My Interests Include....

My experiment was a bust, or a success depending on how you look at it. Unfortunately for me only two people e-mailed regarding my fake internship position. I suppose that this says a lot more than I expected about people’s ability to carefully read job ads. I suppose that this would have worked much more in my favor had I offered some kind of compensation though. I am not that evil. On to more exciting topics I say!

I once again had an interview at Northeastern. I was actually rather shocked that I was offered the chance to actually meet with the person that would ultimately be hiring me. I have finally made it past the gatekeepers in human resources! Hizzah! I think that from now on I am just going to look at being late and getting lost as a good portend when going to an interview, because if I looked at such things as a sign that nothing was going to go well, I would not ever be attending interviews. I am not saying that this interview was the best interview ever, but my hopes are a tad elevated after the interview. This could be a result of desperation though since I am kind of getting sick of a being a dish bitch.

The reason said hopes are on the rise is because Northeastern has a very strange interview style. The interview is not so much an interview but rather more like a lot of being talked at. While this does not bode well for manager’s chances of actually listening to what I am saying, it does minimize my chances of saying potentially insulting things. Yesterdays’s interview involved a lot of nodding to and saying “OK.” It was, in essence, the prefect interview, made even more perfect because I actually received a compliment! That’s right, a compliment! Just when I was beginning to feel like perhaps I was not good enough for Northeastern, I was told “you have a good voice.” Me? A good voice? Why, how could you deduce that from my only saying “OK” for the past fifteen minutes? A compliment is a compliment none the less and it has opened my eyes to something I have been omitting from my resume: completely useless attributes.

Henceforth I am going to add a new section to the novella I send out to prospective employers. It is going to be entitled Hobbies, Interests, and Attributes and will read a little something like this:

*Fine art and photography
*Piercing blue eyes
*Reading
*A good voice
*Sitting
*Ability to stand for long periods
*A heartbeat
*Long walks on the beach
*Cooking
*Ability to breath on my own
*Classical Studies

I should say that this was both inspired by my interview and one of the two responses I received from my internship ad. I see no reason not to include these things in the resume/ cover letter package. I think that I might even start including a photo and a CD that includes my answers to 100 of the most common interview questions. Better yet, perhaps I will include a card board cut out of myself that plays the CD of randomly generated interview question answers. I think I have revolutionized the interview process!

So I Want to Hire an Intern

I am going to hire an intern to help me look for a job. It might sound ridiculous but why not? Every one else is hiring interns to do the grunt work that they don’t want to pay someone to do and certainly wouldn’t dream of doing themselves. I don’t just want an intern, I need an intern. I also live in Boston and I can’t shake a tree with out 15 interns falling out. I think this call for an experiment, an experiment that can only be conducted with the help of Craig’s List, a fake yahoo address, and lots and lots of free time!

The first order of business is creating an enticing ad that will let interns know I am for real and I will offer them the real life experience that they just are not able to find in college. I am thinking it will read something like this:

Wanted: Intern in the exciting field of employment procurement!

Working directly in the home office of the employment procurement director, the intern will be responsible for the day to day operations of the office and insure that the employment procurement project is on schedule.

Principle duties:
*Answering and or directing correspondence to the appropriate party. This includes e-mail, phone, and mail.
*Internet research for the purpose of obtaining leads pertinent to the goals of the director. These will be discussed during employment as they may change often and without warning.
*Representing director and her interests in short, one on one, or group meetings with parties interested in working with director.
* Drafting correspondence tailored to recipient’s specifications and desires, while honestly and professionally representing the director.
* Other duties as assigned by the director.

This is a high profile position that requires a polished, professional look as you will essentially be the face of the director of employment procurement. While we require a commitment until this project is completed we cannot at this time state the term of employment. It could largely depend on you abilities as an intern to the director.

This is an unpaid internship. The lessons you will learn as an intern for the director of employment procurement, you will learn, will be payment enough. This experience will no doubt be the corner stone of your resume.

Please send a brief note not to the above e-mail address stating why you would be perfect for this position.

