Too Much Junk Food

I was still on my journey of discovery when my girlfriend at the time became pregnant with the guy that would become my eldest son. Now, I wasn’t employed, I was just covering rent and living expenses and had no possessions or responsibilities, so this was quite the shock to my system.

I urgently needed to get cracking on becoming an adult and also really needed to make some money to pay for this baby. So, instead of waking up every day at midday and playing Nintendo 64, I started looking for jobs. My girlfriend at the time was from Coffs Harbour and we decided together we’d move there before the baby was born so she could be near her family. So, I only wanted temporary jobs and had my first experience with temp agencies.

The very first agency I went to called me a few days after the interview and straight up offered me a position as the temporary Office Services Coordinator at The Smiths Snackfood Company. I had no idea what The Office Services Coordinator did, but the pay was awesome (casual rates) so I jumped at it. I would only be working 10:00am till 3:00pm every day and earning good money, so we’d be able to save and buy whatever we needed.

This was actually a pretty cool job. The guy that I was replacing had unfortunately been diagnosed with cancer and so was taking some time off. He was a great guy who trained me on my role and I hope to this day he is kicking on.

What I discovered when I arrived was, the Office Services Coordinator was basically just a guy who delivered mail and changed light bulbs. There was a lot of other duties, like filling the vending machines and once I had to vacuum a spill, but other than that, it was mainly mail and light bulbs.

I spent the first month doing that, each day sorting whatever mail came in, and mailing whatever mail had to go out. It was pretty lonely, sitting in the mail room. So I just sat and read some books until someone needed something. I was eating a stack of Smiths Chips and Nestle Chocolate bars and drinking Pepsi and getting fat.

Everyone knew who I was, because I visited every desk, and I knew everyone’s name because of the mail. There was one lady from the finance department who would stop by each and every day and chat to me, and she became pretty much my only “work friend”.

She asked me a lot about what I had previously done, and what my skill set was and so on. And she found I had worked at Hyder in the Accounts department.

And so, she asked me if I could do her a favour which was enter some invoices, and we checked with whoever it was that managed me and I did it. So that became my day, entering invoices and sorting mail and so on.

So, the marketing department soon got wind of this. I mean, that the Office Services Coordinator was now doing more than changing lightbulbs, and so asked if I could do some things for them. I sorted Tazos, sent out promo packs, took notes and a bunch of other things. After about 6 weeks in the role, I found out from my accounts department friend, that there was a bit of a kerfuffle around my role and my duties.

Actually, what she told me was, the marketing team wanted to offer me a permanent role. And the finance team wanted to offer me a permanent role.

If I have one job a really regret not taking, it would be one of these ones. I really liked Smiths Snackfood Company, but there was no chance I was going to take either jobs, because I was moving to Coffs Harbour.

And so, I finished up my job at Smiths and moved on. I sent the finance lady a Christmas card that year and she actually called me and told me she’d changed companies and offered me a job at her new place. But I was happy in Coffs and declined.

Smiths Snackfood was a great place. I didn’t learn much, but I did enjoy my time there, and I also got a little chubby from eating all the junk food.