Wife Got a JOB!!!

Pure Joy

Wife got a JOB!! 

That's right. 

Wife is now employed. In one week, in fact, she's gone from unemployed to having a full time and a part time job. The place she was volunteering at by helping with their marketing, media and grants, loved her so much they wanted to start paying her. So on Monday, she agreed to being on contract for 55 hours a month. There was a lot of negotiation, they wanted to have her part time for 20 hours a week, but it just wasn't going to be enough to pay the student loans and wouldn't have left her open enough for full time work. It is a HARD choice to make. 

So that happened, then by today, she had two jobs that she had interviewed at that said they would let her know this week. At noon, one called, the one that's just 5 minutes away, and offered her the job. Full time for a marketing company. 

"Yes yes yes yes yes," she said to every question. After a minute, "You know, I need to calm down a bit, I've said yes to you more than I did to my husband when he proposed." 

This is what that feels like: 

She then called me at work. 

"I got hired," the words nearly choked her as she tried to spit them out. Then she proceeded to sob incomprehensibly for two minutes while I calmly tried to ascertain which company hired her (the other one emailed to say they would not be able to choose until Monday as they had a scheduling problem with one candidate). I finally got it out of her.

"Come home" she said. And I told my boss and got the OK to go home and start feeling human again.

Pure bliss

I got home, and together we drained a bottle of Friday's long island iced tea and half a big bottle of wine. She was drunk by 5 and asleep by 6. 

Her search started in full a year ago at about this time when her former boss said she wasn't allowed to keep herself safe after a student threatened her - plus working with mice and bats doesn't help matters. She worked with me for 5 months which got her away from that, but has had nothing since March 1.

As an idea what it's like out there: Since May 23, we have sent out 174 resumes. We erased the records from before that because it was just too depressing to scroll through. I sent out six applications on my birthday. She was getting about 3-5 contacts a week - either phone, in person, or recruiters if they count during the past several months. We just needed one yes. And we finally got it!

On another note

You may have noticed the number of blogs trailing off lately. Well, applying to 4-5 jobs a day kind of curtails one's time to do things they enjoy, like writing. Plus I've been writing some art reviews for another publication, and that takes some time. But now I can also make another announcement.

Wife and I will be starting a new blog!

We've been working on it for about a month, banking posts ready to go.

I started Myths of the Midwest in 2011 to help myself stay sane. It has been pretty much a chronicle of wife and I as we struggled out of a crushed dream of a doctorate for her and the rather constant struggle of finding our place in the working world. I appreciated everyone who read it. I enjoyed sharing some of the more insane things that happen from time to time in my awkward life. I also got to share getting engaged and married and the first year of married life. It was a vent and served its purpose well, though it never really caught on much.

The new blog will be a lot of the same topics, but more ordered into categories to share actual tips and empathy to job seekers, notes about writing and advertising, and posts about the things we enjoy about life in the cities. It'll be our calling card for potential freelancing jobs, and now that we're both finally, solidly employed and hopefully getting by through the next year of taking care of shit that's been squeaking by like the fact wife has no work clothes beyond her interview suit, my car is on life support, hers needs brakes, and a ton of other stuff that you have to put off just so you can eat.

The new blog is in the design phase - utilizing some friends we've picked up along the way and their wonderful talents. The nice thing is it won't have to be anonymous. We'll be ourselves and try to bring the funny and the frustrating. I hope you'll join us. It's probably a month off yet or more considering web design can be a bitch, but consider this a teaser. I'll send a heads up when it gets going. Thank you for reading, it meant everything.

Fargo Jones

Social media experience is NOT A THING/My new dentist sucks

Been applying like a mug to get wife a permanent gig. This contract work at my place of biz wasn't going to last forever. In the past week, we've sent out 30 or so apps, contacted two placement firms that are talking to wife, and I did some LinkedIn networking like a mug and got another person in a local business communication group I belong to to take a look at wife for a social media position at their company.

Now, social media is like the baby of a species you have never seen before. No parents. You don't know how to deal with it. And it's only a couple years old. Some people get lucky and have successes, but when other people try to repeat that success, it's just white noise.

What works in social media is new, interesting things. No matter how many experts you wrangle, or examples you bring in, that's the bottom line. You just have to keep throwing out new things and hoping something will stick.

But, this potential employer wanted someone with a few years of professional social media experience. THAT IS NOT A THING. The damn concept was unknown a few years ago. Companies did social media, but not many, and not to the extent they do very recently, and certainly not as a full time gig. So I want to ask this person what the fuck, but can't cause there still might be a position at that company down the road that will work. We're meeting her for coffee maybe in the future, so perhaps I'll get to ask this question.

Secondly, I had three fucking cavities filled this week. We used to go to this dude in Fargo for our dental needs, and he was AWESOME. Only dentist wife has ever liked. I agree. He made dental work seem easy.

So I was somewhat relieved to find out the dentist we chose here had gone to school with him.

Wife got a cavity filled on Tuesday. She moaned and complained that it was a lot worse than before. I scoffed. "Dentistry gets better every year."

Then I went in last night, and had three fucking cavities filled. And oh my GOD it was like being waterboarded. the stupid drill was shooting water down my throat so I couldn't breathe. The dentist was like, try to breathe through your nose (with my mouth open,which I have NEVER understood as advice. Am I just weird or is it impossible to breathe through your nose with your mouth open?) Then she left after filling one and drilling the other two so she could check on another patient.

I welcomed the chance to breathe. but my tongue started to explore the drilled teeth and holy shit do they just strip mine mouths now? I felt like the entirety of my tooth was gone except a couple peaks around the edges.

Then she mentioned possible root canals in the future and I'm OLD I"M SO OLD JESUS FUCK.

Anyway, here's a better blog about dentists. Enjoy.

