On the job

10 a.m. Preparing myself for a Journalism seminar when I casually check my e-mail, waiting for the delivery date for a Body Shop order. Looking through the unread file, my eyes stop upon a response, “ RE: Lincoln Promo”.

I quickly open it to see if my job application had been successful and realise that if I am the first to reply to this e-mail, I’m actually getting my first real job.

And I do.

Overexcited, I decide to skip the seminar (if you’re seeing this, Sue, I’m sorry!!) and get to the Al!ve Church for the initial briefing. And I decided to dress the part too.

I chose a black pencil skirt, which I mixed with white silk-knitted top and black opaque tights. I added some life to the outfit with my newest cut-out ankle boots and grey knitted socks and made my look more vintage with a pair of oversized baroque earrings. I’ll also have to mention that I was going to be a promo person for LouLou’s Vintage, a vintage fair that travels around the UK, visiting over 40 cities. It’s also quite special, as it offers a unique hair parlor and kitsch tea parties. Bearing in mind how much I love fashion, you could imagine my level of happiness.

I almost danced all the way there, happy to have a job, feeling exactly like in the movies. I got there and I was told that the leaflets that I was suppose to hand out (yep, I was supposed to be one of those very annoying people that give you bits of paper you awkwardly stuff in your pockets and forget about) were very heavy and that I couldn’t actually lift them and take them home. At least not in just one turn.

“Well, that’s…bad” I thought to myself, but I quickly decided to not waste any time and get carrying the first set out of 5000 flyers and posters.

As I was walking on the streets of Lincoln with a heavy box in my arms, I suddenly realised how fitted I would be to play the stereotypical small-town girl trying to hit it big with small jobs, carrying around heavy boxes and trying to be as stylish as possible while doing so and completely failing.

My parka was keeping me way hotter than I was expecting it to, my incredibly low heels starting hurting and my arms felt like they were being cut off. I paused for a second to get my hair into a bun and prevent it from stabbing my eyes (because no bad day is complete without the wind blowing in your direction).

I reached my dorm with a broken box, huge calluses and a back pain. And that was only the first trip.

I ended up convincing the boyfriend to come and help me, but by then I had lost all of my notions of glamour regarding the idea of a “grown-up job”, be it just handing out leaflets.

It took me 4 more days to get the job done, but it took a lot of hard work and I was very proud of myself when I finished the stack of 5000 leaflets in a total of 8 hours.