A Reference for Who I Am

The application asked for two references. I had one, a woman who paid me to help with stock in her online shop and would cheerfully have described me as reliable. The other belonged to a shop where I once threw a packet of batteries across the counter and told a customer to fetch them himself.

I was nineteen when that happened. At twenty-seven I still described it as a misunderstanding, which was convenient because it meant I did not have to describe the packet, the customer or the way everybody went quiet afterwards.

The customer had been rude. He accused me of overcharging, called me stupid and refused to look at the price label. I was tired, angry and working a shift I had agreed to cover because I never knew how to refuse without sounding ungrateful. Those facts explained the afternoon. They did not alter where I aimed the batteries.

Nobody was injured. I lost my job. For years I told people the manager had wanted me gone anyway. Sometimes he probably had. I arrived late, swapped shifts without checking and treated reminders as insults. It was embarrassing to discover that somebody could handle an incident imperfectly and still have good reasons not to keep employing me.

Afterwards I worked short jobs, helped my aunt, packed orders and became skilled at making a temporary arrangement sound like a plan. The woman with the online shop, Marlene, changed that. She needed help two mornings a week. I needed money. She gave clear instructions, paid when she said she would and expected me to ask if something was unclear.

For two years I turned up. I learned the stock system, handled returns and told her when I made mistakes before she found them herself. Once I sent the wrong item to a customer. We corrected it. Nobody declared that I was a wrong-item sort of person forever.

Then a larger homewares shop advertised a full-time role. I applied, interviewed and liked the manager, who asked about actual situations instead of demanding that I identify my greatest weakness. I told her I wanted regular work and enjoyed solving practical problems. She offered the role subject to satisfactory checks, including the two references.

The form sat on my laptop for three evenings. I could have listed an old supervisor from a short job, but the work history also contained a question about dismissals. I had answered yes and promised to explain if asked. Now I wanted the explanation to become unnecessary by finding the perfect person to say I had changed.

Marlene read the form when I asked her advice. She looked at the blank space, then at me.

“Who do you want to put there?”

“Nobody.”

“That limits your options.”

I laughed reluctantly. I told her the full story, including the batteries. She did not look shocked. She asked what I wanted from the old manager. I said a reference. Then I admitted I wanted him to say he understood now, that he had been too hard, that I wasn’t really the person he dismissed.

“Those are different requests,” she said.

I knew. I disliked knowing. His name was Paul. He still worked at the same shop, according to its website. I wrote an email asking whether he could provide a factual reference confirming my dates and role, and whether he would be willing to discuss the dismissal. I read it twelve times before sending it. Then I went outside to carry in a delivery because waiting was becoming a full-time occupation.

Paul replied the following morning. He could confirm dates and role. He would not provide a personal recommendation. If I wanted to speak, he could spare twenty minutes after the shop closed on Thursday. The message was polite and so disappointing I nearly refused the meeting.

I went. The shop smelled exactly as I remembered: cardboard, cleaning fluid and something warm from the electrical display. The counter had been replaced. A young woman stood where I used to stand, explaining a return to a customer who appeared to believe volume could improve a receipt.

Paul saw me and nodded towards the staff door. I waited while he helped the young woman. He did not take over the entire conversation. He stood beside her, clarified one point and let her finish. I wondered whether he had learned something too, then reminded myself I was not there to assess his progress.

In the staff room he offered tea. I declined because holding a cup would make my hands more noticeable. He sat opposite me and asked what I wanted to say. I had prepared an explanation about the customer. Instead I said I had behaved badly and spent too long calling it something else.

“You did,” he said.

The plain agreement hurt. I wanted him to meet the admission with a compliment. He did not. He asked what sort of work I was doing now. I described Marlene’s business and the new role. He listened carefully, then said he was glad things were going better.

“Would that change the reference?” I asked.

He shook his head. He had not worked with the person I was now. He could only say what he knew about the period when he employed me. I wanted to argue that people deserved another chance. Then I heard the problem: he was not withholding a job. I was asking him to make a claim he could not honestly support.

