My Life As A Dole Bludger
Ian Kidd

 

MY LIFE AS A DOLE BLUDGER


BY


IAN KIDD


Introduction - To Recap


By the end of my first year as an official Dole Bludger of Australia, it was

becoming apparent that I was getting rather good at this unexpected

career development, and was in no rush for it to come to an end. Not that

that seemed to be a choice I actually even had, however.

 My friend Michael kept popping around, every few weeks or sometimes

months, and we'd go for a walk on the beach. Being a monstrous sixteen

stone at this point, I'd accuse him of trying to kill me by walking too far, while

we reminisced over old times at Mawson, how we'd worked together in

Media Studies, how neither of us had got jobs yet (though Michael seemed to

be getting a fair amount of interviews, which was more than I could say) etc.

I viewed his visits with a mixture of irritation, despair (most of the time he'd

barge in uninvited while I was watching "Doctor Who"), yet also pleasure. At

least someone liked me, though why I couldn't tell.

 I soon found out that when you are on the dole, small, menial tasks just appear

to fill up the day. Soon, you're so busy doing these small, menial, irrelevant

tasks that you wonder how you ever had time to do anything when you had

school to go to as well as these tasks to do.

This was because when I was at school, I never did any of these tasks.

Because they were small, menial and irrelevant.

So I left them for my mum to do.

 Anyhow, the year dragged on, the fun started to wane, and so did the chances

of getting a job in the media.

Then it happened.

I got my first "DIOD" letter from the CES, with instructions that had to be obeyed.

DIOD.

Do It Or Die.





CHAPTER 1 - I ATTEND A JOB SEMINAR





Or rather, obey or we stop your money. With no option, I obeyed and

attended a "Job Seminar" at the local YAC (yuck, more like) - Youth Access

Centre. This essentially consisted of a lecture: "You're all good kids, don't let

those ignorant people who call you dole bludgers ruin your self-esteem", followed

by the remarkably helpful job-seeking exercise of deciding what was important

in a selection of items if our plane had crashed and we were in the desert or

something (it was like "Lost" 12 years early or something), followed by another

lecture: "There ARE jobs out there, so show some effort and you'll get them, you

lazy dole-bludging bastards!"

Thankfully, it was over with within a couple of hours.

 The year reached it's climax. Christmas.

It was TERRIBLY exciting.

1994 began, and went on it's way as years invariably tend to do.

I had a new Case Manager, the ubiquitous Sue Stewart, whose many valid

and valuable contributions have been lost in the mists of time, her immortalised

in my memory - and now in print, no less! - by one incredibly vacuous comment.

Suggesting that I should explore other avenues than video production and the

media (which, by this stage, even I was beginning to realise was a bit of a

dead duck), she suggested I become a dustbin man, as, apparently, if I ever

DID get a job in the media, and I had to report on waste disposal, then perhaps

my experience in being a dustbin man would come in handy, so perhaps I

SHOULD explore that avenue of employment...

To this day, my brother refuses to believe that above conversation ever took

place, but I swear it did. May God have mercy on Sue Stewart's soul...


 It was around this time that Michael and his family moved from Christie Downs

("a cess-pit", Michael called it) to Gawler, to open up a Butcher shop,

which Michael, in a revolutionary concept known as "work", was going to be

manager of. At the time I thought, as Gawler was so far away, that that was

going to be the last I saw of Michael.

I didn't really know how I felt about that. He'd kind of irritated me at first, just

turning up like that whenever he felt like it, but then, after a year or so of this,

I'd kind of gotten used to having him around. But regardless, I was wrong.

My friendship with Michael, having previously consisted of, as I have stated,

him turning up while I'm watching "Doctor Who" and us going for long walks

on the beach while we talked, bitched and whined about our parents, CES and

life in general, was now entering what we shall call "The Air Hockey Phase".

This would consist of Michael ringing me and arranging for us to meet in

Adelaide, at the train station, for a day of fun, frivolity, milkshakes and...air

hockey. To be fair, we did also play "Zone 3" on occasion, although this

gradually tapered off, due to the exorbitant prices and the fact Michael

always 100% thrashed me. This however didn't matter. At last our friendship

was on firm ground. For the first time, I found myself really enjoying his

company, looking forward to his phone calls (unheard of!) etc. It was the

sheer joy of actually being able to go out and have fun with a friend. Anyway,

to labour the point, Michael and I become somewhat notorious in the

"Downtown" amusement centre. We were demons on that air hockey table.

