Diary 2nd 3rd And 4th May 2017

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Diary Tuesday 2nd May 2017 One of my voluntary work days today. I agreed to be a guinea pig for medical students being assessed at the university for the bedside manner and approaches to giving patients an abdominal check up. I was seen, prodded, stethoscoped, and questioned to a fairly set script by about a dozen students and had to award each points on how they performed. Their main examiner was in the examining room too, where I got to lie in bed for over four hours but somehow ended up feeling quite exhausted. The students did very well. I was more nervous for them than I was for me. Returning home afterwards proved to be an endless interrupted journey. I accidentally left my expenses paid bus ticket in the university so I had to go back for it. I later discovered I lost a £5 somewhere in transit too. I just missed one bus and the next was missing so a journey normally lasting about thirty minutes took over ninety. Diary Tuesday 3rd May 2017 Welfare hearing day, which regular readers know I always dread. This time it seemed to go well until my advisor gleefully registered me for a mandatory interview at the welfare office for the following day, with an agency promoting some unspecified warehousing work. My advisor would not tell me anything but the name of the agency. I went from the welfare event to the job club, where I can use computers for job search activity. Then I came home. Diary Thursday 4th May 2017 Star Wars Day (as in May Fourth Be With You). I got ready for my agency warehousing interview, going in cold with no knowledge of which warehouse it could be, or what duties are involved. I was due to be seen at 11.20 am, so I arrived at 11.05 am. Three other candidates were there too and we were given agency application forms to complete, which said nothing about the job on offer. At 12.15pm, 45 minutes after my appointment time I was finally seen by a man I can at best describe as an offensive annoying twerp trying to sound nice. He blathered on about the agency until I asked him directly what the job might involve. He told me it had been for warehousing work, adding while pointing at my stomach, “it would involve lots of heavy lifting and I see that would obviously be a problem for you, so I’ll look out for work with lighter duties for you soon.” I was effectively written off a too fat and obese for the job with incredible casual and outright prejudicial ease. He spoke on, and then noticing my address area in Preston he suddenly said, ‘You must know Dave’ then. I asked the rather obvious question, ‘Dave who?’ He looked at me blankly. I asked with perhaps a dash of sarcastic impatience if he could be more specific with details such for example as a surname. He couldn’t remember that but told me this Dave was bald like me (which he found amusing, so accompanied with being rejected for a job for being overweight) this seemed rather annoying. I went to the job club again and mentioned the incident there. The staff there advised me to complain about his behaviour which I may well do at my next welfare hearing in two weeks. Back home, I put some laundry outside to dry in the Summer heat. My central heating is now off, hopefully until late autumn. Arthur Chappell