A Difference of One Percent
4July 30, 2014 by lucieromarin
Following the theme of Building a New Life, I’ve mentioned a couple of times the Bright New Job which follows the Awful Job Which I Thought was Going to Be the Bright New Job.
Wah! Well, I was training to be a respeaker (the person who makes the captions for television; captions are made by speaking, rather than typing.) It requires 97.3% spoken accuracy and 97.5% after corrections. Now my probation is up, and my stats are full of…96.4.
So that’s that. In two weeks, I’ll be unemployed again! So, taking stock of my discoveries and/or conclusions, I find:
1) Being one percent not-good-enough for a job you really like is quite a different kind of dispiriting to being good at a job you don’t like. The latter is a bit soul-crushing, and makes you wonder if you are in some way compromising your integrity as a person. The former is more like staring through a window at a brightly lit living room full of Christmas presents and party games before turning away sadly to trudge home in the snow to your gruel. You do feel disappointed, but you don’t feel compromised.
2) I had no idea this little captioning universe existed until I happened upon the advertisement in March. Surely this means there other little universes somewhere…?
3) Friends are a blessing. I feel for people who are struggling to find work in countries or states they’ve only just moved to, with all the people they’d naturally turn to thousands of kilometres away. I know we have Skype and email and things – even so.
4) It would have been nice to have been able to write a This-is-How-You-Change- Your-Life – Easy! blog. But I suppose you can’t hope to help people Think Positive and Love God No Matter What if things are going swimmingly all the time…especially when you only have to turn on the news to see how much actual and horrible suffering other people endure. There’s something inconsistent about praying for other people to have the strength to endure persecution while simultaneously having a meltdown over rent!
(And since I did find myself crying every time I had to say, ‘A father holds his dead baby full stop’ and ‘Her father comma mother and brothers were blown up full stop,’ perhaps it’s for the best!).
***
Gah! One lousy percent!!
Roadkill Rhapsody 
Well, I don’t know if this applies over the ditch, but here, employers receive an incentive to take on new employees, one that lasts three months. And in the law of unintended consequences, what this means is that less-scrupulous, or cash-strapped employers take on people for that three months and then let them go. Many people I know have been bitten by this. So it may not be you (because a reasonable employer would figure on a one-percent improvement being more than possible); it may be them. These are evil times. 😦
Friends are a blessing.
Thanks! Our company had just been recently taken over by another company, so there may have been an element of New, Bigger Higher-Ups being demanding, too. Meanwhile, I found out that Mass in Re has no author (at least, none recorded by whoever photocopied it for us) but is French Mass setting and is indeed accompanied by a Mass in Do and Mass in Mi and Mass in Fa. The Frenchness explains the prettiness (which also explains why some people don’t like it much!). Could we have found something that doesn’t exist on the internet?
I’m really sorry to hear that: what a shame! I don’t suppose there’s any appeal on the grounds of being so close to what they’re after? But if not, I hope you’re right (and I’m sure you are) about other little universes to be discovered…
Thank you – no, it doesn’t look that way; it does seem that it’s the kind of skill you either have or don’t have, and it looks like I’ve reached my limit. However, I remind myself that, once settled in a new job, I’m not going to miss the 5am starts one little bit!