So You Wanna Be A Rock 'n Roll Star.
Today, I collapsed down the rabbit hole of self deprecation and failure and actually landed face first at the proverbial rock bottom. I landed so hard I could feel my brain ricocheting off the back of my skull and then plop back down against my eyeballs as I laid there bleeding from the nose, all pride and pretension oozing out of me. After a month of being unemployed and searching hopelessly for a new job I could “like” and “be happy” doing, I brought myself up off the ground, picked the gravel out of my cheeks, wiped the snot and tears from my face and agreed to go to an employment agency.
As I drove there I heard repeated the words of my parents as a motivational mantra: People don’t always get to do what they want in life. No one gets to have their dream job. Do you really think there’s such a thing as doing a job you like? You can always keep writing on the side as a hobby, just like that lady who wrote Harry Potter. She was a secretary.
By the time I reach the agency, I am convinced that I will certainly get a job. Probably as a receptionist somewhere, or perhaps as a data entry administrator, maybe even as a file clerk. I am convinced that such things as “passion” and “ambition” and “dreams” don’t pay the bills, but “mediocrity” and “neutrality” and “indifference” do. So I commit myself to those three things and go in to get myself a mediocre job in a neutral environment where I can shine in my expert indifference. It doesn’t really matter what I want to do at this point, I need a job, something to prove to people that I'm worth something because I am employed.
Before I can be interviewed or take any assessment tests, I have to watch a 16 minute “safety” video produced by the staffing agency’s corporate office. It is narrated by a thin, gray haired older woman in a boxy navy blue blazer and pearls, the typical den mother to a secretary pool in the Valley of the Dolls. She explains basic work safety tips - things like only wearing flat heeled shoes and not answering the phone with big, dangly earrings on - as a background of cubicles and stale office workspaces circulates behind her. The backdrop is speckled with the most culturally diverse people you could think of, each fulfilling some kind of important office task that important people can do for a living if they get an important job through this agency.
It’s easy to imagine the executives sitting around planning the content of this video, each wanting to make sure it sweeps as broadly across the cultural plane and includes every possible demographic in existence so as to not exclude anyone from the workforce. Get a close up on the lady in the wheelchair, that’s perfect. Now flash to the obese account executive sitting comfortably in her desk chair. And how about a slow pan out on a black guy filling out his paperwork? Don’t forget to get an Asian girl in there working on a calculator, and make sure she’s wearing glasses.
The tests they have me take are supposed to gauge my competency in using a computer, specifically Microsoft Word circa 1995. While the testing computer is being warmed up for use, I go through my ten-year work history and create a timeline in my head of the times I have used Windows 95. There was that one time in 1995 when I was still in high school, then a few times in 1996 I think. Then did I use it at that one job I had in 99? No, that was Windows 98. I’ve spent most of my adult life using Windows 2000 or XP and Apple products - fast, clean, simple and beautiful Apple products. Having me prove my proficiency with computers on a Windows 95 machine is like testing a telephone switchboard operator on using a rotary phone. Yes, she can do it, but why the hell would she ever need to rely on the least effective means?
It’s no surprise that I score 99.7% on this test, missing only the question on how to “map a 3-inch indent for the selected paragraph.” I have absolutely no idea what this question means let alone how I would ever find the indent mapping toolbar in a ten year old software application, and for a split second I think that perhaps this is a trick question. Perhaps this is what I’m being tested on, my ability to determine which instructions are applicable and which ones I should be able to call false at a glance. I take a quick scan around the office behind me to see who’s watching me, who’s behind this little scheme of theirs to weed out the discerning and the oblivious. I’m sure that behind the Successories framed print of a football team euphemizing "teamwork" there is a two-way mirror through which a panel of temporary employee experts is monitoring my every move.
Is she stalling with the map indenting question?
I don’t think she’s aware that it’s a fake one.
Yeah, she’s going for the formatting tab, I think she’s gonna check the page properties now.
Damn, and she knew how to insert tables so well. I was sure she’d work out.
The girl who interviews me is dressed from head to toe in soft light pink fabrics and she looks as though she could be 26 or 27, my age, the difference between us is that she's got a job. She is unusually enthusiastic about the possibility of me “joining the team” and I am ill at ease leaving my employment "opportunities" in the well manicured hands of a Britney Spears look alike whose bottle of Pepto threw up all over her this morning. I can’t help but think of her reviewing my resume, calling my references, checking my test scores and then asking me with nicotine flavored breath, “So, you want a job here, but can you handle my truth?” I don’t really want to handle her truth, and I don’t really want her involved with mine. But she is the keeper of the jobs, the ever-elusive jobs that I can’t seem to obtain on my own.
I’ve been to job sites online. I’ve done the classifieds. I’ve sent my resumes to friends of friends and other friends have tried to get me hired at their companies. I’ve had phone interviews and face to face interviews. I’ve had reference checks and background checks and employment verifications. And I keep getting phone calls and emails that say basically the same thing: We’re afraid you may be a little over qualified for this position. We’re afraid that you will get bored in this job and just want to leave in a few months. Maybe you should look for something more challenging, perhaps where you can do some of that writing you’re good at.
To me, working isn’t just working, it’s not just having a job. To me it’s not about the money, I got a very generous compensation package when I left my last employer and I have no debt to be concerned about. It’s not even about having a career, it’s just about getting the fuck on with my life already. It’s about being a productive member of society, it’s about people respecting me for going to work everyday and not ridiculing me for not having a job and thinking that all I do when I say I'm "writing" is sitting on my ass sending instant messages. I’ve never had a job I was proud of, one that I could explain to people without grimacing just a bit. I want that now.
What do I really want to do? I want to own my own small business. I want to do editing and copywriting. I want to work with typefaces and logos and identities and media and technology. I want to be dynamic and progressive and inspired, and I’d like to be able to wear jeans to work. These are the kinds of dreams I have when I think about where I want to work, but dreams don’t get you experience, and without experience you’re nothing on paper, and without anything on paper you’re left sitting across from Britney Spears as she explains to you the process by which people are selected for temporary assignments at this employment agency you had to run to for help.
You’re left sitting there, across from Britney Spears in her pink blouse and pink skirt and pink shoes and pink fingernails as she says to you without the slightest hint of irony, “We'd have a much better chance of placing you somewhere if you could redo your resume and delete some of the more advanced experience you've had. And it would be great if you could make it look a little less professional." And then you nod and smile and you thank her for her time, and you tell her how much you're looking forward to working with her.
