Engaging with Employment

Ever since my manager at the paper told me the company couldn’t afford to pay me, I’ve been on the job hunt. Today, I landed an interview.

Job hunting is beyond easy online. It’s so simple that the job sites even offer ads by people who don’t intend to pay their workers at all. If you ever go to a site, let’s say, for writers, such as Elance.com, you’d find a dozen openings and even more opportunities. And that’s only scratching the surface. Craigslist is a hoard of these kinds of one-time jobs that don’t even promise a steady contract. Many job ads are so poorly written that, when a writer like me looks at them, they just nod, shake their head, and say, “Oh, yes. You certainly do need a writer!”

I’d never trust making a living off any of these sites, but many people do. Yet, a quick look at all the job ads listed for the current day will tell you a lot of people just want free work from jobseekers. Quite frequently, a capitalized heading will catch the eye of a jobseeker, who will read the ad. At the bottom, as if in a laughing undertone, they’ll find the words “No pay but great experience!,*”* as though this employer were Ronald McDonald, offering people an endless pension and interest to boot. That lone sentence tells you: “I want to have you, yes, you, do all this free work, and I want to string you along like a marionette. I want to yank you this way and that way and send emails only because I won’t have to deal with you or allow for an opportunity for a lawyer to contact me. You’ll gain extreme experience, though. And, oh, of course, I’ll write you a letter of recommendation! It will be so riddled with errors and holes that even Swiss cheese will take note.”

I hardly ever use these job mill sites. I want steady work, and I want to build a network of magazine editors I can pitch to. I want to build a solid magazine database and pull from the magazines that know me or pay me well. That way, I can always have money coming in from somewhere. Granted, I didn’t learn to do this overnight.

I’ve crawled Craigslist like a looming spider, digging for that permanent position. After I graduated from high school, I started applying to guest-write blog posts so that I could build up my portfolio. After a while, I didn’t have to guest-blog anymore. Papers started taking the stories I pitched. Magazines took my movie reviews. They’d write me, asking me to cover events and interview people in Chicago. They’d ask for my personal cell number so that they could send me out on assignment or ask if I wanted to take certain assignments on. I’d seek out more magazines to write for.

Today, I have a career. It isn’t steady by any means, but I write different things for different kinds of magazines and newspapers. The internet has made searching for magazines and projects looking for writers beyond easy. Since I don’t have that luxury now, I must call editors to see if they know anyone who needs reporters. In short, some of them took days and days to get back to me with a sorrowful no. Meanwhile, others said they would let me know when their buddy over at this paper needed someone quickly.

Yesterday, I got a call as I was eating dinner. I was masticating a salad while experiencing an uncanny urge to watch Netflix.

“Rob! My main guy!” Jerry booms in my ear just as tomato juice splashes the inside of my mouth. I try to swallow quickly so that I can boom back a response, but I end up choking instead.

“Hi,” I wheeze, “have any news for me?”

“I do!” he said. He sounded as if he would tell me he’d won the lottery. “I got you an interview with an editor at a local paper on the North Side.”

“Oh, my god!” I squeaked, causing the other residents near me to look up as I choked again, on lettuce this time. I gasped into the phone. “When’s the interview?”

He told me the date. I thanked him for another fifteen minutes, managing to keep a constant stream of air flowing into my lungs.

Over the next few days, I prepared for the interview with a print portfolio, something I’ve never used since my resume is a Google Docs file with links to various other archives on the Web displaying my special skills, education, or employment history outside of journalism. I had to develop an offline resume for this employer. I had to dig up letters of recommendation from the recesses of my hard drive, print them out, and slip them into a physical binder. I couldn’t access my Google Drive folder full of such letters from editors that I would have happily shared via email. Employers had gladly accepted this new way to view letters; they didn’t have to open a sea of attachments. Moreover, my resume includes a link to another Google Doc, which lists my contacts and links, in turn, to recommendation letters. This approach is easy on employers. Plus, everything is always available, and I don’t have to keep updating files.

