by J. Pleh

illustration by Dick Lande

Free Press Contributors

Our unemployment compensation ran out long ago. Our six part-time jobs with a max pay of six bucks an hour aren't pulling in enough to meet the base-line poverty level, or more to the point, a rent of $450, pharmacy prescriptions not covered by Washington Basic Health, electric bill, car insurance, light bulbs, soap, gas, toilet paperÉ Humbled. One hour of receptionist work buys a quart of milk, and a quarter of a tank of gas to get to the next four jobs.

The food bank last week very kindly gave me a container of virus-growing yogurt, soured milk, three ounces of hard-rock Christmas candy, thirty valentine suckers, two delicious withered apples, green-growing bread, and a head of lettuce that looked like the top of a hemlock tree. Beaten.

And to all of you reading this who are sufficiently employed, I'm really, honestly happy that the world is going so pecuniarily well for you. I've never been one to resent another's success.

Especially when my underemployment is bringing employment to so many.

And this brings me to the topic of my article: all those well-meaning employees hired to help the unemployed. Now there's a business for you. And half of them have never been unemployed so their words of wisdom sound sort of like me complaining about food when I live in the land of plenty.

I have employed all the pros with money from my unemployment compensation and the last of my savings and retirement. I still don't have a real job to show for this, but I do have a totally depleted savings to show for their work.

So my current resume obviously includes the last two years of running my own business, which is called "Lookin' 4 a Job, Inc."

I've consumed seventy-one how-to books written by every Career Specialist Guru on the market. They are teaching this fifty-year-old professional how to interview, dress, smile, stand, sit, gurgle, and cough up company line. They even teach you how not to cough up when the interviewer says to you, "And we even pay you while you take your fifteen minute breaks!"

An example of the kind of advice these gurus gave me, after a hundred hours of reading their books, were such solid-gold winners as: "If you dye your hair, make sure the roots have been touched up the night before your interview." Or, "Don't chew gum while interviewing." "Look enthusiastic even if the interviewer says the job pays seventy dollars a day for a ship job that requires twenty-four hour duty for five months with no shore leave." I think I even remember reading a tip in one book telling us to be sure and wear clean underwear, especially in offices with a no-fragrance policy.

Besides all those books, I have consumed voracious amounts of weekly articles in local newspapers and college presses providing their weekly diet of "Job Advice," like the article espousing these words of wisdom: "Select the work environment that best fits you." Sure. It's really hard to select from all my options.

Then one local guru, for fifty bucks, told me why I did not have a winning resume. The upshot was that the form, the design, the quality of printing wasn't up to spiff. No comments on the actual skills or qualifications or experience. He said, "Get your priorities right." Got it.

There have been weeks and hours of painfully poignant common sense classes, workshops, seminars, all giving us skills and interest tests, to discover if we are in the wrong field and maybe should sign up for several classes and a two-year program to retrain.

As I said before, I'm not resentful of the fact that my underemployment is feeding so many career specialists. It's survival of the fittest, after all. I'm keeping my eyes open, waiting for one of their positions to vacate. I've got superb qualifications now. Only problem is, I could never take somebody's money to gurgle common sense when the fact is, regardless of the laws, "the market" often is who you know and who you won't threaten. I honestly could not even charge somebody for that honest assessment.

What I need is a good New York-style old fashioned headhunter. A real person, not a computerized data bank. For a fee to the employer this headhunter would find you a match in a few weeks, wham, bam, job done. A real headhunter. A headhunter that doesn't shirk when they see a five-year gap here and there on your resume with explanations like "backpacked alone around the world to study mankind," or "hitched alone through Africa," or "sailed around the world." The headhunter who does not ask, "What does any of that have to do with a job in international communications?"

I nod. I understand. Most of these people, employers and headhunters, are more interested in what's in my laptop than in my headtop.

Now, back to reality: application number 458, requiring a dissertation in which I have to outline a semester of goals and objectives and approaches and then answer twenty examination questions. The job pays eighteen thousand...

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Contents this page were published in the September/October, 1997 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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