A Job to be Done

'You don't own a driving school by any chance do ya?' I'd asked with an hint of sarcasm.

The look back was a blank one, I was having lunch with a male friend that I'd met recently. Quite by chance really. My job as a PE instructor at the local high school didn't really open up many opportunities as far as men were concerned. There weren't many to speak of in the handful of colleagues I happily worked alongside and by the time I'd finished my day trying to get hundreds of stressed out hormonal teenagers to exercise having the energy to go out and meet somebody was highly unlikely.

The only clue I'd had to my new male friends occupation was that he worked in the motor trade, I'd not asked any questions after that knowing just how shaky things were in the motor trade with the countries economic climate. The last thing I wanted was to get onto discussing the fact he was being made redundant next week, that would have totally dampened the mood! So whenever we met I avoided asking questions about his occupation and just thought myself lucky to be working in a school during the recent recession. Being a PE instructor may not be the most glamorous of occupations, but right now it was one of the safest.

'No I don't own a driving school' came the reply.

I half knew this would have been the answer, as why would he have used the words motor trade when telling me what he did, I felt that if he owned a driving school then surely he would have just said that, after all it's something to be proud of, and seemed pretty safe at the moment, so he wouldn't have skirted around saying his actual job title if this was the case. I was half disappointed though. I had a bunch of seventeen and eighteen year olds moaning daily at the school I worked about the difficulty of booking their driving lessons at a reasonable time and a reasonable price, or even achieving one of them being a bonus. I'd promised them I'd look into it.

I spent the next hour or sooffloading on my new found male company about such kids and their moaning. How they're all just trying to get on the roads and it seemed impossible. I managed to confidentiality slip in more then enough comments about how the driving schools nowadays seemed so useless, and how most of the people that worked for them seemed just as useless. My company nodded and smiled in all the right places, but I realised how much I'd been going on, and decided I had probably been sufficiently cruel enough to driving schools and instructors by this point, so promptly stopped and decided to ask the question and facethe possible redundancy discussionI'd been avoiding for all of our meetings.

'So what is it you do in the motor trade anyway?' I asked trying to look interested whilst still stabbing my pasta salad.

'I'm a driving instructor' he replied with a smile 'I just don't own the school'.....