Mister Bump UK

Daughter Update

Just a few weeks ago, at New Year, I posted about my daughter. I thought I’d give a little update.

Unfortunately, the job turned out as I expected. I hate to say I told her so, but… I told her so. Whichever company she had applied to join, they had decided on the strength of the firing that the potential risk of employing her outweighed the potential gain. I can’t blame them, I would have done exactly the same.

[For anybody new to the saga, daughter’s last job was also her first, she was fired from it (albeit under dubious circumstances), and given a correspondingly bad reference.]

Without saying anything, daughter changed her CV, to exclude this previous bad job altogether. It was her only proper job.

So, when we next saw her, daughter was full of smiles. She hadn’t got that job, but don’t worry, several others were in the pipeline.

With daughter, the devil is in the detail, and it took a while to tease out the detail. My wife thinks she did the right thing, even though it will mean dropping a recent job in the same sector she wants to work in. Start from the bottom again. I said that if I were a potential employer, gave her a job and then found out that she’d skipped a job on her CV, I would fire her immediately for not disclosing it.

How would they ever find out? she says. I don’t know, but that kind of thing tends to haunt you – she will have to be on her guard about it for the lifetime of the new job. It only takes a slip of the tongue to mention this previous job. Especially as my daughter is prone to slips of the tongue!

My own suggestion was that instead of asking for a reference from the head office, she should in future ask for a reference from an ex-colleague, somebody she had worked with and got along with. There isn’t anybody, she says. That’s the real problem – she worked there for six months and can’t think of anybody who’d have a good word to say about her. Plus she has strange ideas about who can and can’t give her a reference. Those ideas might well be contrived, a way of just telling me to butt-out. My idea is that somebody who’d worked with her, built a rapport, would more likely be positive. Anyway, for those reasons, daughter rejected my advice. I shrugged – to do anything else wouldn’t help. She will sink or swim by her decision. I’m in a position anyway where I’m happy to butt-out.

As regards her visits, it is like my last title (Boomerang) – she keeps coming back! About once a week, for a couple of days at a time. It is a bit much for me but how can I say no? Besides, she is quite pleasant when she comes, sometimes even quite useful with her car. She does not want to be at (her own) home. I find it awkward when she is here, because her decision to accuse me of abuse was a watershed in my book. It was a trapdoor – we fell through it and can never get back up. We were never going to be a regular father-and-daughter, from that point on. That’s not necessarily her, but something I have trouble getting my head around.

Can I just come over for a visit? Well, at least she asks.

29 comments

  1. Don’t blame you for your attitude. And to have her come every week when she accused you of abuse is horrible. You do well to keep your temper. The job situation is riling, I am sure.

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    • I feel I have to make an effort for the sake of my wife, who shares the house and who is still in daily contact with daughter. The relationship they have is quite weird, though. It is still very dependent, like you’d expect with a 5yo, even though daughter is 20yo!
      Anyway, reason goes out of the window when it is family 🙂.

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      • I know what you mean I think, because my sister and mother were the same. I do understand why you tread carefully. It’s hard workmliving like that though. Ni know, from experience. Much support for you from here.

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  3. I don’t know if I’d be able to have a relationship with a child who said I’d abused them. You’re a bigger man than me. Did she ever apologise to you or did you discuss it with her? I get how you maintain some sort of relationship because of your wife, but it must be tough.

    On the job front, the sooner she starts to listen, the sooner she’ll learn. It doesn’t seem like she wants to grow up any time soon tho’ or take any advice (from those that know) so she’ll probably make many more mistakes 😦

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  4. in the states, there is a government entity that keeps track of each and every job we have…….and all employers can get a list of those jobs for new applicants. I don”t know if such a thing exists in the UK, but daughter is much better off disclosing the information instead of leaving it off. And, after everything you’ve gone through with the little witch (sorry, but seriously!) I’d stay far away from anything to do with her and let the wife deal with her.

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    • You’re probably right! I don’t think there is anything in the UK – one of the government agencies runs a web site – a straightforward job board. But I think there it ends – they don’t track applications etc. Some employers (like the Health Service, other public stuff) are obliged to use that site, but for everyone else it is optional. I never even heard of it until I started looking after the stroke – before then I used an IT-specific web site (which I still use but supplement with this govt site). We have bricks-and-mortar Job Centres (govt-run) but I think all they do is look at this site.

      I agree, I think she should disclose it because it’s just too risky not to. If one of my employees had not disclosed it, I’d know immediately that it was bad. It’s also evidence that they misrepresented themselves which in turn casts doubt on everything else in their cv. Not least, I’d be pissed that they tried to hoodwink me.

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