More good news.

Oromocto is a small town/suburb about 10 minutes outside of Fredericton. As of yesterday, it is losing one of its major employers, which will throw about 700 people out of work at the end of next month. On top of laying off their entire staff, RMH Teleservices is also jerking around their employees and not giving them proper severance benefits. Here is a link to the CBC story.

As badly as the layoffs in the civil service affected the job market here (provincial capital and all), we ain't seen nothin' yet. You see, the government laid off 750 civil servants province-wide back in the spring. RMH, however, is laying off 700 people in this community alone. It's gonna be a rough winter.

As for me, I have 10 form letters and resumes ready to go, all but one of which are unsolicited grovelling to random banks and consulting firms. I gotta walk down to the post office to mail 'em and then officially max-out my line of credit to pay my August rent.

From the Office of the Auditor General

Dear Ms. G-----,

This letter is in reference to your application for employment with this Office.

Following a careful review and evaluation of all applicants, I regret to inform you that we are unable to offer you a position.

Thank you for the interest you have expressed in this Office.

Yours sincerely,

K. D. Robinson,
Deputy Auditor General

I guess I'll add this one to my growing collection.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics

You see this? You see that graph on the far right?



It says that while the average unemployment rate in Canada for people with undergrad degrees is around 9%, the unemployment rate for people with undergrad arts degrees is about 18%.

I'm going back to bed.

Craptacular!

I didn't get the job.

Fuck Alice in Chains.

There's some movie coming out soon that's using "Man in the Box" by Alice in Chains in its commercials. AiC were by far the weakest of all the "grunge" bands and now I have one of their shitty songs stuck in my head. It's gonna be an awesome day, I can tell already.

Today I'm going to print off a form letter and resume for yet another receptionist job, this one is for some company that sells wheelchairs and makes customized prosthetic limbs. You can't make this stuff up. Anyway, that should take about 10 minutes and I don't really know what I'm going to do with the rest of my day.

If you're reading this before 4:00pm AST, answer me this: Do you think I should follow up with that aesthetics salon today, or do you think I should wait until Thursday like I was going to originally? If I call today, they probably haven't made a decision yet, but if I wait until tomorrow it may be too late to change their minds. I'm crap at gauging these things.

I see a slow news day.

Nothing new to report. More of the same on all the job sites and in the paper.

The woman who interviewed me yesterday for the receptionist job said that since she's going to be talking to so many applicants, she probably wouldn't be able to contact everyone. She said that if I don't hear from them by Friday, then that means I didn't get the job... so I'm going to call them on Thursday to hassle them some more. Hopefully they will at least call my references. For some reason they loved me at my last job.

I also never got around to calling CD Plus. I'll wait until next week after I find out what's going on with the receptionist job to do that.

The woman from FRYS called me back yesterday too. After talking to her, I've decided against applying for that job. Apparently "youth care worker" entails working in a group home... you know, those places where they stick kids who aren't quite bad enough to go to prison, just got out of prison, or are otherwise too messed-up to go into regular foster homes. No thank you. I'm a bleeding heart liberal, but when it comes down to it I don't have the kahunas to make a career out of helping the truly disenfranchised. This is one more reason why I need to be independently wealthy (winning the lotto would work just fine); so I can give tons of money to homeless shelters and boys & girls clubs without having to actually do anything. Am I lazy and selfish or what.

The odds they're givin' in Vegas: 50 to 1

The job interview was a big non-event. It lasted all of about 10 minutes, and she didn't really ask me anything, other than to confirm what was on my resume. She seemed pleased by the fact that I'm unemployed so I could start right away if necessary. However, she also said that she plans on talking to between 40 and 50 other applicants by the end of the week... I concluded from this that my chances are probably not good.

Sweet merciful crap!

Holy shit, I have a job interview! First one since I started looking for work back in May... it's for that receptionist job I applied for last week at an anonymous aethetics (sp?) salon that ran an ad in the local paper. Anyway, I'm freaking out because it's in an hour and a half and I have nothing to wear! Motherfucker!

Do you want FRYS with that?

I called the number on the FRYS website which was supposed to be their main office, but I just got a voice mail message saying that whoever is in charge of answering that phone will be away until sometime in August. Fucking awesome. So instead I had to send them a lame-sounding email asking them to call me. The deadline for applying for the youth care job is this Friday, so hopefully they're on the ball about checking their email.

