or how Henry got a job in a burger joint
“Hey, I wanna ask you a question.“
Imagine I’m pointing my finger at you (the right one).
“Yeah, you.“
Now you’re looking back at me.
“Savings are great, aren’t they?“
Now, imagine you’re looking perplexed.
“Seriously, are they?“
Wait, don’t say anything, I’ve already had this conversation with you in my head. It went like this:
You: “Why are you asking?”
Me: “Oh, I don’t know. Do they make you feel warm at night? Could you paint me a picture with a background of green and blue, just like that of the glorious five pound note? Something to help me relax before exiting the cornershop with cans of special hidden under my hoodie?“
Me: “Why are you looking at me so strangely?“
Me: “Ok, fine. I admit it. I just wanted to talk about money. Or lack of it.“
I don’t know why it took so long to get here, but it’s finally happened. The ATM will no longer give me money.
On a positive note, my bank balance now has two letters after it, DR. I’m not entirely sure what it means though. Maybe damn radical? Sure.
At least there’s some solace in Lloyds, Barclays, or whoever, finally realising it’s cool that I can’t pay my overdraft fees. After all that pain in 2008, the banking sector must no longer be full of losers (I’m joking, of course it still is).
I don’t really want to link the two (and I’m not sure if I should), but I keep feeling like I should.
I have no money and I quit my job a month ago. Surely there’s no correlation?
I mean, work just brings pain right?
Let’s move to a commune and reek of patchouli
Initially, no money wasn’t an issue.
It was like I was living in a commune with my flatmates. I, the entertainer, was rewarded with stolen tobacco, half finished beers, and tea spoons of hummus clinging to the pot’s lid.
But then they noticed I was licking the lids of their pots of hummus and stopped letting me use their washing liquid.
Not washing was fine though.
I mean, bin liners are perfect for hiding guts developed in servitude.
However, some people didn’t get it, and despite being breezy, it wasn’t helping me find a way to get money.
Finally though, they got sick of the bin liner and the landlord started asking for the rent.
No longer young enough to attract richer older women, I had to find myself a job.
Who’d have thought it? I mean, it was going to totally ruin my quest to become the greatest copywriter ever.
It also seemed ridiculous.
What was the point of quitting my previous job if I had to getting another fucking one?!
Turns out I’ll never know.
A month of failure
I wasn’t worried. Henry’s are grafting men; take Henry the Hoover, and um, King Henry VIII. The latter was so busy he only managed to have one son!
No one else seemed to realise this though.
Despite spending the end of May applying for the lowest paid, hardest, least office type jobs I could find (within walking distance), I didn’t get a single call back.
No, not from Oslo, a bar in Hackney, where I applied to assist k-holing patrons from south London home, or even at Hackney Council as a groundsman, despite how I had two arms and wore a bin bag (so like, my clothes wouldn’t get dirty when I was digging stuff).
It was a real shame. A real shame indeed.
The biggest shame of all though was that as an aspiring and talented writer (yeah, I’ve been unemployed for a month so I can now legitimately call myself a writer), people were definitely not set alight by my CV.
And I didn’t immediately understand why.
It was full of great short and long keywords, like:
‘the hunkiest bar man you’ll ever need’
‘bricks and mortar baby – aka, I’ll stand the test of time’, and
‘I definitely didn’t just walk out of my previous job without giving any notice and they definitely didn’t fire me. It was a mutual thing. They knew that I was definitely not the right fit. The right fit? Oh, you know, I just liked working too hard and taking orders so much and excelling at my work so much. Oh yeah, I mean we agreed I’d leave because I was making everyone else look so bad.’
Henry’s CV, May 2019
And I’d even lied about last job, stating that I was definitely less important than I actually was so people wouldn’t be as intimidated by me.
Clerk of the Stationary Cupboard formerly known as King. The Department for Digital, Media, Culture & Sport (haha, get it?!)
Henry
June 2017 – May 2019
So what the hell was going wrong?
How to get a job that pays £8.21 an hour
Then I realised, I was being way too smart for my own good. The people reading my CV didn’t know anything about long keywords. They probably weren’t very good at reading either! (actually. they were, they just didn’t spend all day sitting around reading things and talking to other people about them at the tea point, so had less opportunity to scrutinise)
The best action I could possibly take was to copy and paste all of the key phrases from the job description onto my CV and title them as previous roles responsibilities.
It was so simple!
Clerk of the Stationary Cupboard formerly known as King
Henry’s CV, June 2019
June 2017 to May 2019
Responsibilities: To be proud of Bromley Court Hotel’s rich 200 year history and years of experience offering comfortable surroundings, superb food and personal service to all of their guests.
So I did. I also moved down all of my recent experience and listed some bars that I definitely used to work at.
It was funny because it actually worked.
And now I have a job, waiting tables for 40 hours a week at a burger joint.
And it’s great.
Where else is a successful Hollywood director going to meet a dashing and incredibly handsome waiter that looks like he should definitely be the next Spider Man (four’s the charm, isn’t it?)
And when he does, I’ll make sure I get his order wrong so he has a reason to give me his business card.
Henry Says 