Watching Employable Me
I admit to a moment’s trepidation when deciding to watch the latest series of this programme. (And I’m not sure I appreciate the BBC’s tag line, ‘Britain’s most extraordinary job seekers’ but more about that later.)
I found it, though, really enjoyable and refreshing, and not in ways I expected it to. I was dreading feeling the same dead and depressing feelings that I felt while I was working – and looking for work. And it occurs to me – so late in the day! – that since I was so very unhappy for most of my legal career, the obvious answer would have been to go and do something else! Yet so many of us in work are unhappy, or have periods of deep frustration. These are burdens we each have to work through. I did eventually leave my conventional office job, and I could not go back to that now, but the obvious point is, if a thing makes us feel suicidal, we should step away from it.
I like the format of this series, though I couldn’t help wishing, just occasionally, that the mentors who had been employed to motivate our candidates were not all able bodied, swish and slim. Surely the most inspiring message would come from a fully and happily employed person with impairments? Never mind. Perhaps that is a teething problem and the BBC will employ me to inspire others… Dream on, Fran.
Watching this programme, one statement, ‘There is a difference being born with a disability because you don’t know any better…but having 21 years of being able to walk and then having that taken away from you is horrible…’ rather stuck in my craw. Though I wouldn’t say it upset me, there was a time when I would have thrown something at the telly, and regrettably, it is the kind of rather careless disability elitism that dogs the disability movement. More of which later.
It is simply false that persons with birth-related impairments can’t know what we haven’t had. I did, and I do, and it still upsets me occasionally. I will always hate country dancing. And love it.
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January 8, 2018
Britain’s most extraordinary job seekers
Fran Macilvey 'Trapped: My Life with Cerebral Palsy', Fran Macilvey, Fran's School of Hard Knocks 2 Comments
Britain’s Most Extraordinary Job Seekers
That’s not my line, it’s a quote from the BBC series, ‘Employable Me’, a quote with which I take issue.
What is extraordinary about job seekers with impairments is not that we are exceptionally heroic, though attempts to find jobs and field the disappointment of literally thousands of job rejections contain incredibly valuable lessons about the inflexibility and inhumanity of the current mainstream system of looking for work.
Adults with impairments do not often appreciate, either, having to field the mainstream of sentimental hogwash that we are somehow different from the rest of the world’s population in our aspirations. All of us want homes, enough to eat, meaningful friendships and meaningful work.
The whole point of this series, in many ways, is that although disabled applicants bring a special perspective to many tasks that the rest of us take for granted, we do not want to be cast as, or become, especially long-suffering. Yet applicants with impairments looking for jobs are so often hindered by a self-image that is clouded by our own perceptions as, first and foremost, candidates with disability. Yes, that impairment brings a special and valuable gift to any workplace, but all the other great stuff seems to be forced to take second place to the heaviness of impairment.
One really eye-opening aspect of ‘Employable Me’ is that, when interviewers and employers intervene to remind the candidates that they have talents, that they would do themselves a favour by dressing more formally, by watching what they say about themselves, by having real, public faith in their ability, then they start to see themselves more positively. The programme makes the valuable point that when we focus on what we enjoy and what we contribute to the world, our employment prospects improve massively. Employers only want to see our sunny, optimistic, professional selves. All else is secondary.
We can be disabled and proud. We can also choose to overlook our disabilities and focus on our other parts, in the hope that our friends, family, acquaintances and employers will see our talents, and treat us as we wish to be treated – like everyone else.
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