We are just waiting for one more.

97

Everyone hates their fucking job. Everyone.

You find some nobody cleaning streets, driving one of those pathetic, little orange road-sweeping machines and you think he’s happy that he got up that morning to push your discarded crap away from the kerb? You think he told his careers advisor that this was his dream, when he was at school, not studying hard enough.

It’s not just the baristas and shelf-stackers. They’re not always the Nobodies.

You think teachers are happy with their shitty pay? You think their dream of moulding the minds of tomorrow wasn’t dashed within that first year when they found out that it’s all about funding and results and ditching the kids who would bring your rating down rather than giving them help to raise it up. Ideology crushed.

And now these kids have grown up and they can’t handle it. They expect to go into a good job, that they want, without having to try. Everything is instant. So why can’t they have a job that’s fun and easy with great pay? And they’re too good for the menial jobs, right?

They want to get into a position where they can make a difference, make an impact. Just like the teacher that gave up on them wanted to do once. But they’re not being taught to think freely.

Learn how to write an essay rather than say something.

So their hearts are in the right place. They want the impact but they haven’t been given the tools to do that.

And they fail.

Failure used to be a lesson, something you learn. Now it’s the reason to feel depressed and dishevelled and downtrodden. It’s the reason that road sweepers and teachers and baristas are taking pills to feel better or talking to some stranger in a wooden room about their bum deal.

It’s the reason the Doctor was talking to Dr Milton about her disillusionment. How she wanted to help but she feels ineffectual. And she talks about her dad and how she can’t respect him because he spouts platitudes about how Jesus lived his life to a stagnating, dwindling, witless congregation. She wanted to make that same impact that the current batch of ill-educated millennials say they desire. But she works hard for it.

And she doesn’t understand it anymore. Working harder and harder for more and more sick people. More cancer. More diabetes. More heart disease. What’s the point? And she’s finding herself increasingly attached to patients who end up in a metal drawer with relatives wailing in the corridor about the unfairness of it all and the Doctor feels her efforts are futile.

She tells Dr Milton all of this, and he tells her to go to Chelsea Bridge, wrap a rope around her neck and throw herself off.