Hi everyone and welcome back to my blog and today’s blog post will be basically continuing my work placements from the one company Beyond 2030 and from leaving there going into the job centre going through a two week training program to see if I’m actually capable on getting an apprenticeship with the job centre as well as my other work experiences that I went through I will be going through the good the bad and the horrifying experiences that I went through, so grab a snack?and get comfortable ?, because this blog post will be a long and interesting one too ?☕️.
After telling the main trainer before I actually got into the work experience and volunteering with the beyond 2030 is what I told him that I had autism and his reply is that “everyone has autism, in fact normally everyone who comes into the session is and what I told him “no I actually have autism” he was in shock that he didn’t know I actually have it, which I forgot to mention it on from my previous blog (sorry for not mentioning it from there ?)
When I was working with beyond 2030, I’ve learned so much from there including helping out people who are struggling with the work that was being provided, filling up the jugs of water, making sure the tea and coffee is already prepared as well as helping out those who needed additional help with the work being provided from the work folders. The best thing about helping out beyond 2030, going from a work experience placement into voluntary is getting to know the people a bit better and getting to realise the main relationship between student and a teacher, just realising it came from schools both primary and secondary as well as from college and university too ?.
After finishing my voluntary experience with Beyond 2030, it’s time for me to try something else though and that is to get an opportunity to gain an apprenticeship with the job centre doing customer service that was given to me by the job centre and from that point on I thought to myself, maybe I should give it a try and see what happens, so I went in at the job centre to see what was going on along with a group of young people doing exact same thing with me as well and experience whether it’s completely different first we had to go through the main entrance of the job centre, then we went through to the security office to sign in and they have taken us over to a meeting room where they go to explain to us how the program works and we basically continued it for two weeks.
The good news is that I got the experience that I needed when going through the two weeks program during my time there you have to go through a computer program that you have to learn for a short period amount of time and if you can pick it up well if you’re guaranteed for apprenticeship and if you didn’t pick up the pace, you’re won’t be available to get it. Unfortunately for me I didn’t actually get the apprenticeship, however I did get an additional two more weeks to go through my work experience at the job centre to see what it’s like though to go upfront in person as well as making guides on how to create social media accounts and finding job vacancies for the people who are looking for jobs and making the job vacancies presentable too.
After finishing off the four week work experience placement at the job centre, it was time for me to try working at the retail sector and I was strongly against it at first, because to me it felt a bit boring for me to work at and not being challenging, but my boss convinced me to give it a try and see what happens. I gave it a shot at a charity shop and luckily it wasn’t even far from the job centre so I can sign it back up for this many times as I can and from working in there is where the good the bad and the ugly starts to kick in. The good thing about working in there is that there are people out there who actually do understand where you’re coming from especially with the manager who actually understands me for the fact that I have autism and has told me on where I went wrong privately away from the customers.
The bad thing I had from working there is when I’ve made that very same mistake The assistant manager told me off about the front of customers and that is really wrong what is already been disciplined by the manager and not only that The assistant manager and another volunteer who recently started volunteering in the shop had started complaining the situation to her as if they were BFFs along with that is I have to work until 5 PM, which is also missing out my personal life too, but apart from those bad things that happened in there, we still managed to go along well in there and even learned for the fact that majority of the funding goes to charity and whatever stock is leftover get shipped out towards other countries who needed it the most.
After leaving the charity shop and attempted to go towards another educational program as well as getting dismissed very early, because of their criteria didn’t match to their standards at all, I decided to do a two week work placement with the job shop and this is where the horrific experience comes into play. From working at the job shop it was great at first but as I was getting along with the tasks involved and the people to talk to, especially with one person though he told me to take advantage of it though well I can within the two week work placement and he was absolutely right and I did take about a job out there by applying more job vacancies within the job shop that helped me increase my chances of getting a job. There have also been some bad times working there, especially with this one pacific person who surprisingly still works there ??.
While I was working there, The specific person told me to tell the person who is working on the computer to stay a little longer as much as he likes just to make him feel comfortable about himself and this person sadly is homeless and I followed her advice exactly on what she told me and I was told him that “you can stay here as much as you like” and he said “no no that’s fine I’m just about to go” and after I followed her advice and told him to stay has much as he likes she gave me a tongue lashing, right in front of everybody who works there as well as the customers in the job shop how pathetic is that ??? and just to make things even more worse as it was before when I was helping out a customer based on his login issues, so I helped him out as much as I can, but I couldn’t figure it out and have to ask for help from the team and tell me to go help someone else out and out they will get it sorted out.
Another incident that happened on the same day is when I helped out another customer out based on his CV and I gave him the option on asking for help from a job coach and he said no, so I helped him out with the CV and it was basically it was adding in parts to his CV and surprise surprise the very same envious job coach decided to intervene once again and said “what are you doing over there you shouldn’t be helping this guy at all, go help someone else” and who she’s on about there to help someone else was the very same guy who had login issues and was already been dealt with, talk about unprofessionalism and I don’t really see why didn’t the manager step in and deal with this person in the first place ????.
Despite the negative experience that I got from working with this specific person and I even got some positives from the other work colleagues, I’ve learnt so much from working in the job shop including meeting people and assisting them with their job search activities, working on the photocopier, changing the printer ink, arranging and rearranging leaflets and handouts as well as proofreading their application forms and their CVs too ????.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read my other work experiences blog and I’m so sorry for having the blog post really long. Please stay tuned for the next post which will be on my experience with Foleshill Women’s Training (FWT) and don’t forget to leave a comment below on my blog post and spread the word out about my blog too. ???
Wow what can I say! Poor you having to go through so much. You get all sorts in this world. There are some very nice people out there. Keep going girl!!! X