I'd be a great role model for teens. Why do you ask?

So here's the plan for today:

1. I'm going to call Fredericton Residential Youth Services, because apparently they're looking for a part-time "youth care worker". I don't know what that means. The ad says "Youth care workers are responsible for the general supervision, daily living support, behavioral intervention and crisis management of clients". WTF does that mean? It also says "Qualifications: a Bachelor level degree in the social sciences field or a minimum 2 years post-secondary education with related work experience". See, the thing is that technically I'm, like, a credit short of a B.A. in sociology and I have absolutely no experience working with youth-at-risk (or whatever they're calling difficult kids these days). Anyway I'm gonna call them and see what's up.

2. I'm also gonna call the King's Place location of CDPlus. CDPlus is the kind of mall record store that sells Dead Kennedys and Misfits t-shirts, but doesn't carry their music. Nice. Anyway, if I worked there at least I wouldn't have to work a lot of nights or any Sundays because that mall is mostly only open from 8am to 5:30pm Monday to Saturday. Also it's downtown so I can walk to it from here and I don't have to be trapped in the mall during my designated break periods.

Lazy as fuck!

No, I haven't been drunk for the last 4 days... 2 of the last 4, tops.

No, not drunk, just regular TV-watching lazy. Earlier Avril Lavigne kicked the tar out of Yellowcard on that CombatZone show on Much Music. And Trailer Park Boys is on right now, and it's the one with Rita McNeil. Kick ass! TV is fucking awesome. Anyway, I've had a lot of important drinking and laying around to do these last few days, so I've been slack with the writing. Regular service will resume shortly. I swear to god.

Drunk as fuck!

Do you want an office referral???

Finally. Blogger has been all wonky again today. I don't know if it's another "we hate anyone who doesn't use Internet Explorer" issue or what. I can't get the spell check function to work, along with a lot of other small things which add up to make my Blogger experience extremely frustrating. If I had anything better to do, I wouldn't even bother updating.

New today on HRDC: 2 jobs at Burger King (no comment necessary); "customer service representative" for Blue Cross (as much as I'd love explaining to old people why their insurance company won't pay stuff they need in order to live, I think I'll pass); a farm labour job; delivery driver (I don't have a car or a driver's license, so not even if I wanted to...); car washer for Hertz; baby photographer at Sears (I'm pretty sure infantacide is still illegal in Canada, so it's probably not a good idea); office furninture installer (my friend Radio Nick does this and doesn't mind it, but it says you have to have a driver's license); school bus driver (awesome, I'd get to yell "sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up!" all day, but I'd have to get a bird to live on my head).

Hep hep.

Finally, a job which meets my extremely generous criteria for bothering to send a resume. An anonymous "salon" downtown is advertizing in my local paper looking for a full-time receptionist. Kick ass, maybe it'll be Sue Lawrence so I can get my hair and nails done for next to nothing.

It makes me feel so fine I can't control my brain.

More of the same on all the job sites... shitty retail/food service/call centre, or other jobs that sound only semi-shitty which require 3 to 5 years experience minimum. Instead of listing them and making snide remarks like I usually do, I'll lay out my job criteria (eg: a job must meet all of the following requirements for me to even waste the printer ink to send them a resume):

1. I need regular, consistent working hours. I need to have the same schedule every week, and the same days off. Otherwise it's fucking impossible to make plans to do stuff on my own time more than a week in advance. I also need to work at the same time every day -- I need a regular routine so I can eat/sleep/go to the gym at the same time every day. The actual days I work or shift times aren't terribly important, provided they are consistent.

2. I will not work for less than $8/hr. Anything less than that is an insult to the last 6 years (and $45,000+) I spent going to college and university. Besides, I couldn't survive on less than $8/hr even if I wanted to.

3. I will not work in a job where I am required to absorb verbal abuse, insults and/or sexual harassment with gentle good humour. This stipulation pretty much rules out the entire service industry.

4. Unless I'm being paid $15+/hr, I will need at least 35 to 40 hours per week. It's only fair.

Could've been the whiskey.

New on HRDC today: truck driver; typist (tell me where Grafton is and I'll do it!); automobile wrecker (you have to bring your own tools); logging truck driver; insurance salesman (I couldn't even sell water to people dying in the desert); sales associate (at The Wicker Emporium!!); hairdresser; aesthetician. My friend Laura is an aesthetician. She says she waxes pubes all day. I don't care what the tips are like, that doesn't sound like a good way to spend half my waking hours.