I had to approach the process differently this time. I wished I had some chocolate. It makes everything better.

My next task was to look up the company. I wanted to learn what kinds of articles they published. Instinctively, I opened Firefox and typed the name into the search bar. When the error “there is no connection” appeared on the screen, I deflated like a balloon. How was I to learn about the company? I didn’t even know where to begin. I picked up my phone and dialed the toll-free Directory Assistance number, navigated to an operator, and waited on hold for a few minutes.

“Hi,” I crowed. An operator hurriedly asked me for the city and state I wanted to search.

“Yeah, it’s Chicago, Illinois, and I have a question to ask.”

“What’s the question, sir?”

“I want to know about a company. Can you tell me about it?”

“Sir, the automated system will tell you the name, number, and address of the company.”

“Oh, I know that.”

“So, then what do you want to know?”

“I want to know about the company. Like, I want to know about their history, what kinds of articles they publish, how long the editor has been in his current position, things of that nature.”

“Well, sir,” the operator said, explaining in drawn-out syllables, “Google can help you out with that. What you do, sir, is go onto Google and then type in the name of the company. It will bring up the website—-”

I interrupted him. “I don’t have internet access.”

He paused. Then, as if I’d drained him of all energy, he intoned, “Please hold for the number.”

A few seconds later, the number repeated in my ear and popped into my text message inbox. Its 773 area code made me wonder if they would tell me about their own company. Surely yes because other people in Chicago wouldn’t have internet access either.

After I’d dialed in and navigated through a recorded menu that looms larger than the Willis Tower, a young receptionist picked up. “Good morning! How can I help you?”

“Hi,” I answered brightly. “I’m actually calling because I want to know a lot about the company, like what you guys publish and everything like that, and who the editor is, among other things.”

“Sir, we have a website,” she said hurriedly. “Everything’s on the website.”

“I don’t have internet access,” I said.

“I have to go, sir.” She gave me the website’s URL. “Everything’s on the website that you’d want to know. I’d especially encourage you to look at our ‘About’ section.”

“Thank you, but I don’t have—-”

“Sir, I really have to go. Thank you for calling!” she rattled before hanging up.

Nothing has demonstrated the benefit of the internet to me more than my attempt to learn about this company. As I ask people for help, they repeat that I must have internet access before directing me to use it. I wonder: does everyone really have steady internet access? I know —- ironically, from articles I’ve read online —- that they simply don’t.

Eventually, I encounter a willing operator named Kaitlin. I listen to the jingle of her rings and bracelets across her keyboard as she reads me sections from the company page for almost two hours. Meanwhile, I record her onto my Victor Reader Stream. And with this step done, I’ve prepared for my interview.

I dress in a lovely white shirt with a collar, jet-black pants, and black sneakers —- an adaptive pair I’ve had for over a year. I’m sure they’re not the best-looking, but the rest of me looks astonishing. I even twirl in my bathroom mirror before slicking my hair back with a comb and assistance from some other gay men. I touch up my nails and everything else. Soon, I’m standing in the paper’s main lobby, clutching my portfolio, and hoping everything I heard over the phone didn’t leak right out of my brain. I sit in the lobby and read a book that I’m reviewing after making my presence known to my prospective employer.

The interview seems to flow along like a Google Car. The interviewer has an inviting and calming air. Somehow, I recall everything about the company that I heard over the phone, and I answer the questions well. The interview drags a bit when he says he’ll send me some documents via email.

“I can’t access emails at the moment,” I say. This explanation makes me feel like I’ve missed an important lesson in a dream about school.

“You don’t have internet access?”

“No, not at the moment, sir,” I say. I feel even more foolish because everybody should have internet access. I’m getting a sense that the internet is a requirement for me to work here, and my suspicions are confirmed when he stares at me for what seems like forever.