We didn't just play air hockey, we FOUGHT at air hockey. Never had the

hockey pad gone so fast. Never had customers and staff ducked so

much as the pad (and sometimes the paddle) went flying violently out of

control. Who'd have thought such a boring-looking game could turn out

to be so...violent, so...FUN? This was also, unlike Zone 3, a game that

Michael and I were equally matched in. Sometimes he thrashed me,

sometimes I thrashed him, sometimes the game would be a hard-won

battle where one point was all the difference between us. Young children

would gather round in wondrous awe, only to be told by Michael to "Piss

off before you get hurt".

 Despite my weight problem, despite my job problem, my girlfriend problem

(I didn't have one), and my family problem (I DID have one), those fun days

with Michael kept me going.

Hell, for a while there, I was almost happy.

Almost.

But it couldn't last.





CHAPTER 2 - I TRY TO GET VARIOUS JOBS AND ANNOY LOTS OF PEOPLE





One Saturday morning, I was, as usual, looking through the Advertiser and saw

an advert - "Actors Wanted. $12 for an audition".

 The word "con" sprang to mind and, if it had been up to me, I wouldn't have

bothered. Once my mother got hold of the paper, however, there was no

stopping us. "You want to be in showbiz," she squawked, "so you're going.

You just don't WANT a job, do you?"

 After a couple of hours of this, I succumbed - on one proviso: She pay

the $12. Mum, knowing a neatly-laid trap when she fell into one, agreed.

 So we were off to Adelaide on a Saturday afternoon to go into some dodgy

little photographic studio, to sit in front of a camera, have a photo taken, and

be filmed - laughing.

 "What?" I said.

 "It's a film about different types of laughter," the conman - I mean director,

sorry - told me. "We want to see you laugh."

Methinks I wasn't the only one laughing that day, as hundreds of hopefuls

forked out their $12 for their non-existent chance at fame.

The word "suckers" sprang to my mind.

Mind you, at least it wasn't MY $!2.



 Next up - the real fun. I received my usual JobSearch Fortnightly Allowance,

with an ominous note on the back - "Interview Required".

Filled with foreboding, I handed in my form that Friday, only to be given a

ticket with a number on it and sent to be called. Almost an hour later, my

number was finally called, and I was allowed to see the "interviewer".

My, was it worth the wait.

 I was informed by my blank-faced, blank-voiced persecutor (sorry, interviewer,

why do I keep doing that?!) that the CES was "concerned" (shorthand for "out

to get you") that on my form, when I wrote down the 2 jobs that I had applied

for that fortnight, I was always writing "Video production", and they were

"concerned" (shorthand for "bored and wanting to pick on someone") that

that was the only job that I was applying for.

 I told them this was because that was the only job I was interested in getting.

An eminently sensible reply, I thought, but the apparently long-since brain-dead

interviewer clearly didn't think so. I was promptly handed six green cards, told

to go out and ask for jobs from employers IN PERSON, and get them to sign

the cards to show I had been there, and have ALL the jobs be something

OTHER than video production.

 Wanting to see if I understood the situation correctly, I asked if what I was

supposed to do was burst in on employers busy working, ask them about

jobs that didn't exist, they wouldn't have given me if they did, and that I

wasn't particularly interested in anyway, and then annoy and waste these

people's time even more by getting them to sign a stupid, meaningless

piece of green card?

The CES man told me I had an excellent grasp of the situation.

 So I did it. I didn't like it, and neither did my parents, who had to ferry me

around Adelaide all day (the words "Don't those twats at the CES have

anything better to do" were clearly heard uttered in our car, and not just

by me), but I did it. I can't remember much about the six unfortunate

employers I bothered that day - one was self-employed who couldn't afford

to hire anyone, and was was a job as a Storeman in a book shop. Hmm.


 It was around this time that I gave up the idea of being an author. A life-long

dream since childhood, my novel "Ian's Gang" had been going around the

publishing traps since early 93 - from when I left school - but now, nearly

eighteen months and fourteen disinterested publishers later, I had come to

the conclusion it wasn't going to happen. If only because I had run out of

publishers to send it to. Anyway, I gave up the idea. Rejection is never an

uplifting, life-affirming experience at the best of times, and certainly not when

all you ever get is rejection. I canned the idea. Just another nail in the coffin

of Ian Kidd's Potential Happiness.

 Anyway...

 We had a photo taken of the whole family, for some obscure reason or other.

When it was developed, I was mortified. I knew I was overweight. I knew I was

fat. I knew I was obese - sixteen stone and growing all the time. My brother

had even begun referring to me as "the monster", and I had half-heartedly

tried to diet before, always giving up - but it was this photo that changed

everything. I was huge. I was enormous. I dwarfed the photo - I was twice the

size of everyone in it. I realised just how awful I looked. If I carried on like that,

I would be dead by the time I was thirty - and there was no way in Hell (no matter

how freezing) I would get a girlfriend looking like that. I'd had enough. This

was the end. From now on, I was on a diet. But no ordinary diet.