Sallie Mae Can Suck My Balls Clean

Life lately:

Enjoying the hell out of working with wife. She is contracting with my company, and making such a good impression that the president the other day was like "Get ____ to help you with that project" to one of the sales head dudes. We eat lunch together every day. We're kindof sickeningly in love :)

Working on weekly goals, some we reach. Others not. This week, to only eat out twice, both times because of work reasons.

Met with a lawyer and found out we are in too much debt for chapter 13, and make too much money for chapter 7. (last year, I would have qualified for a chapter 7, but couldn't find the $1600 that it would have taken to file it since I had no job, so go figure). We literally can't declare bankruptcy even though we have multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loans between us and will NEVER be able to work it all off. Our loan debts take all my paychecks per month leaving not quite enough for rent. So we rely on wife to make money for us to live on. There's something rather freeing about the fact we cannot discharge student loans (because Sallie Mae in 2005 lobbied congress to pass a law making that impossible), yet they are so large due to predatory lending that we cannot possibly keep up the payments. Something freeing about looking at indentured servitude for the rest of our natural lives. In fact, it's weird because even indentured servants got off after 7 years. Fannie Mae has us for life without parole, and it's all perfectly legal for them to do so.

It's easy to denigrate us for taking on so much debt. But we aren't alone. Student loan debt surpassed $1 trillion this year. There's no question it's the next bubble, higher ed. As more and more of us, fed the lie that higher education is the key to a better life, take on debt, then find no jobs for us on the other side, we are not going to be able to pay back the promise/lie you fed us, America. But hey, don't take my word for it. Other bloggers have said it far better than me.

We keep on truckin on. Sallie Mae suicide is certainly something we discuss on an intellectual level, since being in this position sucks so much balls, and no one gives a shit because you took out the loans willingly to chase the dream that we are fed about education being worth the cost. But in the end, I keep saying, we don't have a house, we don't have cars worth more than 300 bucks. we really have nothing to our names, so what the hell would they take? They can garnish wages, sure, but would any sane judge garnish so much that I can't afford rent let alone food or gas to get to work to pay the wages they garnish? It's hard to say, since this insane system has been upheld by judges so far.

Maybe once enough people are out of work and in life-debt to Sallie Mae - and given the exponential costs of higher ed, that won't take long - things might start to change. Until then, will keep going to work, keep paying the interest only payments that are more than i made in a month at my first professional job 10 years ago.

Sigh.

Wife and I ROCK the North Shore

The best advice I have if you are planning a trip to the north shore is to bring my wife. It will increase your enjoyment of nature's beauty to the point where you will start to question existence in a my-wifeless universe.

First some pics I couldn't fit elsewhere in this blog: 

Yup, north shore baby.

  

 On the north shore, people fuckin skip rocks. It really is this idyllic. I know!

 The Angry Trout Cafe deserves every bit of praise it ever gets. Oh My God they are good. DO NOT SKIMP HERE. Order what your heart wants and skip a meal later, you will not regret it.

We got there just past color peak season, but it still frakin rocked.

 

For one, wife is a whiz at packing. After all the time she spent living out of a suitcase shuttling between her shit life in Grand Forks and her weekends with me in Fargo, she became very good at it. As Malcolm Gladwell would point out, she put in her 10,000 hours of packing.

Problem is this last week she was off her game. She had an interview scheduled for Thursday night, which after working until 6 p.m. didn't leave any time for packing once we got home. However, she got it done and we got out on Friday by 8 a.m. Wife don't pity no fools when it comes to packing.

For two, you are likely to hear the best combinations of the English language ever spoken when you are traveling with my wife. Here are a few excerpts:

"I just want to see a goddamn tugboat and a goddamn lighthouse in this goddamn town, then I want some pie."

"I need some coffee before I kill an orphan."

Deer in the North Shore just stand there and pose for pictures

Dogs in the North Shore drive, but they are crap at parallel parking

For three, if you've played your cards right, if you've been a good boy for four to five years, doing dishes, laundry, driving, shopping, cooking, you get rewarded. We drove up to the Lutsen ski resort, where the gondolas were still moving up to a distant mountain (Minnesota Mountain). The scene was breathtaking. 

Then wife, who has a deadly fear of heights, says

"I'll do it. I'll go up with you. I owe you for so much, so this makes us even."

And it does. Her fear of heights is like anyone's worst fear. I doubt I would be able to hold live snakes for wife, or scuba dive in an eel tank with waterproof spiders. This was her equivalent. So we took the eight minute gondola ride up, and up, then up some more. Then we got to this chalet thing, Lake Superior off in the distance, trees with most leaves down, but still smatterings of mustard yellow and fire orange smeared on the hillsides. The floor of the balcony at this chalet was a wire mesh that wife didn't realize was 30 feet from solid ground until after we were nearly done and I asked for the camera to do a foot picture.

That’s what wife does for me.

She also knows how to splurge. We're still paying for the weekend festivities, but oh how we ate like kings. Poutine slathered in rainbow juice, Herring that sprang from Lake Superior onto our plates with a final look as if to say, "It is my time, please enjoy me." Smoked trout that stank up my hands for hours after. And the Pie. It was this fruit crumble thing from Betty's Pies outside of Two Harbors, and each bite was like tasting little balls of sunshine that burst forth and still brings tears to my eyes thinking about it five days later.

Last slice of heaven

Then on Sunday, we made our way from Lutsen Resort, Stopped at the Split Rock Light House for a spell, ate awesome burritos at Burrito Union in Duluth, a city I think must be the Portlandia of the Midwest because oh my god the hippies/hipsters/lefties.

We got back on Sunday.

And oh, I forgot to say, the Thursday before we left, my boss emails me and asks if my wife is still looking for a new job. Out of the blue because my boss and everyone I work with is awesomesauce personified and I can't believe it. It's a temp job that may last two weeks to two months, and it gets wife out of the miserable mess that HTC has become and into something that begins to approximate a wage that she is worth. It's not what she plans to do with her life, but it gets her out of the hellhole and into a head space that is healthy and human.

