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“Janet, can you come here a moment?”
“Yeah?” I poked my head up from the latest issue of Hello to find the manageress of Shop and Save beckoning me towards her.
“Over here please, Janet – we don’t want the whole world to know our business, do we?”
She was standing beside the cooked-meat counter looking all prim and proper. Uneasily I wondered what she was going to nark about now. I’d cleaned out the fridges, dusted off the shelves, shone up the tins, cleaned the windows. I’d even arranged all my money neatly in the till in case she decided to carry out a tidy-till inspection. There was nothing she could catch me out on.
“Janet, here please.”
She sounded cross about something.
“Coming,” I tried to make my voice chirpy. Putting down my mag, I stood up from the seat beside the cash desk. My mug of coffee almost fell off the counter, but I saved it on time. It took me a few seconds to shove my feet into the new ultra-high, ultra-narrow stilettos I’d got in Dunnes for a tenner. Then, assuming a confident but tottering step, I walked towards Charlotte.
“Yes?” I gave her a cheery smile, the one she’d told me to use on the customers.
“I’m afraid,” her voice dropped and she looked grim, “that I’m going to have to let you go.”
“Oh?” I asked, delighted and surprised. “Go where?”
For a second she looked puzzled.
Then I copped on. “The wholesalers, is it?”
“What?”
“Are you letting me go to the wholesalers? Only I can’t drive. But I’ll learn. I’ll –”
She held up her hand. “I’m letting you go,” she said again. As I opened my mouth, she said quickly, “Janet, I’m firing you.”
“Oh.”
Apparently it was the fridges. I’d cleaned them out but hadn’t turned them back on. She wasn’t mad on my dress sense either. It lowered the tone of her shop.
“Jan, can you come here a second?” Dr Lynch poked his head around his door.
“Nah, what’s up Doc?” I did my impression of Bugs Bunny that had made him laugh so much in my interview that he’d hired me.
He wasn’t laughing this time. He sat at his desk and motioned me to a seat in front of it. When I’d sat myself down and pulled my skirt over my thighs, he said, “I’m going to have to let you go, Jan – sorry.”
“Let me go?” I was shocked. I mean, really shocked. The Doc was a good laugh. Even though the job was boring I never thought I’d lose it. The man was my dad’s friend’s second cousin for God’s sake.
“Yes,” he nodded. “Jan, you tried to diagnose Betty Carey today, didn’t you?”
“I just – ”
“The poor woman thought she was for the high jump.” He leaned towards me and his voice got really slow and deliberate. “Apparently, you told her she had some weird disease.”
“Endocarditis,” I said, “She had all the symptoms and – ”
“You have no business doing that.” His face was going purple.
“It’s just I got a medical encyclopaedia from me dad for Christmas, he thinks I’m going to be a nurse and – ”
“I’ve warned you about this before, Jan.”
“I know and – ”
“I’m sorry.”
It was very final the way he said it.
“Jan, can you come here a second?”
“I can.” Up from my chair, hobbling badly. I’d drunk too much at the Christmas party, which resulted in me slipping and falling over a kerb which in turn resulted in a sprained ankle. A nice injury. It had kept me out of work for over a week.
Libby, my boss, was sitting at her desk in her office. “Janet,” she began, before I’d even sat down, “I’ve been told to give you some bad news.”
She was smiling as she said it, so it couldn’t be too bad. I gave a hesitant smile back. “Yes?”
“The company has decided that your services are no longer required.”
“What services?”
“Exactly,” Libby nodded. “Exactly.” She planted her hands on the desk and nodded even more vigorously. “There isn’t a lot you do, is there, Janet?”
“Pardon?”
“Your leave record is appalling, you’ve been out sick more times than you’ve been in.”
“That’s ‘cause I’ve had more sick days than I’ve had healthy ones.”
“No one is sick that much.” Libby scanned my leave sheet. “You’re getting great mileage out of a bad back. It’s been responsible for almost a month’s sick leave.”
“I have a bad back.” I tried to stare her down. “LBP,” I said. “Lower back pain.”
“Mmm,” Libby made a face and stared pointedly at my shoes. “Mmmm,” she said again.
I didn’t reply. Something was going on that I didn’t really understand.
“Plus,” and here she looked positively alight, “you managed to screw up the whole filing system, didn’t you?”
“No.”
That stopped her gloating.
“All I did was try another way of doing it. It wasn’t my fault that no one could find anything. I was bored and I needed a challenge.”
“Well, I’ve a big challenge for you,” Libby said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Libby stood up. “See how fast you can find another job.” She handed me a pay packet. “You’re fired.”
I wasn’t lucky with employment. I suppose I just didn’t know what I wanted to do, I knew that when I found my particular niche in life, everything would fall into place. All my insecurities would vanish overnight, I’d be Janet Boyle, successful in life, love and the pursuit of happiness. I knew in my bones that that would happen.
All I needed was the right job and things would turn around.
So I did a course in Word for Windows. A night-time thing, a crash course. Literally a crash course – the guy running it said he’d never seen a computer crash as many times as mine. But I got a cert at the end of it. A cert to say I was Word literate – whatever that meant.
And then came the interview. I’d hit the jackpot. I went for an interview with McCoy, McBeale & Co. It looked like a real classy joint . . .