Bad News First

Anonymous says:

Bad news first:

I am not a people person. I am not upbeat or outgoing. I do not believe that the customer is always right, nor will I pretend otherwise in front of them.

I am not a team player. When I come to work, I work. I don't socialize or go to office parties or remember my co-workers' birthdays or give high-fives. I'm not here to be your best friend, and I believe that's the way it should be.

I don't give a damn about the company. Believe it or not, I'm not looking for a job because I want one; I can entertain myself pretty well on my own. I'm looking for a job because I need one in order to pay for my apartment and food and a lot of things that I don't actually even want, like a car and dental surgery. You're going to have to pay me a lot more than $8.50 an hour before you can ask me what drew me to your company with a straight face.

I will never suck up to anyone for any reason. This means you, boss. I am educated, wise, and egalitarian, and you're wasting your time if you think I'm going to respect you by default just because you make more than I do. I respect people who deserve it.

My job is not and will never be my life. My life is what I do the other 128 hours a week, with people who I actively choose to associate with. I will not work overtime, holidays (including Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur), weekends, or election day, and if you ask me, it's insane to expect anyone whose job does not specifically require it to work any of those times.

I know my rights. Violate them and you'll wish you hadn't.

Now the good news:

Without being egotistical, I can tell you that I am one of the smartest people you will ever meet. When I look at the world, I don't just see things. I see patterns and relationships and meaning. I predicted the entire 7th Harry Potter book almost to a tee. I can spend a day with a person and be able to tell you exactly what makes him or her tick. I can introduce you to people who will thank my insight for the fact that they are alive.

I am very likely one of the most trustworthy people you will ever meet. I've never stolen anything except for five nickels from a friend's lunch box when I was 8, which I've felt intensely uncomfortable about ever since. I've got 10-year-old secrets in my head that I've never whispered a word of, even though they probably don't matter that much anymore. I don't lie.

I am very, very good at explaining things. I've taught the scientific method to 5-year-olds, written a ten-page description of a painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and explained the realities of taxes and taxation to a teenager who thought he was voting for Ron Paul. When I was in college, I wrote a short story for a class presentation to explain Hindu burial rituals to a bunch of white college students who could not have cared less. I got a standing ovation.

I'm self-motivated. Given the choice, I will always opt for activity over idleness.

I'm an excellent strategist. I'm always thinking four moves ahead. I'm always looking where nobody else is.

I learn compulsively.

I have a keen eye for bullshit.

I'm a risk-taker. Case in point, I would hope.

Experience:

I started volunteering at COSI Columbus, a local science museum, when I was 13, using compressed air to demonstrate how tornadoes work and using 150-year-old machinery to make tallow candles, tin whistles, and hand-printed leaflets for the entertainment of museum guests. I also wrote several floor shows for the museum, to teach children how to make their own soda and "chocolate asphalt". I won numerous awards for my service during over 1,000 hours of volunteer work. During my 5-year tenure, I eventually served as a paid employee as well.

Also when I was 13, I defended myself in my first legal hearing when I became a victim of the Columbine-era "zero tolerance" hysteria, during which schools expelled students en masse for such minor offenses as wearing black trench coats, writing violent stories, or having rumors spread about them. I was not expelled, making me the only one at my school to come back after being so accused, and wouldn't you know it, I never shot anyone either.

When I was in high school, I was in one school play and never did any others because I was too frustrated with being the only one to show up for every rehearsal. I was the cartoonist for the school newspaper. The week after 9/11 I wrote a front-page column explaining the tenets of Islam and pointing out how most so-called Islamic terrorism was actually motivated by politics and power-mongering, not religion. During the summer, I took classes in biology at Ashland University, Kent State, and Shawnee State. The Shawnee class was in forensics, and I was the first one to successfully solve the fictional crime we were presented with.

I went to Emerson College and got a BA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing, which I freely admit was not the best way to put my unique talents and idiosyncrasies to use. Given the chance to do it again, I would probably pursue a more scientific curriculum at a larger university. Nevertheless, I completed the degree, which included a semester abroad in an insignificant Dutch farm town, two independent studies, and being the youngest student in most of my higher-level classes.

