Vocational Mumblings

Now Hiring

It has been a wild experience existing between full-time jobs. The number of places decked and adorned with “now hiring” signage has been astounding, but not surprising. I mean, they’re still holding to paying their workers peanuts, it’s not nearly as appealing as they might think it is. I really thought I would have an easy transition of it. Surely, my graduation from college, plus wealth of transferrable experience, could easily segue into any number of other positions, right?

So I applied. And I waited. Drove past a number of places hocking their need for workers, that I had applied to, that I heard nothing from. Was ghosted by any number of places, seemingly desperate for workers, but…what, not that desperate?

It was somehow worse after finally getting a position, and seeing how they actually hire. They wait for a pool to fill up, instead of taking people in as they apply. These places kneecap themselves because of tradition, for a process? But they held tight. Some places, I didn’t hear back from for over a month, good or bad. It’s disappointing how much of higher education hiring practices are actually just hiring practices: little-to-no follow-up, nebulous-to-nonexistent pay information, and a general air of complete uncertainty.

All I ask for is that somebody calls me back. Give me closure, give me something. Let me know you’ve moved on so I can move on.

Maximum Vocation, Maximum Exhaustion

I spent a mere two days working two jobs. Even combined, the pay was lackluster and wouldn’t support me in any meaningful way. But what it did leave me with was a sense of physical exhaustion, societal dread, and true emptiness.

I have respect for anyone who can juggle two jobs at a time. I was shot by the end of my short time with it, and that was without anyone else depending on my income to survive. But the fact that so many people have to work two jobs to live, to provide, to survive…it’s honestly infuriating. I can see how spite would carry people through that kind of hardship, but the fact that they have to reflects more on society than on them. What kind of advanced society fails its citizens so terribly that they have to sacrifice all of their time to scrape by? Not a society I care for. We have the potential for so much more, but…you know how it is. The Haves have, and they won’t have not.

But the worst part was the emptiness at the end of the day, and the start of the next: I had no time to just live. Walking around the neighborhood? Too exhausted, needed to rest. Food? Didn’t have time to make it, I’d just get something fast from out. My own writing? My hobbies? The things I cared about? No time to engage. I was losing myself, and for what? A literal pittance of hourly wages. When it all hits the fan, when everything is finally flipped on its head, it will be because we are tired to sacrificing our very essence for the profit of another. We will always be more than our production.

Optimizing Monotony

Ask anyone who’s been in, or trying to get into, the workforce, and one of the most draining parts is right at beginning: the online job application. So much so that I decided to make a cheat sheet to get me through them more easily.

Every line has its own meaning: the workplace, its address (with zip included), city, phone number, my supervisor’s name, start date, end date, my title, salary or wages, description of work, reason for leaving. All of it was there to double-click, Ctrl+C to copy, Ctrl+V to paste into the application’s window. Am I brilliant for doing this? I imagine I’m just the latest in a long line of people to do similarly. I’d be less salty about it if they didn’t ask for my resume in the application, too. Like, all of this information is in my resume. Either use that, or don’t ask for it. You clearly don’t need both!

But this is still a failure on the system. The fact that I need to optimize my application process, to make it as easy as possible to apply to as many jobs as I can in the least amount of time, just in the hopes that something sticks…quantity shouldn’t have to win out over quality. When my survival hinges on getting a job, not The Job, not a perfect job, then I need to do as much as I can as quickly as possible.

Inherent Biases

One of my favorite parts of working in Residence Life is when the RA (Resident Assistant) application goes live. I get to read a bunch of applications (streamlined as much as I can) from hopeful students, watching them operate in group-style interviews, and have more traditional interviews with them. I always approach those traditional interviews with an air of relaxation; I’m still me, and most of the students know who I am, and I try to put them at ease, even as we go down a list of pre-made questions.

There was one time when I was interviewing a group of would-be RAs by myself, and I always try to ask off-book questions to get a better feel for them as people: what is your ideal birthday party? What do you do to relax or take care of yourself? Who do you idolize? I learn the most about people when I explore them outside of the constraints of the job. And to date, I can look past a lot of poorly-worded responses (these applicants have never had the job, anyway)…but what I can’t look past is idolizing the wrong people.

One applicant in particular came in for his interview. Dressed up real nice, always a good speaker, and wasn’t doing terribly in the interview process. I hit him with the old “who do you idolize? Who do you want to emulate when you get older?” And he looks me dead in the eye and says “Jeff Bezos.” I dig in, “Why?” And I listened to the applicant sing praises about Bezos’s business acumen, how he built up an empire, how he runs the different elements of Amazon, how he makes goods so cheap and so available…and how he makes so much money. I nodded, smiled, thanked him, and continued the interview.

He didn’t get the job. I interviewed better people than him. Did I deny an applicant because he idolizes Jeff Bezos? No. But idolizing and wanting to emulate someone who makes their (frankly, excessive) living on the broken backs of others does not make for a positive team player. Honestly, I don’t think it makes for a great individual employee, either, especially one as people-facing as the RA position can be.

Wait. No, it was lacrosse. I denied his application because he was on the lacrosse team, and that whole team was a bunch of schmucks. Mystery solved.