Wife was still not sure about leaving her job, since it's a steady thing and she loves to help students despite all the bullshit that they throw at her every week. Then she got an email from her new, and third, boss in a year that questioned her integrity on her time sheet. So wife let off a stern email, I went to the school the next day to get all her shit, and she emailed the HR people to tell them she was done. Simple, clean. And they haven't talked to her since.

Next blog, her exit interview. It's a thing of beauty.

The Lexington Makes Wife Forget Her Shitty Job for A Magical Night

It's hard to shake off a horrible week at work sometimes, and Saturday was no different for the wife. She spent the morning in a familiar pit of "When the fuck will one of my resumes hit and get me out of this horrible job?" Her pit has the added benefit of mice and bats. She used a microphone at a meeting to tell the entire staff and administration about the mice and bats that live with her. The next day, there was a box of mouse traps in her office.

It's hard not to think it was a prank, rather than a really lazy custodian's way of dealing with the issue.

But we had plans, and I was able to talk her out of the pit to take a short nap before one of the best nights out we've had since moving here.

First, we drove over to St. Paul to the block where they filmed Grumpy Old Men. The three houses were nestled into a block with beautiful trees. The colors in Plymouth are absolutely the best I've seen anywhere in years. Seems that fall is always a bunch of yellow trees that lose their leaves with the first stiff wind. This year, with the drought, the leaves are all sorts of reds and oranges and yellows. Everywhere you look, it's like the label on an Oktoberfest bottle.

Our next stop, Fitzgerald Theatre for the Prairie Home Companion. Wife has always wanted to go to this. We had tickets for the top corner of the top balcony, which is vertigo inducing. After I walked back down to get a couple drinks, whiskey for me for some reason, and rum and diet for the wife, I walked the five million steps back to the top. The last few steps before I got to my row, I seriously wondered if my legs would give way while trying to tip toe down the row to my seat. I made it though.

The Minnesota Opera opened the show, and got us both misty eyed even though we had no idea what they were singing. It was a wonderful evening of music and drama, but the thing that oddly enough got to me the most was the program notes about the show.

After the show, we went to The Lexington, where we had our groom's dinner last December but hadn't been since. That was a serious mistake, because their food was amazing. We started the dinner with some Old Fashioneds, which were whiskey central and took one sip for the wife to get a bit loopy.

I'm good at making steaks. They look weird, but they taste better than anything I have had in a restaurant, so I don't get steaks. I got the seafood linguine, which was excellent, particularly the whitefish part of it. Wife kept reading about their steaks though, and took her chances on a steak, medium rare.

I swear, they must age their meat in a room filled with shamans and Buddhist monks who do nothing but put out positive energy, then douse the steaks in angel tears and Care Bear blood because holy Jebus Wife's steak was incredible. Absolutely incredible.

We then got this Wellington thing for desert on the house brought out by our awesome goddess of a waitress. It was a pastry wrapped around a brownie, marshmallow and melted chocolate and even though I don't care for chocolate I would sacrifice my future children for this desert maker to live with us and make us deliciousness every day. We topped it all off with some Irish coffees and called it a night.

Asshole Bosses Should Be Fair Game

As someone who has been through the long, hard slog of job hunting, I consider myself something of an expert on job advice columns. You read them, you get advice solicited and unsolicited from others. Some of it is helpful. So much of it is bullshit.

One piece of advice is helpful, but bullshit at the same time. That is the advice to never talk poorly about your former places of work.

I understand that being negative about where you worked before makes you look like a complainy pants, and that the potential employer may not want to bring such negativity into their place. That makes perfect sense.

But let’s take, say, a really bad job for shits and giggles. Say your last job was shredding documents illegally for Enron, or digging mass graves in Bosnia. What the fuck are you supposed to be positive about? “It gave me a great appreciation for proper organization!”

I think part of me just has a bad gut reaction because if you do have a legitimately bad boss, you are supposed to lie about it. And that lie props up bad bosses everywhere. It gives bad bosses free reign to be dickholes to their employees, as long as they are being assholes to white male employees anyway. If you don’t read This Article  that sparked this blog entry, and you should, at least read this excerpt:

It is nearly impossible to successfully sue your boss for being a bully. While there are decades' worth of precedents on gender and race discrimination in the workplace, just being an all-around jerk is sanctioned boardroom behavior.

"The standard for outrageous conduct is so high that people lose those lawsuits," says Dr. Gary Namie, the director of the Workplace Bullying Institute. "Nothing is considered outrageous when committed by management."

So when it becomes OK to lie about your former places of work where you were let go because your asshole boss kept asking you to work 60 hours a week and one time you needed to attend a funeral and he waited an appropriate amount of time before firing you. When it becomes OK to lie about it, all bosses everywhere are protected species. This rule works out like gangbusters for former bosses, who have no reason to be reasonable. I've known people that think Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross is the model of a motivating boss. Not the personification of human pit stain.

I’ve lucked out in the boss department, I should say here. I’ve had good and not as good, but with the not as good ones I was in a position that I didn’t really have to interact with them more than a couple times a year. But luck should not give me an edge over others because I can be honest about what management styles work well with me.

And it rankles me that there’s a management class that can be assholes, not get called on it, and can still fuck your shit up when any employer calls for references.

It warms my heart that Minnesota courts are starting to reasonably explore the issue of office bullies, at least on the legal terms of keeping people safe from violent work environments. That’s something at least, and something that might get higher ups to care about more than just numbers, but how their middle managers get those numbers. 

I got a job!!!!!!!

It’s hard to know where to begin. How about the numbers?

9 months

500 applications (at least)

50 interviews

1 job.

A JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Plus a side job editing stuff that I can continue to do to bring in some extra money each week.

Plus some freelancing.

And I sold the house.