At first glance one might think that I am doing this strictly to make a mockery of the intern phenomenon, but it I have a much greater goal in mind. I want to see exactly how many people send me e-mails telling me why essentially they want to write cover letters for me, answer my e-mail, and even go to interviews representing me. If this turns out like I think that it will, I am sure that I will be posting some hilarious responses in over the next few days. Either that or the posting will be removed and the experiment will be over.

Let the experimentation begin!

Would That it Were 1997....

I am surprised that I am able to type this right now. Shocked that I have the skills to both open a new document (in Microsoft Word no less) and the freedom to change the font, point and alignment of the text which I am typing at 64 words per minute. Today I had an interview, and requisite “skills” test at Northeastern University. The event would have been laughable had it not been so utterly sad.

The interview started off as most good interviews start off: with me being late. It was not my fault though, and I did call to let them know. Northeastern is 20 minutes from where I live so naturally I left 60 minutes before I had to be there to account for any adventures I might encounter along the way. What I did not count on was both an adventure and subway troubles. The subway troubles are a given so I should not have been surprised by those. The adventure however involved walked the wrong was out of the subway station and then the wrong way down the street. I had to ask for directions, in Boston, where I have lived and worked for many, many years. This could not bode well.

I don’t think I have ever really had a good interview. I am always encountering trouble both to and during the interview. I recall walking for about an hour to an interview one time back in the days when I would wear a suit to such events thinking that such professional attire had any bearing on my getting a job. Now, I have no problem wearing a suit per se. What I do have a problem with is wearing a suit in the middle of August while having to walk through three miles of fish packing plants. Certainly today’s adventure was nothing compared to that, but neither was today’s job opportunity. Walking through Boston’s fish head district in a suit, in August is strictly reserved for a job like pre-production artist at a company that makes custom packaging for condoms, and not office slave at a university best known for its car tipping students. Pre-interview adventures aside, it is still the interview itself that always turns out awful, fish heads be damned!

Misadventures this morning (and most mornings) aside, this interview was unique in the fact that it was not so much an interview where questions are asked an answers are given, but rather it was more like the kind of interview were questions were asked and answers were given, and then those answers were sent off to be confirmed by calling every supervisor and co-worker I have ever had. Outlandish claims of my actually ever having a job aside, according to woman who interviewed me (an aged debutante I think) I might as well have no office experience at all if it is under three years and I might as well have never attended any college if I never actually finished. One of the questions whose answer I am sure will need to be confirmed by at least three sources was “how did you come to learn office software with so little experience?” I really never thought that Word and Excel were such advanced tools that it took a minimum of three years to adequately learn how to use them. Microsoft should really reconsider including these programs with their software bundles because clearly the general public has no business tinkering with them. The potential for disaster in this area could be devastating. Thankfully this potential scenario was something that I had ample time to contemplate that and many other things this morning as every other question I was asked I have been asked a thousand or so times. I spent most of the time thinking “why does this woman sound like she is from 1940’s Savannah” and “why are there antique computers in here?” Thankfully one of those questions was answered.

The second portion of interview was the skills test. Apropos of Northeastern’s distrustful ways the name of the software used to do the testing was entitled “Prove It.” I for one had a hearty internal laugh. My “Prove It” test had me proving my ability to use a state of the art piece of software that many of you probably have never even heard of because it is so elite and difficult to use that… aww fuck it, it was WordPerfect 97, 97 as in almost ten years ago 97. How can anyone be expected to take such a bullshit test seriously? With questions like bold this and underline that and preview what this would look like if you wanted to print it, there is no way to not laugh about how stupid it actually was to give me, a person with at least one or two brain cells, this kind of test.

While it is funny on the surface the whole thing is really just sad. It is sad that Northeastern is so distrustful of potential employees that they call them from unlisted numbers, ask them to recite their resumes, and then give them this kind of test. Why both hiring from the outside at all. Just promote internally or give one person several dozen jobs because clearly outsiders are not welcome. I am still holding out hope though that maybe one day, I too can be on the inside…mastering WordPerfect 97 for all my future endeavors.

