Footloose and Employment-Free

It’s not often you get to feel like a character from Greek myth – and in general, it’s a bad idea, what with the ending in death and destruction. But here I am, being all Oedipal – not in the family fun and games way, but with a broken foot and the charming shuffle that accompanies it.

Yes folks, I tried to kick the hell out of the world. And it kicked back. This is the second time in three months that I’ve been hobbled with foot damage, and it’s not like I have any of the good stuff that goes with being a professional soccer player. My fractured tarsals have yet to achieve meta status, just a curious limp, perennial exhaustion and (unrelated) unemployment.

As I am overtaken by old ladies on the stairs coming up from the Tube, I find myself thinking about employment, the application therefore and the rejection thereof. There’s something about being mildly incapacitated that makes every rejection letter (letter? I should be so lucky. Every rejection total silence – how long does it take to send out a generic email?) all the more rejecty. “We don’t need you to work for our company, you’re a spazz.” Obviously, my inability to run for the bus (or even run for the phone, which is how I broke my damn foot in the first place) means that I am not cut out for life in general.

I wish they’d just put that category on the bloody job forms: it could be a question like “Rate your competence at being a normal person” and I could tick “Excuse me, wha?” Because it seems to me like a) the majority of getting a job seems to be proving how much like everyone else you are, plus a leetle bit more workaholic and brown-nosey. And b) that there’s this category on human resources forms that asks “Do you consider yourself disabled?” Well, what kind of stupidass question is that? It’s like one of those riddles in Labyrinth: if you say yes, they won’t give you the job, or you’ll get the job out of some affirmative action, and then only if it’s a mild disability that doesn’t require any actual work or changes from your employer. If you say no, then you have no right to complain when your RSI/asthma/lack of proprioception/childhood illness/ME/depression intrudes on your ability to work.

Being disabled is not a yes/no answer, quite frankly. I think employers, governments and other people concerned with defining “normal” would really like it if it was. But clearly, there’s some concern among the rest of us folks who watch trashy TV and have to fill in employment forms. Otherwise why would shows like Buffy and Heroes be so popular? The new mutants have a disability that’s also a superpower – they can’t hold down normal jobs, or go to normal schools. People want to destroy them. But it’s not that clearly defined, chickens: just as each of us could be a Slayer, so each of us could be/is disabled – less able than the presumptuous norm.

In lots of cases, it’s actually work that makes us unable to work, whether from RSI, sick building syndrome, stress, assault, insomnia, sight damaged by computers, you name it. In others, it’s other stuff about being in the (modern) world: allergies, phobias, photo-epilepsy, migranes, hormonal distortions. In others, it’s a one-off injury (broken foot) or surgery or illness that makes us aware of our bodies’ limitations and the way the world is designed for some weirdass superhuman freaks who can leap staircases in a single bound and stand on 2 hour train journeys. In those one-off times, we partially enter the part of the bodily spectrum called “disabled” or “old age.” It’s like special glasses that can enable us to see the challenges the world carelessly and inhumanely holds for anyone different from the lofty presumption of a bodily norm.

So what to do? Tick the “Yes” box and list all the things that make me a bad worker at the job interview (should I get one out of pity – and I say that not because I believe that someone who considers themselves disabled is a less worthy employee, but because most all companies I’ve worked for do, whatever their specious equality policy), meanwhile being aware that to all intents and purposes I am not functionally disabled and have no right to occupy a disabled person’s support or employment opportunity. Or do I tick the “No” box and wrestle my way through more rejections, finally taking a job that will poison me until I can’t do it any more and take to my bed having been made aware that, actually, I am a freak who cannot do the day-to-day dance that everyone else seems to manage.

Now, I’m fine with that. Give me a pile of low self-esteem, a comfy bed and some very engaging fantasy novels. I will happily opt out of the world outside the window for days on end. Heh. But after a few days, the Puritan work ethic revs back up – and this stupid, pointless need for my actions to somehow make a difference to the world makes me feel all misty eyed and ready to bathe.

I know what they say, if life hands you lemons, make lemonade. But what if you keep applying for lemons and then you drop the lemons that you have on your (already quite sore) toes? Hang on, I don’t even know what that means. What I meant to say is: OK, no-one’s giving me a break. Well, all the movies and self-help books tell me I’ve got to make my own breaks.

So I did. Starting one toe at a time.