This was going to be the "get fit" diet to end them all. If I wasn't slim and fit by

the end of it - I'd be slim and dead.





CHAPTER 3 - THE GREAT DIET OF '94





The Great Diet of '94, as we shall refer to it from this point onwards, lasted June

- December (with a couple of weeks off in June - more on this later), and it was a

killer. Unlike most diets, this wasn't about "a little bit of this" and "a little bit of

that" or "everything in moderation" nonsense. I had tried those diets before,

and they didn't work. Eating a little only made you even hungrier, and the

slowness of results soon wore off even the most determined will. I was having

none of it - this was to be the ultimate "crash diet" - and I doubt it would be

recommended by either dieticians or Doctors. Unhealthy and even dangerous,

they might say.

To which I'd say "tough".

Because it worked for me.

 The plan was simple. A long walk at first twice, then stepped up to three times

a day and (and this was the kicker), only one meal per week (not counting

breakfast cornflakes).

One meal.

 The rest of the time I survived on noodles, or (most often) crackers, sometimes

with (but mostly without) butter.

It's a regime to make even the most fit, fanatical health freaks flinch, and my

mother went so far as to describe it as insane. The rest of the family offered

similar supportive comments, like "He won't last a week."

 To be fair, being at that time a person who could spend $20 on crisps

and chocolates and scoff the lot in one day, one could almost see their

point.

 But I was steadfast. This was it. If I didn't do this now, I'd never do it. As

Patrick Stewart might declare, so did I: "The line must be drawn HERE!"

 
 Within a week of this torture (the family being no help, continuously waving

pizzas and beefburgers under my nose at meal times, teasing "You sure you

don't want some?" with gleeful maliciousness), I got on the scales.

I had not lost one pound.

Any other person would have no doubt thrown in the towel at this point, but

I was made of sterner stuff.

I stuck at it - and after another week, it paid off. After two weeks, I had lost

half a stone, going down from sixteen-and-a-quarter, to 15-and-3-quarters.

There was still a long way to go, of course, but it was a start - and a good

one.

 Then, however, the diet was "put off" for two weeks, in which time I put

back on the half a stone I had lost. Why? No, it wasn't just simple slacking

off, or giving up. It was two weeks off I had given myself for good reason.

We were going on holiday. The last holiday we'd attempted in Oz was three

days in the York Peninsula, a disastrous time in late 93, where on the first

day the dog collapsed of suspected dehydration and for a time we thought

she was going to die. She survived (she had but three months to live from a

stomach tumour, little did we know) but the fright put a severe dampener on

the holiday from the start. I could have packed up and gone home there and

then, but we persevered. However, the flies in that place were horrendous -

in your face ALL the time, and as for trying to have a picnic...it was a joke,

and a miserable one, and eventually we said "Fuck it" (well, I did anyway)

and went home.

 Anyhow, this time (with no dog of course, alas) we were going for a two

week holiday in Sydney, the first time we had been to that city. It was half

holiday, half expedition to see whether my brother could get a better job

over there, and whether I might have more chance of getting any job there -

which is how we explained away my holiday to the CES. In both cases, the

answer was negative. For starters, we couldn't have afforded to even buy

a house there. Crappy flats that sell for around $80,000 in Adelaide were

going for around $250,000 in Sydney, and as for the chances of getting a

house as good as we had in Adelaide for therabouts the same price in

Sydney...laughable.

Anyway, I hadn't wanted to be on a diet while the rest of the family had ice

creams, fish 'n' chips and other holiday fare, so when we returned I was

back to square one. But that did not deter me. The moment I set foot back

on home turf, The Great Diet of '94 began again - and this time, in earnest,

non-stop for the next six months.

 Within ONE week this time, I lost the regained half a stone, and the REAL

work began.

 By mid-December 1994, when I finally brought The Great Diet of '94 to a

triumphant end just one week before Christmas, I had a lost a total of FOUR

stone, bringing my weight down to a most satisfactory 12 and a quarter

(it literally wouldn't go any lower without literal starvation!), a weight I have

(more or less) maintained to this very day.

When Ian Kidd decides he's doing something, he DOES it.





CHAPTER 4 - FRIENDS, GIRLFRIENDS, ROMANS, COUNTRYMEN...





Time to get back to Michael and his amazing Technicolor Butcher Shop, I think.

Mid 94, during The Great Diet of '94, as it happens, and less than six months

after Michael opened the shop with great optimism, it all came crashing down.

