Job hunting blues

September 19th, 2010


It is day 111 and I have no job. Actually, I don’t think about it much on the weekend. If I were working I’d have today off, so I don’t feel badly about not actively scouring the internet for new opportunities. We stopped taking the paper when I lost the job that was attached to my professional career at the end of June 2009. With the 40% pay cut that my temporary job as a trainer with the Sacramento based consulting firm provided, we made a lot of cuts (land line, newspaper, yard guy, wine clubs, and a number of other luxuries). So, back to the paper, I did have a reason for bringing it up. This morning, the local newspaper was on my porch. I’m not sure why. I like to think it’s because the job I’ve been searching for is in the classifieds that I would not have otherwise seen. As I said, I’m taking today off from job hunting, so I’ll look at it tomorrow. I’m so excited!!


My job hunting actually started in December 2009. The training gig kind of fell in my lap because the vice president of the company is the ex-husband of an ex-coworker of mine and he knew me and needed trainers (see, it is WHO you know). I had planned to start looking for a new job a couple of months before the temporary job ended, but I was finding that I really hated working for the man. Imagine working for that short, chubby, bald guy from The Princess Bride who is always saying, “Inconceivable.” Now imagine this guy thinks he is the funniest, sexiest, smartest person in the world and is annoyingly condescending. Yeah, so I really wanted out.


A large number of us were given “vacations” for most of December, which kind of sucked because most of us did not have enough vacation accrued to get paid for all that lovely time off. It worked out pretty well for me because I had an interview set up and I didn’t have to worry about asking for the day off. The interview was in a county roughly 78 miles from my home as a Program Manager for Adult Protective Services. My professional career has been in Child Protective Services, but I figured it was worth a shot. The interview went horribly, in my opinion. I just didn’t feel that “I’m doing great” vibe, and couldn’t pull the work “Assisted Living” out of my cluttered brain, so blurted “Old Folks Home.” Ugh, I can’t believe I did that! A friend of mine lives in the county I applied in, so I stopped at her house for a glass of wine on my way home. Made me feel a little better.


January 7th, 2010, had an interview in a county 62 miles from my home as a Child Support manager. I know oh, so very little about the Child Support program, so I spent quite a bit of time Googling things to at least have a basic working knowledge of the process and regulations. I felt like the interview went pretty well. As I was driving back to Calaveras County (where I was stationed for my training gig) it occurred to me that if I got the job I might be WAY over my head. A lot more direct budget exposure than I’ve had and pretty much NO support staff. I drove back to the hotel with heart pounding, and stomach churning (pretty full of myself to be so sure I was going to get it – well, I didn’t).


Oh, did I mention I’m directionally challenged. I got insanely lost trying to get to the interview from Angel’s Camp. I had plugged the address into my GPS, but it died quite some time before I got there and I apparently had left the car charger in the hotel. I had a GPS navigation program on my cell phone (don’t anymore, one of the budget cuts I made when the training job ended), but I was out of my normal area and so, while I could make phone calls, the navigation feature did not work. I had a map on my iTouch, but I didn’t really know where I was so I couldn’t find myself on the map very easily (also it needs Wi-Fi to really function correctly). I did finally figure out where I was (I was going in the wrong direction and was about a half hour along that wrong direction) and got turned back around.

I had given myself ample time for getting lost, so I was not late. Lesson learned: paper maps are not obsolete. Sometime the technology of the 21st century is just not worth it.