Two fat ladies.....

I'm reviewing my CV, not because I have a job in mind that I am going to send it into, just because you never know when you will find such a job and I want to be ready. My CV used to be brilliant, it has things like 'Bar Associate' where it should read 'Bar Maid', 'Administrative technician', where it should read 'Admin assistant', 'graduate trainee' where it should read 'general dogsbody who no-one at the company knows what to do with', and my proudest moment and personal favourite - 'Bingo Assistant', where it should read exactly that - 'Bingo Assistant'.

I have had a job since I was 14 years old and my mother pushed me through the door of a small supermarket that stank of rotting vegetables and said 'there's a sign on the door saying they want staff, go and get the job because pocket money stops here' (in case you were wondering, no, my sister was not given this 'talk' until she was 16). This particular store broke pretty much every law and EU regulation that tries to govern how many hours a CHILD should work, and I worked 25 hours a week for the princely sum of £2 whole pounds an hour (and I was lucky, some of the girls were on £10 a day) and this was on top of going to school.
I had enough of that after an exhausting four months and so my detailed job history began....
Before I was a till girl at Rotting Vegetable Mart I was a babysitter (£1 an hour, £2.50 an hour after midnight, I think I was the cheapest baby sitter in the WHOLE WORLD), then came the Rotting Vegetables, then I was a waitress at a tea room (complete with Victorian uniform including small white apron and head dress, no Glenn, I don't still have it), then I worked at Argos, and then I worked at Homebase for three years. I worked at GAP for a year (the single most miserable job I have EVER had, it turns out I am a rubbish sales person, I can't sell socks to the sockless). I spent a summer working in a bingo hall. I spent another summer working in a country pub. I worked at a starbucks type independant coffee shop (and that is every bit as cool as you think it should be, you chose your own music, you picked your own hours, you were allowed to LAUGH with the customers (try and explain that to the people in GAP), and all the coffee and haribo was absolutely free to staff. I spent another summer working at a wetherspoons. I worked at The Law Society for 6 months and that brings us right up to now, I have been in my current job for a little over two years.

I would just quickly like to state I have NEVER been sacked, I just get bored easily.

The best job out of all of them, the greatest, most fun job I have ever had is far and away the summer I spent between my 2nd and 3rd year at uni, as a Bingo Assistant. The job of bingo assistant is little talked about (I blame the uniform - bow tie and waistcoat, even for the girls) and the reputation of the staff as people who ended up there because they were too thick to do anything else (yearly staff turnover at the establishment where I worked was 450 in a place that needed 20 full time staffers), this is mostly due to the pay being so low no one can believe anyone would actually choose to do it, but they are forgetting the bingo! The old people who come religously EVERY SINGLE DAY to spend almost their entire pension on little cards with numbers on them and dabbers (industry term for maker pen, the professional's choice for ease and speed of eliminating the numbers called out).
I know why all old people are so poor, it isn't the lack of a pension, it's the lure of the bingo!
The silver haired lothario at the helm, calling out the numbers and referring to the old ladies as 'young girls', making them giggle like they haven't giggled in 50 years.
They get drunk at the bingo, drunk! and it's not even Christmas!
And young people wearing questionable bow ties attending to their every need, like they're millionaires. Bloody wonderful!

I made some lovely friends there who I have sadly lost touched with (including a couple of hard core lesbians, but we'll talk about my curious phase another time.....) and had an absolute riot the whole time I was there (although I was never allowed to call the numbers, oh no no no, the patrons were VERY PICKY about who called the numbers, amateurs were regularly booed off the stage). I'd been through the mill a bit at the tail end of time I was at uni and what I needed was to meet new people, do new things and forget about everything that had gone before. I did all of that and it gave me back some desperately needed self-confidance.

Anyone know if the local Bingo hall is recruiting?