During college, I worked at the Cutler Majestic Theater, a 100-year-old vaudeville opera house, where I was promoted twice. I held several jobs repairing bicycles and pedicabs, as well some less-glorious summer jobs making drinks and driving golf carts. I started my own magazine, which published 3 issues and carried work by award-winning writers and illustrators. I handled everything from the editorial, to the design, to hand-selling copies at sci-fi conventions. I had an 8-month internship as the entertainment channel editor at experience.com, which actually required me to be more of a journalist than an editor. My most popular article was called "Children's Book Banned for Silly Reason. Again."

My first job after college was editing a novel for hip-hop publisher Triple Crown Publications. I wrote sketches and funny news headlines for a local comedy troupe. I designed a logo for a serial fiction podcast. I helped Audubon Ohio publish their first book, "Important Bird Areas of Ohio." I've sold short stories to three magazines.

Desperate for money, I took a job at Pizza Hut that promised management opportunities, then left in a huff when I discovered that had been a bald-faced lie. Oddly, they then fired me the day after I quit. Immediately after, I started working for a local publishing house, only to be laid-off eight months later.

That was in May. Since then I've been taking various short-term gigs, canvassing and pet-sitting and the like, while I search for a new career. After a fruitless foray into a voter registration campaign (I am not a people person), I'm at it again.

I also have experience cooking (the non-assembly-line kind), caring for animals (even the ones I'm allergic to), supervising small groups of people, collecting money from employers who won't pay me (or, sometimes, us), improv acting, locating copies of obscure and out-of-print books, digitizing stereoscopic slides from the 20's, public speaking, analyzing the sexual subtext of media aimed at children and teenagers, reviewing books, and occasionally being a real hard-ass. I am well-versed in swordsmanship (practical and theoretical). I read lots of comic books.

I'm looking for a career. I'm open to anything.

My e-mail address is [redacted]. I'm located in Columbus, Ohio. If you're looking to hire an unreliable, untrustworthy, unskilled, cheery, outgoing sycophant, then good luck. I assure you, they are in generous supply. If you're looking to hire a real person, drop me a line.

I am not a salesman, and I am not a cleaner.

OJ Thornton says:

OJ Thornton, born 6th July 1978, UK citizen.

There are two things I cannot do: I am not a salesman, and I am not a cleaner.

The rest of this CV is about what I can do, and why, if you want them done, I'm the one for you.

I am an organiser and a leader, a teacher and a guide. When a person follows me, he or she can trust me to the ends of the Earth. I have had people trust me with their lives, and obey my every command. My eye for detail and my quick mind have enabled me to take them to the edge and bring them back, with full knowledge of the risks, and full preparation to meet them. With discipline and fairness I have won respect and given it in return. I have drawn from people their very best, and enabled them to excel themselves.

I have served and gladly do so: to bring aid another human being is among the greatest joys. Applying my skills in the service of another's needs or desires is my true vocation in work. To turn my mind and hand to finding for them their heart's desire is truly a wondrous thing.

Knowledge and learning are my building blocks, and information is my cement; organisation, the architecture for it all. Administration and communication are my twin talents, each one aided by the other; what a person needs to know, I can find, what a colleague has to find, I can reveal. Complex events, I have arranged, and difficult ideas, made accessible.

With care and understanding, and a dedicated ear, I have guided people with confidence, and confidentiality. With tenderness and sensitivity I have helped them when in need, with strength and courage I have stood at their side and supported them.

My qualifications cannot be written on paper, nor assessed by some examination; only through living have I proven what I can do. In loving and in fighting, in working and in play, I have shown again and again the talents I have learned.

The certificates I have attest that I know mathematics and philosophy (BSc, also Maths 'A' Level 'C'); that I understand theology and physics ('A' Level, both a 'B'); that I studied French and German, English language and literature, and graphic design at GCSE. Another tells, though not the full story, of my proficiency with IT: with spreadsheets, databases and word-processing.

I have worked in a Library, in a college and at home, dealing with customers and businesses alike. I have organised a charity event, and in my last job, even swept the floors for a DIY store (I was fired, because I am not a cleaner!)

