CAREER CHOICE

I had no idea at all what i wanted to do when i left school not a clue. So on the advice of the careers advisor i went on a 13 week program of work experience placements. We met in an office on the corner of Owen street in Coalville. I would be paid a flat 40 pounds a week by Career choice. I would not be getting any money from the actual companies I would be working for.

The first week were spent doing job interview techniques and tips on writing job applications. Why we never done this at school was beyond me!!!!!. With my A-Level maths and computing they tried to find a placement for me in accounting or office type work. However they didn't have any luck for a start so they asked if I would like to try 2 weeks in Burton's clothes shop in Coalville.

I never thought about working in a shop before.The job itself was not that difficult, standing up all day and a bossy ginger haired girl (that everyone else complained about) were the only problems I had. I got on well with most of the other staff and started to get into the swing of things. Keeping the shop tidy and helping customers was the priority. When I got back to career choice they said I had done well.

 

The second placement was at the Yorkshire bank a minutes walk down the road from Burton's. This time I would do the full 4 weeks. I got on with everyone except for the assistant manager.

I did find some of the work a bit boring such as adding up the checks on some ancient machine at the end of each day. But overall it was not a bad placement the most memorable moment was when I helped someone fill the cash machine. I was earning a 40 pound a week training allowance and standing in front of me was over 50000 pounds. Again I got another reasonable report of them back to career choice.

 

The third and final work experience placement was at an office called Thomassen near Morrison's in Coalville. Since I was the first person to get a placement at that place the two women who were in charge told me that I had to make a good impression.

I started off doing some basic office work, but it soon became obvious that they were all far too busy to teach me anything. A lot of the time I was left on my own and I did at least teach myself the basics of spreadsheet use. I was called upon to do the boring jobs that nobody else wanted to do. During this time I got to hear about all the office backstabbing that went on, I have to admit that few weeks in a world of stressed out caffeine addicts was enough to put me off office work for life.

One woman absolutely hated me and talked to me as if I was the scum of the earth. When I got back to career choice she had told the 2 women in charge a load of lies including that I really wanted to go to art college. (Art was my worst subject at school).

By the third week I was getting pretty sick of it, I was spending entire days just photocopying documents. Then I had to go through them all (over 40 massive boxes of them) and spend days on end manually hole punching them all.

Now I don’t mind doing mundane jobs if i’m getting payed a reasonable wage, I was learning no more than I would have done stacking shelves in a supermarket and I would have been paid close to 100 pounds a week instead of the 40 that I was through career choice. Likewise I didn’t mind working for low wages as long as I was learning something that could earn me more money at some future point. I wanted to be “earning or learning” and here I was doing neither.

After about 2 and a half days of non stop repetitive hole punching documents I just left the building without saying anything to anyone. Dad was not happy but he phoned up career choice to say that I had suddenly taken ill. I got away with it and spent the final week back at the office (I didn’t do a lot but had to attend and see out the 13 weeks in order to be paid).

It was then I discovered what career choice was really about..............................