Bring on this recession y'all, what's taking so long?

I had a part-time job from an early age and was super rich for most of my early teenage years. These jobs dried up and by the time I was in uni I was as poor as poor can be. Well......., okay, maybe not ditch-living, bug eating poor, but living on say, $10 a week.

I didn't really need money, I was at uni most of the time, my hobbies weren't expensive and I was too young to go out on the weekends.

As me and my mates neared 18, I painted up some fake IDs and we'd hit the nightclubs. A group of four dudes, maybe not The Dukes of Hotness, struggled to get in to these clubs filled with so much promise. I'd usually get in as I perfected the art of just walking straight through the door, mostly though, one of my mates would get KB'd as they had perfected the art of hovering nervously near the door hoping the bouncers would need an emergency coffee at that very second.

After getting knocked back from pretty much evey hot and not-hot nightspot, we'd end up at Pancake Parlour until the wee hours of Sunday morning recounting tales of how we nearly got in that time, and for such adventures a dude need moola.

I looked in our local paper and found something in the city. I was lucky. We were in the tale end of the recession, but no one knew that at the time. I only had one item that wasn't a black t-shirt, it was a white shirt that had no collar, I was the coolest young adult when I wore it that one time to a cousin's baptism or similar.

I was nervous and the only candidate being interviewed at that time. The offices were small and near the Victoria Market back when the area was still fairly run down and dodgy.
For my first ever interview, I think it went well. I was polite, I was intelligent and enthusiastic, my potential boss seemed pretty suave and gave me the run down on the type of employee the company was looking for. The interview was going so well that I almost forgot to ask what it was that I'd be doing.

The boss dude leaned back on his comfortable office chair, he tapped a flouresent yellow pen on his desk and told me.

"You'll be walking into individual businesses and offering staff a great opportunity. They can purchase a pen like this and a scratchy lottery ticket for $2." Being the ever polite and strategic young man, my smile didn't betray my thoughts. What a scam, this interview - what a waste of my time and bus fare.

"Of course, ..." He continued, "You can't approached any business with a sign out the front."

"A sign?"

"You know, 'No Hawkers' that kind of thing."

"Oh yeah, of course."

I thanked him for his time. I did do alright, he asked me back for a second interview. Despite knowing I wasn't going to touch this job with a kabillion million foot barge pole, I did honestly smile. It's nice to do well at something.

"One word of advice though..."

I turned back, almost alarmed.

"For your next interview, wear a shirt with a collar, you'll need to be professional."

Yeah.

I'll do that.

A mate was telling me recently that when he first moved to Melbourne his first job was to walk around approaching people to sign up to a new mobile phone contract. Who would change their mobile phone providers to a random dude in the street? Needless to say, he lived on just plain rice for fair while.

With a cyclical recession coming, I'm looking forward to the opporunity of maybe getting a dodgy job. I never realised my destiny years ago to be a hawker, swooping down on unsuspecting retail staff to make 1, maybe 2, sales a day. I think I'm ready now. Maybe a dude can follow me around selling 'No Hawker' signs. So much opportunity.