Tim Horton's coffee is laced with crack.

This will be my last post of the day because I have a lot of important drinking to do tonight.

New on HRDC: two call centre jobs in Woodstock; clerk at a craft store in the soon-to-be-dead Brookside Mall; public health nurse (what did I just say...?); another babysitting job; cashier at Tim Horton's. Been there, done that. I may as well recount the horrors of the summer I spend selling soup to old people in the Regent Mall food court:

You can't tell from the uber-cute avatar I use as my profile pic, but I have a piercing in my upper lip. When I was given the honour of slinging Tim Horton's coffee for $5.90/hr, they made me wear a fucking band-aid over it, making it look like I had a moustache. Seriously. I don't know why I didn't tell the manager to go fuck herself right then and there... I probably needed money for beer and cigarettes or something. Anyway, the band-aid also caused random customers to take me asside and ask if my boyfriend hit me. HEY ASSHOLE: IT'S NONE OF YOUR GODDAMN BUSINESS WHAT I DO ON MY OWN TIME! Now go eat your blueberry fritter and leave me the fuck alone.

The assistant manager was a fundamentalist Christian who clearly hated me from the very beginng. Whenever the manager was looking for somebody to do a shitty job nobody wanted, she always volunteered me. Even the other people I worked with noticed that she treated me differently. Look, I realize that the fact that I drink, smoke, dye my hair and *gasp* wear pants offends your Christian sensibilities, but grow the fuck up and show some professionalism.

When I was hired as a Timmy Whore, I was promised at least 35 hours every week, but most of the time I was lucky if I got 20, making it really difficult to get groceries after I bought liquor and smokes. My solution to the problem was to take home a couple of grocery bags worth of donuts, muffins and bagels at night after the store closed. I also used to give some of the food to my friends who were either unemployed or working at other types of shitty jobs. (Tip: if you're poor, it pays to have friends in the food service industry. I don't know about you, but I get sick of Mr. Noodles and Our Compliments Kraft Dinner pretty damn quick.) Anyway, this is very much against the rules at Tim Horton's; donuts that were for sale to the public 1 minute before closing are unsafe to eat 1 minute after closing, so you can't take them home, nor can you give them to the homeless shelter. Makes sense to me.

I also happened to be working the afternoon and evening of 9/11. I don't know what it is about Tim Horton's coffee, but I'm beginning to suspect that there's some agent in it which causes frequent consumers to become equal parts ignorant and obnoxious. Starbucks coffee, on the other hand, causes people to become smug and self-absorbed, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, I had to smile and nod at all manner of idots comming in saying stuff like "They should just round up all them A-rabs, then kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out".

Anyhoo, to make a long story a little bit longer, it eventually came to one of those situations where I could either quit, or would be fired for my donut-liberating ways. I came in for my 6-hour shift one afternoon, having spent the previous 6 hours on campus attending university classes, and said to the shift supervisor, "I can't keep doing this. I'll work today, and if you can't find somebody to cover my shift on Thursday I'll come in for that too, but I'm out of here at the end of the week". She said, "I can work your Thursday shift if you want." and that was the end of that. Except when I went in a few weeks later to pick up my official Record of Employment: it said that I had been fired because I didn't show up for a shift, so as to ensure I couldn't collect any unemployment benefits. Motherfuckers.

Apparently Blogger doesn't like Mozilla today.

This is what the offending "edit" page looks like in IE:



What is up with this site? Every web developer I've ever talked to about such things always says "For the love of god, get rid of Inernet Explorer and please use a standards-compliant browser like Firefox!". So that's what I do, and then one day, for no apparent reason, this site looks all fucked up. What's the deal with Blogger, kids?

Moving right along... new today on HRDC: cashier (another dollar store job... if I didn't know better, I'd begin to suspect dollar stores were a shitty place to work so that's why they always seem to be hiring....); registered nurse (why am I being penalized because I suck at science and math so I decided to study NOT science and math at university?).

Edit: I downloaded the newest version of Firefox, and everything's magically fixed. A note to the staff: if changes are made to the site that might make it look fucked up in certain browsers (not everybody uses IE or Netscape, you know) you should make a post in the news section about it.

Why the fuck does the edit page look like this???

