In 1933 George Orwell wrote;

You have talked so often of going to the dogs – and, well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.

Orwell, however, never received the following letter;

Dear George
Thank you for your recent application for a retail operative position with Primark Stores Ltd.

We have now completed selection procedures and regret to inform you that we will not be taking your application to a further stage at this time.

May we take this opportunity to thank you for your interest in a position and wish you every success in the future.

Living on the streets in London is one thing but being rejected by Primark is a whole different kind of humiliation.  Just for the record here’s a list of the places I’ve already applied to and the various (lack of) responses that I’ve received (last updated on Thursday 4th December).

No jobs – Asda, BB’s Coffee and Muffins, Boots, GAP, Tesco, Thorntons, Sainsbury’s and Webberly’s.

No thanks – Primark.

No response -Department for Work and Pensions, Starbucks and Topman (as I applied online they should also be keeping me informed of vacancies in other companies owned by the Arcadia Group such as Dorothy Perkins, Evans, Burtons etc).

When pressed tell me they are still processing my application – HMV and WHSmith.

When pressed tell me I need to apply online, then their website doesn’t let me – Waterstones and River Island.

Agencies – I have been in contact with Appointments Personnel (“Appointments Personnel is a purely commercial agency and therefore we deal only with office based positions.  Unfortunately as you do not have any office based experience we will be unable to help you on this occasion.”), Cream Recruit (they sent me an internal email by mistake) and Extra Personnel (they never got back to me).

A job would help me get out of debt and back into the black, which is obviously going to have to be one of the points on the now infamous “Let’s sort out Scribs’ life list.”  I will be monitoring the whole sorry situation with some rather pretty bar charts (with graph making skills like this how can you afford not to have me in your office?)

The Poverty Line, for the week commencing 17th November*

Incoming: My Gran sent me £10. (“A little treat from me, get yourself a couple of meals.”)

Outgoing: £11 on food (I found an additional pound lurking on my desk).

Money saving tip: Sleeping.

*Figures are rounded up and my student loan debt is not included for a number of reasons (I don’t know how much it is, it’d be too depressing, it’s not like I’m going to be earning enough anytime soon to have to start paying it back).