What Happened There?

I recently applied for a job but had not heard back from the organisation.  I had already been more or less offered the work verbally, but I knew I had to formally apply and be interviewed.  I hoped it was just a formality.  But when I did not hear back from them I started to worry - last week I wanted to phone them but forebore because I didn't want to make it seem as though I was pressurising them, and I knew that they must have had plenty of applications. 

I phoned their office today.  To my surprise they had no record of my application - they had never received my completed form.  I clearly remember posting it - I posted another letter at the same time, a form to a Government department, and also picked up some passport application forms.  I remembered talking to the lady who gave me the forms and took my letters.  She had queried something on the envelope of the job application one.

I was very polite on the phone, of course - it was clearly nobody's fault - but I did privately wonder whether the organisation I had applied to for work had somehow lost my application form.  The lady on the phone said she would send another, I thanked her, and that was that.  But then the post arrived - and with it a letter from the Government department I had written to, saying they had not received the form I sent them.

Clearly then, something had gone awry at the post office.  I have never experienced anything like this before - problems with the post, yes, but not two important letters, both handed over at the counter, seemingly disappearing off the face of the planet.  And then I started to worry - what if I had lost my chance of the job, and it had been given to somebody else?  I phoned somebody I knew at the organisation and tried to explain what had happened.  I phoned the other people too, the civil servants, and asked to be sent another form.  They were all very understanding, but I still felt a bit wrong-footed and slightly embarrassed because I was aware of the unlikelihood of the scenario I was describing.   Why, I couldn't help feeling,  had this happened to me?

Anyway, it did, and I am sure it will all work out ok.  At least I phoned and found out that the application form had been mislaid.  And the job, as far as I know, is still open. 

I am so looking forward to being a part of the working world - it is one thing to be working by myself at home, it will be quite another to be venturing out and applying my skills in the workplace.  I will only be employed part-time, probably for just a few hours a week.  So I will still have time to write and to look after the house and kids - it will just be good to be able to consider myself officially a working person as well as everything else.

Watch this space!