Back on Mercy’s Facebook page, one of her friends had written under the polar bear link: Babe, this article’s 3 years old FYI.

And Mercy had written back, Oops! Bad news comes so fast it’s easy to miss things when they happen, hey?

And he really, really wanted to write: WHY DO YOU SOUND SO FUCKING CHEERFUL ABOUT IT??? But that was the kind of comment a lost cause, aggressive ex-con, not stepfather material kind of person would make and so he didn’t.

Instead, he navigated to a job search site and scrolled through the current vacancies in the area. There were a couple of warehouse and labouring possibilities, but even the thought of clicking APPLY NOW exhausted him. His first job out of prison had been up at the mines. Just labouring, but better money than you’d get doing the same work anywhere else. Plus there’d been room and board provided, every second weekend off to do what you liked in town. It’d been hard work but an easy life and he’d managed almost four years before he’d pushed his luck on the detox time after a weekend bender and returned a positive alcohol test on the Monday morning.

The best job he could get after that was collecting trolleys at a shopping centre in town, but that ended when the HR department followed up on his non-supplied police check and he had to admit he’d been in prison. They said it wasn’t his record that was the problem but his lying about it. Always be one or the other, though, wouldn’t it?

Mercy was furious on his behalf. They’re not legally allowed to ask, she reckoned, unless it’s a place where you need a Working with Children Check, and even then a drug offence isn’t necessarily a deal breaker. She said this like it was helpful, though she knew that the only job he’d ever wanted to do absolutely needed a WWCC and that given the choice between an employee with a drug conviction and one without, anyone with half a brain would pick the second. Not to mention the fact that the question’s illegality was a technicality at best. What was he going to do? Drag the centre through the courts for unfair hiring practices? ’Scuse me while I withdraw the ten thousand bucks to pay my lawyers.