He said something else before I left. The way the customer spoke to me had been unacceptable. He should have intervened sooner, before the exchange became a contest. He was sorry for that. It did not excuse throwing the packet. I said I understood. For the first time, both halves of the afternoon could be true without cancelling each other.

Outside, I sat on a low wall and cried with the strange frustration of a person who had received a fair answer instead of the answer she wanted. Then I called my friend Leah. She asked whether I still wanted the new job. I said yes. She asked what the new manager actually needed to know. I opened the form again.

The manager was called Ana. I emailed her before the deadline, explaining what Paul could provide and what he could not. I described the dismissal briefly, without calling it a misunderstanding. I offered Marlene’s reference and another contact from a later temporary job, while asking what would be useful for the checks she needed to make.

Ana called the next day. She asked about the incident, the years afterwards and how I handled an angry customer now. I gave an example from Marlene’s returns. The customer received a damaged parcel and wanted a refund immediately. I checked what happened, told Marlene what I could and could not resolve, and kept the customer informed. There had been no clever victory. The parcel was replaced. The customer remained mildly unpleasant. Work continued.

Ana asked what I would do if I felt close to losing my temper. I described the agreed ways we used at Marlene’s to ask for another person or take a brief pause. I did not promise never to be angry. I said I wanted to know the new shop’s procedures before assuming I could manage everything alone.

She thanked me and said she would finish the checks. Then I waited three more days. I worked, slept badly and tried not to read hidden conclusions into the length of every silence. Marlene refused to predict the result. She did say she would miss my help if I left, which meant more than another speech about believing in myself.

The offer was confirmed on Monday. It came with ordinary terms and an ordinary start date. I read it until I believed the words referred to me. Then I accepted, gave Marlene proper notice and bought a pair of shoes suitable for standing all day instead of a celebratory object I would regret paying for.

During the notice period I wrote down the packing routine for the person taking over. Marlene asked me to include the things I usually assumed were obvious. I discovered there were many: where labels went when a parcel changed size, who checked an uncertain return, which shelf held orders waiting for a reply. Explaining the work made the previous two years feel substantial in a way a reference request had not. On the replacement’s first morning she mixed two orders and looked frightened when I pointed it out. I helped separate them before either parcel left. Then I showed her the check I used, admitting I developed it after my own mistake. She relaxed enough to ask another question. I thought of being nineteen and expecting every correction to announce an ending. We finished the morning’s parcels, and she came back the next day.

My first week was tiring. The stockroom had its own geography. I forgot names, learned them and forgot where the spare labels were kept. Ana did not treat me as a rescue project. She showed me the work, asked questions and corrected mistakes while they were still small enough to correct.

On Friday a man complained about a price. For a moment the old shop returned: the counter, the watching queue, the sense that being wrong would make me disappear. I felt my face get hot. I checked the label. This time the label was wrong, not the customer. I called Ana, explained the discrepancy and let her confirm the solution.

The man still grumbled. He wanted the error to prove something about everybody who worked there. I let him finish without offering myself as evidence. After he left, I asked for a minute and went into the stockroom. I stood beside a box of lamps until my breathing felt ordinary again. Then I went back out.

At the end of the shift, Ana asked how I was finding things. I said the work was good and the price complaint had unsettled me more than expected. She said she noticed I asked for help promptly. We discussed what information should be checked before the shop opened the next morning. The conversation ended with a task, not a judgment about my character.

I sent Paul a short message thanking him for meeting and saying I had the job. He replied, Glad to hear it. All the best. I did not need him to add anything. Marlene took me for lunch and made a joke about finally having to learn where I kept the packing tape. Leah bought me flowers that lasted a week on my windowsill.

On payday I looked at the deposit in my account, then at the next week’s rota. There was no grand feeling of being transformed. I was the woman who once threw batteries, the woman who packed parcels for two years and the woman expected at work on Tuesday. I set my alarm, put my shoes by the door and went to bed early enough to get there on time.