Bridge and Stitch: Chicken Pox and Life Lessons

I have never had chicken pox. My mum tried everything when I was younger, even sent me over to friends' houses who had chicken pox, in the hope that I would catch it, but I never did.

Every Monday through to Wednesday I stay in Nottingham at my mate's house whilst I set up my business and I turned up yesterday to find a very poorly Helen with a rash all over her body. Now, obviously being an expert in the field of medicine I quickly diagnosed Helen with chicken pox... with the help of the trusty NHS Online page. Anyway, chicken pox soon got pushed to the back of our minds whilst we watched an hour long episode of 'Made in Chelsea' (Can you believe that Rosie got with Hugo?!?!) and then, beginning to feel myself itch out of paranoia, I decided to read up on the do's and dont's of chicken pox. Sat next to Helen on the sofa I read the following:

It's a very contagious infection. About 90% of people who have not previously had chickenpox will become infected when they come into contact with the virus.

If you have not had chicken pox and you know someone who has the virus. Do not:

be in the same room as the infected person for 15 minutes or more

have face-to-face contact with the infected person e.g. have a conversation with them.

It takes seven to 21 days for the symptoms of chickenpox to show after you have come into contact with the virus. This is called the ‘incubation period’.

Basically it is almost inevitable that I have caught it off her. So please prepare yourself now, as in a few weeks I will be feeling extremely sorry for myself and I will be expecting a lot of sympathy and some 'get-well' presents (chocolate and wine will be fine).

Currently feeling extremely sick and trying to convince myself this is all phycological lets press on with my life story.... So I have just graduated and have all the opportunities in the world resting at my finger tips... or not! However, at the time I thought I was extremely lucky to not long be graduated before being offered my first proper job. I was extremely excited, ready for the challenge and keen to impress. The job was working as an Assistant Designer at Sports Direct, which I was offered after entering a competition for them during my final year of university. It used urban influences to inspire a ski / snow collection.

Outfit 1

Outfit 2

Outfit 3

Outfit 4

Outfit 5

Outfit 6

Starting the job in August I lasted a mere 6 weeks before being sacked. Reality hit hard. I was in work by 8.30am every morning and didn't leave the office until at least 8pm every night with no over-time being paid. Commuting for an hour there and back each day on top of the crazy hours made every day extremely long and tiring. After a few weeks into the job I was warned we had our most important few weeks of the year coming up when our factories from China were coming over to visit. We were warned of even longer hours and that the work HAD to be done - no excuses. This would have all of course been fine except that the Head Designer of my section decided to go on holiday the week leading up to and the week of the factory visit. In his section he had me who had worked there for 1 month, another girl who had worked there for 3 months and a young lad who was in his second week! Between the 3 of us we had to juggle 3 different collections and were given impossible deadlines to meet. I was turning up to work at 7.30am and not leaving the office until gone 10pm in an attempt to get all the work finished ready for meetings with the factory. Finally the dreaded meeting came and we had only managed to get about 75% of the work done. This obviously all came out in the meeting... along with me finding out that an email had been sent out cutting the collection in half. I literally could have died. Half the work I had done was irrelevant and had I seen the email I would have been able to get the necessary work done in time.

Now I hold my hands up and admit that we missed the email and yes we should have seen it. BUT the Head of the Department who sent us the email sat about 10 metres away from our desks. I had never replied to that email confirming that I had seen the details of the collection being cut in half, nor had we had a conversation about it for the whole week... in fact she never spoke one word to me. Knowing that I had only worked in the office for 4 weeks, you would think that people would check your work, confirm and reconfirm any changes... after all - when you're new you are bound to make a few mistakes, especially when your Head Designer isn't there to over see your work. It's the process of learning and you should be guided through. However, I was left to it. No-one checked anything I did and so unfortunately I missed one email (by the way I would receive in excess of 50 emails a day).

As you can imagine it was therefore an embarrassing situation to be in when you turn up to a meeting with the wrong work, and only half of the right work completed. This obviously not only looked bad on me but also on the rest of the company as they clearly hadn't checked the work I was doing. To cover their tracks for the fact that my Head Designer who was in charge of me went away on holiday for the most important week of the year and the other designer who was meant to be looking after me who once asked 'is everything going ok?' and the Head of the Department who never asked me anything.... they sacked me... as it was obviously much easier to blame the new girl than to stand up and admit that they fucked up.

For that reason I hate Sports Direct. I tried to dispute the decision as unlawful sacking but they didn't even have the courtesy to respond to my letters and my lawyer said unfortunately I didn't have a strong case due to being at the company for such a short period of time.

Whichever way you look at it I did still gain a lot of experience whilst I was there, working on different ranges including Airwalk, Title, Slazenger, Playboy, Marvel, LA Gear, Ocean Pacific etc.