Last week Cameron Walker was so desperate to pay the rent he stood on a busy street with a sign, begging for a job. Yesterday he was a new man - he woke in a new and cheaper flat, ready to face his first day at work. The general manager of MrShelf in Mount Maunganui, Rick Harding, was impressed when he saw Cameron, a 19-year-old student, cycling along Hewletts Rd with his "Will swap sign for job" placard. "The reason I grabbed him was he showed motivation. Sometimes you employ staff because they come across good in an interview or have done the correct stuff on paper, but to see someone holding a sign, it just showed me straight away this guy wanted to work." Cameron had also stood on Cameron Rd with the sign last week. On Friday he had a trial run at Mr Shelf and yesterday morning, impressed by what he had seen, Mr Harding offered him a job. "I had a job vacancy and had been wondering what to do about it." Cameron said his new boss was also his "lifesaver", but he had decided to pull out of his business studies at Bay of Plenty Polytechnic so he could focus on making money fulltime. He also found a cheaper flat as he had been struggling to pay his $120 weekly rent. "It was good to get up early and go to work," Cameron said. He wanted to give Mr Harding "a big cheers" for giving him a go.
