Blogs: Richard's job log: 14

Richard currently works in a Birmingham law firm, after completing a contemporary history degree. He's thinking about a paralegal career, but also has media ambitions.

Barring a minor miracle, by the time this piece is published I will be unemployed. After around two and a half years of doing a job that nobody really knows much about, I will be returning to the massed ranks of the unemployed. I must quickly add that I wasn’t sacked or anything like that; no the legal profession deals in contracts and much like a professional footballer might not have his contract extended by his club, myself and eight or nine other people in my team are not having our contracts extended. The litigation we have been working on for the last three years or so has concluded and it is off to the job centre for us.

That’s where the football analogy ends I’m afraid. There are no super-injunctions to be revealed or teary press conferences on the way out, just a handshake and a toodle-pip. To be quite honest I am quite sad to be leaving, having enjoyed my time here.

 

One of the greatest things I can say about the firm I have been working for is that they haven’t actively attempted to destroy my will to live, something my previous company did seemingly every day. One morning, for example, I was taken into a side office and given an enormous dressing down for buying myself a coffee. Seriously, they didn’t think it was appropriate. Thank God I didn’t tell them about the croissant I had in my bag.

I am still unsure how coffee could be inappropriate for an office. If they had watched ‘Office Space’ (yes this is the second time I have referenced this film in about three months), they would know that Bill Lumbergh always had a coffee in the office and he was management!

Besides it wasn’t like Starbucks were drawing pictures of naked ladies on the outside of their cups. In fairness, I think crude caveman style drawings of naked people could vastly improve most coffee houses.

So in summary, I need a new job and as it is quite unlikely that any major coffee chains will be asking me to redecorate their premises anytime soon, I need to get cracking. A friend of mine who is an editor for a magazine has suggested that I use my impending unemployment to put all of my energy into breaking into something that I really want to do rather than just trying to find another job. In theory this is a great idea, though sadly I don’t think the bank would be terribly sympathetic to my cause when I can’t pay my mortgage. Anyway, I am off for a coffee, does anyone want anything?