Stages of looking for a part time job in Edinburgh

When you're deep into your overdraft, you realise it may well be time to actually get off your arse and find yourself a real job. You think it'll be easy, but how wrong can you be. Here's every stage of finding a part-time job in Edinburgh:

Poverty

You've been living off 27p lidl spaghetti hoops and 12 for £1 tesco potato waffles for two weeks now and you're starting to forget what fruit looks like. You've been washing your hair with a bar of soap because you don't want to splash out for shampoo. Your flatmates hate you because you can't afford to buy your share of the communal toilet paper and you're on the verge of illegally subletting your uni room to fund a trip to Hive.

You have no choice. You're going to have to do some actual work.

A sad sight indeed

Optimism (naivety)

This can't be that hard you think, surely anyone can carry some plates or pull a pint. You're a lively and intelligent student of a top university, surely you must have done loads of really impressive things that qualify you to make a half-decent cup of coffee. You think of all the fun jobs you can do in your head, all the staff discounts you'll receive, the top quality banter you'll have with your future colleagues and most importantly – what you'll do with all that sweet, sweet cash you can practically taste.

Self-hatred

Now all you have to do is sum up your entire worth as a human being on one side of A4 and hand it over. This is where things begin to go wrong. You think through what you've spent your life doing, through what you've achieved, through all the responsibilities and hardships you've dealt with…and realise you've done absolutely nothing.

After hours staring at Microsoft Word, you have your school grades and those few months you volunteered at Barnardo's for DofE. But not to worry, your sparkling personality will see you through. Youth trumps experience. You're sure it does.

When your only marketable skill is giving up

Application

You print out 20 copies of your measly CV and hit the high street. With so many cafes and bars there's sure to be somewhere that'll want you. So maybe they don't actually say they're hiring, one look at you and they will be.

You hand them out with confidence and charisma. So what if lots have said outright they weren't accepting applications, a few bored looking people took your CV and put it behind the bar somewhere. The manager will definitely be in touch.

Waiting

It's been two weeks and you have heard absolutely nothing. You even got desperate and applied online to Subway and Greggs. You just can't understand why no-ones gotten back to you. Your friends keep asking how your job hunt is going and you tell them it's fine.

This is a lie. Even in the deathly Scottish winter, you're forced to consider Deliveroo as the only remaining option.

Grieving

As with any loss, the death of your employment dream takes a while to process. You hear your employed friends complaining about their work while rolling in the giant money-piles of money they rake in after every 8 hour Saturday shift. You spend a lot of time alone, contemplating what could possibly have gone wrong. This is a slow and painful process that passes through denial, anger, bargaining, and finally…

Optional: return to the places that rejected you and cry

Selling your organs on eBay

That's it, clearly you're utterly worthless. On the plus side, your organs aren't. You only need one kidney and you don't even know what a spleen does anyway. You even look into starting a side business in selling your used underwear to weirdos on the internet, apparently it's very lucrative. Real jobs are for chumps anyway.