Three weeks before the chocolate incident, I was at my local unemployment office.
I hadn't quite reached the point where I turned up in a barely washed pair of jeans and t-shirt but I had been going there long enough to realise how pointless it was. The job centre was slowly draining all hope from me. There was something about these places, no matter how many posters they put up of happy employed people it still is an uncaring black hole. Despite the title, few people actually leave with a job or prospects of getting one, unless a volunteer seat warmer in a public house counts.
I turned up every fortnight for four months to discuss my progress in the world of work. In reality, it was waiting a long time on uncomfortable green chairs with other people in various stages of job seeking. There are three types of job seeker, the newly unemployed who were neatly dressed and still keen, versus the ones who had given up, going through the motions so they could get hold of their benefits. In between there were people like me whose optimism was slowly slipping but still felt they had to make an effort. It was hard to be optimistic, how could you be when you were about to face a dressing down from a smug office worker with less qualifications than you?
Finally, after an eternity of waiting and picking my nails, a loud buzz sounded and it was my turn to be crushed, I mean coached.
The interrogator, sorry interviewer, is a woman in her late forties. My heart crashed to the sub basement. This was a woman who has made a whole career out of knocking people down who have hit rock bottom. She was a full believer in equality, in that everyone who sat in front of her was a total loser who couldn't secure employment. I wondered how many alcoholics she made that day.
She stared at me over her black rimmed glasses, she wore a chunky knit jumper, wool or some Xeran fibre. When the Xerans came to live above the earth, we got a few technologies off them. Just a few, they were infamously stingy that blue skinned lot.
I say technology, it's hard to explain. They don't have machines, it's all biological, from bacteria and plants. It took me a while to get used to the idea of materials that come from Eldritch terrors, but it makes sense to go towards the material that doesn't come from fossil fuels. Better for the environment, just don't think about where it comes from if you want to sleep at night.
"Ms Goldheart," The human terror's frown lines deepened and I gulped. It was going to be brutal, she was going for the kill. "I understand from your records you have been out of work for four months? '' Her derision was thinly veiled. "And your horticultural degree was so long ago it's obsolete now with-," she almost said, Xeran. "The new developments. Which is a great shame."
I shrugged at the remark. When you have heard the same thing told by a different person every two weeks for four months, it loses it effect after a while, "What can I say?" I said, trying to take sincerity, "I've had a few setbacks the last few months."
"I can see that clearly Ms Goldheart," she said without any sympathy, "However, I cannot see what you are doing to rectify your situation." She looked at her computer screen, "Any degree, even an obsolete one shows you once had the ability to learn."
She has a job? I thought, sitting up in my chair. By this point of unemployment, I didn't care if it was a data entry job, in a stark white cubicle. I'm taking it, another month of no prospects and I was going to have to apply to a food bank. I nearly fell for it. Wait, my brain reminds me, any second now.
Three... Two... One...
"Unfortunately, so does everyone else," she did it, the knock back. It still stung, I slumped back in my chair. She briefly looked up from her computer screen to acknowledge my reaction, "this means you are a problem to us. No one wants to employ someone who is overqualified but lacks experience in other fields."
"I know," I said, thinking of the cheap wine back at home, ready to comfort me, "I get told this every other week. I apply to every job going. I've had a few interviews." Which was true, Though none had led to a job. "I'm not even picky, I'll even do labouring!" it was a last ditch attempt, I couldn't see myself digging a ditch and neither could she. She shook her head at my reply.
"So I see Ms Goldheart." She said disinterested, "I am still going to put you in the retraining programme. There's a vacancy starting next week."
Forget the sub basement, my heart has sunk to the depths of hell and is now being prodded by Satan with a pitchfork.