Still Having Problems

I am still having problems getting into here to update, which why nothing has happened for a couple of days.

But today seems to be working okay, so here we go.

I have decided to give this sales job a go. They seem very organised and keen to get more people, which is good.

I have a four day training course starting tomorrow lunch time. So I will be up with the lark and plan to leave home at 7.30 to drive down. The course finishes on Thursday. I'm assuming that there will be a certain amount of selection involved. So I have to be all bright eyed and positive and enthusiastic. I can do that! I'm sure I can.

Actually my gut is telling me that this might be good. Its probably time I moved on from IT. I haven't been able to keep up with the latest developments and in the last two years, I've probably spent more time not working than working which is not good. It looks like with the sales job I will get leads, all I have to do is charm people into buying. Its a well established firm and they seem pretty sure that their sales pitch works, all I have to do is follow the script.

In 10 years time the mortgage should be paid off, and the children will be grown, the youngest should be through university by then. I need to maximize my income for those 10 years. I'm never going to get rich as a contract programmer. If I am a good salesman(person), they I could get a nice nest egg together. Assuming that I don't get lemoned into spending it all on the husband and children!

Decisions, decisions

I took part in a conference call today about the sales job I applied for yesterday.

First I did a check on the internet for the company. Seems they have a bit of a rep for bullying old folk into buying stuff they don't want. OTOH, its unlikely that any satisfied customers are going to post to sites that are looking for negative reviews. If the satisfied customers post at all they are going to go to the companies site, and there were loads of positive posts there.

If I want to go further, I will have to attend a 4 day brainwashing session, er, training course, at a hotel down south. The training course will be free, and the hotel bill will be picked up by the company.

There is a course running next week. I could do the course, drive home Thursday night. Shadow an existing salesman on the Friday and Saturday, then be off on Monday visiting leads and selling the goods. They pay a percentage of whatever I sell, and pay weekly. Someone earned over £5000 one week this year. But the average weekly earnings are £860. Not that £860 a week is anything to sneeze at.

BUT, I can expect 2 or 3 leads a day, six days a week. One morning, one afternoon and one evening. Each visit will last 1 or 2 hours, or longer. So I could be working from 10 o'clock in the morning to 9 or 10 o'clock at night. Six days a week. Saturdays are their busiest days. Which makes sense. That when people are home.

So I could be working 11 or 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, for £36,000 a year (based on 45 working weeks in the year).

Of course, if I get good at it, I could earn a lot more. If I last and don't burn out, or fall asleep at the wheel.

Also, I would be self employed, so I would have to pay tax, higher level NI, accountant etc. petrol etc. out of that money.

Hmmmmm.

Decisions, decisions

Monday - One Step Foreward

I have bitten the bullet and applied for a sales job.

The advert promised massive potential earnings, of course. I need to search out a few more jobs and apply for them. Its silly to apply for just one job and then sit back waiting. However, I have had to change my CV a lot before applying for a none-it job, so I might wait and see if I get any response. It difficults to go from computer programming to selling beds. Its not a logical path by any means.

In other news, I tried to find out if I need to do anything to my paypal account before I start trying to sell stuff on ebay. But the website was so slow I gave up in the end.

I think I might just list a couple of things and see if it works. Its not like anything is likely to sell for more than a few pounds.

Now I have to decide what to do for tea. I'm not sure I can stand the excitement!

This was supposed to be Friday!

I tried to update this blog two or three times yesterday, but blogger didn't want to play.

It was very strange, I tried typing in, but just got pipes appearing (like this ||||) instead of letters.

I normally use IE6 as my web browser, but I while ago I loaded up Safari, so I am trying that instead. Hopefully this will post okay!

I hate Fridays. Its another week over and I'm no further forward. Like a song says "Another day older and deeper in debt".

I'm going to go and try and solve a problem I have in an Access database I am supposed to be up dating for a friend. We have a table which should have been set up with a unique identifier, but wasn't. So if you update a record, it just creates another record with the same identifier. I need to find a way of collating the records to capture all the info but lose the extra records.

I'll let you know how I get on.

Career Advice?

I had an appointment for adult career advice this morning.

What a joke!

It seems that this is not a good time to change career. Wow! Who knew!

But what I am supposed to do? I have been trying for nearly 4 months to get a contract using my skills. I have nearly exhausted my savings. I will be getting Job Seekers allowance for up to 6 months, but that will not even cover my grocery shopping at Tesco's. My husband cannot continue paying the mortgage, utilities, council tax etc. for ever.

I need to find a job and get some money coming in.

So I wanted advice on different places to look for jobs. I knew that it was unlikely that they would be much help. But somehow I did expect something. The only thing was that there are still openings in retail (but even there they like experience), care work and sales. So I guess I will have to try and talk my way into a sales job.

Shudder! I need a personality transplant to be able to do sales!

Some Good News!

I phoned up the job seekers allowance people yesterday to see how my claim is going. Seemingly they made a payment to me on Friday which will appear in my bank account today or tomorrow. Nice of them to let me know! They were a lot quicker to send me the original letter refusing my claim.

Still, every little helps. Its nice to know that the 30+years I have been paying NI are actually worth something.

The moral of this story is to check if you are turned down for anything. It would have been too easy to say, "Well they must know what they are doing!" and give up.

I have an appointment tomorrow morning at another job centre for adult career advice. I.e. what sort of jobs can I apply for if I can't get a job in the area I have worked in for 24 years!

I need to either get a job or win a load of money on the lottery. At the present rate of progress, I need to keep buying lottery tickets!

Another Month, Another Post!

Well I'm still here, still unemployed.

One of the big problems with being unemployed is social. I sit at home looking for work on the internet and thinking of things I could do if I had some spare money. I would love to do some decorating, several rooms in the house are looking a little tired, but I don't want to spend the money on paint and wallpaper.

So when I do go out, I have no conversation. I haven't been anywhere, I haven't done anything (other than a bit of housework) and I have nothing planned. We aren't having a holiday, obviously, this year. I can't meet up with people for lunch, or for a troll round the shops.

I can't decide if people are avoiding me because I'm so boring, or if I am being paranoid!

I went down to the job centre a couple of weeks ago and applied for job seekers allowance. It looked fine, then I got a letter saying my application had been turned down. I phoned up the office to find the reason and was told that I needed to have paid £5000 per year N.I. for the last two years to qualify. Which is rubbish. Who pays £5000 a year National Insurance? Any way they asked to see my P60's for the last two years (which I had already produced at the job centre). Those where sent off on Tuesday, so I should hear soon.

Not that job seekers is a lot of money, but every little helps. I'm nearly at the end of my savings.

I have a friend who has a shop, I have offered to write a website for him. He's not going to pay me. But it will give me a chance to do some web programming, which I have not really done before, and if the site turns out okay, then I can apply for a job as a web programmer and use the site as an example of what I can do. Now I just have to learn how to program web stuff!