Will I take the risk?

LegacyUser

Hi,

I am looking for some advice on my current situation. I am a single mother, have very supportive friends and family but I don't ask for their help all that often because they have all their own lives to lead. I live at home with my mum and her husband and my mum helps out a lot, so don't like looking for extra babysitting from her. My child's father is not around.

I am in a job that takes an hour and a half to get to. I've had to reduce my hours because of this as I have to collect my child from creche by a certain time or I'm charged by the quarter hour. I am working in an office settling, I have bookkeeping experience and experience on the reception but I have no qualifications. I've been looking for jobs for the last year and I've had a few interviews but nothing further as I don't have the right experience. This has made me not want to even try to look for something similar.

I am wondering whether to apply for the christmas jobs as it would get my experience in retail. And this would be good as I am hoping to return to college next year (sept 16) and would hopefully be able to get a part time job in a shop..


The thing is, it's risky, and I don't know if I will regret it.
Because
1) if i get a christmas temp job, I could be let go after christmas and be out of a job.. will have no money for creche or saving for college

2) if I get a christmas temp job, I will be relying on my parents to watch my daughter a lot more which I don't like the idea of... My stepsister did this when her little girl was small, and I saw the exasperated looks from my mum and her husband would pull when asked to babysit yet again..

I'm stuck on a fork in the road and don't know which direction to take...

Thanks

CaraMay

Is there any way you can get the dad involved to either help with the costs of crèche etc or mind your child? It seems mad to take Christmas work as you will most likely be let go after Xmas

LegacyUser

He has moved abroad and changed his number so no, no way, even though I have tried.

Yes it is mad, however, I can't afford the distance with the pay cut and the crèche fees even with the social welfare helping me out.

But it probably is too much of a risk as there's a chance of being let go after Christmas, so I probably will just leave it.

Thanks for your reply.

njs030

Op don't depend on a part time job in a shop when you go to college. I know people have an idea that it's easy and there's loads available....that's why any part time retail job has literally hundreds of applicants!! Very few people even get to interview stage without decent experience and you don't have any from what you've said....a few weeks at Christmas would be a small amount.

Have you been offered any Christmas jobs? Again there's a high number of applicants for them and obviously the people with experience will be the most likely to get an offer.
Why don't you apply first and see how things stand if you're offered something?

nikkibikki

Do you use a community creche? The state subsidise places in community creches sometimes for returning to education. Talk to your local community creche about it.

Talk to your Mam and her husband too if they'd willing to help out a little more temporarily over the Christmas if u decide to go down that road.