Job Hunting or “I’m glad I ain’t a girl”

Limbo sucks.
No, not the religious concept of limbo as a place that’s neither heaven, hell, nor purgatory, but a nether world I remember from the good ‘ole Baltimore Catechism where un-baptized babies and some other poor souls were consigned.

No, I mean the limbo of not knowing if you have a job. (Cold, hard logic and my intuition tells me I’m dead meat after the 7th of July when the Town Council takes control of the Brookhaven Public Information Office…but in B’haven you never really know,hence the element of the unknown.)

So I began, prudently, a limited job search a month ago. Answered ads for jobs in journalism from newspapers here and there (like in Vermont, Idaho, Washington State, Maryland, and New York); made a few discreet inquiries and leading suggestions to some key political people who I’d really like to work for; and generally kept my ear to the ground to catch the buzz.

Not very satisfying. I’ve always approached job hunt like a job. Full time. Full bore. 100%. Call everyone I know (now known as “networking”); answer every appropriate ad; spend 8 hours a day scouring the help wanted sections, web sites, etc. and keep calling friends, business acquaintances, etc. (‘Cause we all know the really good jobs hardly ever get advertised).

But what I’m doing now isn’t really a job hunt, it’s more like a job look-around.

Now, here’s where the frustration comes in. Jobs applied for: a dozen-and-a-half or so. Companies responding: three -- the Rutland Herald’s Human Resources Dept. confirming receipt of the application; The Nature Conservancy’s HR dept. in Helena, MT confirming receipt of their application; and an interview scheduled by the editor of Hamptons.com, an online newspaper in Southampton. (The lady stood me up for the interview! She forgot. She admitted it to me on the phone from wherever she was when she was supposed to be with me. Then she felt guilty and told me I was overqualified and was making too much money to take the pay cut she was offering. I told her, politely, it wasn’t any business of hers whether I was taking a pay cut, as long as I was willing to work for the salary she was offering. I don’t think she could deal with that ‘cause I never heard from her again. Of course, she might have guessed I wasn’t really interested in her job in the first place: the pay cut was too much and Hamptons.com seems like a real amateur operation. Her conduct re the job interview seemed to confirm my observation.)

That’s it. Not another word from another organization. (Consider this: every one of the companies I’ve contacted is a “communications” company. The folks I’ve written to are professional communicators.)

Surely after 40 years in business I should know better than to expect anything more than dead silence at the other end of an emailed job application.
But hope springs eternal, hence my frustration.

Here’s where I tie my job search back into the title of this posting.

I’m sitting here thinking about how much I would hate to be a girl. You know, a cute, smart, out-going, good wit, nice hair, well-read, easy to talk with, ready to laugh, on top of politics, business, current events, got good grades in school, athletic, not unfamiliar with spectator sports, have a good, highly skilled, professional-type job kind-a girl,who's willing to put it all out there in hopes of meeting a nice guy...and then have to wait by a telephone for some schmuck to call her for a date.

Okay, so that’s an outmoded concept. Some sort of relic from my youth. Boy-girl 1.0.

But it was the standard at one time and it’s just dawning on me what a jerk I must have been for a whole lot of years.

Not that I suspect there were legions of women sitting around pining for my phone call. But the idea of not having the initiative; not being able to go on the offensive, having to wait for someone else to act first really irks me now, and would have made me crazy had some chromosomes been arranged a bit differently way back in 1946-47. It also gives me more of an emotional connection with Betty Friedan, Gloria, et. al on top of my intellectual acceptance of the women's movement.

Okay, so I’m now on the receiving end of some sort of karmic justice. I probably deserve it.

But I don’t have to like it.

And to every girl I didn’t call, I’m grimly accepting my penance and offering my apology….Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Lo siento. Really.

Ciao for now.