What Caroline Said

Caroline, my work coach, suggested I apply for a job at Aldi. I have a business. I build websites. I just can’t afford to eat this week.

The system doesn’t understand self-employment after abuse. It understands employed or unemployed. In work or out of work. Earning enough or not earning enough. It does not understand: I have the skills and the clients and the ability to build a six-figure business but my confidence was dismantled over thirteen years and right now I’m rebuilding it from a kitchen table after bedtime and some months the invoices don’t cover the rent.

Caroline is nice enough. She has a lanyard and a script and a genuine desire to help, filtered through a system designed to move people into any job rather than the right job. Her computer says I’m not earning enough. Her training says suggest Aldi. Her box needs ticking.

My box doesn’t fit her box.

I sat in that appointment and I explained. Calmly. Politely. In the voice I use when I need someone with authority to understand something without feeling threatened by the explanation. The voice I perfected over thirteen years of living with a man who couldn’t handle being wrong.

I explained that I was self-employed. That I was building. That the business was real and growing and the gap between where I am and where I’m going is called investment and it’s temporary and if the system could just hold the space for a few more months I would be fine.

She typed something. Looked at her screen. Said something about the minimum income floor. Said something about conditionality. Said the word “realistic” in a way that meant: love, just get a job.

I didn’t get a job at Aldi. Nothing against Aldi. I just didn’t survive thirteen years of coercive control and rebuild my entire life from nothing to be told that the answer to my problems is a checkout till.

The answer to my problems is time. And space. And a system that understands that a woman leaving an abusive marriage doesn’t need to be pushed into employment. She needs to be trusted. Because she has been mistrusted and underestimated and dismissed for so long that one more person doing it might be the thing that breaks the thread she’s hanging by.

Caroline didn’t mean to be that person. She was doing her job. And I was doing mine.

The difference is mine doesn’t come with a lanyard.