The Unemployment Chronicles
So . . . as I stated in the last part of this story when my expiration date came due and they pulled me off the shelf of the gainfully employed I went through all the early stages . . . the “I won’t give you the pleasure” cold defiance, the walk of shame to the parking lot with that pitiful box of career crap that wouldn’t amount to tankful of gas at the pawn shop, the numbness, the undeserved and unquestioning support of my wife, family and a fine group of friends, chronic but fleeting acceptance and then a well deserved week off.
And I used that week well. First I caught up on my Judge Judy, then I watched every bad day-play movie on Showtime, HBO, The Movie Channel and Cinemax and as many bad action & horror movie marathons on SYFY, FX as they could air. And so on and so on.
Then suddenly it was all over, the week was gone, vacation was done and I was just the unemployed guy again. That’s when the frenzy began.
It’s funny looking back on it all now from a distance of several months, 1000 miles and a solid, regular paycheck. I hadn’t actively looked for work in something like 17 years. The last two jobs I had accounted for 14 of those years and were jobs that came to me through headhunters and networking. The last time I’d actually looked for work you still knocked on doors and filled out applications in dim lobbies with employed people wandering by looking at you with the “as if” face. And always, always you bought the Sunday and Monday papers for the job listings.
Enter the electronic age and Monster.com, Hotjobs, Indeed.com, LinkedIn, blah, blah, and blah.com. Sign up, sign in. Hurry so you can receive your job alerts, quietly ignoring the odds as you post your resume. Quietly and but increasingly ignoring the come-ons for professional resume writing, career counseling and paid access to the premium jobs. Enter the ATS and keyword tracking, the age where a computer decides whether a human will even see your resume . . .and you thought your grammar teacher was tough. Enter every bit of data about yourself into Monster and the rest just so you can re-enter everything everytime, over and over again because every employer wants you to use their website. Enter recruiters that won’t return calls or emails. And worse, prospective employers that leave a message to call back for an interview and never return your return call. Or companies that call to set up an interview and end up trying to sell you their employment marketing services. Employers that ask you to do some “sample” work and you do even though you know you shouldn’t and you never hear from them again. Interviewers that ask if you think Hitler was a good leader. And so on. And so on. And you do it all. You hang out hope on each resume submitted, on each call, email or voice mail. And you wait. You shower, shave and dress every day. You cry out . . . I’m good, I’m strong, I’m valid. You cry out until you just don’t anymore and you don’t shower and shave and dress as much. And you don’t leave the house so much. And you don’t do so much at all except cling to the laptop . . . checking email, Monster.com, Indeed, LinkedIn, blah, blah, and blah.com. Still hoping, still trying, still clinging, still valid, still valid . . . still valid . . . . . . still valid . . . . . . . . . still . . . oh screw it.
And so ends the second week of unemployment.