I’ve never been lucky enough to have a career or jobs that I actively enjoyed. Most of the jobs I’ve had were things I tolerated rather than felt strongly connected to.

I never really knew about all the kinds of jobs that existed and there were probably lots of things that I could have aimed for had I known about them. I think I would probably have tried to do something creative, although I always knew that it wasn’t going to be graphic design for other people. I wasn’t naturally suited to the commercial side of it and I was studying it at a time when the internet barely existed and much of the software was still in its infancy.

At the time of writing this in 2022, as I’m nearly 48, I still don’t know what my ideal job would have been. What I’d like to have done and what I’d realistically have been capable of turning into a career are two different things. Throughout my academic, professional and personal life I’ve often been very aware of my own limitations and of the gap between creating things for myself and producing work professionally to commercial standards.

It’s always been nice to get praise for things I’ve made such as costumes, design work or other artwork, but I’ve generally felt that most of those things weren’t the kind of skills I could realistically turn into a conventional career. One exception is the pub maps, which have had some modest commercial success over the years, although they were never likely to become anything close to a full-time income.

Here’s a summary of the paid jobs I’ve had…

1987 to 1988 or thereabouts.
Whilst not being a real job, my first experience of any kind of paid work was being a paperboy for a free newspaper. I think I got paid 1p per newspaper and I must’ve only had about 200 to deliver each week.

September 1991 – October 1991
My first proper job was working in a small video shop in Oulton in about 1992. It didn’t last very long but it was alright. As there’s a real chance that this could be read by someone that doesn’t even know what a video shop was. It was a kind of library where you could hire VHS video tapes to watch on your VCR at home. It was what people had before Netflix.

December 1992 – October 1997
After my previous video shop job it wasn’t too long until I began working at Ritz in Rothwell.
After about a year or so of working for there, the company had been bought out by Blockbuster and the store went through a transformation.
The job could be quite boring and also quite busy but overall it was a good job to have at that point in my life as it helped supplement my only other income from my student grant. It was one of the reasons I was able to avoid taking a student loan during my college years.
I was able to keep my job even after they’d accidentally dismissed me after I went to California for two months and it was only meant to be a break in employment.
My employment eventually ended in October 1996.

July 1996 – October 1996
I got another job, largely standing behind a counter at Total for a few months from summer to Autumn. I was always working with someone and I never really felt comfortable in that kind of environment. There always seemed to be too much to do and not enough time, like restocking, lottery, newsagent stuff, serving fuel etc. and I don’t think I was especially suited to that type of retail work with

I was quite glad when it was over.

August 1996 – April 1998
For part of 1996 I had three jobs whilst still being a student. Apart from the two shop assistant jobs, I had also taken on an evening cleaning job cleaning at an Employment Agency called HMS, which was part of the same company I worked for, Initial Rentokil, and it was later rebranded as Initial.
I mostly worked when the staff had finished and left for the day. The offices were on the first floor above the corner of Vicar Lane and Eastgate in Leeds. After the work was done, it was sometimes relaxing to just sit in an empty office watching people go by.
Working in town overlapped with working at Parceline by a few months but I finished in April 1998.

January 1997 – June 1997
Whilst at HMS I also began a further cleaning job employed by the same company but working at Imperial Metal Industries (IMI) (Yorkshire Copper Works) in Stourton.
I really quite liked that job for a number of reasons. The site was vast, varied and interesting. I would be able to work alone as part of a large team. I was the only male part of this cleaning staff but that was okay. I’d have to go around the heavy industrial areas and also clean brand new offices. One of the more interesting parts of the work was in an old office block that was being wound down. It was so strange because parts of it had barely been touched since the 70s or 80s. There were all kinds of boardrooms, labs and abandoned areas to explore. Outside areas were also heavily industrialised and interesting to walk around,. As the place was going through a transition, I was able to finish duties quite quickly a lot of the time and spend parts of my shift just soaking up the different environments. I only ever took a couple of photos, and it was well before I would ever have a digital camera.

July 1997 – February 1999
Delivery Driver / Furniture Assembly
Initially the job was meant to be for just one week.
For the most time, I was delivering office equipment and furniture and having to assemble it in homes and premises for a company called Viking Direct. I covered all of North, East, West and parts of South Yorkshire and County Durham. It gave me a much better sense of geography and every day was different.
For the last part of my time working for Parceline, I was doing normal deliveries and collections around Leeds City Centre. That was less enjoyable and often quite stressful.
Overall the job hadn’t been bad and I saw some interesting places. Oddly, I still have the uniform. Not that Parceline exists any more, I would have any use for it, or could even fit into trousers with a 32 inch waist.

May 1999 onwards
After an agonising 10 weeks of unemployment, I got a new job via an agency in 1999 and began working in a call centre environment. Over the years I ended up working across a wide variety of roles including Retention, Business Customer Service, Correspondence, Bereavements & Long Term Illnesses, and eventually Business Customer Service again.

Like many large companies over that period, the organisation went through huge changes over the years, including takeovers, outsourcing and restructuring. Some of those changes were difficult and the working environment gradually became very different from the one I’d originally joined. Earlier on, it had felt like a much more personal and supportive employer, whereas later years became increasingly corporate and process/target-driven. And customer outcomes were often secondary to process limitations or access levels, even when I had the skills to do more than I was allowed to, at no detriment to anyone.

2023
A further massive change happened in 2023 when the client of the company I work for decided to shift all their Business Customer Service to the Philippines. I was due to become redundant and get a year’s salary as a pay-out. However, two months after being made aware of this, my employer was able to redeploy me to customer service for a different kind client in a the energy sector. It was a massive change, but essentially a very similar role doing customer service.

One good thing to come out of the Covid-19 pandemic was having to work from home. If I never have to regularly work in an office again then that would suit me just fine. I enjoy the quieter environment, the lack of commuting, and generally having a bit more time and flexibility in the day. It also meant I got to spend much more time with my dog.

2025 Redundancy

In October 2025, after over a quarter of a century, my job had come to an end because yet again, the work of hundreds of UK-based people was being off-shored. This time to South Africa. There was no possibility of redeployment this time.

I decided that having an extended period of not working would be a good thing and I’d have lots of opportunity to do things I might not otherwise have as much chance to do. Well, at least in theory. But in practice, so much of my time disappeared into a massive project, often a bit beyond my level of comfort or capability, and all the thoughts of travelling around the UK or rattling off lots of smaller projects just got obliterated by the project I won’t name here until it’s done (or officially abandoned).

Looking for another job is going to be daunting, and although I’d like to do something creative, that career-ship sailed a long time ago. So it’ll probably be customer service again. I’d really like to get another dog again, so I hope I’ll be able to do something entirely (or mostly) working from home. I’m really not looking forward to the job-hunting, the applications, the rejections, the interviews, training and all the corporate/management/target challenges. But, if I eventually get another job I hope it will be my last one as I won’t want to have to go through all the upheaval and strife again.