Going through financial trouble is not easy at all, more than trying to fulfill your unwanted needs sometimes just being on a hand-to-mouth basis becomes hard enough, and also if you're someone that is trying to not rely on your parents for support, not coz you'll not get it but because of burdening them further than they already have is unnecessary, the situation sort of becomes unpleasant. Having been brought up in India and in a well supported family, these sort of issues never seemed to have arrived in front me, also partly because I hadn't ever lived on me own before. Point to be noted, before I move any further, I might go off-track and use my scouse vocabulary from place to place unintentionally, and its not for the reason of sounding posh which is kinda cool 😁, but because it has sort of engraved its effects in myself. For the very same reason it was completely involuntary that I used "me" instead of "my" in the sentence earlier. Forgive me 🥹. Moving on, not living on my own ever had me develop my comfort around the safe environment my parents had provided me with and I guess that's what home is all about anyway. Coming to UK and settling in its culture also came along with making changes in that habit, which I was all-in for. I mean this was THE dream, being able to achieve things on my own and being financially independent alongside completing my degree and finding a job. All that, seemed easier at first, until it wasn't.

  In the first semester of my degree I had my first job in hospitality, which went on for like three days, with 12-14 excruciating continuous hours where we had to stand all day and at the end of that experience I was left with enough money to cover my personal expenses for about two and a half months. Bythway, this was off-term in official break time and all very legal, so don't go reporting me to home office. Secondly, I got another hospitality break from Liverpool Football Club which went on for like 5 months with only one or two shifts per week, sometimes less than that depending upon the matches played back home. Okay, to be fare, more than the fact of being paid, this was cool for the right reasons of being able to see football stars so up close and being able to see matches from VIP boxes. I don't know whether the management would have liked to know that last point I told. Well its too late now anyways isn't it.

  Even after LFC I worked at a couple other places and apart from the surreal, amazing and sometimes worst experiences, I never really faced an emotional attachment to any of those jobs. One can understand that if you put staff on rotation and every time that you do a shift you see different faces to work with that don't care about you but the job in the long run. Cant really blame them as well, given nobody knows for sure what situation the other person might be going through. It didn't bothered me to be honest but did sort of affected me when there was no one to turn up to while you're on those long shifts and still have something to worry about as soon as you reach back home. Also, being on your own doing Uni side by side to a job and keeping your loved ones in the loop with not being able to see them for a year or more, things as such sort of wears a person down a little bit. Not even mentioning about my chicken pox episode right now, coz that's for another blog post 😬. Being part of Wendy's in all of this came to me as big blessing than I would have imagined.

   Right after my graduation a good friend of mine got me a referral to working full time at Wendy's fast food chain. As I was unemployed uptil that point and in dire need of financial aid from somewhere, this became my only option not realising that later on it would become such a humbling experience for me. My first day being there was a disaster, not even kidding, literally buns were flying everywhere. Its true you don't get the hang of something on the first day, but working in that environment felt like I was in a stock exchange building like in the movie wolf of wall street with things on screen you need to do and people shouting random stuff that you need to understand with partial hearing ability and if you don't, you get a cheese slap ( I mean literally slapped by cheese ). I may have made that last bit up, shhhhhhhhhhhhh🤫. It was not long in my training by some amazing people that I became good at the things needed to be done and those amazing people also became some of my very very good friends.

   Soon enough I was doing 5 shifts per week, sometimes even more than that, which really was exhausting but not bothering enough at that point as I didn't had much to do at my room anyway and being in the store and around the people that you get to see everyday is obviously much more than you can have rather than binge watching every web series that comes to mind. And on a side note, I'm not a fan of anime, so that sucks (haven't really tried it). For the people that know me would agree on the fact that I don't talk much, but in spite that, listening to others has always proved comforting. This is also why I don't share much and can go undetected if am going through something. but even in those times, I unintentionally was able to make friends that made sure to check up on me if I looked extra silent on those long shifts at Wendy's. Its always nice to know that someone has got your back, and that is literally what people did over there, whether it be jumping on a line with a coworker in rush hours or supporting someone outside of the store with completely unrelated issues.

   Many people left eventually down the line in the 6-7 months time I was there and though it was comforting to have friends and a financial wall to fall back on, the thought of leaving Wendys always made me dwell and confused of when would it be my time, completely oblivious to the fact that I would get attached to it more than I thought. Well, eventually it happened. After spending almost 7 months doing shifts in and out, hanging out with some of the greatest people I've known, it was finally my time to leave. A company had offered me a role a couple months along the line prior to leaving and I was working for them part-time alongside also working for Wendy's. Being able to do something that I came here for and also getting a chance to further advance my career and gaining more experience definitely shifted my preference towards the role offered to me by the company. It wasn't able to meet the financial level that I was getting from Wendy's but was good enough for a hand-to-mouth situation. Let me tell you that it wasn't even the bigger part of the problem I was worrying about than to explain it to my mates at Wendy's why I would be leaving. So, like a mature person I came to the decision of not telling them at all 🥲. That decision obviously backfired because people liked to gossip, most of which was leaked through my great manager himself. After handing my notice, everyone knew the next day. So, my eventual plan of breaking it down slowly became useless even before it started. Obviously, people became mad, unhappy and didn't wanted to see my face. But, they eventually came around and even behind the disappointment, they carried acceptance and genuine happiness for me moving on.