Page 7 of Escape to the Country

Plenty more jobs out there for my beautiful girl. Onwards and upwards. Love youx

And Beth came back with:

Well, it’s obviously not the right job for you, my love, and not meant to be. Don’t lose heart. The right thing will come along at the right time. And remember, there’ll always be a poo bag here with your name on it!

That night, I sat in a pair of old pyjamas and stuffed my face with chocolate, feeling really sorry for myself. I drank the best part of a bottle of Pinot Grigio and took myself off to bed around 10p.m. feeling sick from being a total glutton. I wished I’d stopped at Mum’s again. I felt really lonely.

* * *

A ping from my phone woke me around 8a.m. I’d slept in, which was very unlike me and possibly down to the wine. It was the noise that signified I’d got an email, and when I checked, there was one from Gym Fit, asking me to call them to arrange an interview. Crikey, this job-hunting lark was a proper rollercoaster on your emotions. I waited till 9a.m. on the dot and arranged an interview for the following morning.

What the hell did I do with myself today though? I literally had nothing to do. I could have checked job sites, but doing it on my phone wasn’t the best way to do it as the writing was all so blinking small.

The post arrived and in it was a letter as Celine had promised from the HR department with my redundancy settlement. One week’s pay for every year that I’d been there, my holiday pay for the holiday that I hadn’t yet taken that year and an extra thousand pounds on top. Sounded like quite a bit, but once I started to get the things I needed from the list I’d made, I couldn’t see it lasting that long, especially when I had to buy a car.

Window shopping. That was the answer. I’d go and check out laptops and iPads. I know Beth had said that I could use hers, which was so kind of her, but I needed something to do while I was at home too. The other thing I could do was to go to the gym, but I was scared to death to bump into someone I knew who would want to know why I was there in the daytime, and I’d have to tell them my whole sorry story. I wasn’t ready to share that just yet.

I drove to the local retail park and went into two different electronics shops. Not having a clue as to what the hell I was actually buying, I even surprised myself when I came out of the second one with a new Mac and an iPad. At this rate, my redundancy money wouldn’t last long at all.

I spent the rest of the day setting everything up and googling PR jobs, but also looking at blog posts about what to do when you want to change your career. I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. I also checked out some other local gyms so that I could be fully prepped for tomorrow’s interview.

* * *

Once more, I turned up looking the part in a smart trouser suit. I was the smartest one there and was introduced to the regional manager and the gym manager. A quick tour round the gym piqued my interest and it was explained to me that the main part of the job was to contact local companies and offer their staff corporate membership. How hard could that be? They seemed to be a really young, dynamic team and the company was really forward-thinking. Part of the role would be to manage the membership team of three people and ultimately increase their membership numbers. I felt that I’d be well suited to the job and it appeared that they did too because after being at home for two hours, a job offer landed in my inbox.

I punched the air. I could do it. People did want me to work for them. I was good enough! Thank goodness for that. I gave the regional manager a call and after a little negotiating – I asked for more money and they said no – we agreed on the offer. It was nearly half the salary I was used to getting, but a job was a job and I couldn’t afford to be particularly choosy right now, so I accepted and said that I was looking forward to starting next Monday.

* * *

The days until I started my new job dragged a bit. I milled around, not really doing much, just sleeping lots and drinking buckets of tea and nursing my wounds. I still felt totally devastated that I’d been made redundant and it really hurt when I felt that I’d given so much to the company, although I was grateful that I’d found something pretty quickly. Not everyone was that lucky.

My emotions were all over the place. I spent time over at the farm when Beth was free, although she was so busy alternating between Growlers and helping in the community, those times were few and far between.

Monday came around. Wanting to make a fab impression, I had dressed in a designer suit and high heels. The club manager took one look at me, grinned and passed me a pair of shiny branded tracksuit bottoms and a manly polo shirt with the name of the gym printed bang in the middle of my right boob. Perfect placement by the marketing department. I was leant a pair of really manky old trainers from lost property and told to bring my own in tomorrow. They’d forgotten to give me that little bit of useful information. The thought of putting my feet into this disgusting footwear made me cringe as I thought of my beautiful shoes and the designer pumps I normally wore if I had to resort to flatties.

I sat at my desk and was told that at 10a.m. there was a conference call when all the membership managers from the Midland sites dialled in and talked about what they would do for the day ahead. A further call would take place at 5p.m. to talk about their successes. That seemed a little excessive to me, and very controlling, but so be it. I was the new girl so I’d go with the flow.

After spending most of the day being introduced to the fitness team, and the three members of staff who would be working under me, in the time we had left, I was given instructions from the gym manager to do roleplay with my team and go through some scripted questions and answers which were in the handbook. It all felt a bit daft to be honest, something that grown adults shouldn’t really have to do.

There wasn’t much I could contribute to the early evening call that day, and I went home wondering what the next day would entail. I soon found out, when on the morning call the next day, my instructions were to continue with the roleplay with my team until we knew it off by heart. I’d never been one for roleplay to be honest; at the PR company we just got on with stuff, but then I’d never worked at a gym before, so I ran with it. Just before lunch, the club manager suggested that we went out into Stafford town centre to give out some free day passes to the gym to break things up a bit. I was taken aback at the thought of standing around in the street – having thought that my role was to focus on corporate membership – but my team looked to me for guidance, so we piled into my car and headed for the town centre.

We chatted in the car and I got to know the guys a little better. Dave was just nineteen and a fitness fanatic and it was his first job after leaving sixth form. Ali had been working there for two years and said that she’d seen membership managers and staff come and go quickly. When I asked her whether she’d considered applying for the position, she laughed and said that the turnover of staff in the department was so incredibly high that she’d rather keep her job. She was quite happy because she got membership for free and she was a proper gym bunny. Marie was the member of staff we’d left behind in case there were any walk-in visits. Ali told me that she was twenty-three and had taken a change of direction from her beauty career as she couldn’t cope with standing on her feet all day. She’d been there for one month and was still learning the ropes herself.

As we approached the town centre, the weather was looking pretty grim, with grey cloudy skies ahead, and after I parked up, we spread ourselves out along the high street. In our bright green gym polo shirts, we were quite a show. As it started to drizzle, and my carefully curled hair hung limply around my shoulders, I handed out leaflets, smiling at the passers-by and using my most enthusiastic voice.

‘Hi there, can I offer you a free day pass to Gym Fit in Stafford?’

Now, I know us British people are a suspicious lot when someone is trying to stop them in the street, but I found myself wondering why people couldn’t actually be nice to those just trying to do their jobs, instead of completely ignoring them, deliberately walking in a different direction or avoiding eye contact. You would have thought we were passing on a deadly virus, the way people treated us.

A group of lads in their late teens walked towards me.These will definitely go for it, I thought. I smiled sweetly. One of them deliberately nudged into me, knocking all the fliers out of my hand. They found it highly amusing as I picked up the scattered leaflets that were all getting wet.

‘Sorry love, didn’t see you there doing your Kermit the Frog impression!’ More laughter drifted my way, but I held my head up and continued to smile sweetly through gritted teeth.

‘We’re giving away free passes today to Gym Fit. Would you be interested at all?’ They fell about laughing and one shouted, ‘You’re not a very good advert for a gym with an arse the size of yours, love.’

I was seriously insulted – I knew the tracksuit bottoms weren’t the most flattering, but I couldn’t believe their rudeness.

I huffed Miss Piggy style and turned in the opposite direction. A pretty young lady walked towards me with a pushchair.

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