Jogging Along

by James Birk

Chapter 19

  It was a grim time to be an FFS employee. The rumour mill had been in overdrive for several weeks, but as yet no announcement had been forthcoming on the prospective redundancies. We badgered our line manager, Kirsty for information at every available opportunity, but if she knew anything she was doing an incredible job of pretending not to, and experience had taught me that if Kirsty acted as though she didn’t know anything, it was because she really didn’t. Discretion was a completely alien concept to her.

  Grant, on the other hand, was a master of secrecy, and he certainly had the air of someone who knew more than he was letting on. In fairness to him, though, he didn’t look particularly happy about things, which meant either he was feeling sympathy for those individuals who were about to lose their jobs, or more realistically, his own job wasn’t safe either.

  I wasn’t sure what to make of it all. I didn’t like my job that much I knew, but I did like the security of having a regular income. Unemployment did not resonate too strongly with me as a desirable state of affairs. The summer after graduating university I had had a brief spell claiming jobseekers allowance, and it was not an experience I was in a hurry to repeat. I could still remember the feeling of euphoria at finishing my degree, of realising there would be no more mind-numbing essays to write, no more interpreting of novels that I hadn’t fully understood and no more caffeine-fuelled all night revision sessions. I was a free man, and what’s more a graduate. I knew that it wouldn’t be long before I was snapped up by some prestigious graduate recruiter and earning a nice fat salary. But weeks went by and none of my applications were successful, and because every other student and recent graduate in Cardiff was also looking for work over the summer, I found that not only could I not get the highly paid job I had been expecting, but I couldn’t even get a really badly paid job. I started looking for work from the beginning of June, when I finished my last exam. I was still unemployed at the end of July when I received the disappointing news that too much time in the pub and too little time in the library had caused me to narrowly miss out on the all-important upper second class degree that I needed to even stand a chance of getting through the recruitment filters of the bigger employers. The absence of even a sniff of a job continued right the way through to the end of September when for the first time in my life I didn’t have a school or a university to return to. For the whole of that summer and beyond I found myself ‘on the dole’ and it was a pretty awful experience.

  It wasn’t hard to claim benefits. As long as I was able appear to be actively looking for work I was allowed to continue to receive the fortnightly payments for a reasonable amount of time without question. All I needed to do was keep a record of three different things that I had done each week to help me find gainful employment, and to be honest that was often as simple as opening the job section in the newspaper on three separate occasions. In fact it was sometimes as simple as claiming to have opened the job section in the newspaper on three separate occasions. It wasn’t hard to be on job seekers allowance, but it was demoralising, because even though I only had to make myself available to sign on once every two weeks, there did seem to be a conspiracy to make that fortnightly experience as humiliating as it possibly could be, as if everyone who was claiming benefits was a workshy sponger, rather than someone who was just unfortunate enough to find themself in a saturated job market. Inevitably some people who were on benefits were probably on benefits because they were lazy, but in my experience, the vast majority of people queuing up in that soul-destroying little office to be validated for another fortnight were genuine people who wanted to find gainful employment.

  Eventually I managed to find a badly paid job stacking shelves in a shop and one badly paid job led to another badly paid job and even though my career had yet to scale the heights that I had once dreamed possible I had managed to remain in gainful employment for seven years without ever needing to sign on again, until I had finally made my way into Freedom Financial Services, which was now, after just over two years, the longest period I’d ever spent working for the same employer. In fact, when I thought about it, it was really the closest thing I’d ever had to an actual career. The reality was that any idiot could do my job. In theory one needed five GCSEs grade C or above, including Maths and English to get through the doors of FFS, but this was a fairly unnecessary filter, because I had been far more intellectually challenged when I was in primary school than I ever had been in FFS.

  Still, glad as I would be to escape the job dissatisfaction that FFS provided me with, I didn’t want to be told to leave, I didn’t want to be on the proverbial ‘scrap heap’ just months before my thirtieth birthday. If my life had not gone to plan so far, it was at least following some kind of alternative, less demanding plan, but to be unemployed now, to have to give up my horrible little flat and move back in with my parents now, was too awful a prospect for me to imagine (I had my doubts about how thrilled my parents would have been with the idea of me moving back in as well).

  To ease my concerns I had thrown myself more vigorously than before into my running, and it was helping to ease the pressure. I had also started to be on time for work, and to do my job properly. It no longer made any kind of sense to risk getting caught skiving off or doing anything that I shouldn’t be doing.

  Tim laughed at my new found devotion to my job, but then he could afford to laugh. He was planning on leaving soon anyway. He had a career path lined up for him, and perhaps just as importantly, he was ever so slightly younger than me.

  Working hard meant a lot more time spent at my desk. Rarely did an opportunity arise to actually get up legitimately, and I started to get cabin fever. Tim would goad me by offering to go for a round of drinks and then deliberately ‘forgetting’ mine, meaning that if I wanted a coffee to help me through the day, I would have to actually get up myself. Fortunately I could usually rely on Antonia or Faye to keep me provided with regular doses of caffeine.

  It was with almost euphoric delight one morning that I discovered, as I was sifting thought the team post, a legitimate reason to leave my desk. There was a medical report that had been delivered to my team by mistake, and consequently it was imperative that I took it upstairs to the medical underwriting team.

