Call me

I've spent the last 2 years trying to get a job. It was part of a plan.

Now, the plan wasn't "all I have to do is win the lottery twice and we're made," while I sit on my backside filling out lotto entries. No, the plan was I get a job doing what I have been doing for the last 25 years. We decorate and sell our house. We buy a smaller one without a mortgage.

Good plan, I hear you say. But I can't get a job. No one will interview me.

I tell a lie, I had one interview last year. I was so nervous, it being my first face-to-face interview, I probably didn't come across very well. Never mind, I thought. There will be others...

There was a telephone interview, I'm not sure if they count. A friend had put in a good word for me. I didn't know it was a telephone interview until that morning, so I got my suit cleaned before I got the phone call. It went well, I thought. "See you next week," he said, "for the second interview. More of a chat, really." Then he disappeared on various trips to Paris for days or weeks at a time. But he wouldn't delegate the vacancy-filling to any one else. So I waited. And phoned, of course.

Because agencies don't help. They are like lovers who have decided to move on, but haven't the nerve to tell you. "I'll call," they say. "Before the end of the week, I'll call." Then you call them, but they are always "on the phone, can I take a message?" Call me, I say. We can make it work. We can make me work.

I only apply for jobs I know I can do, but I'm told I'm not qualified so they haven't forwarded my CV. 25 years don't matter because I don't have previous knowledge of some new acronym or buzzword I could pick up in no time. Or I'm not qualified because I haven't worked recently.

Managers. Grow up. Not everyone over 35 is brain dead, not everyone who has been looking for work for a long period is unemployable. Use your imagination. Believe it or not, it's what you're paid to do. Do you think I won't fit in? Why, am I from a different planet? I still buy CDs, go to the cinema, listen to mp3s. I don't bore people about the good old days.

So meet me. Interview me. Talk to me.

Oh, and the telephone interviewer? He gave the job to someone else they had to get rid of 2 months later bcause he couldn't do the job.

I'm waiting for the phone to ring.