Oh my god FUCK OFF! I can't copy and paste text and this thing just ate my post. Here is a screen shot so you can see how fucked up this looks:



SOMEBODY FUCKING FIX THIS!!!1eleven

And that's our show for today. Join us tomorrow when our guest will be "tales from the food service industry"

It's been an unusually slow day in new job postings, so I guess that's it for today.

Oh, and still no word back from Dan Savage. Fucker.

Fuck you, Dawson Leery.

New today on HRDC: cook with Aramark (wouldn't that be sad... spending 5 years at university only to end up working in the cafeteria?); driver salesperson (read: traveling salesman); cable television technician (cool, then I could make people wait around from 8am to 5pm only to show up at 6:30 and leave one of those little notes on their door that says "sorry we missed you, please call Rogers to schedule another installation appointment"); sales associate (at that kiosk in the mall that sells nothing but ink cartrages); babysitter. That last one really gets me because it only pays $7 an hour, and not because I would apply for it if the pay was better, I can't stand kids. Anyway, the job is in Forest Hills, so the parents are obviously not hurting for cash. It amazes me the way in which people devalue child care in terms of financial compensation. Taking care of kids is one of the hardest jobs I can think of; shouldn't it be worth more than $0.90 above minimum wage? What the hell is wrong with people.

No news is good news, I guess

There are no new jobs posted on any of the sites I check regularly. What's up with that, there's usually at least one or two by this time.

I'm fuckin' lovin' it!

New on HRDC: flatbed truck driver; call centre agent (what did I just say about telemarketing jobs...?); security guard. My friend John is a rent-a-cop, er... security guard. The local phone company has been out on strike for months now, so John was hired by a private security firm to guard the phone company's property. The strike has gotten ugly enough that workers have apparently been cutting phone lines and that sort of thing. Anyway, the point of this digression is that John is essentially a strike breaker, and if you knew him, you would see the humour in this.

Yay for not interrupting Deep Blue

The woman at Connect just called me back and she got my resume etc. etc. etc. She said they'd be having a meeting either later this week or early next week about what kind of qualifications they're looking for etc. etc. and would probably call me for an interview later next week. This, of course, was all after she tried to hassle me into applying to work for them as a telemarketer. Jesus, if that's all I wanted, does she really think I'd be making all this effort? They'll give those jobs to anyone who can talk and type at the same time and isn't overtly mentally ill. Anyway, so I guess this is all very promising... I'm still not happy at the prospect of graveyard shift though.

In other news... I checked Workopolis for the first time in at least a week, and lo and behold there's a temp agency looking for office monkeys in my area. By the end of the day I'm going to send off a copy of my standard bullshit cover letter and resume, where I say things like "I can offer your business a unique mix of skills, talents, and enthusiasm" and "Besides flexibility, I can also offer your business my ability to work well as part of a team, a skill I gained as a result of my employment with Tim Horton’s". And it makes me feel so dirty.

Shooting blanks

I just called Connect, got the voice mail of the woman I needed to talk to... "We spoke last week blah blah blah... I mailed my resume blah blah blah... just wanted to follow up with you blah blah blah... wondering if you've started doing interviews yet blah blah blah..." I just know she's going to call me back during the squid show that's on the Discovery Channel at 3:00pm.

New on HRDC since I looked last: amusement ride operator! Fuck yeah, I'd love to be a carnie! Except the ad says you have to own a half-ton truck. Jesus H. Christ.

Unscheduled downtime

It's pushing noon and... wait, it's 12:01... and I've only just now gotten the internet working again. I'm gonna wait until sometime after 1:00 to follow up on the call centre thing I mentioned yesterday.

New so far today on HRDC: two postings for retail sales clerks, both at Dollarama. I love that place, but my old roommate used to work there as a stock boy and hated it. He said that the regional manager was a bitch who came in every week and loudly complained to the store manager about the doctor of Scrud needing to cut his hair. That and he was always being hassled by customers about "snowman plates". Apparently Dollarama sells dinner plates with snowmen on them which are in high demand among the social assistance set.

Hey Faggot, gimme a job!

The following is an excerpt from this week's Savage Love:

Did you know that if you Google "huge breasts," you get 1,170,000 hits? But if you Google "huge balls," you get only 67,000? And that if you Google "huge asshole," you get 8,830—including a link to the official White House web site?