  I leapt out of my seat with glee.

  ‘Just off to take this to the medics,’ I announced to anyone who would listen.

  ‘Oh, I’m off up there myself in a minute,’ said Tim malevolently, ‘why don’t I just take it then and save you the trouble.’

  I shot him a look of such pure rage that he was taken aback for a moment.

  ‘It’s alright mate,’ I snarled, ‘I think it needs to go up NOW!’

  Tim nodded demurely and turned back to the game of noughts and crosses he was playing on somebody’s actual application form for Life Assurance.

  I marched out into the lobby and pressed the call button for the lift. Minutes later I was on the fifteenth floor, waiting for a slightly ignorant jobsworth called Callum to look up from the application form he was perusing on the Medical Help Desk (which should have been called the Medical Underwriting Help Desk for absolute clarity, but I don’t think anyone had yet made the mistake of going to the desk in need of first aid) and acknowledge my existence. After a just-long-enough-to-be-rude-but-not-long-enough-to-really-complain-about period of time had elapsed he finally lifted his head.

  ‘Yes?’ he barked.

  ‘Err, got a letter sent to our department by mistake,’ I replied, proffering the envelope as I spoke.

  He snatched it out of my hand and without uttering another word he returned to his work, clearly irritated to have been bothered by a fifth floor monkey such as myself.

  Under less anxious times I would have said or done something to take Callum down a peg or two, but I resisted the urge and walked away.

  Back in the fifteenth floor lobby, I realised that my little trip had barely taken any time at all and braced myself for the ensuing boredom that would come with returning t
o my desk when the lift doors opened and the adorable Amy walked out. I had barely seen anything of her since last summer but she had lost none of her cuteness. She saw me and smiled and my heart melted instantly.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, ‘how are you?’

  ‘I’m alright,’ I replied, ‘Bored, mostly. How about you?’

  ‘Yeah, pretty bored too,’ she agreed, ‘so how’s the marathon training going?’

  ‘Surprisingly good,’ I said, ‘I mean I’m way off being able to run anything close to twenty-six miles, but I have been training almost every day.’

  ‘I can tell,’ she said, ‘you look pretty fit.’

  I blushed a bit, not used to taking complements.

  ‘Thanks,’ I mumbled and then changing the subject quickly, ‘so what brings you up here today?’

  ‘Oh I just need to bring this medical report that got sent down to our team by mistake,’ she said.

  ‘Same thing happened to me, must be Julian doling out the post today,’ I said, recalling the ineptitude of my former prodigy.

  ‘I actually think it was,’ she laughed.

  ‘Well watch out, there’s an idiot called Callum on the helpdesk today,’ I warned, ‘he’s a bit of dick, truth be told.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve met him before,’ she said, ‘actually he asked me out once, so I’ll probably be OK.’

  ‘Callum asked you out?’ I strained to keep the jealousy out of my voice, ‘you didn’t go out with him did you.’

  ‘No, he’s not really my type,’ she said looking at me, ‘anyway I fancied someone else at the time.’

  Was it my imagination or was she blushing now too?

  ‘Oh right,’ I mumbled, ‘well I hope it all worked out with him.’

  ‘No, he was seeing someone else at the time,’ she was giving me the strangest of looks, ‘but it doesn’t matter now, because I’m leaving at the end of the week.’

  I was crestfallen.

  ‘Really? Have you got a new job?’

  ‘No, but I’m going back to university to do teacher training next year,’ she said, ‘and I can’t really justify the rent I’m paying, so I’m moving back in with my parents.’

  ‘Oh, do they live locally?’ I asked hopefully but knowing from her accent that it was a pointless question.

  ‘No they live in rural Kent,’ she grimaced, ‘but it’ll save me some money, and to be honest I’m an awful cook.’

  ‘Yeah, nothing beats your mum’s cooking does it?’ I said.

  ‘Have you ever tasted my mum’s cooking,’ she looked puzzled.

  ‘No I mean, well my mum is a good cook so I was just...’ I tailed off as I realised she had been joking.

  ‘Well I suppose I’d better go and deliver this letter,’ she shrugged and made to go through doors I had just exited.

  ‘Yeah, well I’m sorry you’re leaving,’ I said before adding, ‘I mean I’m sure you won’t miss FFS, but you know the place won’t be the same without you.’

  She paused and gave me another strange look.

  ‘Really?’ she said, ‘but you haven’t spoken to me since the summer.’

  ‘Haven’t I?’ I said knowing full well that I hadn’t, ‘well yeah, I am a bit rubbish like that.’

  ‘I thought maybe you didn’t like me,’ she continued.

  ‘N...n...n...no,’ I stammered, ‘I mean I do like you, it’s just you know...’

  ‘What?’ she smiled inquisitively.

  ‘Well you were on a different floor, so....’ I tailed off lamely.

  ‘So you do like me?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah, I really do,’ I said, ‘in fact if you’re having a leaving do or anything...’

  ‘I’m not,’ she said, ‘I’ve got to move out of my room on Friday, so my parents are picking me up and taking me home then.’

  ‘Oh, OK,’ I said, ‘well I hope it all works out for you anyway.’

  ‘Yeah, you too.’

  She smiled her luminous smile once more and walked away.

  I watched her go sensing another opportunity for happiness had just slipped through my fingers.