On top of that, this new job pays nearly 30 percent more than the old one in Fargo (which is about right for the difference between here and there according to some sites). After 9 months of trying to pay for a wedding, going DEEP into credit debt, trying to figure out how to make $50 last the week when one gas fill up takes most of that, trying to remain sane, I have a new job that starts on Monday. Yesterday, we were wondering how the hell we were going to pay rent in June. Today, we are planning a budget that more than doubles what we were “living” on.

I can soon get an oil change for my car that has muscled through 5000 miles since the last mechanic set eyes on her.

I can soon own more than one pair of kacki pants.

I can get new shoes after 2.5 years on the last pair, daily.

I can have more than a carl budding lunch meat sandwich and ramen for lunch every day.

24 hours ago, we were trying to figure out how to come up with 1500 for a bankruptcy lawyer. Today, we can decide to go through a credit counseling service instead. They couldn’t help me before without a steady income.

Tomorrow, I have a therapy appointment. I’m still going, cause you’re probably wondering why I haven’t been already for criminy sake.

Job hunting has never been this hard in my life. It has been brutal. Painful. Confusing. Madening. Frustrating. Full of moments that seem like, "This is it, this is the one!" and then having that job pulled from your open hands, and then crushed in front of you. And every time you see Romney saying he's jobless, or see some politician on tv talking about how jobless people need to just get back to work you want to punch their grandchildren while they watch. Better yet, make them apply to jobs they are more than qualified for for 9 months without landing anything.

Every job advice column grates on you. You follow the advice, you blame yourself, you want to scream at HR computers who disqualify you without explanation.

Its experiences like this that people with jobs just don’t understand. It’s so easy to get comfortable, to think that you are a highly qualified, great worker with impecable references and qualifications. But the moment you take that leap into the unknown and find out how none of that means squat in a new hiring computer system that rejects you without a chance after you spent 2 hours filling out their stupid forms that repeat every goddamn thing that is already on your resume. Yet, don't accept that where you are is where you will have to be forever. Fear of leaving a job you hate can be just as soul-killing as trying to land a job you'll love.

Yeah, today is a day full of relief, fear, confusion, a new ability to breathe. I’m still trying to process it. It’s going to take a long time to recover.

Cee Lo, I need to go enjoy this breathing thing, please take it from here:

(addition): Long talk with the wife last night on how to be smart about this. How not to do the dumb thing and go money crazy the first month. We can live with our laptop that's missing a P button and has a cord held together by duct tape. We can live with the couch that got messed up in the move so now it feels like sitting on the floor. Slowly, carefully, we will crawl our way back to normalcy. 

Anatomy of shitty job seeker columns

One thing that I get a lot of as a job seeker is email newsletters from the many places I use to find new positions. Often, an HR professional will write an advice piece on what you are doing wrong as a job seeker and how to correct that.

The beauty of this sort of criticism/advice is that it can be done to anything a job seeker does, because it is ALWAYS your fault that you don’t have a job. You said something wrong or did something “unprofessional” that lost you the job.

Let’s take today’s e-mail from The Ladder about annoying voicemails. 

The writer brings up a topic, here leaving voicemails, and has a handy example of why some moron didn’t get a job because of his stupidface voicemail message. Some of the tips are solid – Of course you should leave your phone number and full name.

But most of these are doing some language parsing and imagineering on a grander scale than a sophomore English major trying to impress her professor. The columnist reads the line: “When I spoke with your CEO at our Alumni Conference last week, he mentioned what a great background I have for the role” as a vague threat. Perhaps Stan was genuinely excited about the job, to the point that when he saw the CEO at an event, he introduced himself and made a good impression. Stan really wants to work for your company, so much so that he’s generating networking opportunities to build relationships. He wants to jump in right now, because there’s nothing more he wants to do with his life than help your company become the juggernaut of industry that you all know it can be. But I guess noting that you are ready to go ASAP is “desperate.” My argument here is that the audience can take the message any way they want to. It's the old communication machine: 

You can encode a message as carefully as you like, but half of the process lies in the ability of the receiver to decode the message accurately. If you intentionally want to be a dick, like the HR person who read Stan's message about chatting with the CEO as a threat, you sure can, but do you think there's more than 5 percent chance that Stan could have been calling to threaten the HR person?  

I’ve got some degrees, and I can play this fun game as well. Lets look at the voicemail that the columnist says is a good example and one we should use as a template for our own interactions.

“Hi Susan, it’s Jim Ablebody at 867-5309. Just calling to let you know how excited I am about the opportunity there at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. As I mentioned last week, I’ve spent 17 years in nuclear safety, so I feel there could be a great fit. Hey, just like Mariano Rivera, I’m getting better with age! Thanks, Susan, and, again, it’s Jim [stop and tiny pause]. Ablebody [stop and tiny pause]. 867-5 [stop and tiny pause]. 309 [stop and tiny pause]. Thanks, Susan!”

1. Hi? Hi!? You really need to be more formal in these voicemails. Friends and schoolkids say Hi. Professionals say Hello or Good Afternoon.

2. “Just calling” is an outright lie. You are not just calling to let me know you are excited. There are a plethora of valid and good reasons you are calling me.

3. “Mariano Rivera”? Seriously? Is that a baseball player? You’ve just turned off anyone who isn’t into sports. Add to that your use of the word age rather than experience and you’ve just lost the job, buckko.

4. You said Thanks, Susan twice here. You are groveling too much at this point. You are repetitive, and aparantly have some sort of “thanks” Tourettes.

5. You said you have 17 years in the business. So, why are you trying to kill me? (Ok, that was just for fun)

So what’s the upshot of all this? The vast majority of columns can be boiled down to “just be nice and be respectful of the HR department’s time.” “It’s always your fault you don’t have a job yet because you did something stupid, stupid pants." And in part "HR departments are always right no matter how they want to interpret your messages, so don't question them. OBEY." 

