I Am Your Mailbox's Worst Nightmare

I am working! YAY.

I haven't been working since i got back to France. Which means i've been one of the many unemployed people who is living on the state's welfare. Don't take me wrong, I don't enjoy it. Yes I receive money to do nothing at all all day but it's far from what i'm expecting from life.

Being unemployed is depressing. You turn around in your living room (in my situation, in the 20m2 studio we live in), you read (a lot), watch stuff on the computer (even more than reading), you play Candy Crush or Angry Birds and there goes your entire day. Next morning, you press repeat. Trust me, you'd kill yourself for less than that.

So one night, I was browsing the internet for ideas and job opportunities. I saw that they were looking for people to distribute commercial flyers into people's mailboxes. In a few words, they were looking for people to contaminate people's mailboxes. And they were going to pay me for that. Badly but still. It's 10hrs worth of work that would get me just a notch more than what I get from the government.

So I sent back my application, got the interview on Monday and started the job on Tuesday. I had 709 sets of 15 flyers to put together and then distribute before Wednesday evening.

I know it sounds easy. Trust me. It ain't. It's hard. Not Einstein hard. It's physically demanding. At least, a lot more than I expected. Standing in front of a table an entire day to gather all this paperwork together in one set. It's repetitive. It's a bit like a cashier at a supermarket. You're doing the same gesture over and over and over again. I was stiffed the following day you have no idea.

I had 468 kilos of flyers to move. And god knows you're moving them A LOT.

From the pallet to the table (1), from the table to the kart (2), from the kart to the car (3) from the car to the kart (4) from the kart to the mailbox (5), FIVE time (and that's without counting when you're dragging the kart from mailbox to mailbox adding so many kilometres walking) Which makes a grand total of 2 tons and 340 kilos. And I “only” had 709 mailboxes. Some areas have 1500!!

Talking about working out.

So next time you get these damn commercial flyers in your mailbox, think about that poor boy or girl who had to drag his/her fully loaded kart all the way to your mailbox. And if you really don't want any, put the “stop pub” sticker on your mailbox instead of spitting at our face. It's not an easy job. But for some dark reason, i kinda enjoy it ...