despatches from the frontlines of the jobhunt front

01/16/10

I haven't had a regular paying job for 2 1/2 years now. I probably hadn't deserved to have a regular paying job for longer than that but up until late-July of 2007 I'd been managing to pass as a semi-productive member of the middle class, providing some valuable services to the marketplace and the community while paying most of my taxes and all of my mortgage installments. And I pride myself on the fact that it took one way-shrewd group of new administrators at a local university to see through my bullshit and cut me loose. Hell, that school is suffering along this year under the burden of needing to pare about two million dollars out of its FY10 budget (try looking at administrative compensation, ya yutzes) so just think how much worse it would have been if I'd still been there. Any resemblence to the current president's previous stop on the lecture tour out in New Mexico is purely coincidental.

I'd probably feel much worse about things if the corporate contractor that got brought in by those crack university administrators hadn't done such a magnificent job of replacing me and the bookstore I ran. Odds are that this new bookstore operation is not the absolute worst one in the country; there are still quite a few that I haven't gotten into to check yet. Really, donchya think that there are probably more than even a few that are just as miserably run as the one that replaced mine? If not worse? After all, this new contractor does run 250+ other stores and that makes for a whole world of possibilities in that sample alone.

I may not get around to visiting all those other stores to do my comparison shopping. Money's tight right now even if I have been relieved of any incentive (not to mention the means) to be throwing away my cash in gaudy displays of foolish charitable giving. I used to do that but my motto has now become, "Let 'em eat cake."

The word about what a slacker I am must have spread pretty effectively. I haven't been able to land one of the rarely available jobs that pops up in the industry I'm most familiar with. That even includes one on a nearby campus where I have a little bit of previous history. This is a school that's allowed something approaching a million bucks to go swirling down the toilet from its bookstore operation over the last several years. I guess I'd have to agree; there's no way that I can run in that kind of fast company. My store always made money.

Oh well, something will turn up sometime soon. I continue to receive daily reports from this genius little dotcom called Monster. A family member recommended that I get signed up on it and I'll tell you, it's been eye-opening. There have been alot of features that have shown up in my inbox reminding me to keep my resume down to something under three pages and to tailor my cover letters to the specifics of any particular job that I'm applying for and to not let on that I'd been turned down as a contestant on Biggest Loser and that to spite them I'd let my weight drop to 525 pounds all by myself. And to be damn sure that I don't let on as to how I did that, exactly. Proprietary trade secrets, right? Really pretty elementary stuff.

But the totally best thing thing about Monster.com has to be the daily job postings that show up regular as clockwork somewhere between 1 and 10 in the morning. I figure on the days that they come in late it's because some desperately unhappy Monster employee has been cherry-picking the best opportunities for him/herself. Heck, there was even a posting for the store manager's job at the Hamline University Bookstore. I thnk that was somewhere between manager #1 (tenure:5 months) and manager #2 (tenure:10 months). But it could have been in one of the gaps bookended by #3 (tenure:2 months---honest, I can't possibly make shit like this up) or even #4 (tenure from May '09 to date and counting). I decided that my skills were almost up to the lofty standards demanded buy this astute chain store entity but that it was looking like upward mobility within the company was whisking all of the previous managers right on up the corporate ladder. I just wasn't ready to commit to the life of an itinerant company man and didn't want to subject my kids to a new school district every few years. Or months, apparently. Pay no attention to the fact that my kids, our kids, are already pretty much grown and out of the house. Yeah, we've even changed the locks. Thank you.

So, the Hamline gig tugged at my heartstrings a little bit but they were casting their recruitment nets pretty wide. I think I even tracked down a classified ad in one of the Mankato papers. Like I said, lofty standards and I wasn't about to get into a tussle over a job with one of my would-be homies from Mankato. I was born there, after all. Thank god there's been a steady flow of other career opportunities courtesy of the Monster auto-mailer.

I'd have never guessed that there could be such turnover in management level positions for some of our region's finest service-segment companies such as PetCo, McDonald's (@the airport---duh!!!, can you spell travel opportunities?), American Income Life, Toys'R'Us and Little Caesar's (both their Midway Center and Highland shops!!). How to choose?

I've held a grudge against PetCo ever since they pulled their shop out of the Midway. That was PetCo, wasn't it? Well, I shouldn't judge. Paper Warehouse or Party City or whatever is gone too. I figured that it was gonna be a tough sled for that strip mall when Mervyn's boarded up the windows. And besides, PetCo wasn't automatically offering manager's jobs. They were also posting "Groomer's" positions. Not sure what that is exactly but definitely don't want to.

Some idiot at one of the WorkForce Centers referred me to American Income Life awhile back, touting a union enroller's job. I fired off my resume and then spent a couple of days calling their various local offices in what turned out to be the foolish hope that someone might actually answer the phone. The company must have some pretty liberal lunch hour allowances which seemed like a feather in its cap. I also did some internet research to no avail and asked my long-time insurance agent if he'd ever heard of American Income Life. N, couldn't say that he had. About a month (yes, that would be four weeks or more) later some nimrod who sounded like he was 16 called looking to set up an appointment to discuss the opening. I think he was calling from a public phone outside of one of the remaining PetCo stores. Scratch that one off the list and scratch the WorkForce Center off the list while I'm at it. I'm glad to know that Minnesota tax dollars are hard at work in at least one of those centers.

Toys'R'Us has lost all of its charms for me ever since the Rax went out of business out there on B2. My ex and I spent a good chunk of our disposable income there (at Toys and then at Rax afterwards) trying to keep our kids invested in the Santy Claus Myth but those two wised up on that one a few years back. Two strikes. Oh yeah, Shinders isn't open out there anymore and neither is the Loehmann Plaza Theater Mega-Plex. Yer outta there!!

That leaves it to Lil Caesar's and Mac and D's. I've got a niece who's already employed at Little C's though she keeps casting covetous glances at the curly fries and jamocha shakes at the Arby's across the street. I'm not about to risk any nepotism charges. Besides which I've worked with family before and it's everything it's cracked up to be. I'll admit that I admire the Little Caesar's business model: your large cheese or pepperoni pizza, hot and ready for you guaranteed for $5.00. But still, I'd rather be a customer than an employee.

The list is down to the McDonald's at the airport. Lots of plusses. Food discounts, duty-free shops, the automated walkways. Did I mention food discounts? But then I got to thinking. Did I really want the possible responsibility of being the purveyor of the last supper on this earthly plane (no pun intended) to some lunatic-fringe underwear bomber? No thanks. My sins are already weighing heavily enough.