You know you've sold your soul to a corporate job when...

...you're required to do menial tasks with "fun" names, like a "lobby slide" (sweeping and tidying the store's entrance) or a "ten spin" (checking the temperature of refrigerated food items every ten minutes.)

...all of the company's ridiculously high standards for quality and customer service tend to contradict one another and cancel each other out, i.e. the impossibility of grinding beans and brewing a fresh pot of coffee every eight minutes during morning rush while taking every customer's order within 30 seconds from the time they enter the store.

...every company policy and rule boils down to one common goal: avoiding lawsuits.

...you and your coworkers are strongly encouraged to show your unique personality--while wearing identical uniforms, repeating scripted lines to customers and performing monotonous tasks for hours at a time.

...there's an acronym for everything, from how to resolve a customer complaint to how to properly clean the bathroom.

more later.

Me, myself and my network

An article in The New York Times last month said that for every job opening in the U.S. there are six job seekers.

Everyone, from my dad to the President of the E.W. Scripps Company, tells me networking is key. This idea may have exploded in the age of Facebook and Twitter, but I can remember being very young the first time I heard someone say, "it's not what you know, it's who you know."

To someone who has racked up around $100,000 in student loan debt for a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism, it's slightly disheartening. In fact, the more articles and books I read about job searching, the more I'm told to put my education section at the bottom of my resume, and highlight any impressive names on my reference page--no matter how distant my connection to that person may be.

I must admit, I've sent several resumes and cover letters via email every week since I've moved to Philadelphia, mostly to general address like jobs@companyname.com. And my only two call backs so far were from companies where I applied in person. (As it happens, they were both in food service, but that's another story.)

My most recent job-hunt read was Can I Wear My Nose Ring To The Interview?: A Crash Course In Finding, Landing, and Keeping Your First Real Job by Ellen Gordon Reeves. The chapter on cover letters was the most interesting to me. The author insisted that no self-respecting person should begin a cover letter with "hello my name is," "I'm writing in application of," or any other generic opening. Instead, she suggests an original, attention-catching first sentence. I completely agree with her on this, but the only example she gave of this must-have beginning was one in which a name was dropped.

Don't get me wrong, with the current job-to-jobless persons ratio, I think using someone's name is an often essential way to set yourself apart from the other hundreds of applicants. And I don't think my education is obsolete. No matter who you know, you most likely won't get the job without solid credentials, impressive work samples, and a good interview.

But let's say I apply for a job at company X for which I'm perfectly qualified. Then, another not-as-qualified person applies to the same job, but first sends out a mass message to his or her one thousand Facebook friends (most of whom he or she barely knows) and asks for a contact at company X. I have a sharp, concise and thoughtful cover letter. The other candidate has a cover letter with a name. We all know who gets the job.

It doesn't seem fair for employers to discriminate on a who-you-know basis. But I guess if all this name-finding hoop jumping is what it takes today, I have no choice.

Sightseeing

On the five-hundred block of South Sixth Street, we get the best of both worlds. 


Walk south and we run into South Street--famous for nightlife, restaurants, hip shops, and tourists. The sidewalks are always busy with a mosaic of pedestrians, vendors, and street musicians. Even the restaurants need bouncers late at night on South Street.


On Friday and Saturday nights after the bars close, you can usually count on a domestic dispute or two (often incited by the arrival of a tow truck), a handful of people using alleys as receptacles for the release of various bodily fluids, and a confetti-like sprinkling of discarded, greasy paper plates and other trash along the street and sidewalk.


But when you head north on Sixth Street, after a few blocks you're greeted with red brick roads, horse-drawn carriages, and lush, green parks full of people reading, relaxing, walking. The shady, winding pathways of Washington Square are a tranquil refuge in the eye of a storm of city traffic and turmoil. There are no signs posted, but there is an unspoken agreement to maintain the serenity among the habitués.


There's nothing particularly special about our block itself, other than being the dividing line between two parallel universes. We live next to a computer repair shop, a dumpy take-out pizzeria, and across the street from a gated, community park with basketball courts and a children's playground.


A couple nights ago, however, things got a little exciting.