With the wide variety of HR professionals out there, each with their own strange quirks, pet peeves, and outside lives that affect their mood at any given moment, there is no magic bullet that will get you hired. It's an impossible task to come up with something so neutral that it won't offend someone for some random reason, but will also be in the least bit memorable. What you say to one employer can be taken completely wrong by another. But such thinking makes for entertaining exercises in language analysis and keeps job experts busy writing columns about all the things you are doing wrong. 

Bipolar life

The highs and lows of living with me day to day is more than wife can handle. I don't have bipolar disorder, I have bipolar life. Here's the past 27 or so hours.

10 a.m. Tuesday: I get a call from temp service. The people I worked for last month want me back for a week starting next Wednesday. I'm supposed to close on the house in Fargo on Thursday. I let them know and have not had a confirmation either way.

11:30 a.m. Tuesday: I get an email from my mother. I haven't spoken or written to her since January. At that time, I had made clear how much I had been hurt by her actions toward my wife. She still hasn't apologized. She has tried guilting me about how she feels, she has tried chastising me by saying hasn't this gone on long enough, now she is threatening to call wife's mother if I don't get back to her soon. In all this, she hasn't said sorry once. She will never admit to being wrong about anything, so the only way to move forward would be for me to accept that everything is just in my head, that I was wrong, and to put it behind me. I've done that my whole life. I'm tired of just forgetting and forgiving. My last two emails to her were lengthy, heart-spilling emails that explained why I moved, why I love my wife, and how without her, I would likely not be here today. Her responses have yet to even be concerned that her son was feeling suicidal or to ask if I'm better. I've decided not to respond.

12:30 p.m. Tuesday. I have cleaned up and dressed up for my interview. I head to my wife's job with a sack lunch for us. We were discussing the morning's events when I got a call from the realtor. My uncle had been kind enough to go paint some random spots on the house so the appraiser could approve the sale. Because the buyer is using city funding, everything has to be done by next week, or the sale will fall through. However, one spot under the garage window was missed, and if it wasn't fixed by 4, the sale would be off. Brought down by a few dollars worth of primer. No one I knew had free afternoons, and the realtor had a tight schedule. I turned to twitter in panic. Then the realtor called back to say she got her husband involved and that it would get done. Although now I have to call HUD tomorrow to get the sale approved quickly. The bank has made it clear that they don't care whether or not the sale goes through.

By this time, it was 2:30. I had a major job interview in one hour. I spent the time trying to calm down, reading the job description, researching the company.

3:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m. I had a good job interview. The place seems like a good fit. My background seems good. A bunch of things during the interview made me more optimistic about it, like talking about salary, about training, about the next step being coming in to see HR.  I got homework - writing a press release and editing another. They put it on a flash drive with no mention of getting it back to them. That also gives me good feelings about it, who throws away a flash drive like that? The manager even made a Star Trek joke, and how cool is that!

Evening: I get beer and the ingredients to make pizza. Wife and I settle in for the night. We try to unwind, although I know I'll be up late working on the homework. I've been reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo out loud to her in the evenings. Sometimes I get 4 pages done, others I get 25. Depends on how wiped out she is and how anxious.

10 p.m. to 2 a.m.: Wife falls asleep. I work on the homework late into the night. I knock out a press release and edit the other piece. It's rather dry stuff, but the struggle is part of the fun.

8 a.m. Wednesday. Wake up, wife looks at what I wrote and makes some comments. I make her lunch and send her off to work. I continue to work on the homework and email it along with a thank you note.

10 a.m. I try to relax. Wife forbids me to do anything else productive today. I decide to go to a movie, my second this year. While I am there, the realtor calls to say that HUD approved the sale. She's positively giddy. I have to call a company to de-winterize the house. So much for not being productive.

Now I'm just waiting by the phone, waiting for them to call me and tell me I've got a job. 

Things sticking in my craw lately

If you are going to have me fill out a job form that takes 2 hours to give you the exact same information that's on my resume and cover letter, please don't be a dick and send a form rejection letter.

I should not get antibiotics right away for an ear infection and then watch as my wife is told she has to wait a week to get antibiotics for an illness she got from me.  Watching her suffer for a week while I got better was horrible. Then she finally got a prescription on the THIRD visit to the doctor.

I got a call from a job that I did a phone interview for two weeks ago. They were going ahead with other people, but it was certainly nice to have a human being call to let me know. I appreciated that.

One of my wife's friends is helping me with my query letter, which is absolutely wonderful since he used to be in the agent business. He's also forwarded my name to contacts that might need some freelance work done from time to time. He is now my hero. 

While I will not use my name in this blog, since people who hire in this day and age do searches, and this is not a professional outlet that I want to advertise myself, I did get a thing published today by Walker Blogs. They were looking for writers of 300-word quickies called viewfinders. Wife encouraged me to send one in about a piece we saw last month at the Walker. The few readers of this blog will find out who I am, but I'm OK with that as long as you don't use my name in this space. The nice thing is that it will lead to some freelancing work so I can write about art events in the cities that wife drags me to.   

So between the contract editing work and this Walker thing, I might actually have some money trickling in. Not enough to live on, but I like that both things are doable even after I get a full time job. Once that happens, these part time things can go entirely to paying off debts and bills that have piled up during unemployment. It's just getting that full time job that's eluding me.

Our house is in the middle of selling. So that's nice!  I stopped paying for it in November, and I won't see any money whatsoever from the sale, but I think once it's done, it will be off the plate of worries I've had resting on my shoulders.

Wife is feeling the pressure of keeping things afloat by working full time while I struggle along looking for a full time job myself. It's a daily struggle. Tears. Stomach pits. IBS. Judging by the shit that's coming out of me now, by the time I'm in a home, I will be a nursing assistant's worst nightmare. (I said this wasn't professional. You were warned.) I love my wife and wish I could pull through soon to just get us both on some kind of solid ground. Once that happens, Watch Out Twin Cities.