I have refereed in sports, and presented a scientific speech. I have written for my local newspaper and have volunteered for charities. I have performed in front of hundreds, and cared for others' children.

In everything, I have given my all, passionately and with conviction.

If you have need of any of these skills and talents, I will gladly take on a role.

I can be reached at snowdrop-explodes@talk21.com.

Tick

Jacqui says:

Degree. Tick.
Bar work. Tick.
Master's degree. Tick.
Library experience. Tick.
University experience. Tick.
Public sector experience. Tick.
Customer services experience. Tick.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Life ticked away, one temporary job after another. One of these days I
would find the thing I can *love*, not just *do*.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Filing. Tick.
Proofreading. Tick.
Word-processing. Tick.
Managing a team of 10. Tick.
Planning 500-delegate events. Tick.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Time ticked on.

"I have spent the last five years raising my child, an experience I
found worthwhile and rewarding. During this time I earned and used a
wide variety of skills, from intricately-detailed project planning to
improvisational comedy."

I can sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star 48 times while reading a map by
torchlight, 5000 miles from home. I can sew name tapes into tiny
sweaters while reading aloud a picture book. In French. I can make
dinner for three out of two crusts of bread, half a bag of spinach,
and some slightly dubious cheddar fished out from the back of the
fridge. I can watch Cars for the 19th time in 3 days without sobbing
for rescue. I can spot headlice at 80 paces. I can explain why thunder
happens, how tomatoes ripen, and what doesn't go into the washing
machine [coins, animals, Lego...]. I can tell when "But I don't need
the toilet!" is a lie.

Find something you love doing and do it. Tick.

Find something you love doing and get paid for it. Uh...

Dear Sir

Thomas Thurman, 33, says "For the benefit of any HR managers reading, the poet would like to explain that this is not entirely autobiographical. ;)"

Dear Sir: This application form,
from one potential employee,
will tell you how I should perform.
I have a first-class* BSc,
ten years of writing ANSI C,
some Java; Perl with DBI;
and tendencies to wander free
and gaze, all wordless, at the sky.

I know perhaps it's not the norm
to mention this on one's CV.
I wonder if you'd just transform
the job I'm asking for, to be
not writing code, but poetry.
Do ask your boss. It's worth a try.
He'd sing, himself, when he was three,
and gaze, all wordless, at the sky.

I'd stay till ten beneath a warm
duvet, and then I'd climb a tree,
my face upheld towards the storm,
or paddle barefoot in the sea.
Perhaps a friend comes round for tea.
Perhaps among the corn we'd lie
in silent solidarity
and gaze, all wordless, at the sky...

Sir, I enclose an S.A.E.
I wonder if you might reply
and leave your desk to run with me,
and gaze, all wordless, at the sky.


* for the non-British readers, first class = magna cum laude

SWF ISO RESPECT

Kelli, 22, says:

This is how I feel when I send out resume and cover letter after resume and cover letter. It seems to be about as effective and draws the same kind of crowd.

SWF ISO RESPECT: HWP College grad, 3.8 GPA, BA psych, honors, dean's list WLTM emplyr for NSA job opp. ISO of job w/ benis, psych reltd, low admin, intel req! WAA.

Overqualified

You may find some inspiration here, in Joey Comeau's Overqualified. From the website:

Looking for work is an exercise in selling yourself. You write cover letter after cover letter, listing the parts of you that you respect the least, listing the selling points that make you valuable in a buyer's market. You leave out the little details that you tell yourself in the morning to make things okay. You don't mention the way your heart flutters when you meet your lover's eyes across the table, the way your feet felt like lead at your aunt's funeral. You write cover letter after cover letter, listing the same store bought traits in the same wording, day after day, hoping to find another job.

And then maybe one day you just snap a little. You sit down to write a cover letter, and something entirely new comes out.

And you send it anyway.

(His webcomic, A Softer World, is also lovely and brilliant.)

To Whom It May Concern

Carmen Machado, 22

I'm 22. I graduated from college in December, with a shiny B.A. and lots of student loans. I job hunted for months. I wrote so many cover letters that even now, the valediction "sincerely" still makes my heart break. I've been sending these meticulously written cover letters and perfectly sculpted resumes into the digital void for over eight months now. In the interim, I moved across the country. Despite a handful of interviews, dozens of cover letters, and hundreds of resumes, I remain, in essence, jobless.

