Fear of Competence

On Monday I had a job interview. The second since I arrived up here. Jobs are rare here, and all of them pay Minimum Wage. Pause and consider that a moment. How are you supposed to rent a residence and eat and pay for gasoline for your job on minimum wage? You can't. Obviously, some jobs pay more, but apparently, there's an unstated rule that you must be female to deserve an interview. As I am not, my applications languish and weeks later I get a "we hired someone else, FOAD". This isn't a great feeling, particularly since my resume is fully loaded, like a Cadillac with all the extras. There are few jobs I haven't done, and few skills I don't have. Unfortunately, some of those skills would have landed me work, like driving a forklift, or operating the high end DC electrical test equipment used in electronics manufacturing. Sadly, I don't have those skills and even if I did, everybody around here expects me to have done nothing BUT electronics manufacturing for the last decade and they only pay a modest wage if I did know that. Having done all these other jobs seems to intimidate them. This is Sad Panda for me.

The job I interviewed for would be easy compared to most things I've done. Inventory of supplies, customer service by email and phone, minding the production employees while the owners are out having more of a life. Easy. I did that in my last couple jobs. Trained people too. Apparently I was just too qualified because they didn't keep their word about calling me and cowardly reposted their job the next day. How sad is that? No response to my query emails. I am left annoyed but at least I'm not working for minimum wage for someone who can't keep their word on the first day. So, call that a dodged bullet if you like. Isn't that something?

People buy these. They're the next big thing.

Part of me thinks I should see if the local motorcycle dealers will hire me to sell scooters. They do sell a few. It must be a rare thing, but rare is not none. The other job I'm interested in is one of the local independent bookstores. And maybe I'd think seriously about working at the local cooking supply store, though they didn't contact me about their cooking school like they said they would, which is bad business practice. You really shouldn't lie to employees or potential employees. It never ends well. There's also that farm supply store, though her ad is gone so maybe she's got someone while I was waiting for the wankers to keep their word. Figures.

Employers who lie really shouldn't be shocked if employees are skeptical. Duh! Only crazy people think others have no memory. Do I want to work for crazy people again? Oh hell no.