Stop being a stupid interviewer, please!

The web is full of articles about the job interview process. These articles range from "10 things not to do in an interview" to "the five dumbest answers given in interviews."

Notice how all the emphasis is on the interviewee. The person desperate to get the job they've been "lucky" enough to get called in to talk about. As someone who goes through job interviews at least once a week for the past six months, I've become something of an expert on the interview process. I have to say, your performance is lacking, interviewers.

So, in the ever-tried-and-true list form, here's a top five mistakes to avoid that I've seen over the months.

1.       If you interview someone, whether over the phone or in person, do them the favor of telling them they didn't get the job.

                About half of the interviews I go on, send thank you letters for, and contact a week later to check on their progress - all perfectly reasonable things recommended by experts - I never hear from again. I took the time to thank you for taking the time to meet with me and discuss how I could best help your organization, but the fact is, I drove to your office, changed my schedule, and put on my best suit for you, sometimes taking 3 hours worth of writing tests. You show up in the same old thing you wear every day, talk to me for 30 minutes, and move on. I feel like we slept together and you didn't have the decency to call the next day.

2.       Please put the questions away!

                I now have a good idea what press junkets are like. I go to interviews, handle the same questions with a rehearsed ease of "spontaneity," and feel like we learned nothing about each other by the end of our time. Look, I interview people for a living as a reporter, let me tell you something - the best stuff you'll get is when you LISTEN to the other person, and ask questions about what they are saying. It's called a conversation. It's awesome! All too often, I get sat in a room with 2-5 other people, who read pre-written questions that come from the Dummies Guide to Conducting Job Interviews. "What interested you about this job?" "How do you handle change?" "What do you do when you have competing priorities?" I can only spin so much gold for such questions. I promise you, you will never get to know someone in this way. Don't get me wrong, pre-written questions can be a useful tool, but only if you ask follow up questions.

3.       More than the act of sticking to your scripted questions, some of the questions themselves need to go!

                You know what interested me in this job? You pay money. For services I can provide and have been doing well for years. I'm sorry that I don't have a born and bred loyalty to your company that I just applied to along with 30 others last week. I'm unemployed and am not choosy. That being said, if you hire me, I will kick so much ass and be so loyal, you'll be begging me to take it down a notch. But right now, the only thing that interested me was that you need a writer, and you pay. Period. But you ask this question and expect an "honest" response. I guarantee you all you will get is bull crap. 

4.       Telling me about your company is all good, but edit your shit.

                Maybe one in three interviews, but enough to be annoying, is the interviewer who spends 20-30 minutes of our brief time together talking about the company, their position, and the job details. This can be done in 5 minutes, tops. Any more time, and you are wasting a lot of time in our interview telling me about your company that I will not be working for because you haven’t taken a second to stop proselytizing to have a real conversation.

5.       Be honest.

                You ask honesty of people in interviews. Honesty and integrity screwed me out of a job last week, actually, but that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the things you say after the interview. If you are already set on someone else, let me know. Don't lead me on for a week or two, saying "we are still having internal discussions about the position" only to tell me later that I didn't get it. If I'm not in the running, let me know, and let me know what I can do better. I ask for feedback, but rarely get it. If I never hear what I did wrong, how can I do better? Constructive criticism would be good.

So, there's your top five. Not that I expect you to do them. After all, there's "so much going on around here" that you don't have time to put effort into finding the right person to fill a position at your business. You make that clear in the first two minutes. Every time. 

Good Problems

What a Friday.

I’m finishing week four of a 1-2 week job, inputting data, quality assurance stuff. Rather dull, but I’m still glad for the work. The supervisor asks me to come in on Tuesday, which will be my last day.

I’ve got a part-time job for 20 an hour writing for a legal company, but that won’t start for a couple weeks. But hey, even part time there will pay better than a week at Sears. Glad I didn't take that job.

Last week, I got tired of waiting for this creative talent staffing company to find me something, so I sent a somewhat snarky note. The last email I had gotten from them said they were working hard to find the best opportunity for me. I emailed back “You don’t need to work too hard, I’ll be happy with the second best opportunity.” For some reason, that got them looking for me after 4 months of not hearing from them, resulting in that part time gig.

Then Friday. I got a call from them to meet with a company on Monday that is looking for a temp to hire writing position for 22 an hour. Then I got a call from the other staffing place asking if I want to start Wednesday on a 1-2 month temp job for a legal office doing a lot of typing and Word stuff for 14.50 an hour. I said I could give them a firm answer on Monday, but the time commitment might be an issue. She seemed OK with that.

So after so long, I now have a part time gig, a temp gig, and a potential temp-to-hire gig all happening at the same damn time.

To top it off, I got home and in the mail was a late, but very very appreciated wedding gift that brought tears to wife's eyes and warmed my lumpy black heart and made me wish I could give the sender a big hug of thanks. 

I then started to update Wife on the phone calls I'd gotten since we last talked at noon.

Wife: Your life is ridiculous.

Me: You’re telling me.

Wife: I forbid you to keep talking about your latest phone call. It makes my brain hurt.

Me: gwaaahahahuuuu. Me brain hurt. Good problems.

That damn reuben sandwich!

The great emotional breakdown of 2012 started with a latke reuben from Rye Deli.

It had been months since wife and I had gone out to enjoy this city that we moved to six months ago with a job for her and dreams of continuing a career for me. Months of having to scrimp and save. Months of saying "Well, we can't go to this musician or comedian that we are hard core fans of, but once I get a job, things'll change."

Then on a tip from Andria, I started checking out the local library for free tickets to local places. The hope was to score tickets to the Minnesota Zoo and go there Thursday. Wife was taking her first paid vacation ever. I was working a temp job for three weeks and now had extra cash for gas money, and we had a plastic bin and bankers box full of books to sell to fund this excursion.

