Fallen From Grace

A Second Chance

I was aware of this current job which was expressed at the interview I would be on a three month contract so when four months had passed (because I did at least three months suffering from Plantar fasciitis in steel topped shoes because we had to wear these chucky shoes in case anything fell on our feet!) I was certain that I got the job.
I was looking ahead at the rotas for the upcoming weeks and my name was scheduled on the board however by the end of the fourth month I had an incident at work where regretfully I'd accepted a fraudulent twenty pound note - I found out that I didn't have the job.

"Why didn't you put it through the machine?"

I remember I was asked this in an office upstairs when I was in the most awful position to be in because they even said they had one all the way over on the other till.

"That doesn't work," I let them know. "I was told when I started it only occasionally worked."

And then I remembered thinking at the time well that was a load of good as I opened and closed my till but decided to check notes in the light and right now my colleague who I requested for support in the room backed me up on this.

"It works," Barbara expressed. "However we need to put notes in five to six times before it gets accepted. It is quite temperamental."

"How could someone of your experience let this happen?"

I will never forget these words. In fact they brought on further bouts of anxiety even after the interview with that woman's voice in my head...

"How could you let this happen? With your experience how could you let this happen..."

I was running purely on my nerves as I worked away in a highly anxious state and for the first time I came harder on myself but quite hurtfully in this moment I didn't know how. They showed me the twenty I accepted and asked me what was wrong with it.

"I don't see the Queen's head. I can't see the Queen's head!"

I panicked.

"What else?"

I tried to think but to be fair that was all I knew and I couldn't really comment.

"You have UV pens in your draw."

I think I knew that there were those weird pens in the draw with silly ends on but I didn't know what they were used for however once they were explained it then made sense that's what they were because I had tried to write with them and could not. They started to explain other differences on the note like the water mark and how it should look like and how this note was made out of paper and then said how it should feel. As soon as they started saying that I started to remember something else that I previously knew from my other store. The problem why I wasn't so knowledgeable over this and only knew very basic things was because of the previous store needing a good percent pass rate so they'd be telling me all the answers I needed to put down to make the store look good rather than me doing the work. I used to get quite annoyed by that approach because I was just like I'm not learning anything here.

Then, I watched video footage of myself working with my other colleague Hannah on the other side. To be fair my first reaction to seeing myself on camera was - was I really that body shape than the one I had in my head?
Obviously I saw my hair scraped back into a bun and obviously saw how that did not look good on camera but then told myself to concentrate when this guy with a cap on approached the end of the till. I waited until he was the main customer and he tries to pay with a card but it doesn't work so he gives me the note and seeing this footage gave me the memories back. When it was over I did get asked a question about it so I requested to watch it again and I got up to the screen and re-watched it closely to what had happened. I felt like I was a police officer of the law inspecting the video footage closely.