 There are a number of reasons, I'm sure, but ALLEGEDLY (so I don't get sued)

the main one was that the entrepeneur who'd started off with one shop and

then started a franchise, was stretching himself just a mite too thin. With the

result that (ALLEGEDLY) Michael's shop would be empty of the food and meat

that MADE IT a Butchers Shop, that sometimes the deliveries would be

around to quarter to five in an afternoon, when Michael was about to shut up

shop (ALLEGEDLY). The whole thing came to a spectacular climax in October

that year, as Michael's family cut their losses and closed up the business.

The Great Butcher Debacle was, however, far from over...for, with all the

money they'd invested in the business, Michael's family were ticked...and

were taking the entrepeneur to court, sueing him for what could be, as

Michael gleefully informed me, "an absolutely bloody fortune".


 Back to the present - post-Great Diet of '94, early December, just before

Christmas.

 Michael and I went off to town, I indulged in my traditional "Maybe next

year will be better" speech, we shared our "See you next year" excrutiating

joke, and with Michael and family having fled Gawler and now living in

Morphett Vale, Michael was now sharing the train ride back from town

with me. Michael glumly asked me what I thought his chances were of

getting a job before Christmas.

"Bleak," I told him.

 Four days later, three days before Christmas, I received a phone call from

Michael.

 "What did you say my chances were of getting a job before Christmas?" were

the first words out of his mouth.

 I remembered. "Bleak," I said again.

 "Well...guess what?" he replied.

He had a job. An on-the-job-3-days-a-week, TAFE-the-other-two clerical

traineeship, starting first thing in the New Year.

Exactly what I was looking for, and wasn't getting.

Turned out to be a clerical traineeship he'd taken a test for back in June.

Which I COULD have taken...if I hadn't been in Sydney at the time.


 This didn't affect our friendship too much. All it meant was our town

visits had to be on a weekend instead of a weekday, and he had more

money than me. But I honestly didn't really care about that.

 
 Christmas, New Year came and went. It was 1995.

Life in the Kidd household was even more depressing than normal, with

my Uncle Mike in the UK (my dad's sister's husband) being diagnosed

with leukemia. Oh, happy days...not.





CHAPTER 5 - Debacles and Fiasco's - and That's Just The Job Interviews!





Here, for the first time in a while, I will mention my attempts at getting a job. Not

that I hadn't been trying, but none of it was very interesting or even remotely

worth writing about.

 But now, for the first time in two and half years of trying, I had gotten my very

first...JOB INTERVIEW!

 It was an interview for a job I had applied for as receptionist at a carpet cleaning firm.

They rang up one afternoon when Mum and Dad were out and asked me

down for an interview.

I nearly died of shock on the spot.

I said yes, of course, but it was the timing that blew me - and my parents -

away.

The interview was the next day...at 7am in the morning.

So, it was 5:45 am the next morning that I was dragged kicking and screaming

out of bed by my parents ("What are you doing? Leave me alone. PISS OFF!"

to be chauffeured down in my best suit for a 7 o'clock interview.

Which consisted of filling out a ridiculous questionnaire ("Where do you see

yourself in ten years?" I wrote "Being older.") alongside half a dozen other

shell-shocked applicants, for the actual interview to last approximately

ten seconds, consisting of one question ("Tell me about yourself"; "Well...I

think I'm pretty great, actually"), delivered by an apparently recovering

lobotomy patient.

 I didn't get the job, or even hear from them ever again.

Nor can I say I was terribly devastated by the fact.

 Then, only a couple of weeks later, I was stunned when I got ANOTHER job

interview.

This was even more prestigious than the last one.

Shoe Salesman at Betts & Betts, no less. Working alongside Al Bundy,

presumably.

 I have to be honest, the (female) interviewer for this job was much nicer and

friendlier and seemed less like a mental home escapee, but she still came

out with some classic ridiculous questions.

 "Why do you want to be a shoe salesman at Betts & Betts?"

 "Well, gee...I dunno...I think there's just something about the smell of a ladies'

sweaty foot when you take her shoe off that really turns me on."

I didn't get THAT job, either.

I don't know, some people just have no sense of humour.





Coda - In Conclusion





So, after two and a half years as a career dole bludger, did I have any advice

to pass on, impart to any prospective dole bludgers of the future?

No, not really.

However, if I had learned one thing from my experiences, it was this: Always

make notes of whatever trivial things happen to you. It could come in handy

ten to twelve years in the future when you want to post your story on the

internet in the vain hope of giving a couple of people a bit of a chuckle.












 

 

Copyright © 1996 Ian Kidd
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"