Eight Months of Hell
I discovered the heady joys of unemployment straight out of university. Not because I'd done a degree designed to do bugger all (Hi, Art History graduates!). Oh, no. I'd got a 2:1 joint honors degree in computer science and mathematics. For much of my time at university, people had said "You'll have no trouble getting a job."

Unfortunately, I graduated in summer 2003. Everyone who lost their job after the dotcom bubble burst crowded the job market, with their experience that's worth more than any qualification.

Before then, I'd had no experience of unemployment. After all, I'd worked two jobs to fund university.* My courseload had been heavy enough that working a job would have meant settling for a third. I only had time for two of socializing, degree work, and job, after all. My liver and lungs won't thank me, but what else is new?

So I graduated, moved back in with my parents (due to being at the rock bottom of my overdraft and having no mates' sofas I could crash on) and signed on. The job centre staff were all very understanding. My handler was great. I showed him that I'd been applying for jobs and he told me tales of when he'd done the same right after graduating. Probably lying to make me feel better, but I appreciated it all the same.

That was mid-June. I had a simple routine: wake up around eleven, wank, check livejournal and forums, wank, play some sort of video game, wank, do chores, wank, greet parents, drink tea, eat, check job sites and work on CV/covering letter, have a crafty fag once parents have gone to bed,** wank, get really quite depressed, sleep.

On average, I think I found one job a day at the start, but by the end of the first month I was down to checking once a week and not seeing anything for weeks on end. I got two interviews over the summer. One was for a large charity for a helldesk position, which they turned me down for because I'd had experience in a more advanced field,*** and the other was a small business ISP, a family-run type thing, who scrapped the position due to lack of funds and folded four months later.

Come September, my mum had a serious operation. In the "fifteen weeks off work to recover" level. This cut in on my wanking time, but I finally discovered the "joys" of daytime television. I did what I could to make her life easier, and tried to apply for jobs but by that point my depression was so deep I pretty much gave up on graduate positions. My dreams of twenty grand a year were far off, and sixteen was my new goal: enough that I stood a chance of getting a job and paying rent so I could move out. Then fourteen, so I'd have some cash I could save while living at home. Then anything.

Needless to say hearing friends going on about their ace new jobs earning 20-25K sent me spiralling further down.

By chance, I ended up supply teaching for an agency. All you needed was a degree--any degree--and you could be a supply teacher due to the chronic lack of said. A hundred quid a day when I was paying a hundred-ten in board (and on £40 a week as I was living at home)? Fuck yeah. I soon discovered the downsides: I got maybe one day every two weeks, and they were in the worst schools in the most deprived areas. Showing up at the first place, expecting some actual help and support, I got told "You've got a full day. If the cunts don't riot, you're golden." One day every couple of weeks was about all I could manage. On the other hand, that freed up more money for booze. And the agency christmas party was truly epic. I'd never had a four-day hangover before.

I got three interviews in December. One to be the web programmer for a local design house. Just what I wanted to do, what I had some experience doing (I didn't just herd servers in Germany, I'd done my share of PHP and Perl). I wanted that job. I *needed* that job. I poured my all into the interview, did all my research, aced the technical demo and shined in the final interview. It was between me and one other bloke. In the end, they tossed a coin, and I lost.

The second one was to be a lab technician at the local high school. Twelve grand pro-rata for twenty hours a week. Fuck the degree, fuck what I wanted to do, I was getting interest based on A-Level physics, grade D. I seriously considered moving my degree into the "Hobbies" section of my CV at that point. Humiliated at how I'd obviously wasted four years of my life, I went for the interview. I obviously couldn't give a shit, and I was offered the job two weeks later.

The final interview was for a... sub-prime loan agency that's currently in administration with pretty much all the staff made redundant as the company's fucking clueless. Software testing. I asked in the interview what the chances were for promotion to developing, maybe wrtiting code or just an internal transfer based on core skills. I was told they were good. They wanted someone with A-level IT, I had a degree, but I was "enthusiastic" pronounced "desparate". Fourteen thou full time. I got the offer on the same day as the lab tech job, and snapped it up. Which was a mistake, but that's another QOTW.

I don't have any funny stories about being unemployed. Between my mates from uni with their cars and their girlfriends calling me a layabout pikey cunt, between suited folks who treat you like a timewaster for daring to have experience--or ignoring that which you have, between pure random chance costing me a job I would happily have killed for, between family trying to be supportive and destroying any sense of self-worth...

I spent eight months feeling lower than a tapeworm. I blame those eight months for sending me into a depressive spiral that I only emerged from four years' later and that nearly destroyed me.

* Well, that's what I told my parents. Actually, it was so I could drink and smoke and spend vast amounts on books. Twelve years later and I'm a professional writer, so it paid off!
** My mum's one of those people who couldn't bear the thought of any child of hers smoking and to this day I won't ever tell her that I did. My dad, once I lied that I'd picked it up in Germany and only spent my own money on it, didn't mind, but he joined in with the silence.
*** My degree included a year working, which I spent propping up the network and users at a large German defense contractor when not pissed. Since that was more than just answering a phone and reading a script, they didn't want me.
(DigitalRaven will have to make do with gin, Tue 7 Apr 2009, 22:12, 2 replies)

Not a particularly nice story
well told though. glad you are doing something you enjoy now!
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Wed 8 Apr 2009, 8:34, closed)

Sounds familiar
I graduated 1998 and spent 6 months lowering my sights every day. I also was interviewed for a school lab technician job. The cunts never even bothered getting back to me.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Wed 8 Apr 2009, 9:56, closed)