Chasing a Better Life: Peas and Coffee Stains

Chasing a better life

The very first experience I ever had of working with a recruiter was when was chasing a better life, free of peas and coffee stains.

Fiercely independent

I was (and still am) fiercely independent. I’d left school at the age of sixteen to work in a supermarket café.

I still vividly remember the Assistant Head Teacher at my high school in his brown suit telling me I couldn’t study Advanced Higher German in my final year, even though I had offered to study it mostly myself with minimal support. I loved my German classes and at the time I thought I wanted to be a translator; I had all these images in my head of glamorously travelling the world, being on TV doing a job I loved.

After the disappointing news, it was clear to me that if I could not study what I wanted, there was no point in me staying on at school. I left very soon after for a full-time job in a supermarket café.

Peas and Coffee Stains

I was on my usual nine-hour shift on a Friday when I experienced a last straw situation.

As the youngest person on the team, I often did double the work compared to some of my colleagues, it was just the way it was. I had reluctantly conditioned myself to accept that for the best part of two years.

On an October afternoon, while I was on my second round of clearing the tables as my colleagues chatted, I had a moment. As I cleaned the coffee stains and stray peas off the table, in my blue apron that was down to my ankles over a white catering shirt that was four sizes too big, and my brown hair net and blue cap.

I just remember thinking there has GOT to be more to life than this……

On a warm, sunny Friday evening that would have been perfect for an after work social, there I was, sat in front of a computer. It was still and quiet all around me, aside from the humming of the computer fans, the occasional clicking of the mouse button and the keyboard keys generating letters on the screen.

But the sound of determination in my head was deafening, like the thundering hooves of a thousand wildebeest running down a gorge; I was in the library making my CV.

Saturday morning

Saturday morning on my way to work, back in my long blue apron, I posted, YES posted my CV off to three different recruitment agencies.

I was chasing a better life, away from the peas and coffee stains.

I didn’t really understand how they worked but I knew somehow that they would help me find a job, I had seen some adverts on TV and that was the general gist of what I’d gathered.

Full to the brim with hope

On the Tuesday, I navigated my way through to ‘the big city’ to register for work with two of them.

At that time, I lived in a quiet, small town on the coast in the northeast. The recent opening of the first McDonalds in the area had generated queues longer than the ones you’ve seen outside an Apple Store when they release a new iPhone.

The ‘big city’ I knew was full of opportunity, was an hour and a half’s drive. I’d recently bought my car, so I was fully mobile.

After looking up a map, counting the roundabouts and which exits I needed to take, noting down a few street names, off I went.

I was full to the brim with hope, not in my blue apron. I was on my way to a better life.