“You can fax me the documents, though,” I say, feeling somewhat hopeful. I have a fax machine in my apartment.

“A fax could work,” he says dubiously, “but when do you think you’ll have internet access?”

For the first time in this experiment, I confess. “Next month.” Yet doubt hangs in his voice, and his eyes dance over me, marking me for a swift takedown as soon as I leave his office. He’s sitting so close that I can see his brown irises jump around, but I can’t quite tell what he’s looking at. Is he comparing my attire to my apparent lack of internet? Perhaps I don’t have this kind of attire in my closet since I don’t even have the internet at my house, something he probably uses every day to watch Lolcats videos.

“Are you regularly employed, Mr. Kingett?” he asks.

Stunned, I nearly burst out laughing. He’s already forgotten my resume, which he glanced over at the beginning of the interview. I slide my portfolio back to him, tapping my resume to emphasize my words. “As outlined in my resume, I’m a loyal employee of many magazines and—-”

He interrupts me. “Did you fax in your last assignment?”

“Yes,” I lie uncomfortably, but I’m aware that my journalistic experiment relies on not providing an explanation.

“Give me a minute,” he requests. Then, he reads my education and qualification history like a father who’s just stumbled on their son’s diary. He looks at me intently after the cross-examination. Then, he smiles, possibly to himself. He blinks before asking me what kinds of stories I write. I slide my portfolio over to him, tapping the headlines of published articles in the newspaper that laid me off.

“I wish I had more time to read these,” he says wistfully. I nearly face-palm. I hadn’t faxed him anything, but I should have. My first impulse had been to email him my clippings, and I’d assumed he wouldn’t have a fax machine in his office.

“As you can see from the clippings, I’m a very thorough investigative reporter.” I try to explain. “Some of my stories stir up some conversation, and others are enlightening, heartfelt, human-interest stories.”

He flips through the portfolio. Then, he gazes at me frostily. “They’re all very good,” he notes. “I have a confession to make, though.”

“Yes?” I feel awkward, as if he’s going to blurt out that my haircut’s bad.

“I don’t have a fax machine in my office. To be honest with you, I don’t even know where a fax machine is in this building.”

I have no clue how to answer. My mouth opens before my brain can tell my uvula to shut up.

“Have you tried having a scavenger hunt for it? You know, break all the departments into teams?”

He laughs heartily before looking back at my resume with an even bigger grin. “I was just planning that this afternoon!”

“Oh, good.” I’m smiling, too. “Then we can publish it as a headline: ‘The fax machine has been found!’”

He laughs again before neatly placing my resume back into my portfolio, along with my clippings. His tone becomes serious again. “You’d have to actively use an email address here, you know.”

“Yes,” I reply briskly. “I know, and I will. I’ll have access next month.”

He sighs and leans back. Then, he leans forward again and smiles. He stands up slowly and holds out a hand for me to shake. As I shake it firmly, he says, “I’ll be sure to follow up with you regarding this interview.”

“Great!” I say, though something tells me I’ve lost this one. I stamp a grin on my face until I’m outside. There, I let it deflate into a frown that lasts all the way home. I picture the interviewer happily shaking hands with and hiring someone else before cheerily asking the new worker, “Please, sir, can you tell me your email again?” The new worker smiles at his new boss, and then he rattles off something he made years ago, possibly thinking the address sounds cute to his friends and snazzy to employers. His new boss will beam, knowing he won’t have to buy a fax machine to communicate with one of his staff members. I picture these two colleagues marching into the newsroom the next day. They open their email clients and connect to an IMAP server instead of a POP server in order to save hard drive space. They’ll see the subject line of an email from a younger employee who likes to send jokes to people. The subject reads, “The fax machine scavenger hunt.”

I’m sure both men will briefly look at the joke before deleting the message. The interviewer will reflect on my interview very briefly, and he’ll feel a brief sense of doubt. Then, he’ll take a sip of his coffee and wonder who in the world needs fax machines anyway.