Everyone's been tremendously reassuring. It only feels like you've been looking forever, they say. It's not your fault - the economy's bad. Keep plugging away at it. Something's bound to pop up.

It occurred to me, late last night, that every resume that I send out is incomplete. After all, I've done so much in my short life, and I only have a page to shape those experiences to make it look as though everything I have ever done with my existence has been leading up to the exact position that I'm applying for.

So here's my resume. My actual resume. The one that I want to send out every time.

COVER LETTER

To Whom It May Concern;

(I promise, this Concerns You.)

When I was in college, I was in a basic film class. Every time a project came around, every class member was required to propose an idea. Class members were to vote on the idea that they wanted to work on the most, and the top three ideas were used. I loved this process. I loved it because I was able to stand up and talk about a story I wanted to tell, and watch as the camera techs and and writers and artists and storytellers and other creative minds gravitated towards me.

I was always picked. Always. For ideas that I scrawled down in my notebook on the train to school that morning, or something that formed in my head minutes before I had to present, or something that came to me as I sat in the bathtub the previous night, observing my prune textured hands in the yellow glow of my bathroom's single light bulb.

"You," one of my classmates later said to me, over something frozen and alcoholic, "are a woman of ideas."

I've always been this way.

When I was a child, I told stories. Out loud. I bounced my Barbies and dinosaurs and Fisher Price men over the purple carpet in an elaborate soap opera; engaging them in stories of war and thwarted love and romances across species. As I got older, the players became the people around me. The tiniest quirks exhibited by complete strangers assured them a place in my story. I'd sit at outdoor cafes and give stories to people passing by. That old woman in the corner? She paints songbirds onto rocking chairs in her small, sun drenched living room. The man on the bicycle? He's recovering from a ferocious breakup. He alleviates his pain by dragging his former lover's antique violin bow across his pale arm, straining his ears to hear the music.

Even stories that others told me - to them merely ordinary and nostalgic - transformed into vignettes of unspeakable beauty. My mother once told me how my father carried me and my siblings back from a fair when we were children. I was perched on his shoulders, my rambunctious brother clung to his neck, and my small, stubborn sister rode in his arms. All of this over hills and broken sidewalks, through the shaded avenues of our Pennsylvania suburb.

That was a story.

When I was eleven, and sitting in a nursing home, I watched my mother wash the feet of an ancient woman who didn't remember her name. The feet were twisted like roots, and she washed them with exceptional tenderness.

Even then, I know there was a story there.

In college, on a train to Virginia, I watched a woman in the seat next to me pick at a run in her stockings, a single tear poised at the tip of her nose, refusing to fall. Her free hand was wrapped around an orange, and she held onto it like it was the last orange in existence. Her fingernails had broken the surface of the peel.

I could have written the story there, our feet only inches apart, her sorrow so palpable that even after I got up at my stop and walked away, I could feel its tendrils still clinging to my skin, and smell the citrus in my clothes. Even now, I don't touch oranges without thinking of her.

Honestly, Truthfully, Kindly, Lovingly,
Carmen M. Machado

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

I've worked with adults, with kids, with infants, with the disabled, the elderly, the disenfranchised. I've worked with irate and difficult people desperately seeking appeasement, with people who didn't speak English, with unhappy coworkers who only want to discuss their divorce. A women who patronized the hotel once called me her "superhero." I've been hugged by a lot of customers. Once, a man on the street said I had kind hands. Children love me.

I've worked at ritzy hotels, serving clients worth millions of dollars while wearing a suit and tie and pants that always looked dry cleaned in the unbearable summer humidity.

I've also been a janitor. Those floors had never been cleaner.

I write. I've done freelance writing about the intricacies of Washington, DC. I've typed up press releases and feature articles. I keep a blog read by hundreds of strangers. I've written poetry about halves of pomegranates, and residing in the hearts of whales. I've done PSAs. I've written a screenplay. I've written short stories, one of which was a finalist for a literary prize provided by my university. Once, while bored, I wrote a seven-part quest for the RPG Oblivion.