Unfortunately, the zoo tickets are a hot item at the library, only put out randomly, and they go fast. I've checked 4 times since last week, and never got lucky. We tried on Thursday and got nothing. I was determined to give wife a good day out though. We didn't know what we would do, but after selling the books, we had some money to do it.

Wife had read about Rye in pretty much every Twin Cities magazine, and ever since the New York honeymoon, she's wanted to visit. So we pulled in on Thursday afternoon, an empty time at Rye, and our eyes boggled at the menu, the fish on display, and promises of hand carved meats.

I ordered a brisket sandwich and poutine to share. Poutine at Rye is fries and cheese curds smothered in an onion-heavy gravy, and it makes you want to sell your unborn for the promise that you will have it again, soon.

Wife ordered a latke reuben, which is a reuben, but with latke instead of rye.

Her sandwich came out first. A pile of corned beef between two burned looking pieces of latke. She took a bite, and was instantly transported back to our honeymoon, wolfing down a pie tin full of corned beef from Carnegie Deli with a plastic fork in our hotel room across the street. She piled a fork full, carefully balancing the ingredients to give me the perfect bite. A bit scared, I put the fork in my mouth, and my eyes misted. The meat must have been soaking in angel blood and puppy dreams for a week. The latke was blackened, but tasted unburned, just perfectly crisp.

My sandwich was not as good. I'm not a fan of mustard, but it happens so seldom that a sandwich has mustard that I don't make sure to hold it every time.

But that reuben.

Damn.

Shit.

We sat there, I scraped mustard off my sandwich. Wife occasionally gave me more bites, which I took without hesitation.  I usually pick better than her, but this time it was her turn to share.

We then took in the Life Like exhibit at the Walker, which was fantastic. We could have gotten free tickets for this, but it was just one of those things where we didn't know we would be going until we were driving by it. The Life Like exhibit was one of those rare times where my background in modern lit and themes helped me to decode and understand the pieces on display, while still having a gut emotional reaction to them.

(not my picture)

We coasted through Friday, but I got a rejection from a job I sorely wanted and hadn't heard from for weeks. She was nice about it, but it still stung. With the temp job coming to a close, it started to feel like we were once again approaching that dark precipice of not knowing how to make it through another month.

On Saturday, I woke to check my email, and before I was gone 10 minutes, wife was calling for me. I was annoyed.

The off feeling didn't stop. I went to Cub to grab some groceries. Came home and cooked bacon and egg sandwiches. I rented two movies from a redbox. I know wife's tastes are different than mine, but I figured I had scored a good medium by getting two kids movies. Hugo and Tintin. I had to talk her into Hugo, which annoyed me, since I got it specifically for her. She had wanted to go out for St. Patties day, but we couldn't afford it. Instead, I made corned beef. But nothing seemed to be good enough. I was looking down the hole of joblessness once again, and I didn't know what was going to happen. The reuben had cracked the emotional wall on Thursday, and the art gallery had stuck a crowbar in that wall, but Saturday's fights with the wife took a bazooka to it.

We were lying in bed together at about 3, because we had had enough snipping, and nothing was going right between us, and the weight of everything just. Snapped.

And I started crying. Deep sobs. Like the kind a 13 year old girl would have if she came to the deep realization that Robert Pattinson was way too old for her and would never, ever, ever be interested and the best she could hope for was the scabby acne guy named Stan from fourth period. Holy shit did I break. And wife just jumped on, wrapping her arms around me, calling me back from the abyss. Telling me it would be all right. I cried like I couldn't breathe. I wore my way through eight Kleenix. I felt like I was doing sit ups, the deep stomach shit that was going on.

One hour later.

Me: What the hell was that?

Wife: It was you letting go for once. You haven't done that since we moved.

Me: Holy shit.

Wife: It's nice to know you are still human. I was worried. No one should be able to do what you've done for six months without that happening.

Me: Thank you for being here.

Wife: Hey, it's my turn. Howabout we watch Tintin?

Me: OK.

Epilogue: Tintin is frackin awesome.  

I wrote this while in my boxers

So week three of the temp job is going along nicely. It’s late tonight, and I haven’t blogged in a while. Wife is sleeping, dreaming poorly if history is any indication. Lots of things going on, and I don’t know how to organize it all into a coherent blog from the heart.

Temping. I have to say that I have truly enjoyed the mind-numbing trudgery that is my temp job for the past 2 and a half weeks. Mostly, I spend my days cutting and pasting from one document to another. Sometimes, I go in and fix html code. Sometimes, I create excel documents on what information is missing. Sometimes, I read over pages and pages of numbers to make sure that they are all correct. But, I’m getting paid for the first time in a long time, and that’s nice. I got to work overtime last week by going in Saturday. Time and a half kicks ass.

Not to complain about getting hung with a new rope, but it hasn’t made hunting for a permanent position easier. I now spend my few hours not working and not trying to tackle the laundry or keeping connected with the wife by applying to jobs. I’m still up for a couple, that said they would call two weeks ago. I send emails every 6 days to see if they are progressing. Nothing.

On Thursday, I went in for an interview at Sears. The internet link led me to believe it was the first of two such interviews, but I was hired after 20 minutes. For $6 an hour plus commission.

I’ve never been a proud person. I’ve worked shit jobs for shit pay and had no problem doing it. I lived for 2 and a half years in a 2 room apartment that had a bathroom in the main hallway, and with no shower where I had to sit in a tub and pour water on my head with a bucket because the tub was too small. I’m pretty sure my neighbor was cooking meth every night too.

But there was no mention of benefits. There was almost an expectation on the interviewers part that I would say no. “Do you have any problems with what I’ve said so far?” was a common question.  Then I was told to get a drug test in the next two days, regardless of what my availability was. The drug testing place was only open 9-4, and on the other end of the metro area. I already had work scheduled for the temp job where I get more than twice what I would earn at Sears.

