Friday morning saw me getting everyone ready to leave the house with a certain degree of stress where really there should have been none. After all it was not me taking a driving test, I wasn’t even taking someone else on a driving test! For goodness sake, I kept telling myself, it was work, I wouldn’t be expected to read any number plates or explain where the windscreen washer reservoir was. Or even how to change the oil and water!
Once everyone else was at school and work, it was with a high degree of trepidation that I drove the four mile route to the test centre, and saw two or three cars taking their leave of the parking area – and one returning. I felt more and more stressed as I parked my car – as if I too were under observation. Almost someone were going to turn to me and tell me I had failed and would have to retake – for the eighth time! I would rather go through labour and childbirth than retake my driving test – what was I going on about? It wasn’t me!
So why did this building instil such fear into me? I looked around the parking area as I locked my car, and noticed that the person who had come back as I had arrived was in tears with the examiner looking uncomfortable leaving the vehicle and talking to a woman who was probably the instructor He was stood going through a conversation with her, fiddling with the Velcro on his high-visibility jacket, then he turned and carried on towards the door at the back of the building, leaving the instructor to console her student- and my heart in tatters as I felt so badly for her.
Just as I was beginning to wonder if I should enter by the back door or go around the front, a man put is head around the back door and asked was I okay and was I their new lady? I replied positively to both questions and he beckoned me over. He too had the high visibility jacket, but wore it with a smile that made me feel much more at ease. Leading me into the building, which smelt like a hospital waiting room, he showed me to a seat and asked if I wanted a coffee or something? I replied not, the shaking in my hands was unmistakeable and I knew I would be bound to drop it all over this polished floor.
Sat in the corridor awaiting the door to open, I now felt as though I were facing the headteacher at school for some huge misdemeanour, and I could almost feel a whole term of house points slipping away. Once again able to do my instant mind makeover of the area, the colour of the walls, a pale duck-egg blue was not too bad, there were potted plants, and I already knew what the waiting room was like, yet that was my perception of it as a learner driver, and therefore was somewhat warped.
Finally a lady came into the corridor to fetch me and lead me to the inner sanctum of the Administrators Office. The first thing I noticed was the relaxed feel of the open plan room – deceptively large this side of the grille. Well I am sure there were no bars up when I last attended four years ago. Bullet-proof window as well? The lady – Jeanette – saw me noticing this, and reassured me that nothing untoward had happened it was simply Government guidelines since the prison nearby had been built. Oh how reassuring!
This room was pale green, but much nicer than the insipid green of the Theory Test Centre in town. The floor had darker green carpet tiles, probably also government issue.She ran through the housekeeping – where the Fire Exits were, Bomb procedures, etc. Bomb procedures? Were people so distressed at failure that they resorted to terrorist behaviour?
On the wall was a huge planner, not dissimilar to the one on the wall at the Maternity Unit, also fairly close by. Right now I knew where I would rather be. It gave lists of what examiner went with which student and when, apparently this was agreed at daily staff meetings – like the huddle before shift at the supermarket.
My job here would be to greet the students and their instructors and issue them with clipboard and information sheet. As tests began at eight thirty now, there was a shift pattern, but I would be working partly here and partly at the Theory Test Centre and would be advised as much in advance as possible when and where I would be needed.
As if on cue, a face appeared at the window and Jeanette signalled for me to follow her. She was really good with the nervous lad stood there, and just as I was thinking that she was a real asset to the place, she announced once he had been given his clipboard and sheet that she was taking early retirement at the end of June – one reason why they were recruiting now,
I found the job very interesting and time went quickly, the examiners actually were human and not as robotic as I feared, though I had yet to meet two or three of them, so obviously they were breaking me in gently. I got the feeling though this could be right for me – I had been ‘on the other side’ too many times.
Tags: administrator, bomb procedures, childbirth, examiner, government, high visibility jacket, instructor, labour, number plates, student, windscreen washer
