Employment Desperation

Saturday 26 July 2025 - 11:30am

The letterbox just performed its daily act of bureaucratic violence. Final notice from the landlord - £240 rent arrears, eviction proceedings commence Monday unless payment received. The cream-coloured paper feels expensive in a way that emphasises how skint I am.

Sitting here with yesterday’s newspaper and my third consecutive cigarette, watching the job adverts through smoke that tastes like defeat. Twenty-six years of artistic education reduced to scanning classified columns for anything that won’t require me to lie about my qualifications.

11:45am - The Universe’s Cruel Irony

Found it. “Part-time Computer Assistant wanted - Retro Games & Electronics shop, Camberwell. Knowledge of vintage systems essential. £8.50/hour, 20 hours/week.”

Of course. My expertise in digital archaeology - the very thing that marks me as unemployable in the modern world - suddenly becomes my lifeline. The machines I love because they’re beautifully obsolete might now prevent me from joining them in obsolescence.

Joystick Jerry’s Retro Emporium. Even the name makes me want to crawl under the covers and pretend Saturday never happened.

12:00pm - The Phone Call

Dialled the number with fingers that shook worse than my morning coffee routine. Each digit pressed down with the weight of necessity until I’d committed myself to employment.

Voice on the other end sounded like it had been filtered through too many cigarettes and not enough sleep. “Yeah, we’re still looking. Can you start Monday?”

Interview today at 2pm. Not really an interview - more like checking I can operate a till without setting anything on fire. £170 a week will cover rent with enough left over for Embassy cigarettes and the cheapest wine available. Survival mathematics written in the margins of desperation.

12:15pm - Contemplating Retail Hell

Twenty hours a week of explaining to hipsters why their newly purchased Commodore 64 won’t connect to their Samsung TV. Twenty hours of selling digital archaeology to people who think retro computing is a fashion statement rather than a monument to lost digital poetry.

The Amiga hums in the corner, oblivious to its imminent abandonment. Soon I’ll have even less time to spend with my only reliable companion. Twenty hours of speaking to strangers about machines they’ll never understand, leaving barely enough energy for the art that justifies my existence.

But perhaps, in the cosmic joke that governs my life, working in a shop full of technological corpses will provide new material for creative excavation. New forms of suffering to transform into pixels and pain.

Interview Preparation - 1:30pm

Time to locate the least wrinkled clothes I own and practice saying “Thank you for considering my application” without the word “unfortunately” appearing anywhere in the sentence.

The radiator clanked once when I hung up the phone, as if applauding this latest development in my ongoing performance of survival. Even the heating system recognises the irony of an artist reduced to retail work to afford the shelter necessary for continued artistic failure.

Outside, someone’s Saturday continues with the sound of car engines and purposeful movement. People going places that matter, to jobs that provide more than bare subsistence. My Saturday has just become a countdown to Monday morning humiliation.

Post-Interview Update - 4:45pm

Got the job. Of course I did. Twenty-seven years of obsessive knowledge about obsolete computing systems finally becomes marketable, even if it’s just explaining connector cables to teenagers who think the Atari 2600 is “vintage chic.”

Jerry seems decent enough - mid-fifties, beard that’s seen better decades, owns more vintage computers than any sane person should possess. Shop smells like old electronics and broken dreams, which feels appropriately familiar.

Start Monday 9am. Twenty hours a week of wage slavery in service of rent payments and continued survival. Another small death in the grand tapestry of existing without quite living.

At least I know the systems. That counts for something in a world that’s forgotten how beautiful these machines were when they mattered.

The Amiga still hums in the corner, patient as always. Soon it will have to share my attention with retail customers and stock inventory, but it will endure. These machines always do.

Time for wine and cigarettes and pretending this is victory rather than defeat.

“Twenty hours a week of selling digital archaeology to people who think retro computing is a fashion statement”