Part 5 : My Life at Work

My life at work; this will be short.

My first job is teaching in a high school. I am 20. I do not wish to be a teacher, nor do I feel I have anything to teach. I have always detested having to speak in front of a group. I am only a few years older than my class. Worse, I am teaching geography to year 8s although I never studied geography beyond year 7. Nevertheless, I manage to do it for one whole year. I learn that you must be careful not to mix up Africa and South America.

My second job is looking after other people's children in my home, along with my own. This is easy but I only get $20 a week so it is not lucrative, but at least my children have someone to play with. This goes on for years and a succession of children without incident until little James gets a wellie full of boiling water by accident, and severely burns his little white foot. I vow never to look after anybody's children ever again.

Next I get a job working in the office of our family business, which is an investment company. I like this job because I can dress up in nice clothes. I learn how to run a share register and how to wait for things to turn up in the mail. Sometimes the things take months and months. I have to liaise with someone at Executor Trustee about tranferring a Trust Fund. Every week I go across town to his office and say, We haven't received anything yet. His wife is going to have a baby. One day she rings up while I'm in the office and he turns away from me to answer the phone. 'Hi hinny', he says, in a treacley voice. I wonder if this is because he is Dutch.

My last job is working in the canteen at Touch Footy on Thursday nights, a job my daughter does not want and my son needs someone to do. This is a very time consuming way of making a few dollars for the club by selling the odd pie, pasty, red frog, giant python, and Coke. Plus I have to keep the drink fridge stocked up. One day a young woman comes in and tells me she thinks I should do more in the interests of fellowship, organise a barbecue on the weekend for example.
Fellowship! Interfering Christian person! Does she think I like doing this? I am so outraged I can hardly speak.