Job Hunting
This is the only place I ever want to work.
Winter term is over, and I’m back home for Spring Break. There’s all sorts of things about living with your parents that you forget when you’re off at school, like how there aren’t dozens of half naked guys parading back and forth between the shower and their rooms (hopefully), or how you don’t have to consider what STD the previous user of the toilet had (again, hopefully), or how your Mom and Dad will frequently pause whatever movie you’re watching to debate about whether the character actor in the background was in That Movie with That Guy from Hill Street Blues and how great That Movie had been. Vacation life is great, but with it comes a new challenge – finding a job.
I never had a job before the summer after my senior year, and I’ll talk about that in detail a little bit later. Growing up, money was never really an issue – I had an allowance, like most kids, and I managed to live on that just fine, right up on into high school. I didn’t buy clothes, I didn’t have a car to pay for or gas up, and most dealers would accept locks of my hair in exchange for meth, so I never really needed a whole lot of cash. When I finally did get a job, my view of the way the world worked changed a lot. Walking into the supermarket, I realized that the people around me didn’t just live there like a monastic order of pimply faced adolescents with an extreme devotion to produce – they were all biding their time until their shift ended just like me! It was a depressing discovery, especially after how hard I worked to get a job in the first place.
For me, finding a job has been a lot like my attempts to find a girlfriend: Humiliating and completely fruitless. I think I’m very qualified to form a caring relationship with a charming and attractive employer, however, said employers turn me down cold and instead hire completely unqualified applicants who are probably frat boys and will only hurt them in the end. I first danced this tango last spring, where I applied for a summer job at literally hundreds of perfectly comely and intelligent places, all of which were apparently too free spirited and busy for a new employee at the time. In the end, my friend Dylan hooked me up with a part time job pressure washing cars in the mornings at Capitol Chevrolet, which was a lot like a blind date with an anime loving Republican who has severe hygiene issues. Every morning I got up at 7:00 AM and drove 10 miles to the dealership, where three other guys and I would wheel a pressure washer on a cart around the lot and spray down all the cars, then dry them. I found this job objectionable for multiple reasons:
1) I hate the Cadillac Escalade more than most things on Earth. If you like it, shut up; driving one does not make you a rapper, it makes you an environment hating, road hogging idiot. However, Capitol Chevrolet stocked a lot of Cadillac Escalades, and if you don’t follow me, just try to imagine wiping moist bird crap off of whatever you hate the most with a wet rag at 7:30 in the morning.
2) My coworkers were from a distinctly different socioeconomic class than I was. This wasn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but they were dicks about it. They made fun of me because I was going to go to college. One of them was convinced that the dark side of the moon was visible from Japan. One of them once bragged about how he got a girl pregnant. Even more shocking, one of them liked President Bush.
3) President Bush!
4) I mean, really, he was just blindly in favor of our dimwitted, racist excuse for a leader. It boggles the mind.
As much as I’d like to forget my relationship with Capitol Chevrolet, we still meant something to one another for awhile, mainly because she paid me and I sprayed her with pressurized water just the way she liked it. I added the experience to my resume today, and then printed off a few copies and went out job hunting. As usual, I’d go into whatever business caught my fancy, say hello to whomever was behind the counter, check to make sure my fly wasn’t open, and then take the leap and ask them if they were planning on hiring any extra help this summer. The first few places gave me the typical answer – “Maybe”, but the last place I tried seemed pretty interested.
The lady behind the counter at Carl's Restaurant (a name that will make you go, “Hey, I love that place!” if you live in the right part of Multnomah County) seemed really genuinely interested when I handed her my resume, and then the manager told me she’d be sure to take a look at it later, and then they gave me an application to fill out and asked me a bunch of questions about where I was going to school and when I’d be available and commented on how they’d never met anyone named Truman before. If I had a job-hunting wingman, this would the point at which I’d turn and give him the thumbs up. It’s the resume that did it – that really hooked her.
