Steven Naismith has only been out of a job for two months after his Hearts sacking.
But he has revealed he was quickly offered a surprising route back into work.
Naismith has been able to have some downtime away from football, taking a holiday and doing some other things he couldn’t do while involved at the coalface of club management.
He will no doubt see himself returning to management one day in the future but for now it is about taking stock.
Naismith offered surprising job after Hearts exit
While the 38-year-old is in no rush to get straight back into football or management, he revealed there was an offer there for a very different career path.
Naismith was in his house a matter of days after losing his job at Tynecastle and was able to take receipt of a parcel.
When he did though, his postman enquired if he would be looking for a job over the busy Christmas period.
Despite the former Scotland striker thinking he was joking at first, it turned out he was deadly serious.
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland’s Off The Ball programme, Naismith said: “I may as well tell the story about the postman coming a couple of days after I got sacked.
“My postman came after I lost my job and when I answered the door to take the parcel he said ‘We are hiring over Christmas, we need drivers’.
“I thought he was joking but he was like ‘No seriously just let me know if you want a form’.”
Naismith has been making use of his extra spare time – playing padel and even attending bread making classes!
He added: “I’ve enjoyed the time off. I went on holiday, I baked some bread and I have played some padel.
“When I have not been working I have been sitting thinking ‘What am I going to do?’.
“There was a bread making class somewhere down Ayrshire way so I went to it with my missus.
“I have managed to do loads of stuff that I wanted to.”
Naismith previously broke Hearts silence
It comes after Naismith recently broke his silence on his Hearts sacking.
The rookie boss admitted to making mistakes in his first job in management but also insisted he had faith he would have turned things round and didn’t see the news coming.
He told the Warm-Up: “It’s disappointing. There’s a bit of frustration there because you do believe. We worked so hard over the previous year to bring success at the start which we managed to do.
“And then the reward of that is European football. You get to develop the squad a bit. We managed to do that, nobody complained about the recruitment over the summer.
“But then as a young manager you sign players at the start of the season and you think ‘brilliant, we’ve got this option and that option’. But probably the bit you can’t judge is how much time they’re going to take to settle.
“Nearly every player we signed, Hearts is a bigger club than where they came from. My experience of going to Rangers from Kilmarnock, it’s sink or swim time.
“Our first game against Rangers was excellent, all that was missing was the goal. Then we lose a couple of games, some bad decisions from me and individual errors cost us a lot.
“And then you’re trying to stem that tide and for me it’s small moments. Dundee United at home, we controlled the game and they scored late on with a deflected goal. And then that builds.”