The (Mis?)Adventures of a Perpetual Job-Hunter/Job-Hater

My interview this morning went well, and while they strongly hinted that I could expect an offer soon enough, I’m about 90% sure that it’s not the right opportunity to jump into after a painful year and a half of job dissatisfaction. My goal is to never again put myself in the same situation I extricated myself from only a week ago, and I’m afraid that accepting this job would contradict that goal entirely. I know I’m not interested in editing the content I’d be immersed in during my tenure there, which is why I left both of my previous jobs. The time to be selective is now, but unfortunately my mom doesn’t understand the logic behind this…

At 11pm last night, I applied for a magazine internship that I’m dying to secure, and lo and behold, I was miraculously contacted this morning regarding my application and invited for an interview scheduled for Tuesday morning. I’m really hoping to get this one, folks… really hoping. I’ve been fantasizing all day about getting hired on full-time after my internship expires and finally experiencing what it’s like to have a job that I actually enjoy… I’m probably being overly optimistic, but being jobless can do that to a girl, strangely enough. I think it’s because I’m no longer shackled to a job that I have to force myself, with great difficulty, to accept (sort of like forcing yourself to swallow Buckley’s without gagging) - when I worked for Awkward/A$$hole boss, that forced acceptance ended up permeating/polluting my outlook on the future, hindering me from recognizing that I could indeed do more than just passively accepting my situation.

So now that I’m taking accountability for my career path, I’m willing to be an unpaid, full-time intern at a reputable magazine for a couple of months to acquire some much needed and incredibly valuable experience while working part-time. It makes perfect sense to me… and to my husband – God bless him for being so darn supportive. But it doesn’t make that much sense to my mom… I could see the disapproval in the look on her face when I told her. And I’m sure it doesn’t make sense to several others who are aware of this plan (they are, however, a tad more sensitive than my mom and therefore avoid manifesting less than nuanced reactions when I discuss it, haha!). But simply working to generate an income hasn’t gotten me anywhere fruitful so far. I think it’s about time that I change my strategy and let what I love to do guide my job search… even if that means working for free for a little while.

The bottom line: if you are okay with what you want to do, that’s all that should matter. Readers, this sounds like such a trite statement, such fluffy advice that we all roll our eyes at, but it’s advice that we don’t fully take to heart when we should. I’ve felt the need to justify my decisions to people in this past week, but I can’t let my hyper-sensitivity to what others think prevent me from doing something I’m over-the-moon excited about. Would it make sense if I did?

A gem of advice: DO NOT accept a job at a company that lacks a legitimate HR department! Not only will you witness HR violations occur left, right, and center (and all known to the phony HR department they’ve set up) during your miserable tenure at the company, but you will more than likely be f*cked with when it comes to your final pay.

So, learn from my situation, dear friends. Here are a few tips to bear in mind if you have the misfortune of being f*cked with by a former, legitimate-HR-department-less employer, thereby prolonging your ties (against your will) with a company you despise:

#1: Incessant emailing lets them know you mean business. Harass, harass, and harass them again for what you’re entitled to.

#2: Point out the stupidity in the lame justification they will try to sell you in their attempt to f*ck up your final pay. Do this in conjunction with tip #1.

#3: Be extremely thorough in your explanation of why they are wrong. Do this in conjunction with tips #1 and #2.

#4: Be ready to bust out the big guns: tell them you are not afraid to take the issue up with the labour board, and if they don’t get the hint after you tell them that, go one step further by declaring you are well-connected with employment lawyers. I’m almost at this point! Also, I do know employment lawyers and would be more than happy to send along contact info if you need it!

#5: Do not just “let it go”, people – yes, you may just want to throw in the towel and wash your hands of it all so that you can finally begin the process of erasing your experience with the company from your memory forever, but don’t let them get away with this bull$h!t. Just think of all the days you spent languishing at your desk, utterly bored and unfulfilled… so first they want your soul, and now they want a portion of your earnings, too??? NOoooooOOoo, I don’t think so!

I wish I could explicitly name my former employer to give you all a proper warning! The ad for my former job is on Workopolis right now and is extremely deceptive… how I wish I could expose the dishonest company behind the pretty ad. Sigh.

Hokay, my sincerest apologies for last night’s utterly depressing post! I hope I didn’t lose my small handful of readers (are there any more of you out there???) because of my wallowing. I’m a little more chipper today, I promise!

So my rant last night was a little heavy, but for more humourous work rants check out www.workrant.com. A ton of the rants posted there are comedy gold – all of you fellow job-hunters/job-haters will appreciate the humour, the unabashed, expletive-rich declarations of boss-hating, and knowing that you are not alone. So read a few and post a few of your own… you might find it therapeutic – empowering, even – to send your thoughts out into cyberspace since you’re forced to muffle them in the office.

