The End of an Era...

I landed in London in the middle of an Economic Meltdown. This was the worst employment crisis my generation had seen (so far, touch wood), and I had just quit my job, packed my bags and touched down in the supposed land of milk and honey. I considered myself a creative, a graphic designer who had risen rapidly in her previous small company, with a good education and a lot of ambition.

In my naivety I had not realised that creatives are this first casualties of financial fall out. Companies are not in the mood for shelling out so that others can get all artsy, magazines close down because the public rid themselves of all but the necessities, ad revenues go down - in short, we're toast. And so, after numerous calls to media agencies that had ended in gales of laughter and hang ups, I headed off to an admin agency and signed up for the first job I could find - Data Input.

When I was interviewed, the lady employing me actually said previous employees had actually described the position as 'soul destroying' and 'worse than death'...Did this deter me? Oh no, the allure of the shiny, golden pound coins was too strong. And so it began...

My interviewer had not overstated the 'challenges' of this job at my interview and over the past year I have, at times, be more bored than I believed it was possible to be. You know that feeling when a Geography teacher has been rambling for 2 hours about the difference between concave and convex - worse. Or when you go to a prize giving and the keynote speaker mumbles through forty five minutes of god knows what, and you have counted the ceiling tiles, and the hairs on the head in front of you and indeed the dust - worse! In fact that only thing that could possibly be more dull was the job of the girl next to me. Said girl is a waifishly pretty Northerner called Anna. Aspiring actress, political soul mate, fellow Doc Marten aficionado, it was love at first witty comment. In fact the only thing keeping me from running away at high speed was our budding friendship and the knowledge that Anna understood, and was perhaps the only person in the world that was more bored than I was.

Gradually our little group grew, and it became a lunch time haven of witty banter, company gossip and generally a reason to stay alive until 1pm. The tedium of our jobs and the endless amusement of life in a large institution formed us into a tight knit group, who understood each others gripes, celebrated each others achievements, mourned each others sorrows. From casual relationships, we developed strong attachments cemented with many glasses of wine, a lot of laughs and the odd few tears.

But now the end of the era looms. Anna leaves on Friday, and I am floundering. I have moved within the company, and now have a job that I find a certain amount of satisfaction within, and yet my main reason for staying, the people, is starting to give way. Anna is not the first of our little group to depart, but she was the first I met, the one who started at the same time as me, the job yardstick I supposed. And as I begin to look to horizons new I realise that while the last year hasn't been my most productive career wise, it could not have been more rewarding socially.

Misery does indeed love company, and a bottle of a wine, and a healthy dose of sarcasm and shared experience.