Reading Between the Lines . . .
Jeff's Job Search Diary, Entry 1:
About to move to Eugene! Very excited. Everyone says it's hard to get a job here, but I don't buy it. I can cook! I can work with crazy people! Surely, the ubiquitous presence of hunger and insanity will stabilize my career anywhere, despite the constant griping of tie-dyed, dreadlocked hippies that there are no jobs in town. No jobs for stoners, perhaps. I shall use the fail-safe "shock and awe" approach. A tie, and a Regis Philbin-style shimmery dress shirt. That'll be the ace up MY sleeve. Poor fools won't know what hit them. I've already got an interview this week with Reconnecting Youth. Sure, I don't know anything about the program, sure I'm getting in over my head, but check out this smile, baby! Look at my tie! Shock and awe, my friend, shock and awe.
Jeff's Job Search Diary, Entry 2:
Still waiting for a call back from the Reconnecting Youth job. They must be waiting for their retinas to heal.
Jeff's Job Search Diary, Entry 3:
Rejected! Can you believe it?! I've never interviewed for a job I didn't get. The fools! The pitiful fools! I've posted their name on a corkboard of agencies/people to contact when my first book makes the New York Times Bestseller List, joining them with the celebrated ranks of several high school teachers, grade-school bullies, the National Honor Society chairpersons, and the entire faculty and admissions department of Northwestern University. Just wait. Your time is near.
Jeff's Job Search Diary, Entry 4:
Interviewed for a Life Skills Facilitator today, a position which would make me responsible for teaching the day to day skills necessary to cook, get an apartment, and find employment. Does it strike anyone else as ironic that I'm INTERVIEWING for this job?!?? How good can I POSSIBLY be at getting and retaining employment if I'm sitting in a social service office without coffee at 7:00 AM freezing my butt off in Payless Shoes trying to impress a company that plans to pay me $10 an hour and screw me on benefits? I bring this up to the committee. They don't see the irony. I explain that humor, also, is a life skill. They show me the door.
Jeff's Job Search Diary, Entry 5:
Went to an interview for a proofreading job today. Not an interview so much as a humiliating spelling test for the unemployed. Here I am, with a range of 50 year-old recovering meth addicts and crossword Nazis taking a competency test which requires me to distinguish between who and whom, further and farther, and asks me, in a final act of mockery, to spell "misspell." The final sheet of open-ended asks me to explain the difference between a pica and a point. I tell them a pica is a variety of arctic ground squirrel which makes it's home in the Canadian north and southeastern Alaska. "As to the point," I wrote, "your guess is as good as mine." I was the last to finish, and they handed me a ten-spot for my time. This will make that the first ten dollars I've earned in Eugene!
Jeff's Job Search Diary, Entry 6:
I have an interview today for a Community Service Worker, supervising delinquent youth in the wilderness while simultaneously doing trail maintenance work. The six month forecast calls for rain. Still, good pay, and an interesting job. I pull out my Regis gear and throw on Eminem's Lose Yourself to psyche myself up for the interview. "Look. If you had one shot or one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment, would you capture it, or just let it slip?" I'm rapping to myself in the mirror, work up a sweat, and have to change shirts.
Jeff's Job Search Diary, Entry 7:
No one called today. I spent the ten dollars I made on a new tie-dye shirt and a Dreadlock MAGIC! kit, then walked down to hang out at the local market. I saw some over-eager kid in a Regis shirt and shook my dreads. "Ain't nothin' son," I told him. I hope tears wash out of flashy fabric.
Jeff's Job Search, Entry 8:
Was promised to get a call on the Community Service Worker position today. Sat around making beaded necklaces until 4:30, then the phone rang. It WASN'T the Community Service Worker man calling, but the proofreading job which I had effectively taunted several weeks previous. They wondered if I could start tomorrow. I laughed and told them I thought I bombed that test. Stiffly, they told me I didn't. So that's that. Tomorrow, 1:30 PM Orientation. My friends at the market bid me a trance-like goodbye, and Emily moved back in, just like she promised.
Looks like that's it for the job search journal. I guess, from now on, this world is mine for the taking, make me king as we move toward a new world order, a normal life is boring but super stardom is close to post-mordem, it only grows harder, homie grows hotter, coast to coast shows he's known as the globe trotter . . . . .
but the beat goes on duddadumdadum . . . .
Jeff
posted by Tobias Arthur @ 12:10 AM
4 Comments:
Love the entry, Jeff... you rock! Or rap, as it were.
Best of luck on the job. I'll be thinking of you. I'm sure Em misses the dreads.
Tash
Jeff joins the 9 to 5 working world as a proofreader. Somehow, I don't feel joy. Instead, I am reminded of a scene from INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, when it is revealed that Jeff Goldblum's character has become a pod person: "This is fine," he drones in a voice totally devoid of emotion, "why did we fight so hard to resist it...?" Or, to put it in terms from Stephen King's THE TOMMYKNOCKERS: congratulations Jeff, you are BECOMING...one of us.
Eight to noon, dad. Eight to noon. Still only half-way there. Fear not, I'm still only working undercover as a "working man." But remember, a man cannot long wear one face to himself and another to the public without becoming confused as to which is which. I'd look up who said that, or maybe give it more thought, but I have work to do.
-Jeff
Picas and points are units of measurement in typography.
Six picas in an inch, twelve points in a pica.
Congrats on the job, dude!!
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