Amazing. I have been enduring the mostly-unemployed-for-over-a-year-now struggle. I think I had the good fortune to have employment for three months in 2009. I'm more of a Cover Letter/Resume kind of girl, but lately I have been embarking on a journey which I was hoping was going to be an easier more time-effective/find a retail job in a few days journey.
Back in the day I was able to go into a place with a "now hiring" sign with a pen and a list of contacts to copy onto an application. That is long over apparently. I have been casually walking in, store after store and keep getting the same thing. "Go to the website, and on the bottom of the home page, click on Careers. You can apply online"
Sounds OK right? Now instead of paying for gas you just go to the yellow pages online, look up "Vinnin Sq" for instance and then click on the websites for stores found in the plaza five minutes from your house, and get out a bunch of apps in an hour, cut and paste right? Really, really wrong.
After an interview this morning that was so-so I walked around the square to see who else was hiring, and was told by a few stores to go online, so I figured it was a trend and went home. Got online and looked up Pet Co... filled out the app... as best as you can in my industry, every company you enter has to match the national database of jobs, which of course you type in "Furry Vengeance Productions" and it doesn't exist. So you have to call Cast and crew to get the ID number, they don't call you back with it of course. Ah well, so I write in Cast and crew, and then say I've been a freelance Production Assistant for a number of years... then I have to type in a few more things and done. ok cool thanks Pet Co... Hope my Resume fits the keywords someone is looking for. then I go onto another job I saw in the Career Center to apply to at Joanne's Arts and Crafts. I go through the two hour long process of a psych exam etc, to then be finally allowed to see what positions are available in stores for cashiers. No where but Ohio. Fantastic. I chalk it up to the time I would have wasted watching a bad movie.
So I check out Michael's. Hour to write a custom Resume. Half hour to find the right words for a cover letter. Then I have to post it, then type out everything again in a data base that is in the resume. then I have to take a skills assessment test. Then I have to take a psych test again... 300 questions asking me 100 different ways if I think it's a good idea to make up for the pay I'm not going to be getting there by stealing it from the registers. Basically, now if they call me they are going to offer minimum wage and think I want to just steal from the registers all the time. wow. talk about employee confidence. they want to make sure I won't rip them off while letting me know that they are going to treat me like shit and not pay me, and expect I'm going to steal from them anyway.
Art supplies people. You sell art supplies. To artists. And scrapbookers.
Anyways, so hours of my day have been spent on applying to jobs. I guess I can say that before all this I could type 75wpm, and now it's prolly gone up to 100wpm. If nothing else maybe I can make some money by writing my opinion on "The Examiner" even though I have heard that the blogging revolution is dead.
Time to go to sleep, wake up at 7am. Travel an hour to help a "friend" (whom over the past two days of delaying my free labor for Career Center visits and interviews I can tell is thinking in the back of her mind she'd never hire me, nor recommend me after this) paint and learn from her (she who gets jobs with her Union card, I not)... for five days... for a free lunch. Payout $80 in gas, and hopefully no broken car parts. Time to say goodbye to my beautiful apartment, my freedom, my dignity, my hopes and dreams... and sell off more shit, to be able fit on a blow up mattress at my parents house in the living room... and undo all the good that has happened to me in my life in a few weeks time. I can't make it in this world.
But you know, with an upbeat twist! People, there aren't enough happy pills to fix this. God Bless America.
