Anyone unfortunate to have been saddled with my company in the last twelve months will surely have been regaled with colourful and expletive-ridden anecdotes about my time working for the Society of St Vincent de Paul - Vinnies to you trendy, bargain-hunting whores. As amusing and often rewarding as that time of employment was (see: wardrobe; bank balance) I finally came to the end of my time there when my Area Manager and I engaged in some mutually passive aggressive conversation regarding my rather lax attitude towards attendance. Luckily for me, I can smell the end of any relationship miles off and had been making preparations for this parting of the ways for a few weeks, and had luckily succeeded in securing myself a job with embryo (intenional lack of capitals) designs, a couture bridal and evening wear business on South King St, not two shopfronts from the building in which I spent six years of school life (NHSPA) and the building in which I spent two years avoiding Legal Studies/English Advanced (Lou Jacks Cafe).
I feel no guilt over the way things went with Vinnies; they had strung me along many a time and they really should not have been surprised when I, in the end, showed them no real loyalty. My time with Vinnies has taught me that a great job is more than an excellent pay packet and baskets of free clothes: if the people you work with/for are mentally deranged drug addicts, you won't last long - and that's before you even have to start dealing with the customers. I am responsible for the fact that things ended in the manner that they did, but frankly they - or more specifcally, my Area Manager, is responsible for the fact that things had to end at all.
So today I tossed off my scummy jeans and natty blue apron and donned my sophisticated blacks for my first day at the other end of the retail spectrum. This job offers an even better pay packet (let's all hear it for commission) and is in a clean, quiet, pleasant smelling environment. The woman who is my boss owns the business and designs all the dresses herself, and I can safely say that I am going to be able to earn that tasty commission totally honestly - I think her designs are beautiful. I also have had the chance to talk with her fairly extensively about her design principles - admirable; her plans for the business - ambitious; and her personal history - unsual and inspiring (and I am not a person who approves of the use of that word.) As I left the store at 5:10pm this afternoon, I found myself thinking that this was a company I could happily see myself staying with, in one capacity or another, for some time yet.
There's just one hitch: my employment with embryo is Saturdays only - which would have suited me great during the semester. But the semester is drawing to a close, and with my plans to move out of home next year and the recent ransacking my savings account has taken, I need to work at least three or four days a week over the summer to get some cash together and finally meet that elusive* Youth Allowance target. embryo are not looking to expand my role and quite frankly I'm happy for it to stay that way; it means not having to let them down when uni goes back in March.
No, what I need is quick, fast cash, from someone (by which I mean a company or business) I neither like, respect nor frequent, so that when I fuck them over by disappearing just after the Christmas rush, I don't have to feel guilty/give up my favourite coffee haunt for leaving them in the lurch. A CBD cafe, I thought to myself, or maybe a Country Road Christmas Casual. I'd probably be fucking miserable and want to kill myself/the customers (HOW MANY DIFFERENT KINDS OF CARGO PANT CAN YOU TRY ON???) but the money, right?
So off I trotted to seek.com.au, my go-to guide for all things employment related. (Truth told, it has only ever rendered me one, very undesireable job, but I figured for these purposes it was perfect.) Hospitality yielded little - I don't want to work in a hotel. Retail was a little more promising and I had saved myself ads for kikki.K, Marcs and Jigsaw (remember what I said about cold hard cash), when I came across an advertisement for a Sales Assistant with Australian lable Katie Pye.
Katie Pye was a kickass designer back in the eighties, doing lots of wacky and wonderful stuff with handpainting and flowers and Mondrian-style prints - totally the kind of thing my mother wore back in the day, which is why there is a bright aquamarine coat dress with floral hand painting lurking at the back of my wardrobe, just waiting for me to be brave enough to wear it in real life. (I wore it once to an eighties party. Its shoulders could have their own postcode.) Suffice to say, it's funky stuff and I like funky stuff and I obviously like working in jobs where I get to tell people what to wear.
In the end, I decided not to think about applying for this one - in Surry Hills, it would be a hassle for me to get to by public transport and I think they were probably looking for someone with more administrative/stock management skills than I have. But the fact that I was thinking about going for it raised some interesting questions for me.
What if I had liked it alot? What if, at the end of working there for three months, I maybe decided I liked it better than embryo? Would I quit embryo then, just because I found something better? Is it worth even applying for a new job, not because you specifically want to get out of your old job, but because it might be that "something better"?
Finding something better is kind of a recurring theme with me, at least when it comes to things like jobs. From year nine to the begining of university I had (including a gap year) six different employers. My two best friends had one. I don't think the concept of "company loyalty" rates very highly with me, which is why I always found it so hard to understand why these two friends insisted on staying in jobs that were boring, badly paid and poorly managed. While they both had different reasons for doing so, for one it was certainly a factor that she had worked there so long and established a relationship with her bosses. I have to say that kind of thing has never meant very much to me. If I think I can get better pay and better conditions - and in an industry that better suits my needs and interests - somewhere else, I will drop whatever employer I have like a hot potato, because my theory is that while I have no rights as a casual employee, I also have no responsibility.
And it's an attitude that extends into other areas of my life too. I don't like to be a settler. I don't buy clothes that "almost fit." (Unless they're vintage and beautiful and worth altering.) (Also note clothing that "almost fits" and comes FOR FREE does not count.) I don't buy what's on special just because it's cheap. I certainly never buy the first version of an item that I come across, if I think I can get it somewhere else cheaper or prettier or both. I was taught to always get at least three quotes for a job. (Came in handy that time the brick got thrown through Jenna's window in year 11...) No, I'm a person who prides themselves on making informed and positive choices, hopefully unhindered and uninhibited by notions of loyalty or convenience. This is good because sometimes I save money and often feel like I've avoided being sucked like the tragic consumer I am into whatever trend-vacuum is exerting its influence over me. This is bad because I often feel like I'm on tenterhooks, I can't get settled, I'm always looking over my shoulder, waiting for the next great offer to come along. I think what it comes down to is that I kind of hate the concept of work so much that what I'm REALLY waiting for is someone to pay me to sit around and read books, or study. Or act. That would be the ideal, quite frankly.
But maybe I am learning to settle, a little - or at least recognise what's good for me. Because while I'm happy to fuck over big, anonymous multinationals like Marcs or Jigsaw, another big part of holding off on the Katie Pye application was that, should anything eventuate, it would eventually mean letting down one of two spectacular independent Australian designers. After what I learnt about the embryo story and where she's planning to take it, I just wouldn't feel right about appraising my role there in purely fiscal terms. This is a relationship I hope will mean more than just my pay packet and tax-deductible black clothing; if I behave myself and think less of what they can offer me and more of what I can offer them I could wind up with something more akin to a career than a job. (Note I have no intention or desire to go into designing wedding dresses.) Yeah, I make me sick too. But that's my informed and positive choice to make.
*PLEASE NOTE the spelling of this word, elusive. It means (according to dictionary.com)
1.eluding clear perception or complete mental grasp; hard to express or define: an elusive concept. 2. cleverly or skillfully evasive: a fish too elusive to catch. IT IS NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH allusive (having reference to something implied or inferred; containing, abounding in, or characterized by allusions) or illusive (based on or having the nature of an illusion). STUDENT JOURNALISTS OF SYDNEY, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
