Welcome to the dollhouse.

“Marched up to me, looked me right in the eye and said, ‘I’m here for a job. Any job.’ Work experience, none. Recommendations, none. Skills….

So I gave her a job, any job.”

Gone are the days where that could happen. Albeit, that is a fictional exchange from The Gilmore Girls, circa 2003. A mere decade later, I find myself in the unemployed shoes, except that now one can’t simply walk up to people and ask for a job. I’ve been doing that for the last 10 months and it hasn’t gotten me anywhere. And no, I haven’t been applying to jobs that do not match my resume or my sparkly eyes and exuding personality.

I am looking for a part time position in a customer service environment. Pubs, restaurants, bars, stores, high street shops. You know, workplaces fit for an Eastern European immigrant. I’ve been living in London for the last (almost) 5 years and in this time I’ve been a nanny, a bartender, a waitress, a student and all around, a punching bag for English employers who think that an Eastern European background equals not knowing the law and rights and responsibilities of employees/employers.

Don’t get me wrong, some of my employers have been absolutely lovely. In 2012, I’d been unemployed for close to a year and my former manager was amazing enough to give me a chance, in an environment I didn’t have any kind of experience.

Since then, I’ve gone back to school to focus on what I really want to do – journalism. I’ve been a student at Goldsmiths and I’m now in my third year, looking yet again to get a part-time job. Studying is great, but unfortunately it doesn’t pay the bills and I don’t have super rich parents willing to foot the living bills that come attached to the not-so-glamorous London life.

But I’m crazy, I know. I should go to the closest jobcentre plus and apply for benefits. That is, after all, what is expected of me, as an immigrant. That is what David Cameron assumes, that I’ve only moved to London to live off other people, which is probably why I’ve been studying for the past three years. So I can get a degree, drown myself in endless student loan debt and ultimately, ask for government charity.

I’m crazy, I know. Crazy to think that with a strong administrative background, not to mention several years of customer service experience and the knowledge I can actually finish a degree, I could ever get a position a monkey could fill provided it could explain that no, it doesn’t have other aspirations than to endlessly serve.

After close to 300 rejection letters and numerous humiliating phone calls/personal calls to various places of business, I’m probably out of options. I moved here believing in London’s multicultural background and I spent the last three years studying British media history, British media law and cultural studies. And yet, the one thing I can’t seem to escape is my non-British nationality.

Just goes to show that London is not exactly welcoming to immigrants, unlike the garbage mainstream media has been serving Londoners on a silver platter.

A small line in my passport says more about me than anything I’ve ever done.