I take photographs. I once photographed a crystal by nestling it into an avocado, in lieu of the normal, smooth pit. I've covered my roommates' Easter egg dyeing with the fervent attention of a photojournalist. I've shot weddings, parties, and nightclubs. I took pictures at my aging great uncle's birthday party, and they are both funny and sad. I love my cameras. I treat them as though they're another set of eyes.

I edit. When I was younger, I swore to a teacher that I could hear the misplaced commas. In college, I told a professor that "their," "there," and "they're" sound radically different to me. On road trips, I used to correct punctuation on passing billboards until my mother begged me to stop.

I paint. I draw. I sculpt. I make pottery. I create creatures out of cracks in the wall.

I've been a camp counselor in the Pennsylvania mountains. I've helped build a house in West Virginia. I've worked with youth in South Africa. I've written curricula for Cherokee children in Oklahoma.

I organized and taught a creative writing class for the kids I worked with in South Africa. On the first day they wrote about trees and flowers. The next day, I made them write about dirt. By the end of the week, their poetry seized me by the arms and shook me.

I was a photographer at a children's photography studio, where I placated parents and coaxed children and soothed fussy infants. I was a cashier at a Goodwill, where I learned how to stand on my feet for hours at a time. I worked at a sex toy store and sold vibrators to nervous women who looked like my mother. I learned to listen to other people, to be compassionate, to help them help themselves. I worked as a canvasser for a political cause, and was chased down the street by a man with a rake. I learned how to speak up, how to work for something that I believed in, and how to run without dropping my clipboard. I did administrative work for two different photographers, serving as an organizational system for their scattered endeavors. I fetched coffee and film with equal zest. Once, when a model didn't show, I volunteered to have my own face smothered in toothpaste and photographed. I answered phones at my university library with diligence. I worked at a pottery studio and taught people how to recognize their own creativity. I loaded and unloaded hot kilns in the quiet still of the morning.

Once, I locked myself out of my house, and I climbed on the roof to get back inside.

SKILLS

I'm the daughter of an engineer who taught me that there was always a solution. "You can always make it work," he said. "It may not always be pretty, but it will always work." I take this to heart every time I'm faced with something. "It's a problem solving activity," I say, chewing contemplatively on my thumb before doing something radical like tying a sofa to the roof of my bitty car with nothing but twine and pantyhose. My father has a family motto: "Machados never give up."

I can write, creatively and technically and for media publications and the internet and blogs. I can take pictures, using a 35mm camera, a digital SLR, any type of medium or large format camera, as well as digital video cameras. I can edit and proofread. I'm personable and excellent with customers and the general public. I'm hardworking. I can type faster than many professional administrative assistants. I can multi-task. I'm so organized that I have a calendar on my computer and a calendar that I carry around in my purse and a giant sheet of butcher paper on my bedroom wall where I keep my "to dos." I have extensive knowledge of blogging and internet networking sites. I can act. I've been in six Shakespearean plays, and stage fought in three of them. I can use Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, FileMaker Pro, and website design programs. I know basic HTML.

I've taken classes in Fine Art Photography, Commercial and Large Format Photography, Photojournalism, Writing for Mass Communications, Reporting, Film & Video, Writing for Visual Media, Advanced Writing for Film, not to mention four fiction writing workshops, one poetry writing workshop, and a creative nonfiction memoir writing independent study that changed the way I look at writing altogether.

I didn't just "move" to California. I threw all of my possessions in the back of my tiny car and took off, knowing that what I sought lay past the campy South Dakota billboards and misty West Virgina hills and soaring Colorado mountains. When I saw the Rockies for the first time, I forgot to breathe. When faced with the Grand Canyon, I was unable to stand. I just sat in the dirt with my suntanned arms wrapped around my legs, letting the tears fall. The road was strange and beautiful. Wyoming was so wide. Illinois was so cheerful. Minnesota was so sad. I drove and drove and never took my eyes off the horizon. I was nervous. I was uncertain. But I'm still here.

Maybe that's my greatest skill.

I'm not afraid.

I'm looking for a job.

Maybe you've got one for me.