There's a video making the rounds on the Internet of Sean Hannity tearing into an Occupy representative, calling him a rapist* and telling him to "pound the pavement" some more and wash dishes if he has to, but just stop living off student loans, you stupid free-loader (I might be paraphrasing). All of that, I suspect, is all Hannity probably wanted to come from the whole segment -- a man in a thousand dollar suit yelling at a kid with a goatee and telling him to get a job is ratings security to the Fox audience. It makes me wonder when the last time Hannity "pounded" anything besides his producer.
But, nonetheless, we try. Yesterday -- Monday -- I got up early and hit my digital pavement. I created profiles with two more staffing agencies (on top of the one I've already been employed by for a year, except they haven't had a placement for me since February), applied for a few more jobs in my field, then banged out about a dozen applications for various assistant and receptionist jobs I found on a couple of online job boards.
Last evening, I was elated to get an email back quickly from one of the assistant positions I applied for earlier. But, that's weird, it's like midnight... The following is the exact email I received, but the highlighting is mine:
Good Morning,
Thank you for your resume. Here is some information about our company and the job description.
ABOUT US
DB Tuning GmbH is a tuning related company. We are designing tuning parts and making style for any kind of car. DB Tuning GmbH was founded in 1999 and incorporated in 2001 under the business name DB Tuning Shop. Headquartered in the city of Basel, Switzerland. DB Tuning GmbH delivers tuning solutions to its clients in the areas of high quality design, creative, technical expertise, modern style, and so on. We do design and we are doing it very well.
JOB SUMMARY
We are expanding and opening new services. We are now seeking a highly motivated Finance/Administrative assistant to join our team. The position offers a very attractive salary . What we do? We sell tuning parts, making design and moderation for tuning parts and everything else about car tuning design. Our management department decided to accept orders from US customers. There are so much potential and actual clients along US that we cannot lose our sales now. We have many orders from them pending, so we decided to hire Administrative assistant. During all working process you will be our official representative with full rights and standards. You will be processing orders/payments/billing records/payment invoices/transactions from our US clients and customers.. Why we need you? According to our local law we cannot accept direct payments and orders from foreign company or person. In this case we have to open a local office or hire an official Administrative assistant to process all the duties in full.
SALARY
Weekly fixed salary is $1250, paid at the end of each week.
Please reply to this email if you’re interested in the job.
Thank you
The signature then included some phone number in Switzerland.
So basically, it's the employment equivalent of a Nigerian prince email. Fucking brilliant. This is the same reason I took down both my Monster and CareerBuilder profiles. All I ever got were spam emails and people calling me at all kinds of weird hours whenever I would update my page asking if I wanted to make "thousands of dollars working from home!"
And when I do break though all this bull shit, I feel like my Master's degree is keeping me from getting work (no, really). One interviewer wouldn't stop asking me if the 26k the job paid was going to be enough even though the job was exactly what I wanted to do. Another, for a receptionist position, looked me directly in the face and asked me "what are you doing here?" Oh, right, 'cause I'm the first liberal arts major in this day in age looking for underemployment. I just want to work, dammit. I just realized today that I have enough savings for about a month and a half then things are going to get hairy if I don't do SOME kind of work by then.
I wish I were making all these stories up. It even astounds me that people don't seem to want highly-qualified people. But companies now have their pick of literally hundreds of candidates for each position. They can afford to be ridiculously picky and get exactly who they want: qualified, but not too qualified, so they don't have to do this all again in a year or so when that person jumps to a higher-paying job or when we have to fire them for asking for a raise. They want the perfect cog, not someone who's going to lose motivation easily when the lack of upward mobility becomes apparent.
It's little wonder people are dropping out of the unemployment pool. The only reason the unemployment numbers seemed to improve on the last report was that so many people have just given up. If I had any choice, I might join them. But, let's just say that it's a good thing I've never bought anything that's in danger of being reposessed...
*Referring to the sexual assaults that perpetrated in Zuccotti Park by opportunists that saw a group of trusting hippies and decided to try and blend in. Some say that the NYPD steered known offenders of all kinds toward the encampment to make the protesters look bad, but that hasn't been proven by anyone yet. I think it's mostly really possible that a group of young people handing out free food and free places to sleep is inevitably going to draw some rabble, especially in New York. I'm for everything the movement talks about, but that whole camp was an incredibly naive venture.
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