Swings and round-a-bouts

As you are all aware MOTH (Man of the House) is looking for employment, and that's just hard on so many levels - I am sure you all know why, so I won't go into the details.

What is weird though is that at my job I am sitting on panels choosing people to come and work for me, all the while wishing that MOTH gets a job and feeling that maybe, just maybe if I treat these people with respect, that he too will be treated with respect.

Last week was particularly hard. MOTH received notification from the university telling him that he received a scholarship to train as a wood tech teacher. Cue excitement. He rings the Education Department and is informed which school it is that has accepted him - you can imagine the rest. Apparently he will receive the paperwork in the mail. The papers never come. (You can see where this is going can't you? If this was a movie you'd be hearing the "don't fall for it, it's a trick" music) He calls the school at this stage, and oops ... "uuuum, oooh , aaargh - we don't have any money anymore, sorry there is no longer a job."

Not only was that annoying, frustrating and blood boilingly ( I know that is not a word - but I'm using it and I know you get it) infuriating, it made the fact that he was offered another job two days previously, which he turned down thinking he had received a better offer, so bad.

And this is where the lesson lies - some people just don't think about how their actions can really make someone else's day, or life, really bad.

As I sit, listening to people tell me why I should give them a job. I listen intensely. I look for ways to employ them, and I feel so bad when I can't employ them all. But I haven't treated them badly, and that has to count for something. And surely, in the world of swings and round-a-bouts, in the world of 'see ya on the flip side' and the world of Karma, somehow the way I treat other people might just get him a job.

This is what I just don't get ...

Some people are seriously so nasty. They purposely do things that make other people's days much, much worse than it was ever intended to be in the first place. They relish it. It is like they can't live unless they have done something to make someone else feel hopeless.

Why are they like that? What happened to them to make them think that this is OK?

I have to remind myself that not everyone is nice in the world, and who wants that reminder? Honestly? No-one.

And just when I think there is no hope (and there is a lot of hopelessness out there) I find some evidence of really lovely, heartwarming, genuine people. I get them. I just can't fathom the others.