Ambush Interview

Yesterday afternoon I was ambushed by the human resources department of Northeastern University. While this was a pleasant surprise as I certainly welcome the idea of working for Northeastern, if I didn’t I would not have applied there. What I am not excited about however is the interview that I will be attending tomorrow. It is really hard to get excited about an interview these days having been on so many, and this one will be especially trying given the pre interview conversation I had with Renee From Human Resources; her full name I presume.

The first problem was her name. For some reason the name Renee irks me. It always has and I don’t know why. Being an equal opportunity annoyee, I am also irked by the name Evan. Again I don’t know why this is. If only the problems with yesterday’s conversation were in the name of the person who called. Not surprisingly it goes much deeper.

The conversation started off well enough (despite the name thing) but quickly deteriorated once I realized that the conversation would consist of more than just telling me when and where I could expect to be asked inane questions by a doe eye bobble head who would not doubt be thinking more about having lunch than what I would actually be saying to her. I should know by now that “do you have a few minutes to discuss this opportunity: actually means “are you ready for a surprise interview?” I was not ready for a surprise interview.

Apparently the element of surprise is something that Northeastern feels is greatly in their favor even going so far as to call from a block number.The real reason I say this though is because despite dear Renee telling me she had my resume right in front of her, she requested that I list all my previous experience, with dates, in descending order. Oh, and would I mind telling her a little bit about my experience in each position? Why Renee, you know what? I would mind, because you JUST TOLD ME you have my resume right on front of you! It is no secret that I have a very low opinion of human resource, but apparently I overestimated or took for granted their ability to read. I suppose that this answers a lot of question I have about why I am unable to get a job in a timely manner.

Speaking of getting a job in a timely manner, part of quizzing me on my own resume involved my having to explain why I have suffered through not one but three periods of unemployment more than a month long. Now I can understand this question, just as I can try and understand why I was asked to read my resume to dear Renee. I can understand that the good people of the human resources office want to make sure I was not spending my unemployed time behind bars or in a mental institution. Just because I can understand why the question was asked though does not make it any less absurd. What makes it absurd is that I applied for the job with Northeastern over a month ago. If it takes Northeastern over a month to even acknowledge that I contacted them, why should it be a shock that I have spent multiple months, in a row, unemployed? This is how out of touch human resources are with the concept of looking for a job.

Tomorrow is the day though. Tomorrow I meet with the hiring manager. I must come in the morning though because she likes to have interviews before noon. I presume the rest of the day is spent at lunch or at resume readings, or maybe, just maybe doing irreparable damage to the preferences of an employees benefits package. Lord knows I would not want to intrude on that by having an interview with the hiring manager of the human resources department.

Revenge is a Dish Best Served By the IRS

When the weather outside is frightful and my job prospects are hardly delightful my fancy turns to the one thing that can cheer me up in these trying times: sweet, sweet revenge. I have been unemployed three out of the last four winters, so it is inevitable that I will eventually turn to doing, or at least attempting to do in those who have wronged me over the last year…specifically the last fiscal year. Vengeance is not something that I take lightly. I am not prone to the petty or pedestrian in any other facet of my life so the methods I chose to employ while seeking revenge are no different. I go for the throat, or perhaps more appropriately, the wallet. My coup de gras of choice this year? Reporting a former employer to the IRS for their on going tax fraud. Normally I would not care about tax fraud, but this tax fraud involves my money, and I certainly care a great deal about that.

Now I will not give the name of the employer in question mainly because I do not wish to be accused to slander. I am much more inventive than slander…not to mention that my accusations are actually true. I will say this about the employer in question though: it was, and is, a creep lab in a converted frat house in the middle of a residential area surrounded by dorms housing students at one of Boston’s performing arts colleges; or should I say conservatories. Imagine the dramatics if budding Broadway starlets knew that the house next door was receiving potentially cancerous bloodcicles 4 days a week! I may not be able to prevent the students of this fine institution from being in close proximity from blood borne pathogens, but I can prevent a massive outbreak of the vapors.