I think a dating resume would be a great idea. Employers and potential partners both want the same thing: Somebody committed, who’s right for the job and isn’t a deadbeat or a psychopath. People could include a list of all their previous girlfriends, with how long the relationship lasted and maybe some letters of recommendation from the more amicable breakups. Then there’d be a list of skills, like “Proficient in bra removal” or “Willing to kill spiders in girlfriend’s apartment”… This is good. I’m making one. Ladies, I’ll expect you to have applications printed up.
I never had a job before the summer after my senior year, and I’ll talk about that in detail a little bit later. Growing up, money was never really an issue – I had an allowance, like most kids, and I managed to live on that just fine, right up on into high school. I didn’t buy clothes, I didn’t have a car to pay for or gas up, and most dealers would accept locks of my hair in exchange for meth, so I never really needed a whole lot of cash. When I finally did get a job, my view of the way the world worked changed a lot. Walking into the supermarket, I realized that the people around me didn’t just live there like a monastic order of pimply faced adolescents with an extreme devotion to produce – they were all biding their time until their shift ended just like me! It was a depressing discovery, especially after how hard I worked to get a job in the first place.
For me, finding a job has been a lot like my attempts to find a girlfriend: Humiliating and completely fruitless. I think I’m very qualified to form a caring relationship with a charming and attractive employer, however, said employers turn me down cold and instead hire completely unqualified applicants who are probably frat boys and will only hurt them in the end. I first danced this tango last spring, where I applied for a summer job at literally hundreds of perfectly comely and intelligent places, all of which were apparently too free spirited and busy for a new employee at the time. In the end, my friend Dylan hooked me up with a part time job pressure washing cars in the mornings at Capitol Chevrolet, which was a lot like a blind date with an anime loving Republican who has severe hygiene issues. Every morning I got up at 7:00 AM and drove 10 miles to the dealership, where three other guys and I would wheel a pressure washer on a cart around the lot and spray down all the cars, then dry them. I found this job objectionable for multiple reasons:
1) I hate the Cadillac Escalade more than most things on Earth. If you like it, shut up; driving one does not make you a rapper, it makes you an environment hating, road hogging idiot. However, Capitol Chevrolet stocked a lot of Cadillac Escalades, and if you don’t follow me, just try to imagine wiping moist bird crap off of whatever you hate the most with a wet rag at 7:30 in the morning.
2) My coworkers were from a distinctly different socioeconomic class than I was. This wasn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but they were dicks about it. They made fun of me because I was going to go to college. One of them was convinced that the dark side of the moon was visible from Japan. One of them once bragged about how he got a girl pregnant. Even more shocking, one of them liked President Bush.
3) President Bush!
4) I mean, really, he was just blindly in favor of our dimwitted, racist excuse for a leader. It boggles the mind.
As much as I’d like to forget my relationship with Capitol Chevrolet, we still meant something to one another for awhile, mainly because she paid me and I sprayed her with pressurized water just the way she liked it. I added the experience to my resume today, and then printed off a few copies and went out job hunting. As usual, I’d go into whatever business caught my fancy, say hello to whomever was behind the counter, check to make sure my fly wasn’t open, and then take the leap and ask them if they were planning on hiring any extra help this summer. The first few places gave me the typical answer – “Maybe”, but the last place I tried seemed pretty interested.
The lady behind the counter at Carl's Restaurant (a name that will make you go, “Hey, I love that place!” if you live in the right part of Multnomah County) seemed really genuinely interested when I handed her my resume, and then the manager told me she’d be sure to take a look at it later, and then they gave me an application to fill out and asked me a bunch of questions about where I was going to school and when I’d be available and commented on how they’d never met anyone named Truman before. If I had a job-hunting wingman, this would the point at which I’d turn and give him the thumbs up. It’s the resume that did it – that really hooked her.
I think a dating resume would be a great idea. Employers and potential partners both want the same thing: Somebody committed, who’s right for the job and isn’t a deadbeat or a psychopath. People could include a list of all their previous girlfriends, with how long the relationship lasted and maybe some letters of recommendation from the more amicable breakups. Then there’d be a list of skills, like “Proficient in bra removal” or “Willing to kill spiders in girlfriend’s apartment”… This is good. I’m making one. Ladies, I’ll expect you to have applications printed up.
Truman Capps will not kill spiders in your apartment, but feels he makes up for it in his dedication to bra removal.