During the last 26 minutes or so of my lunch break this afternoon, I sat in my car and almost convinced myself to give in to the overwhelming urge not to return to the office after my glorious one-hour respite was over. I wanted so very badly to be fearless, to let my thirst for sanity dictate my course of action for once, to drive out of the gloomy parking lot and cross the threshold into happy, sunny freedom. But at 1:54pm, I knew I couldn’t retreat. I have bills to pay, I thought… four dogs to feed… gas to buy… a husband to consult before making significant, perhaps ludicrous decisions of the sort and to whom, along with the rest of my family, I’d have to justify the spur-of-the-moment action that would have such final, irrevocable consequences. So better judgment took a hold of me despite the fact that my insides were practically screaming for me to get the hell out of there. And by 1:56pm, the gut-wrenching longing to leave my God-awful job was quieted by overriding Reason – in an eerily robotic (and highly disappointing) manner, I was already walking back into the building that houses so much of my misery.

It’s absolutely terrifying, this Reason, isn’t it? Because oftentimes what Reason can force us to do isn’t truly reasonable. Is it reasonable to stay in an environment that actually makes me hate myself more and more with each passing day because it nurtures my habitual participation in the murder of my own brain? Is it reasonable to feign politeness (however obviously forced it is) toward my belittling, control-obsessed boss? Is it reasonable to continue doing a job that I didn’t even sign up for upon my initial hiring, and one that I still haven’t been properly trained to do, four freakin’ months later? Is it reasonable for me to accept being severely underpaid in proportion to my education, capabilities, and job experience? Of course, not, no… and yet the ritualizing of all these somehow “reasonable” things tricks me into thinking otherwise.

This, though, is the most terrifying thing about the trickster, Reason…

My brother-in-law’s father passed away just a couple of weeks ago both unexpectedly and before his time… life is fleeting. We’re all on this earth on finite terms, which should galvanize our thirst for relishing each day fully so that not a single day is wasted if it is the last… this job, though, essentially makes me scoff at that important (perhaps even most important) realization – it makes me wish each day would end sooner. Would Time just hurry up so that I can get out of here, I say to myself constantly while staring vacantly at my computer screen. And if something is so unbearable that it makes us want each blessing of a day to expire faster, causes us to try and make ourselves numb during work hours just so that we can sit still, and teaches us to ultimately appreciate life less… then we have to let it go.

But many of us don’t. I’m one of the many. So why in the world do we do this to ourselves? Because we have to, is the resounding answer, I’m sure. But there it is again, what we believe to be Reason telling us to accept something wholly unreasonable. We don’t have to… we don’t have to do anything. And yet even as I write those words, I still don’t believe them 100%. You know how I know that? Because I know that I’ll wake up tomorrow morning and get ready for work, hop in my car and drive (all the while dreading the start of my work day), and carry out the same ol’ foolish ritual all over again.

I received a much anticipated phone call yesterday afternoon from the potential employer I mentioned in an earlier post – I’ve been invited to complete some editing tests, and if all goes well on those, I’ll secure an interview! Ack, The Interview. I absolutely dread interviews because I always over-prepare for them, only to under-perform during the actual thing… always.

The initial “pre-screening” interview was conducted over the phone. Fortunately, the kind woman from Human Resources was never able to reach me live when she attempted to call me – instead, the pre-screening interview was set up via a series of voicemail exchanges, and this highly convenient game of phone tag allowed me to prepare a nice little script to adhere to unwaveringly during our chat. It’s always a good idea to anticipate the questions that a potential employer will ask you, and since I’m a stronger communicator in writing, it helps me flesh out my thoughts better if I write down the general gist of my answers and expand them verbally afterwards. A great tip, I think, for all of you who share the same preference for writing! Anywho, I decided I’d go that extra mile this time and write an exhaustive script from which I could read VERBATIM (while throwing in the occassional, “you know”, “hmm, that’s a good question”, etc., to make it more natural).

So of course I was incredibly confident that I’d ace it, especially given the format of the inverview, which not only allowed me to refer to my script but also to the company’s website on my laptop, all the while pyjama-ed out and lying on my stomach (the most comfortable position, I think!) in bed. I was so ready, I thought, so ready.

Imagine my horror when the kind woman from Human Resources asked me questions about my current position rather than inviting me to discuss my relevant previous experience as an Editor. I wanted to impress her by emphasizing how multi-faceted my previous job was; instead, I gave her a rather cringe-inducing one-sentence answer when she asked me about what I did. Yes, I froze. =S It wasn’t in the script!

The script did help me in answering some of the more general questions that she asked, but let this be a lesson on how not to prep for an interview - while I didn’t quite bomb it and was able to redeem myself just enough to snag an editing test invitation, sometimes excessive preparation can limit you and ironically under-prepare you if it leads you to take the kind of narrow approach that I so gracefully took. I think from an employer’s perspective, a good interview is a good conversation… and no one likes talking to a wall!