A Job Fair.
There was a job fair at Pembroke Mall today. I didn't know how to dress, since it's like a job interview but hey, it's a fair. At 10 a.m. dozens of people dressed for a job interview, each carrying a small folder of resumes, ran into the mall looking for the fair, like gamers looking for D&D 4th Edition. I was instructed as to where the "recruiters" were. This term is suspiciously close somehow to "procurers" (look it up) or "press gangs" in my mind.
I said, "Good morning" to a man who worked for the Yoonited States Secret Service. Somehow, in a Gross Pointe Blank kind of way, this was why I wanted to go, to see Secret Service recruiters. Then I saw a pamphlet that reminded me that the Agency of Fucking Up Your Airplane Flight is part of the Secret Service, and I felt sick. There were no clowns, rides, or cotton candy at the Job Fair. Although the Home Depot booth did have frisbees.
There was an incredibly thin woman, dressed in classy business wear, who stood on the edge of the crowd like a hawk looking for mice. I'm not sure what her function was.
Each prospective recruiter victim had a fragile smile, like making an L with your finger and thumb on your forehead. Each one looked like if you casually asked him or her the one-word question, "Unemployed?" he or she would produce a small caliber pistol from seemingly nowhere and stick it in his or her mouth. The only thing worse than being unemployed is seeing a whole bunch of unemployed people and realizing you have that look on your face too.
Faced with a desire to look up on the internets what the definition of "clinical depression" might be, I went shopping. Walking through half a dozen retail stores, each one had a different 1980s vintage song playing on the Muzakinator, which reinforced my Gross Pointe Blank fantasy. Songs like "Cruel Summer" mean different things when you're freshly laid off.
I bought Mitch Hedberg's other CD, which made me sad because he's dead. Then I resolved to have a big dose of comfort food, which is a euphemism for "food that's bad for you." In America, we call that "Number 3 with a Coke." Double quarter pounder and fries. I can feel my cholesterol increasing as I type.
However, Mitch was funny as always, and I am now spiking my watered down McDonald's Coke with the free liter of Real Coke I won the other day, and it doesn't get much better than that. Not today, anyway.
14 comments:
This too shall pass so long as you keep up your diligence. Believe me, I know. Hey, you got to go to the mall in the middle of the day...granted Pembroke Mall.
Thanks, man. :)
They didn't have the Hedberg CD at Pembroke. The FYE didn't even have a comedy CD section, as far as I could tell. I had to go to Planet Music, and then I had to ask somebody, and she said the comedy CDs were behind the New Age music over there, and I thought, fuck, you can't hide anything better than that even if you put it in the classical room.
This reminds me eerily of the time Brian and I attended a job fair in Williamsburg in early 1999. Granted, we had further to drive and most of the "jobs" were recruiters for various military branches. The buddy system was certainly helpful since we could take turns being the lead at a particular table so the other wouldn't have to suffer the same fate.
We had an entire hour (the drive home) to discuss precisely how much time we'd wasted and the numerous ways it could've been spent. On the flip side, the job fair later at the Pavilion was much better and worth the effort.
Bishop (still without an ID on here!)
As my sister in law said to me yesterday when I got back, "It isn't anyone's favorite way to spend the day."
Hm, I had thought in passing about going to that job fair -- thanks for tipping me off not to waste my time.
Honestly, if there's another one, I'll probably go, just to make sure I don't miss out on something. But that one sucked.
They all suck. That doesn't mean that in our current position we don't need to attend :) Their sucking is because of the mood, not because of what they offer. Like reynolds said, diligence is the word.
Yep. Right. Diligence. It's getting tough, but I work on it every day. Thanks, dudes.
...you can't hide anything better than that even if you put it in the classical room...
Hey!
Okay, sorry, that was uncalled for, I admit it. I just always thought it was weird that Planet Music has a separate room for classical CDs.
This store separates classical from non-classical the way independent video stores separate porn from non-porn?
Yes, the classical CDs are in their own room, although there are no beaded string draperies between.
That is because we don't want to have to rub elbows with the riff-raff whilst we are contemplating the purchase of Mahler's Fifth done by the London or Boston Symphonies.
Reminds me of the Tower in downtown Boston, which they cleverly placed within easy walking distance of both New England Conservatory and Berklee College of Music. The Classical floor (yes, the entire floor, it was great) was at the top, and you had to ride the escalator all the way up there, where you could gaze at the rabble purchasing pop or rap or what-have-you.
We used to, in quite a tongue-in-cheek way, refer to it as the penthouse. I only ventured outside it in those years for jazz or Queen.
I understand that perfectly. That's just how I feel when I'm in the little room in the back with the dirty movies.
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