So now came one of those moments. Those decisions that will haunt you no matter which way you choose.

Left: a soul-sucking job that I woudn’t enjoy, that wouldn’t help with the bills that have already piled up, that would be a large step backward, keep me away from the wife, and horrible to be around when I was with her, and my job hunt would be curtailed for who knows how long.

Right: A soul-sucking joblessness that continues to eat what little remains of my self esteem and self worth. Temp work that isn’t reliable.

A long weekend and lots of soul searching and conversations led us to me not going in for the drug testing. I have an interview Friday to do a similar job to the caretaking thing I did for 8 months after grad school – watching people with disabilities to make sure they are OK. I didn’t mind the work then, and would be happy to do it again. It also pays a shitton better, if not as well as I got in Fargo.

Here’s what keeps me going, in all the darkness. I just need a yes.

One yes.

I’ve been asking for that yes for six months now. And wading through rejection after rejection.

But One. Just one and both wife and I will have full time jobs for the first time in our relationship. We dream of paying bills when they come in the mail, instead of waiting until the last possible day. It’s a small dream, but its ours.

One yes and we will be able to finally take part in some of the events that the Twin Cities has to offer.

One yes, and we can start the long road of recovery back to not having to raid the change jar to pay for gas to get to an interview. To not having to craigslist items to get by for another week.

One yes and our world changes.

That’s what I hang on to. 

The incredibly demeaning, pointless, soul sucking mindfuck that is job hunting

So it's been about 6 months now of job hunting. 250 jobs applied to, 2 job fairs, 2 networking events, and about 30 phone and in person interviews. That's 1 out of every ten applications that gets an interview. When you figure that most jobs have 90-200 applicants, I think those are pretty good numbers, yet I still have not converted into a job. The frustration is aggravating, demoralizing, and highly depressing. I've been sooooo close, and usually get told that I did absolutely nothing wrong. Wife says it's a miracle that I don't just lie in bed all day under the covers.

Three weeks ago, I was in the running for a position at the MNCPA for basically the same job I've been doing for the past 5 years, even less demanding, in fact. I did something I hadn't done before, I was more myself than usual, rather than formulating answers based on advice learned from interview books and websites. I briefly hinted at this previously, but want to go into this more. At one point I mentioned how my last job writing and editing newsletters was everything I loved about journalism with nothing I hated. I usually don't use the hate word, and books would say this is a big no no. And when asked what I hated about the job, I answered with my heart rather than my head.

"Well, that's a big question with a rather complicated answer, but I think it comes down to honesty. Newspapers pretend to be objective, but, particularly in small towns, the newspaper is essentially a promotional tool for how wonderful the community is no matter what the story. I found that to be a sort of dishonesty that can eat at you over time. Newsletters, however, are up front about their purpose. Everyone involved is in on the production process. You write stories about people, and they have a chance to see it before it goes to print. I like that collaboration."

Ordinarily, I would follow advice and address such a question with this. It usually doesn't come up since I don't talk like that about former jobs to begin with.

Anyway, I came in second for the job. The interviewer was super nice and left a message for me that was hands down the best rejection I have ever received. She seemed very sad that she couldn't hire me, that they didn't have two jobs. "You did everything absolutely right," she said. If anything didn't work out with the other person, or if she heard of anything, she would let me know. It made me feel pretty good and hopeful for the future. Perhaps I had latched onto something.

Then, on Tuesday last week, the same MNCPA job was posted online. Perhaps it was a mistake? I emailed. No response. I called, no answer. I called again, and she picked up. It was a pleasant conversation. I asked about the position, indicated that I was still available and willing. She said they were starting the search from scratch, and that I would be in the mix, that the other person didn't work out for some vague reason, and they were going another direction (with the same exact job description). She didn't know how long the process would take, but I should call back to check in at some point. I wanted to throw up a bit. Was everything she said before a lie? Was I grasping on to such hopeful words after a long, brutal search for jobs, for nothing? I was on lunch at my temp job, so there were no blankets to crawl under.

Life goes on. More jobs applied to. I'm waiting to hear about one editing position after interviewing 10 days ago. I should hear in the next day or two. I have a phone interview on Wednesday for a proofreading job and an in-person interview on Thursday evening for a job at Sears that would be a desperate return to retail. Next week I have an interview to work for the state in a caretaking position.

All I have ever wanted to do was write, to work on the craft, to meet people and talk to them until I find out why they are incredible and to share their stories with others. I moved to the cities thinking 8 years of doing just that and doing it well -- and earning a master's degree -- would be enough to land any number of communications jobs only asking for 2-3 years of experience and a bachelor's degree. Turns out that it isn't.

After almost 6 months, I did manage to get a temp job last week entering data from an adobe document to a CMS system. It continues this week. Although there were two aggravating hiccups with the temp service.   On Wednesday, when the world was covered in ice, I woke in time to give myself an hour and a half to drive ten miles to work. What I didn't account for was the extra 30 miles that would be added to the trip when my wife needed me to drive her to work as well. I notified the temp service of this. When I got a call from them, she asked "did you leave early?" Like I was some lazy roustabout barely able to figure out this whole "work" thing. I let it slide. Much like my car on the way to work. Then, I found out about a potential full-time job interview that wanted to see me. I emailed the temp service to ask: "I have received a call about an interview on Friday. I have not asked about how you work around interviews for permanent positions. I have not returned the call for the interview yet, so don't know how flexible they are on time, but she requested a 2 p.m. interview. Let me know." The answer was illuminating.

"As for an interview on Friday – this is only a week to 2 week assignment so it does not look good to have an interview during this period.  I would think the company would accommodate you if they know you are working on contract and will schedule after hours."

First, thanks for assuming that anyone would stay late at their job to interview a potential employee. Second, thanks for putting my temporary position above a potential permanent placement.

Anyway, that's a lot of ranting for one blog post. It may not be exciting to read, but this one was more therapy than anything.