“Konstantine I have some really bad news”
This is how my Agent for ECB opened the conversation last Thursday when he called me to tell me what progress we had.
“Oh no” – Is what is thought, with “no” echoing in my head.
To make a long story short, what my agent told me, is that they changed their mind and decided not to hire me after all at ECB. I was dumbstruck…at least until desperation set in.
I felt like the earth opened up and swallowed my hopes.
“How? Why?” – I asked, choking back some tears.
“I don’t know, but Melva (The intermediate between agency and ECB) is very angry and is going to a meeting to find out what happened.”
At this point, I couldn’t really say anything. I was just incredibly sad.
My agent continued – “I’m truly sorry Konstantine, I will try and find you another job…” but I was too gone to really carry a conversation.
“How can a company as big as ECB do this?” – I kept thinking to myself.
I’ve truly never heard before of an employer “changing his mind” about a job offer after he made it. It just seemed incredibly irresponsible and I was determined to get to the bottom of it.
After letting my sister and cousin know, I couldn’t really gather the courage to go job hunting for that day. Having the single break I had these five months so cruelly shattered, dissipated any enthusiasm I would be able to gather for job search. I left it for the other day, although It’s frankly something that I cannot afford to set aside.
Since I didn’t get the job afterall, I now need to pay rent and I don’t have a job.
An unforeseen consequence of all this is that I lost two jobs that could sustain me. The day my agent told me I got the ECB job, two people called me for bar work and I turned them down because I thought that a) I wouldn’t need it. b) I would be leaving soon and there was no reason to leave them hanging.
How was I supposed to know.
That day, I did manage to sent a (pretty dramatic) mail to Melva to ask what happened but I never received a reply. I left things as they were for the time and attempted to call her Monday afternoon. What she told me was unbelievable.
They never did accept me. All they told the agent is that I had things looked very good and that they were waiting for the final result. Why my agent decided to tell me that I got the position is anyone’s guess.
Furthermore, when I contacted him 5 days later to ask what was happening, he would tell me that “my position has not been compromised” and that “I should not worry”.
Now how can that be, when they never even said yes in the first place?
Funny thing is that I had a gut feeling that something was going to go awry (and so did my sister) but…hell…damn the optimist in me.
Anyway, Melva did not know why they decided not to hire me after all and they do not need to disclose the reason, but deep down, for some reason, I have the feeling that it’s because they read my last entry and did it to punish me for jumping to conlcusions.
sigh
So, here I am. Still at London and not going anywhere. My big break came and spat me in the eye for being so damn happy about it.
Great.