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

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.

It’s been some time since my last post, and I’m sure my handful of readers have been wondering (well, at least I hope they’ve been wondering – and I hope there are still a handful of you out there!) how I’ve been doing since that fateful day…

I don’t regret quitting at all. I have been coping with the fear that stems from, as my good friend articulated, leaving something safe for the unknown… but I haven’t experienced even the slightest regret since emancipating myself from Awkward Boss’ evil clutches and the drudgery of a soul-killing job.

I’m sure some people think that my decision was rash, but I have faith that this will all work out. The truth is that I’m young, I’m smart, I’ve got a good education, and I know how to sell my qualifications and skills  pretty well to potential employers – I’m not at all worried that I’ll be forever unemployed from this point on… even in this terrible job market, I’m confident that I can secure a respectable position soon. But I so desperately want to find an opportunity that will make me truly content – and that is a much more difficult task.

So I’ve been keeping myself quite busy since making the choice to be unemployed. The day after quitting, I completed the editorial tests for the other potential employer. I’ve applied for several jobs that I think I’d enjoy, making a conscious effort to be more selective in my job hunt. But I’ve been most focused on submitting my cover letter (now very carefully written!) and resume to several magazines in hopes of securing an internship. And, to my great surprise, I actually received a response just a couple of hours ago from an Editor who might be interested in taking me on. I’m almost giddy at the thought of gaining experience working at an actual magazine. And as mind-blowing as it sounds, the unpaid aspect of it is pretty insignificant to me, even with gas to buy, four dogs to feed, and bills to pay.

Is it absolutely crazy that I’m most excited about the prospect of securing an unpaid internship? To some of you it might be, but to the others who share my sentiments about vocation, I’m sure you understand my giddiness.

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.

A good friend of mine just recently started her own online vintage clothing shop (shop online here: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=7957463), which has really inspired me. She and I often discuss the importance of choosing a job that incorporates what we’re passionate about in life, and since she hasn’t yet found a position that’s well-suited to her interests in this terribly limited job market, she took the initiative to essentially create a job for herself that allows her to apply her talent, creativity, and her passion for vintage fashion in a manifest way. I’m both incredibly proud and envious of her. That’s right – I’m envious, and I’ll own up to it! ;-D I’m envious because she’s on to something, folks – something that not many people my age are on to. Not only is she a self-starter with strong initiative, but she’s bold enough to exercise the selectivity that leads an individual down the path toward a self-fulfilling career.

I think it’s relatively safe to say that we know all about initiative. We hear all about it in discussions geared toward career searching and career development, we read all about it in job advertisements and in literature on what it takes to make entrepreneurial ventures successful. It’s clear that initiative and all things career-related go hand-in-hand. But let’s talk about selectivity for a sec, which my friend’s admirable venture has prompted me to contemplate…because I think everyone in my current position – desperate to be liberated as soon as possible from a soul-murdering job – forgets about the importance of selectivity due to the overwhelming notion that any other job would be sheer bliss in comparison… and don’t get me wrong, it probably would be, but if we’re talking about self-fulfillment here, then I think a certain longevity needs to be entrenched in that sheer bliss. A change of scenery would only bring about temporary job happiness; soon enough, though, if it’s just another job that stifles your potential, suppresses your creativity, discourages your autonomy… boy, I can really go on and on here… ahem, the welcome change of scenery will very quickly become just an alternate backdrop to the same mind-numbing and soul-killing you endured in the job you bolted from in the first place.

And yet even with that acknowledgment ever-present in the back of my mind somewhere, I’m still totally and utterly guilty of allowing this “any other job would be sheer bliss in comparison” notion to guide my job-searching frenzy. And “frenzy” is indeed the best word to describe my job search, due to my gross lack of selectivity, which is rooted, of course, in my dire need to realize my dream of abandoning this Human Resources Department-less (scary, right?), employee-undervaluing company with just a moment’s notice (courteously giving Awkward Boss two weeks’ notice is almost incomprehensible to me!). It’s all a haze. For example, when I frantically scour Workopolis job ads, I rarely fully absorb and process what positions entail. I copy and paste the same generic cover letter in all of my applications, the odd time making poorly thought-out modifications that evince an embarrassing lack of care on my part to tailor my applications to the specific positions I apply for (and on really bad days, I should confess, I’ve even submitted cover letters that specify incorrect job titles in the very first line – “I wish to be considered for the Production Editor Position” when actually I was applying for a Proofreading position… oops!). I next to never have a clue about the company I’m applying to work for. In the midst of the onslaught of resume submissions propelled by my need to find a-job-any-job-oh-please-I-need-to-get-out-of-this-place!, my desire to find a job that will make me genuinely happy and motivate me to be the most impressive, most valuable, most engaged employee that I can be doesn’t translate. I know in this horrible job market we job-searchers feel that we have no choice but to apply for anything and everything and that being selective is incredibly risky…I need a job, NOW, you may be saying, and being selective could jeopardize my chances of finding employment NOW. Everyone is in a different circumstance, of course, but if you have room to allow selectivity/your interests/your passions/your larger career goals guide your job search, then do so. The benefits, I think, are manifold – for both practical and “transcendent” reasons. Under the practical umbrella of benefits, for example: it’ll minimize the time you spend applying for (and, in the event that you are called back from potential employers, respectfully declining interviews for) jobs that you aren’t actually interested in. This has happened to me a few times – it involves truly begrudging effort to dodge phone calls from potential employers you’re no longer interested in or devise believable and reasonable excuses when declining interviews for positions you initially expressed enthusiasm about. Moreover, it’ll give you more time to allocate toward tailoring your applications with care (learn from my laughable mistakes!), thereby increasing your chances of recruitment. Under the “transcendent” umbrella of benefits: it will help you preserve your own conceptualization of a self-fulfilling career, one that won’t evoke a visceral reaction of disgust when you think about doing it for 40 years.

I think the preservation of this conceptualization is so vital in my search for a self-fulfilling career because I’m confident that the distinction between a job and a career is that the latter goes even further than providing one with an opportunity to make money while doing something extremely enjoyable… it’s so much more, I think, in that it provides one with the ability to intermingle work and selfhood; a career is so much more personalized and self-revealing, allowing one to manifestly demonstrate to others his or her individuality and passions with work and the workplace functioning as a kind of vessel for that process of “selfhood-revelation”.

Okay, so I realize that that’s some pretty lofty, idealistic discussion – but more hard-nosed entries will follow in the near future to problematize things…for now, though, let me revel in this idealism! Anyway, being selective, obviously, is contingent on knowing what you want – it’s contingent on knowing you. Oftentimes we lose sight of that, which is why I think the self-fulfilling career can be so darn elusive. But God bless my vintage fashionista friend for showing me the truly wonderful things that selectivity can lead to.