Unfortunately this is not about the vapors. This is about the impending April 15^th tax deadline or more importantly the February 15^th deadline that the IRS imposes on employers to present their employees with W-2 forms. As I have mentioned, I have spent thee out of the last four winters unemployed so going to the mail box in mid January to find my W-2 form is like experiencing Christmas all over again. This year there will be no Christmas however for I shall not be receiving the coveted W-2. Not only has my former employer fucked me over, but they also ruined Christmas, and that is just plain unforgivable.

When one thinks of a medical facility they picture (or at least I picture) crisp white walls, the smell of bleach in the air, and accountants, lots and lots of accountants. The lab I worked for had none of these things, except the aroma of bleach, but that was only in the summer when the actual lab portion of the building was infested with maggots. There was nary an accountant in sight, which was not really surprising given how I was often paid my bi-monthly pittance; with a personal, unaddressed check that was some \times made out only to my first name. That should have been a clue that I would be in for a ruined fiscal Christmas. To make matters even more bizarre, I was paid with a check drawn from an offshore account. Again, this is not something one might expect from a place that touts itself as a medical facility. I should also mention that I was paid under the table for nearly a year, which was not only great while it lasted, but even better as a tool for revenge.

Somewhere around April things changed at the creepy lab though. Apparently the elderly doctor’s who ran the joint had a moment of lucidity and realized that the might be spending their pickled years behind bars for not withholding employees taxes. This is a rose colored explanation of course, the real reason that so called taxes were now being taken from our checks was that they were having financial trouble and withholding funds was the perfect way to give us salary cuts without having us walk out the door with antique centrifuges and incubators. The doctors fancied themselves the most intelligent and witty pair of medical anomalies that ever walked the earth, and therefore didn’t suspect that we underlings would ever notice that they were taking taxes from us with out getting both or social security number or address, and as I mentioned above, occasionally our last names.

So vengeance is mine! At least I hope. Naturally this is less about actual vengeance (although I do indeed love revenge) and more about my getting the money that was pretty much stolen from me. Given that I hover right around the poverty line I could expect to get all my money back in the form of a much needed tax return. I have more or less already prepared myself to not get the money that is owned to me any time soon, so I will just have to settle for knowing that I have caused a greater amount of financial turmoil for the people who did this to me. If only I could pay my rent with smugness.

Confessions of a Dish Washer

I have a confession to make. Contrary to the title of this blog, I am not really unemployed. The fact is; I am a dishwasher at a Japanese tea house. That’s right, I have a job. The problem is, I don’t consider it a job and therefore think of myself as unemployed. That is the sad truth.

I am not saying that washing dishes is a bad job, because when it comes down to it really isn’t. For one thing there people I work with are really nice, nicer in fact then another of the other bitches I have had to work with over the past few years. I guess that is where the good times end though. Washing dishes certainly isn’t a glorious job, that goes with out saying. And as for the physical labor involved in such a task? Well let’s just say that counting down the hours until I am an office slave again because the truth of the matter is that I don’t like standing for 9 hours a throw, nor do I like the rash that I am developing on my arms. I won’t even mention the killer dish pan hands I’ve got going on. Scouring is hard work.

No, what it most unsavory about washing dishes is that it has changed my very way of life. Working a 9-5 job becomes a whole lot cushier when you start working between the hours of 4 PM and 1 AM...six nights a week. Now I leave for work just around the time I used to get home from work. I eat dinner after 10 PM, I hardly ever watch television, and worst of all I don’t ever get to seen any one I actually enjoy seeing, including my girlfriend. Washing dishes has torn the fabric of my existence.

For so long I had taken for granted my quiet evenings at home, often thinking of them as boring and unproductive. Now that they have been ripped from my life I want them back. Of course my evenings at home, watching lots of TV, eating dinner at a decent hour and actually seeing my girlfriend awake were a lot of the time uneventful affairs, but they were mine and I liked them and would like them returned to me. If I thought my quality of life was poor when I was working for middle aged, fag-hag, Satan, it’s nothing compared to working for the greater good of grease free dishes.

