Only Being Offered Minimal Part-Time Hours? Join Kleeneze!

My eldest son has got a job after being unemployed for over a year and it's left him more confused than ever.

He applied for a job at Morrisons, who are taking over a Netto's store near the town centre, immediately opposite the 24 hour Asda. He's been offered a job that totals 9 hours per week. That's right. Nine hours per week. Morrisons think he'll accept a job that pays him £4 more per week than he'd get on Job Seeker's Allowance; luckily for them, they were right.

Interestingly enough, he is being sent on the standard warehouse training induction course - 1 month at 39 hours per week. After the initial flurry of money in his bank account, he'll receive a level of pay that means neither he nor the employer are liable for tax or national insurance contributions.

To undertake his training, he needs to start work at 8 am in a town 10 miles away. Not a problem if you've got a car. A big problem if you're reliant on public transport and the buses run hourly and aren't available when you need to get to and from work. Cycling is too dangerous - cyclists are severely injured and killed every year on that road due to a lack of safe cycle routes. So, for the next month, my hour-long journey to and from work will involve yet another 20 minute detour each way. All this so he can earn a grand total of £55 per week!

He's taking the job because, as he points out, "It stops the endless humiliation of Job Seeker's Allowance." Despite the fact that he's supposed to stay on JSA until he's got at least 16 hours per week of part-time work, he's signing off at the first opportunity. His views on the tick-box mentality of the Job Centre Plus staff are not complementary; he's lost count of the number of jobs he's applied for where the only criteria appears to be "they can't prove I can't do this."

Now, my son would be an ideal Kleeneze distributor - he's hard working, supportive, genial and believes in good customer service. Unfortunately, he needs to move to another address before I can recruit him to join my team. He's not going to manage that on £55 per week.

For everybody else out there who are offered jobs so part-time, they're not worth spending the bus fare on, consider this - if you still don't want to take advantage of the Kleeneze opportunity to run your own full-time business, running a Kleeneze business from home is the ideal compliment to this sort of minimal part-time work.