Working. Unemployed.

I'm currently ill in bed and trying to fit this quick post in before Corrie.

Some of you may know that in an attempt to pay off my overdraft and get a life I've got a temporary waitressing job in a restaurant. The hours are long and it pays minimum wages and it's TIRING. The people I work with are all lovely and make it a gazillion times better than it otherwise would be.

I just have a few things I kind of wanted to say about it. Not because you all want to read it or anything as ridiculous as that, but occasionally I like to flick through this blog and remind myself of times when I've been happy/sad/angry and I felt I should probably note this whole temporary work fiasco down.

Working from 12pm until 11pm -and sometimes past midnight- is tiring and depressing. There's no time for anything else, I've not seen any friends in ages (except my best friend and that's because we coincidentally have had the same days off). I've cried more in the past two weeks than I probably have in the past 3 months. I've gone from one extreme (being unemployed with all the time in the world) to working all the hours ever. I'd never ever say I was work-shy, I've pretty much always been employed since I was 15 and it's never been desk jobs so it's not like I'm scared of being on my feet all day or anything as pathetic as that. It's just that this is not healthy, I don't know how anybody does it, but I do know that for many it's not a choice *serious face*. From speaking to the fab people that I work with there are cases of people that have debt to repay (nothing like the measly grand a half of overdraft that I have), haven't been able to get apprenticeships or have simply ended up there just as I have.

It feels weird to write, I haven't actually written a single thing in ages and I feel like I've forgotten how to do it. Apologies if this ramble is hard to read, I'm trying to make it at least a little coherent.

So yes, anyway. I was thinking about a lot of things today and I have a few points.

• I was watching that Dispatches episodes about rubbish collections and recycling and why the fuck did they not mention restaurants once? This is the second restaurant I've worked in and both have been  appalling for recycling. There's this massive focus on household waste and recycling but never a mention of the catering industry, especially in the mainstream media. Do we just ignore that? Is that the done thing? The amount of glass, cardboard and food waste that gets taken to landfill is just crazy. Well annoying.
• No-one who works 12 hours a day has any time for politics. Fucking lucky too, because if they did have the time to pay attention to it they'd be really angry at it all (well, angrier...). Even I -someone who <3s politics- has been plagued with a horrible bitterness towards people in politics in the space of a fortnight. Obviously when I'm unemployed again my bitterness shall be focused on a different aspect of politics (which can be summarised with the well known phrase "fucking Tories").
• I'll be unemployed again after the first week of November. I'm ridiculously lucky to have parents who aren't charging me any rent whilst I pay off my overdraft and such. However, there are some people who will be made unemployed when I will -because it's the end of Blackpool's season when the illuminations are turned off- and they have families to look after and rent to pay. The bus I get to work drives through one of the poorest wards in Blackpool and for many people living in that ward it'll only get worse at the end of the season. This isn't a "oh poor them in their poor situation" thing. I've lived in that, I'm not feeling sorry for them, I'm angry. Since I was a kid there's now more help in schools for poor kids and there is more help for parents, but towns like Blackpool still have nothing in the way of good, permanent employment. Masses of people are loaded onto the dole queue every November until late February and it's months of hard winters for all of them. I know Blackpool is undergoing a regeneration at the moment, and fair enough, it's looking nicer and the town attracted 13 million visitors this year, but where are the benefits to those of us who actually live here? Where are the proper jobs? Where is all this money that's being pumped into the local economy going? FOR REAL. So much anger at all of this.

Anyway. I think I'm done ranting now. If anyone made it this far then you're a bit weird but it's really appreciated. Corrie is on now, good timing.