>>> Text-Heavy
By staff writer E.E. Southerby
Volume 31 – May 11, 2003
Now Playing: “Virgin Superstar” by And One
As veteran readers of this column will no doubt already be aware, I dislike my construction worker job. The hours are early and long and the heavy lifting is ridiculous. Unfortunately, I need some kind of work to subsidize my career as a superstar comedian. I've decided I should do my lower back a favor and start looking elsewhere for employment. This is my story. Here's what happened:
-I hate taking the bus to work. It makes me feel like a poor person. I guess being surrounded by other dirty poor people will do that to you. What made me feel even poorer was when I went to the corner store to buy bus tickets, but when I handed the surly corner store employee my bank card, she said they only accepted cash for bus tickets. What the hell? If I had cash, I wouldn't need bus tickets in the first place.
-So I had to go to the bank machine to go buy bus tickets. Of course, my bank was across the country (in Victoria, where I go to school), so I just went to the nearest machine I could find. It was the weirdest thing, the thing wouldn't accept my bank card. It only accepted bus tickets.
-No, seriously, the bank machine said “There will be a $2.00 fee added to this transaction. Do you wish to continue?” What the hell is going on here? No, I guess I'll just print my own fucking money. Damn it! There's one bank machine in the world that doesn't charge a ‘convenience' fee, and it's halfway around the world. That's not very convenient at all, if you ask me. I hate taking the bus to work.
-I don't think there's anything more embarrassing than writing a resume. You've got to write out all your experience, your education, and then you have to pad it with obtuse ‘objective' and ‘skills and qualifications' sections (“My goal in life is to assist in the sales and distribution of bus tickets within a corner store environment”). And as if that wasn't bad enough, then you have to write a cover letter that completely relieves you of your humility. But I think the worst part is when you go to hand in the resume at a store or restaurant or whatever, and the stupid-ass bleached-blonde cashier with more body piercings than brain cells starts reading it right in front of you and then, just as she says “I'll give it to the manager”, she lets out an audible giggle. Bitch.
-When you're going around handing in resumes that often get thrown out before you even leave the store, you kind of get into a rhythm. You try to avoid places that have an ‘Application Form' because those take too long to fill out, and you head for the places where you think the actual manager might be working so they might get to see you before the stupid-ass bleached-blonde cashier pisses you off and ruins your good mood. You get used to the questions they ask when you stop by (“When are you available? Full-time or part time?”) and you become a job-searching robot. Then, eventually, something comes along to disrupt the rhythm. Someone will be like “Let's skip the resume part and jump right to the interview” and you think something completely irrational like “Oh, great, can we hurry this up? I've got a lot of other resumes to hand out today.”
-I don't want to work in a place that requires you to wear a uniform. Especially somewhere that asks you to wear a stupid hat. I mean, let's face it, you're not the 177th Airborne Unit. You're at fucking Dairy Queen. I've never gone to Dairy Queen and looked at the girl behind the counter and noticed she wasn't wearing the hat and thought “Gosh, I hope she's a real DQ employee.” Here's a question: Are there people going around impersonating Dairy Queen cashiers, that they needed to humiliate the real ones by making them wear a ridiculous teal and purple outfit? Because I don't really care, so long as I get my Blizzard.
-Quote of the Moment: I applied to work at a restaurant, and the lady asked me if I had any experience working at a restaurant. I replied honestly (“No.”) and she said: “Well, then you can't work at a restaurant. No restaurant in the world will hire you without experience.” Oh, really? Then how does ANYONE get a job at a restaurant? Are people just born with the inherent experience? I guess it's possible. This isn't rocket surgery, people. It's fucking Dairy Queen.
-I wish I had a job at a big company that hires university students for the summer. Not because I need more money (I do) nor because I'm jealous of my friends who have these kinds of jobs (I am), but because I was hoping to meet some other people my age who have some attractive friends I haven't alienated yet.
-So Mother's Day is fast approaching. By the time you read this, it will already be underway. Mother's Day always reminds me of elementary school, where we all had to make some craft for our moms and everyone else's turned out great except for mine and then all the kids would laugh and throw ketchup packets at me. Everyone else's, except Katie Jenkins'. Katie never had to make a craft, she always got out of it, because her mom was dead. Some people are lucky, I guess. She always gets her way. First she doesn't have to make a Mother's Day craft, then she laughs at my application to Dairy Queen.