Growing up – the one about finding a job

It’s not easy finding a job at the moment and #boychild is finding this out first hand.

Having passed some A levels (he’s fairly bright) and deciding that further education didn’t appeal so much got a full time employ, but with a 5am to 1pm shift, which is all well and dandy if you’ve got no friends and want to be in bed by 9am to get your sleep quota in.

Having done that for year he became seduced by the bright lights of further education and had his heart set on Geography/Humanities/Something or other at Auckland university. Despite many questions as to whether it was the “right” thing to study off he went.

For a year. When it became obvious that either he didn’t like study or that he’d chosen the wrong thing.

Leave Uni having achieved partial success and some not so stellar results. Spent all the savings accrued from the year in employ – nett funds now a few gold coins.

Again frustratingly for parents he leaves finding a job untill after Christmas for no reason other than a misplaced hope of success. Yeah like that happens.

And Herein lies a problem. Having left school and had a job for a year, and then a year at Uni #boychild is a couple of years of experience short of a school leaver, but older. And he’s fighting a school leaver fresh off the boat for a job. Any job, if only he knows which one. So older with little by way of recommendation and references. It was never going to be easy.

Back to reality then. Part of being “on the dole” is compulsory attendance at finding work seminars. These seem to be tick the box activities for WINZ and not a lot about finding employ for people.

They then fit you up with a job, that it seems you have to accept. And the doozy they fit #boychild up with was a 30 hours a week, casual hours, thing in a café. The hours varied according to the whim of the owner and often he would return to home for 3 or 4 hours before having to go back for an evening shift. Weird or what. There were days when he went in for an hour. There were days he didn’t go in at all.

Seems the proprietor of the said café establishment had signed up to a cash for job scheme. Employee gets hours for work, employer get subsidy.

So from the parents view of things he’s press-ganged into a job of work that’s neither full-time or appropriate. 30 casual hours in a kitchen cooking from German language menus, not the stuff of legend.

And from a parents point of view, because that’s all we have we suddenly get “I’m told that one more mistake and I’m fired” and it seems there was a rather public dressing down in front of customers with a WINZ person present who, he says said “If you lose this job you’ll lose the dole” which sounds sort of odd and sort of not.

To be honest it’s not a job that I would have put #boychild up for, cooking and cleaning not really his two major strengths to be honest, judging by his domestic habits.

Today though he gets a text telling him not to come to work anymore, a text no less, so he rang and the proprietor tells him that he’s no longer needed.

There are a couple of questions as a parent, and employee that I have

1. Was there a work contract?
2. Did you agree a 90 day trial period, understanding that you could be fired without cause within the 90 days?
3. What “mistakes” did you make, and what training or supervision was given to ensure that you understood the requirements?
4. Did the WINZ person really allow a dressing down in front of customers in the way you said?

I’m hoping that this is the rock bottom and that the only way is up, I’m damned if I’m going to let #boychild mope and spiral out of control into some kind of career beneficiary status, and I’m damned if I’m going to encourage him into a further $10K of student debt to gain a diploma in IT or some such.

Things have a way of working out if you’re motivated and ready to take a knock or two, as a parent this is a hard time to be a parent, as a worker this is a hard time to look for a job, and whilst I don’t expect him to lower his sights he might have to accept that to get on the ladder you have to get on the ladder.

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