My assistant, Mahrya, discovered these amazing facts, BREAST, while tracking down Tiffany Towers and Wendy Whoppers, neither of whom responded, as they say at The New York Times, to my repeated requests for comment. I could have looked up "huge breasts" myself, I suppose, but enormoboobs are so early- to mid-Clinton-era, you know? I like to reserve my time for researching newer, freakier fetishes, thank you very much, so it seemed like the perfect assignment for my assistant. Apparently not. Shortly after tracking down Tiffany Towers, Mahrya informed me that she's moving on. It seems my assistant found more respectable work at a law firm where she won't have to Google "huge breasts" ever again. (The partners will have to Google that for themselves.) While I'm sorry to see Mahrya go—thanks for everything, M—I am looking forward to hiring a new assistant. Does spending the day Googling enormoboobs, tracking down retired porn stars, and gently reminding me about deadlines I've already missed sound appealing? Send me an e-mail. (Male applicants are encouraged to enclose pictures of themselves in Speedos.)

The following is the email I sent to Dan Savage in response to his job posting:

Dear Dan,

I'm a recent university grad who's been vainly searching for administrative work in the wiles of eastern Canada. I live in Fredericton, New Brunswick, about a four-hour drive from your friends at Venus Envy in Halifax, and about an hour and a half from the Maine border. Anyway, I would be more than happy to relocate to sunny Seattle if you'd be willing to hire me as your assistant... I've got a brother in Portland and I love the Pacific North West.

Working as your assistant makes perfect sense for me because since I've been unemployed, I already spend a great deal of time Googling terms like "huge boobs". I'm sorry that I'm not a boy who wears Speedos, but rest assured that my bushy-tailed enthusiasm will more than make up for my missing appendages. I've been a fan of yours for years, and I promise to never leave you for a law firm.

I've attached my resume, and I hope to hear from you.

Cheers,

Mary

Hello dream job!

Now hiring female escorts

Here's some more new jobs posted on HRDC since I looked last: truck owner/operator; mechanical engineer; cashier (at the Mail N' Mart, that place that used to get robbed all the time!); counter atendant - food service; cashier - customer service (at Pets Unlimited... hmmmm... isn't that the store currently facing a sexual discrimination lawsuit?).

New today from my friends at Monster.ca: Aboriginal Diabetes Initiative/Canada Prenatal Nutrition Program Coordinator; Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Coordinator; Clinical Dietician; Territorial Coordinator, Community Wellness Programs; Condominium Coordinator. Oh wait, despite the fact that I swearched for jobs in Fredericton, all of these are in fucking Iqaluit!

Then I looked at the classifieds in my local paper. There were two ads from "escort services" looking to hire "new ladies". My boyfriend gets pissy when I fuck other people but if it weren't for that, I would seriously consider it. Hey, at least then I wouldn't have to "work" more than a few hours a week and could still pay rent.

Fucking construction.

Still nothing new on Career Beacon today. I don't know why I continue checking that one, it's updated sporadically at best and the only jobs openings which seem to be posted there are in medicine or some other field in which I have no training nor experience.

New postings so far today on HRDC: physiotherapy assistant; flatbed truck driver; mechanical engineer.

I have a toothache.

9:52 am, just woke up. Checked HRDC Job Bank and Career Beacon site, nothing new except one construction worker job on HRDC. Yeah fucking right.

Tomorrow I will follow up on that call centre job I applied for last week... it's at an out bound centre as a "Call Centre Quality Verifier". Basically you sit alone in a room for 8 hours listening to taped calls and writing reports about what people did wrong. That sounds like the perfect job for me, seeing as how much I like to be left alone and criticize other people. The only problem is that it's Monday to Fiday, midnight to 8:00am. I don't like that idea, if for no other reason than this place is downtown near all the bars so I wouldn't be able to get to work without walking through hoards of drunken morons. Night shift isn't good anyway, it makes it difficult to have a social life on your days off. Also I would never have sex again. If I get it my hope is that they'll be so blown away with my abilities to be overly critical and work without supervision that they'll switch me to days before long. Here's hoping.

Greetings from the mysterious east.

I'm unemployed. Sometimes I don't mind it, like when I get to lay around all day watching TV, downloading porn, reading comic books and playing SNES games. Other times I hate it. Like when my bank and credit card statements come. And those unnerving letters from the student loan people saying they want their $45k back. Those are the absolute worst.

Basically, I've gotten bored and cranky enough that I've decided my unemployment should be chronicled... but somewhere other than in my SuicideGirls journal so as to not bore to death all my porn friends. Hence: Destitute is the New Black!.