Cautious optimism

Hello again everyone and welcome to my lair. For anyone who has been waiting with baited breath since my last post, my job interview was today. Given my long history with this solicitor I knew it would be the most relaxed interview I'd ever been to, and I was not wrong. Of course that doesn't mean it wasn't a job interview, I still had to answer questions, (including that awful one I always get asked, "Where do you see yourself in five years?") You could say given how well I knew the women who were interrogating me, it would have been an easy interview. Well it was, but at the same time it wasn't.

You see this woman has worked with me before, so she knows what I'm like. She knows that I love to talk, I don't handle yelling very well, and I can fall to pieces fairly easy. So when I get asked a question like "If a client calls up and yells at you, are you going to call me on my day off in tears again crying because you can't cope?" it's a bit hard to put my best face forward. (And yes I really did do that the last time I worked there.)

Basically it was my job today to prove to her that I wasn't too rusty from being out of work for over three years, and also that I have grown and matured enough to be able to cope with the high stress of working for a divorce solicitor. The rusty part was easy to prove. You see one of my most appealing skills as a secretary was my typing speed. Thanks to my dad forcing me to learn touch typing when I was 11 I can type fast enough to take dictation well. So I'm pretty sure that's one of the reasons she hired me the first time. Today I had to type out a dictated letter for her, and I know for a fact I aced that part of the interview. Apparently I was the first person to have gotten 100% on the typing test, but I did have an advantage there given I'm familiar with her work.

As for reassuring her that I've grown, matured and am ready to come back to work, I think I did that too. In her words I'm the most ideal candidate so far, the only problem is I don't really want to work full time. That's really not a problem for her, the problem for her is whether or not she can find someone else willing to job share with me. Of course I told her that if it came to it, I'd be prepared to go back to work full time, even temporarily at this stage, but I don't know for how long. Already I need an hour off every Thursday for  Miss K's speech therapy group, then there will be optometrists appointments, eye specialist appointments, other family emergencies I'm sure, you get the picture. Already I have been given the impression that taking a day off because Miss K has a cold is unacceptable, but I totally understand why. The thing I need to figure out is how much am I prepared to put to the side in the name of work.

I'm getting this job for Miss K's sake (as well as my own). I'm doing it so that we can have a nice life, full of nice things and no stress about whether to pay the bills or buy food this week. But can I really say it's for Miss K's sake if she goes without her mum when she really needs her, so that I can go out and play with the big people all day? I guess I won't really know for certain until it happens, but I can tell you now, this would be a huge learning experience for me. One I hope I'm ready for. Already I learned today that she cannot be bribed with wine and chocolate, so that's always good to know for future reference. (Yes I did offer a bribe, no I wasn't serious, yes she knows I was joking.)

So now I play the waiting game. I should hear something by the end of the week, so for anyone who knows me, don't be surprised if I spend the next three days jumping every time the phone rings. Hopefully very soon you'll be reading the work of a working mum. Or I'll fall completely off the map being too exhausted to even think straight and you guys might need to send out a search party. Either way we'll have fun.

Wish me luck...