"Other than money, what are you looking for in a job?". A common ice breaker or team building question.
Maybe it was the spirits talking but this time it seemed stemmed in curiosity and blended with therapy. In my Zoom suit at my kitchen counter, interviewing for a job in wine and liquor sales.
The guy asking would occasionally glance at some papers in his hands. I'm guessing my resume, cover letter and a variety of pre-written questions including the psychological study of my soul. There were vintage maps and wine bottles in his background. There is a way out of this and he has directions and a destination.
"A sense of purpose" I react to the conceptual question with equal parts ease and embarrassment.
I had been going about the search in the wrong way, some experts say.
There has been an ongoing and inconsistent amount of guidance:
Make authentic connections
Show don't tell
Know your why
Gain vs get
What the fuck
The pressure is increasing just like co-payments and office visits. Experts will suffer if there's ever an actual answer. Job alerts enter my inbox like it’s a contest. Start off in control and end up in a crash. Regardless of what happens, this one could age well, I think.
I believed it when I wrote the objective on my resume: "Following college, I was a full time liquor store employee. I unloaded trucks with a fork lift, stocked beer, wine and liquor. Dusted bottles. Built displays. Worked with sales representatives and merchandisers. I carried cases out to customers cars. I swept the parking lot. My work ethic was founded here and I’m on tap to return."
He received 350 applications in 10 days. This 1 paragraph stood out, he told me. A numbers game, some experts say. Flattered he consumed my content. Most don't.
Stained and worn out, rejections have piled up like ignored laundry.
My words aren't tailored to 'beat the bots’. Likely never seen by a human eye before being rejected by the robots in control.
Next-steps are scheduled. Appointments are added. All the procedural elements are in order.
It was snowing again. It didn’t bother me like it used to. I seem to have adapted to the conditions. Repetitive, tedious and limiting. Groceries done. Car parked.
Well stocked and nowhere to go, I went out for a walk. I was just outside my apartment when a car slowed down and stopped in front of me.
"Where the fuck are you going?" My neighbor Joe asked through his driver's side window.
Cigar idling in his mouth, he swears like an old uncle and talks to me like a co-worker.
“Walking into Harvard Square” I told him.
He told me he was going home to shovel.
“You want a hand?” I asked.
“If you want” he says.
I went back home to get better gloves and met Joe in his driveway.
His icebreaker is more literal. He pushes the metal blade through the compacted snow and ice tracks made by his car tires. I scoop it up with the shovel and pile it next to the Saint Anthony lawn statue. Standing there in his old Boston University winter coat with Physical Plant stitched on it, he points toward the front of his house. “Get that over there” the retired maintenance guy tells me.
“Which one? The porch, the steps, the sidewalk?”
“All of it!” he orders.
I get all of it. Then I sweep it, then I salt it.
Ice pick as his cane he climbs up his front steps and sits back on his familiar bench on his front porch. Leans back and without looking rings his doorbell with his thumb over his shoulder. Joe’s wife’s robed arm extends from the front door with a bottle of red wine in a brown paper bag.
“Do you want wine or I could give you $20.00?” he asks. A repurposed interview question.
I tell him I don't need either, that I don't mind shoveling. I actually like the workout and the fresh air. He just stares at me waiting for an answer. Turns out I already got this job.
I should feel guilty but I don’t and take the wine.
‘I’ll drink this” I say the obvious. Thinking that Saint Anthony would approve, it is said he represents a ‘steady courage to face the ups and downs of life’.
“Of course you’ll drink it” he assures me that's exactly what it is for. For drinking.
It's not a metaphor. It's not an exercise. It's not a robot. It's human.
And it's rare.
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