Dated

Last time I told you about my first homes in Estonia and England, today I look back at the media jobs, the very first ones.

I was about seven years old when I took up my first media job, seriously! Alright, it’s a slight exaggeration. Actually as my mum was quite heavily involved in the heritage protection, it also meant I was involved too, mainly just going along to different places and ceremonies, eating cake and drinking coffee with grown-ups (the most important things to remember, and yes, young kids did drink coffee at that time). Once there was a ceremony of one of the statues of liberty and the heritage organisation was also selling newspapers (maybe they were handing out for a donation, but ‘selling’ sounds more like a proper job and I remember dealing with cash), so anyhow at one point they left me on my own to do the duty and sell the papers. My only memory is being successful on this, because a few people were very kind and gave more money than expected. I think being a lovely little girl was my trump (have to admit here, using the word ‘trump’, even if it’s starting with the lower case, doesn’t feel right, either a positive word, but I am adamant not to stop using the word just because of someone).

When I was a student I did another media sales job, covering a friend and selling (legal!) videos in a shopping centre for half a day, but the more serious and continuous role was at the local television studio in Tartu during my journalism studies. It was a very straightforward job. I was greeting the guests, offered them tea and coffee, powdered their faces if necessary. Oh, and as it was a breakfast show I was responsible for buying the morning papers. I have to add that it all happened really early and most importantly, I am more of a night owl rather than a lark. 

So one Friday morning (the live show at the local studio was on only on Fridays) I got yesterday’s papers, took these to the studios, the programme started and the presenters were introducing the papers like pros. No one noticed! Apart from an observant viewer who then rang to the studios and informed us. Oops! Luckily feeling ashamed was enough as a punishment and anyway, I’ve decided to blame the kiosk that sold me the old news. How could they!

My friend and I as journalism students, handling money.
She was my predecessor at the studios.

I can’t think of any similar kind of mishaps in England if I take into account only my first media related jobs. When I was a researcher the only out of ordinary thing I did was being sick on the pavement in front of the building during the sunny lunch hour, although to be really accurate there was a young tree growing on that pavement which roots I generously fed… Oh, and also my excuse was that I was pregnant, but as it was early days I wasn’t able to tell anyone, as I also couldn’t explain to my colleagues about my habit of saving the second cheeseburger in the desk drawer for later… I really did crave those!

And additionally on a similar note - I once panicked that I might not get a job that I desired and started sending e-mails to some magazines asking if they have any vacancies. To save myself from typing the same text, I copy-pasted it, but didn't change the names of the companies I applied for, so they all thought I'm really interested in working in only one of those magazines (yes, I know, they didn't think that, I'm sure they realized my rather stupid and lazy mistake. No wonder they didn't reply!)