Around 1, Jason stepped out on the front stoop for a smoke. Even though the park closes at dusk, the streetlights made two intruders quite visible. They were sitting on a bench just a few feet from the street. Exchanging sexual favors.


A male passerby stopped dead in his tracks for a few moments to view the spectacle. He eventually walked on,  but not before glancing across the street to see Jason, and flashing him a big thumbs-up.


Never one to leave a guy hanging, Jason returned the gesture with a grin.

It's raining, pasta sauce is pouring

So far, I love life in the city. So many perks--like having everything you need within walking distance, so much history and diversity...

And a few quirks:

Jason and I woke up and immediately remembered we forgot to put the trash out on the curb for collection last night. But when we dragged the bags out from the laundry room to take outside, we also dragged out a mouse. The cat couldn't catch it, but Jason's sandal did. Death, I found, (especially of an animal larger than your average bug) is particularly hard to stomach just moments after you wake up. We're guessing he found his way in through the storm cellar in the laundry room that opens up onto the sidewalk. We're also guessing he has lots of friends and family nearby.

For reasons unknown, the city didn't even end up collecting the trash on our block this morning as scheduled. The streets always smell on trash night. The streets smell surprisingly worse after everyone's trash has been sitting out overnight in the rain. Also, we had fish for dinner last night, and I just cleaned the cat litter box.

So, tonight Jason, Joe and I stopped at SuperFresh for a few dinner supplies. We just needed a jar of marinara for our soon-to-be stuffed pasta shells. The thing about grocery stores in the middle of a city is they're often small. And cramped. And sometimes when someone pushes by you in a narrow aisle when you're holding a jar of pasta sauce, it causes you to drop it. (You equals Jason in this scenario.)

The store employee who happened to be just a few feet away, kindly told us to please step back, he would clean it up. Then he kindly reminded us, along with everyone else in the store, to USE A BASKET, USE A BASKET, YOU KIDS ALWAYS THINK YOU CAN CARRY EVERYTHING IN YOUR HANDS, BUT YOU CAN'T. USE A BASKET, YOU GOTTA USE A BASKET, PLLLEEEASE. THIS WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU WOULDA USED A BASKET. GO ON, GET A BASKET, NOW, ALL OF YOU!

Walking home, it started to rain again. A lady in a passing car made a point to hang the upper half of her body out the window and sing to us, tauntingly, "It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring!"

I guess the joke's on her, though, because she wasn't wearing a raincoat either.

I've made an example of myself, and not the good kind.

You see, the thing about typos is they happen. Publishers make reprints, newspapers run corrections, professors make marks with their red pens. Just think of all the time, money, and effort spent on avoiding and correcting misspelled words, run on sentences--I've already made (and fortunately caught) three of them in this blog.

The other thing about typos is that there are some places where they can't happen, or at least where they are seldom forgiven.

Like on a resume.

For a proofreading job.

You heard right, my friends, I boasted my community invovlement on my resume that I sent to a marketing firm that warns potential employees on their job posting that "errors are costly and time-consuming for our clients and our company; they could be cause for dismissal." Their confident and daring use of the often-debated semi-colon makes the statement that much more intimidating.

And, no. The squiggly red line we've all come to rely on so well did not save my ass. I made my resume in InDesign, a graphic design program that I'm new to, and haven't yet found its spell check function. I was trying to make it tech-savvy and user-friendly--I even converted it into a PDF.

Luckily, the only other company who received that copy of my resume was advertising a job for which I knew I was highly under-qualified.

But as for the hip-sounding marketing firm, it makes it all the harder to take knowing that I was a perfect match for the job. The ad even said "must love dogs." Sure, I'm more of a cat person, but still, how cool is that?

I haven't heard anything back yet, not even a rejection. Part of me is tempted to write to them again and admit my flaw, in the vain hope they kept my papers on file because my writing samples were just that good. My less optimistic side says I made their decision for them. You wouldn't hire a nanny with a criminal record. You don't hire a dyslexic to do your taxes.

Until the next sweet-sounding job posting surfaces on Craig's List, I'll keep on hoping that company's need for a proofreader is particularly desperate.

By the way, can you find the typos I left uncorrected in this post? Maybe that's just the perfect way to end all of my cover letters.