Of course I know that the unemployed, or rather, the under employed life is a difficult one, but I was not prepared for my days to be consumed by job searching and my nights to be consumed by dish washing. That is all I do. That is all I can afford to do. That is all dish washing allows me to do. Like ever other normal person, every one I know works during the day so it is not like I can give some one a call and ask them to entertain me for a few hours as a means to curb my a crushing boredom. Nor can I expect that same person to be awake and interested in so much as a chat at midnight on a Wednesday. Even if I could find such a person, I couldn’t pay for any kind of entertainment because the other draw back of making less then half of what I was making before washing dishes, is that I make $10 more per week than I need to pay my rent. It’s a charmed life.

I just have to keep reminding myself that washing dishes is temporary, as if I can find some kind of solace in that. It all depends on what your definition of temporary is. Terminal illnesses, for example, are temporary. Even a 25 to life prison sentence has the possibility of being temporary. Hopefully have a life outside of washing dishes and looking for a job, is also not temporary.

Unemployment: Round 3

I am currently unemployed because I was a disgruntled employee. For two agonizing months I worked for Satan, or at least Satan as trapped in the body of an obsessive compulsive, middle aged fag hag. As if Satan could have taken on a more appropriate form. If you are unconvinced that this could truly be the essence of evil, she was also a real estate agent. I had no choice really in leaving my job one day never to return or be heard from again. Satan called me "Princess" on a regular basis. Clearly I had no choice in the matter.

This is not the first time I have just walked out of a job never to return, in fact this is the sixth or seventh time I have done it. Some might have the idea that I can't hold down a job or that I am irresponsible, or in some other way unemployable, but no, that it is not true at all. The problem is that I have a very low threshold for tolerating bullshit, and calling me Princess, in addition to the other Satanesque behavior I had to deal with on a daily basis, pushed me well beyond my bullshit comfort zone. Usually I am pushed to walk out of a job for far less than what Satan was dishing out, like being asked to clean the bathroom, or being told "It's not Double Mocha Latte Grande! It's Grande Double Mocha Latte!" There is actually not a lot that I will put up with, so Satan should have been lucky I actually came back from my lunch break on my first day.

What is done is done though, and I have done it many times. This is after all unemployment round three. I have over the last 5 years spent at least 18 months unemployed. There is just no place for an undereducated, highly intelligent, authority loathing person like myself in the working world. I learned this during unemployment round one, which is why my last 4 jobs were found at the crossroads where the undereducated, the disgruntled, and the often time sexually predatory all meet to find weird jobs and free things: craigslist.org. Where else can one become a 3-D photographer in the mall, an office slave in an underground cancer lab, a property manager for Satan, and a dish washer in a Japanese tea house owned by a gay Taiwanese man, all in less than 5 years? No where my friend, no where at all.

I suppose that is why I can't find a job now. My resume is a laughable mixture of jobs that no person could have possible held in their life time, let alone in rapid succession. One might even think that my resume is full of lies in all the wrong places (as opposed to right places which have more than their fair share of lies) but sadly this is not the case. Mine is the resume of an art school drop out or an ex-convict, two things I am not, or at least not yet. I should mention that I recently had an interview with an organization trying to help ex-convicts lead more productive lives. Had I actually applied for this job through craigslist I would have been hired on the spot as this is the perfect position to have rounded out my seriously fucked up resume.

For now that is that. I am a disgruntled unemployee. Look forward to me regaling you with tales of my unemployment woes which are sure to included: rants about the uselessness of "human resources", employees inability to read my cover letter, and my personal favorite, being asked how I received a degree in Classical Studies* in less than two years. That last one actually ties into the previous two because it states several times in my cover letter that I have studied Classics for two years and have not yet received a degree. I suppose if "HR" spent less time filing it's nails while complaining about it's cheating boyfriend on internet message boards, I would not be writing this blog from home, but rather from a cushy cubical.


*Another favorite question of mine during the interview process is "Oh Classical Studies, how interesting! What is that exactly?" And I am the one who needs a degree in order to ask the question "How might I direct your call?"