6 months ago, I had to leave my job due to how badly my disabilities were effecting me. This was a difficult decision, but for the past 6 months I have been job searching everyday for a job that would be more suitable for my needs due to my disability.
Ideally, I need a job where I could work remotely if I were having issues. I previously worked in secondary education and if I was ill, I couldn’t teach a class remotely.
I’m quite keen on working in a student support role and so I started looking for jobs in higher education where more are available. A lot of them are also at least hybrid job roles, so if I’m having difficulty one day. I don’t have to automatically ring in sick.
On Wednesday, after 6 months of applying for jobs everyday I finally got a job offer and I start in January. It is also the exact role I want to. While I wanted to work in student support, I applied for other roles in the higher education sector to build relevant experience and widen my chances of landing a job.
I met with my Mum yesterday and she is at least really proud of me. She works in retail and fully appreciates why I couldn’t work in a shop.
This sadly doesn’t seem to be the case with one of my sisters, my aunt and my Grandad though. They have apparently been speaking behind my back and saying that I should have just taken a job at a Tesco. They reckon I could stock shelves or at the very least work at a till.
I have a mobility issue and a physical disability that would make those tasks either impossible or extremely difficult. And then my disability that causes me to ring in sick a lot, is the fact I have severe brittle asthma. I can’t stock shelves or work a till remotely.
And it kinda irritates me that they have dismissed the hard work I have done the past 6 months. Like when I told my Grandad I got this job, he was happy for me but followed it up with the “you could have got a job sooner if you’d had been willing to work in a shop.”
When I expressed how my disabilities made that not doable he just dismissed it and told me how back in his day, I would have had to work or die. As if that is a time we should be aspiring to where the disabled were put in that position.
Also, I should note every university I have interviewed at has been in a hiring freeze. Despite this I was getting multiple interviews a month and after only 6 months, which as I understand it is the tail end of the average time it takes to find a job, I landed a job offer.
I don’t expect a parade for finding a job but I do hate seeing the work I put in to get one being dismissed cos I could have supposedly got a job quicker by taking on a job I literally can’t do due to my disabilities.
Sorry for the rant. I really just needed to vent.
On the upside though, I start my new job on the 22nd January.
