I started writing this blog as some kind of legacy to the next generations, about life as I know it, because I never had anyone to give me pearls of wisdom really apart from a caring elder sister.
Now, driving for UPS I feel over qualified, under utilised…………..it is so degrading sometimes ferrying cardboard boxes, and so depressing. Infuriating when idiots are behind a steering wheel and are in front of me, but at least not for long !!! Also infuriating when stores don’t answer their delivery goods in back doors, those that have bells of course, Yes believe it or not some don’t have bells and I guess they believe in divine meditation to get supplies.
And another thing…. I used to earn more for 40 hours a week rather than less for 60 hours a week of tedium.
No one ever prepared me for this aspect of life as I know it. Hence the message according to Meldew and the story line now. It’s no good saying, I am doom and gloom, could be worse. I am older and wiser, too old for a worthwhile job, and the stark reality is no one wants a man like me aged 60. That is rather soul destroying, and sadly it is true. Yes I delivered a small box to a lovely lady who answered the door in a wheel chair. She was so happy, it made me smile. She had everything to be unhappy about but she was not………….mmmmm.
Whereas me, I get so fed up. Last Friday night, eating my dinner at the dinner table, I was still mentally in the fast lane trying to get home. Some female retailer had said a few hours earlier that I looked shattered, well a few hours later she was dead right.
It is awful, wasteful and indictment on our society, that someone like me, yes I am blowing my own trumpet, well someone has too………cannot use his experience and knowledge for gainful employment for the benefit of others as well as me.
I have a chat every now and again with a young lad who works in Waterstones, the book shop. He is told when to work, most of the 7 days the shop is open, for a basic salary. He has no say on his times of the shifts, inc Saturday and Sunday and late night Thursdays. He asks me about my job, most of the shops know I work 60 hours a week verbatim. Neither of us get overtime. Was Margaret Thatcher and Rupert Murdoch right to kill the successors of the Tolpuddle Martyrs ???? I think not.
In the 70’s as a thirty something, I thought things would get easier. There would be more leisure time, a better work life balance. Wow was I wrong wrong wrong with that logical forecast. Employment sucks, this recession is a depression, less jobs and more people on the dole going for the fewer opportunities as situations are not vacant at all and slavery has manifested once again. Still we have firms going bust, the latest Bottoms Up has gone bottom up. That means those jobs are not there anymore and the staff are all looking for work, it is a constant spiral or diminishing returns.
My job with UPS has more downs than Ups, but at least it’s a job and I have some money, but no time and not enough £££ to spend on riotous living.
One final thought. For more than 6 months Shirley and I did not speak, we led separate lives apart from the odd slagging match. The house was for sale. She wanted a new life with a Yorkshire terrier. It was a sad affair.
One day she said she didn’t want anyone else to be with me.
That was rather poignant.
No one had ever said that to me before.
It is easy to demolish, takes so much longer to construct. Plants take time to flourish, buildings too to rise into the sky.
I said no one wants me. Well Shirley did, and it was not a case of surely not.
I thank her for that.
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