 So one month ago, I launched myself into a new city. A new time zone. New coast.
New cardiovascular challenges. San Francisco's city planners disregarded all topographical factors when they plopped this city down on more than 50 hills, and my roommates apparently disregarded my atrophied lungs and calf muscles when they selected what would become my abode upon moving here - on the sheer face of one such incline.
These aren't the only adjustments. I have entered a sustainable utopia, where compost bins are cheerfully dealt out, gratis, to each residence, where recycling doesn't just refer to my best friend's annual closet clean-out (thanks, Janette!), and where I'm pretty sure the grocery clerk at Safeway gave me the stink-eye last week for buying inorganic fruit. (I believe in the environment! But I am on a budget!)
Along with a new address, a new appreciation for the term "sticker
shock", and a freshly-approved smog inspection badge on my unsuspecting
little red Hyundai, one would think I'd have a new job, too. Just to
round things off.
Rather, one would hope.
But see, I like to keep things exciting. And therefore, to go along
with the foreign surroundings, I have launched myself into the rocky
terrain of unemployment.
Oh, it's not that I don't work. I go to an office all week long. I do great work, actually. It's that I don't get paid to work.
May I present the concept "unpaid internship". The bane of my financial existence.
I go to my unpaid internship every day, and on my lunch hours and
increasingly anxiety-ridden days off, I go to first and second
interviews with various prospective gainful employers. I then calmly
wait for the rejection emails to roll in - always pleasant, always
emphasizing how nice it was to meet with me, always concluding that I
should be honored to be runner-up to the asshole who actually has
relevant job experience in the "field" and thus, will be receiving a
paycheck. In other words, Later, loser.
They don't say asshole or loser in their primly worded smack-downs. But I can read the subtext.
How, I ask you, is one supposed to gain relevant job experience in a
new field if one can't weasel her way into even the entry-est of
entry-level positions in that field?
Refer back to my nemesis, Unpaid Internship. Apparently, this is the
only thing for which I'm qualified. At 25, being labeled "intern" feels
borderline inappropriate. At 35, when I inevitably decide to change
career tacks again, it will be fully humiliating. I'm steeling myself
now.
New city, new life, new sense of failure and worthlessness.
Some might hypothesize that I'm not trying hard enough. To them, I
serenely offer my middle finger. And share the following anecdote, just
one of many from my job search.
Last week, I decided that on this infuriating playing field in the
game of Employment, I should just embrace the New-ness of it all. See
things with a fresh, organic, smog-free, eye. Think outside my white
middle-class college-degreed box, quit limiting myself to jobs in
public relations and marketing and other perky, freshly-pressed
positions, and brainstorm something else, something new, which would immerse me in this strange land.
Inspired, I clambered over the hill to the predominantly Latino
neighborhood just a few streets over. Panting, I went to every Mexican
bakery in a 10-block radius, and in a faltering gringa accent, pleaded for a job as a baker's assistant.
I just want to make beautiful pastry!, I implored. Por favor, let me hacer the pasteles! I work muy muy barato!
In English: Pay me in cookies, if you like.
They turned me down. For this minimum-wage position, this sweaty
early-morning labor in an inferno-like gritty back kitchen, they all -
every single one of them - turned me down. Flat.
At least I didn't have to wait for an e-mail.
Cheers to new experiences. Excuse me while I scale the cliff back home.
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Quirkee Voices 
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