A job listing came up that I'm qualified for, even overqualified — office work, asking for 2 years of experience when I have 30. The job is with the public defenders' office, and I strongly believe that any person charged with any crime should be offered competent legal advice at no charge. I'd be doing support work for that, and at a pretty good wage, too!
Sweet! I want this job!
I filled out the application, and wrote a cover letter explaining why I'd be perfect. The listing stressed that they want someone with a firm grasp of written language and grammar, quick and accurate data entry, and strong attention to detail. Jeez, man. When can I start?
I was so excited about the job and the frickin' brilliant cover letter I'd written, I attached it with my résumé and application, and clicked 'submit' immediately... before remembering that I hadn't spellchecked it.
There were two typos, but the website doesn't allow corrections, deletions, or replacement of the file. They'll read two big fat typos as I brag about my attention to detail, so that job possibility is almost certainly no longer a possibility.
Chances are, because I'm old, they wouldn't have hired me anyway. That's what's happened with every application I've turned in, everywhere.
It makes me angry ... at myself. Double dumbass on me, I don't need to offer prospective employers a valid reason not to hire me.
♦ ♦ ♦
And now it's the First of May. A month or so ago, watching money run out, I decided that the May 1 would be my deadline, and here it is.
The rent is ready, and there'll be about $100 left for groceries and emergencies, but that's the end.
Food won't be an immediate problem. There's at least a few weeks' of canned food stockpiled, and a crate of ramen, and besides, I need to lose some weight. I can stretch $100 to feed me through the merry month of May.
But I've never been behind on the rent, and never will be. Come June 1, a month from today, if there's no money to pay the rent, I'm outtahere.
I'll continue looking for a job, of course, and maybe I'm being overly pessimistic. Maybe Walgreens will hire me as a stockboy, or the community college will let me scrub their restroom floors. Maybe.
But also, maybe not, so today I began tidying the mess in this room. When the clutter has been reduced, I'll start packing and giving stuff away.
Still hoping to find a job, still looking, still applying, but I'm a realist, so I need to be ready to move out.
Where would I move? I have no answer for that, except que sera sera, whatever will be will be.
♦ ♦ ♦
When there are no other options, my mom and sister Katrina will probably ask me to move in with them. But I value my privacy, and my mother doesn't. If we lived in the same house, she'd go through my stuff one day (or every day) when I'm not home. She's done it before, when I was a kid, and when I wasn't. I love my mom, but she's not going to rummage through my life a third time, so if they offer, my answer will be no.
My brother Clay and his wife Karen might offer to take me in, but it's impossible. I have no car, get around on public transit, and they live seven miles from the nearest bus stop. And privacy is an issue — in my 20s, when Clay and I lived together, he also went through my possessions one day when I wasn't home. It's a family tradition! I love Clay & Karen, but if they offer, my answer will be no.
My brother Dick and his wife Young-sook live near a workable bus stop, and to my knowledge Dick has never rifled through my personal belongings. But their condominium is tiny, every bedroom is taken, and there'd be no safe space for my agoraphobic cat. I love Dick, but if he offers, my answer will be no.
My sister Hazel lives in a nursing home, so I can't crash there.
My brother Ralph is dead, so he's no help.
Can't imagine an invitation from any of the nieces and nephews. George is my only relative from his generation that I sorta know, but we'd quickly drive each other to a murder-suicide.
And my few friends who might've offered assistance have all either drifted away or died (the ultimate drifting away).
♦ ♦ ♦
I might ask Mom for a loan. I've never borrowed money from her, but she's 'loaned' thousands and even gave her car to a no-account nephew of mine, so I think she'd be good for it.
She would attach painful strings, though. She'd demand that I attend church with her. Maybe she'd demand that I profess my faith in her Lord and Savior.
The bigger worry about a loan is that it needs to be repaid, and that can't be done without income. I seem to suddenly be unemployable, which is the bottom line to all this.
Well... I'll keep looking for work, cleaning and emptying this room, and watching old movies. I'm not going to let worries ruin my day, or the month of May.
5/1/2024
Well you're lucky, you CAN go home to Mommy, not a happy fate though...Two typos just make you human, your age? Hasn't Seattle woke awareness extended to downtrodden seniors, or do you need to also be a gay trans bi-racial paraplegic to get those extra rights? Anyway, maybe you'll get some surprise check in the mail, to save you from your sweet mammy...Eel
ReplyDeleteI don't think those rights are extra. I think they come with the package. It just took us a while to realize it.
ReplyDeleteJohn
Job hunting comes down to first impressions, and I'm a fart in person. I've rarely been the guy doing the hiring, but typos when someone tells me he's got a great command of English grammar and spelling -- I'd trash that letter, like they no doubt trashed mine, but c'est la vie with a belch, life goes on until it doesn't.
Delete99% of jobs I apply for online have a job portal "feature" that supposedly auto-fills my uploaded Word Doc resume and cover letter. EVERY TIME so many errors are introduced, so many fields are incorrectly filled or repeated, or job history out of order, I simply give up rather than look like an ass.
DeleteI've resorted to only applying for jobs online that simply require a straight upload of docs, none of this pseudo-AI anti-human horseshit. Bad enough the docs will be "screened" by AI before ever being placed in front of human eyes (if you can call HR people "human") but at least I can maintain the slim dignity of knowing that my docs are, at least when I uploaded them, as I wrote them.
The job market has been as corrupted and compromised as the housing market. It's like a death match for poor desperate people, organized by an audience of rich tech bros. Fuck 'em!
Fuck 'em entirely, and double fuck 'em for relying on AI when its I remains so very A.
DeleteMy street address seems like the least important thing about me, so it's not even on my résumé, so the first address listed is my last employer in Wisconsin, and AI always reads that as if it's my address. Every job on the résumé gets the wrong address, too, and after every application and résumé I've sumbitted there comes a flood of spammy job-hunt emails from the shitty job-hunt sites recommending jobs I should apply for… in Madison, Wisconsin.
Everything's turned to shit everywhere, and what little hasn't is in the process.