Would you like fries with that?

Usually a bit of research goes into writing these blogs. This time, however, to get the scope of my life for the past little while it’s just a matter of going through my gmail inbox.

Yesterday, I got two rejection emails from people that won’t hire me. Two isn’t a record, but it’s close. I think my record is four rejection emails in a single day. I think that I’ll know I’ve hit the big time when I get seven in a single day. Then I’ll really know I’m going nowhere.

It’s no easy thing to get emails that say some variation of, “blah, blah, blah we’re not taking your application past this stage, blah, blah, blah,” like I’m competing in the the Dakar Road Rally. In fact, it’s very difficult to get any email at all. I figure I send about an average of five to six applications a day, for two months — some days I send many more, some days, like today, I send a lot less. That’s about 300 different businesses who have rejected my application.

And before you get on my case about me not sending out enough applications, understand this: Each business needs to be researched, each cover letter needs to be tailored and meticulously proof-read, and each addressee needs to be found. I feel I have to address my emails and cover letters to someone. This is a lot more difficult than it sounds. It’s a matter of sifting through the names, if they are available, which they’re often not, and finding the right person to address. That same person usually doesn’t want to be discovered because then someone might accidently try to ask them for a job.

Anyway, I have about 18-20 rejections in my inbox. I’m not entirely sure of the number exactly, it’s too goddamned depressing to try to closely examine, so that’s my estimate. That’s about a six percent return on my work — and that’s just rejections.

Yesterday was special because I flew into a bloody rage. The kind of rage where I scream and punch walls. The kind of rage that nobody has really seen, because I make sure I’m alone when I have them.

I got a special rejection last night. It said this:

Hi Arin,

With this e-mail we would like to thank you again for your application.

Erik has had a pleasant call with you but unfortunately we won’t take you to the next round.

Main reason is we’re not confident enough this job will keep you challenged for the next couple of years.

Thanks again for your time and all the best with your career.

Anne Marie

This one stung, because the interview had gone very well. It was for a job in Breda, Holland —  writing lessons about how to use software designed for people that work in the hotel industry. It was over Skype, and it seemed mutually agreeable. Even the internet connection was consistent. The only problem was the incredibly loud drilling that started on the opposite wall of my room as soon as the interview started. I had head-phones, so that was taken care of. To the interviewer, however, it must have looked and sounded like I was in a white box underneath a major highway.

Every interview I’ve had — three in total, a single percentage return on my work— has had something idiotic happen. The first one, I was so eager to get the initial firm-handshake-and-eye-contact thing right, I ended up awkwardly locking fingers with the man, like two morons trying to have a thumb war. The interview, which lasted 15 more minutes — after the People From the Planet Gergblatz greeting — went downhill from there.

The second interview was a hell of a lot better. It was a double grilling by two people, and I fielded every question with grace and aplomb. I was thoughtful and articulate even with the annoying question, “Can you tell me some of your weaknesses?” (“Why, yes I can. I’m a serial rapist. So you could say my weakness is vaginas.”). Everybody was happy with everybody and they seemed to be impressed with me. Then it came time to write the test. 

I had 45 minutes to  proofread a document and correct the errors therein. It was a test, so I was left on my own in room and given the opportunity to concentrate in silence. Silence, except for a guy that kept barging into the office to demand answers for vague questions. The first time, it was to ask why I was there. The second time, it was to see when I would be leaving. The third time, it was to ask who had booked the room for me. Throughout the whole test I could also hear the hysterical giggling of someone who had obviously been sucking on nitrous-oxide throughout her high-pitched conversation with a jack-hammer. Apparently, sometime during the test, I didn’t notice that Romania wasn’t in the Middle East, and I blew it.

I didn’t complain to them because the distractions could have been part of the test — which actually speaks volumes about the amount of self-doubt and mystical second-guessing which goes into every interview — so I’m complaining to you.

Granted, I did have two interviews prior to this recent concerted search for work. One, I blew because I think I may have been over-confident. The other, I blew because they told me point-blank that I was over-qualified.

Which brings me back to yesterday’s rejection which almost caused me to have an aneurism.  Specifically the line, “...we’re not confident enough this job will keep you challenged…”

To me, this means that I’m not stupid enough for the position, and that they — by trawling crack dens and lobotomy outpatient wards — are looking for someone stupider.  This flies in the face of any logical hiring scheme aside from talent searches for reality-show contestants. Somebody, probably me, was paid a visit by the bullshit fairy.

The previous interview I had — the one where I screwed-up the handshake — the guy made it pretty clear throughout that the job was too much of a challenge for me. I actually felt better about this. At least I knew that I had to get better at something. It caused me to re-arrange what I thought I was capable of, it also taught me how to handle the next interview — namely, to have some good questions and answers ready, and to aim a little better with my hand.

The over-qualified argument is the most unhelpful response you can get. It leaves you impotently seething because you don’t learn anything aside from the relative merits of banging your head against a wall until you reach the intelligence level of asparagus, thus increasing your hireability.

I almost wrote back, “Presumably, if it’s not enough of a challenge for me, I’ll hit the ground running and be able to improve on the quality of my work from there. It’s better for you, in that respect, to hire someone that can actually do  things. But if you want someone that sees every task you give them as a challenge; like turning on a computer, or not shitting in the waste-paper basket, then good luck running your business into the dirt.” 

I didn’t, naturally. I said, thank you for the email, re-iterated why I believed the work wouldn’t be a challenge, and signed off with, “Best Regards”.

This narrow space between “too challenging” and “not challenging enough” doesn’t, of course, exist in the real world. It’s not a tangible number that can be measured and then played within the field of its borders. It’s totally science-fiction, created by a business acumen that relies on double-speak and political correctness in order to convey a message that is totally meaningless.

Monster.ca, a grand and world-renowned employment board, sites 6 of the best— read: most honest — reasons why I didn’t get the job:

REASON 1. None Of Us Liked You

REASON 2. You’re Not Attractive Enough

REASON 3. You’re Much Too Attractive

REASON 4. We Hired The Vice-President’s Brother-In-Law Instead

REASON 5. We Intended To Hire An Insider All Along

REASON 6. We Found Someone Who’ll Let Us Exploit Them

This, to me, sounds about right. But, it is also something which is totally out of your ability to control. As a matter of fact, that’s the crux of job hunting. Aside from the incredible amounts of self-doubt,  uncertainty, soul-sucking disappointment and general Anton The Great-style mind-play, it’s the fact that you have no control over it. All you have control over is quantity and quality of job applications, and not turning into a gardening tool during the interview. Your fate — long term — lies in the hands of people that have met you for a moment, and that is affected by  whatever mood they happen to be in at the time. Worse yet, you’ll never know their reasoning either way.

With so much uncertainty you start to fill in the blanks with psychopathic mysticism. At least, I do. Was I wearing magical socks on that day? Did ignoring the homeless guy upset my karmic balance? Did thinking bad thoughts result in my inbox being empty today? Will telling people about the interview that went well jinx my chances? For that last one, apparently, yes.

Frankly, I should know better. After what happened with my radio job in B.C., I concluded that nothing means nothing, and everything means nothing .There is no meaning, there is no rhyme or reason, everything is chance, and to quote the great Mark Knopfler, “Sometimes you’re a Louisville Slugger, sometimes you’re the ball.” 

Ironically, in that case, things turned around for me when I basically gave up and returned to Ottawa. Then Opa died, and everything changed. This is in direct opposition to the philosophy that continued hard work will get you somewhere; to never give up, to keep plodding on. Like I’m doing these day. Well, not today, but for the past while.

Anyway, crazy mysticism aside, your fate lies in the hands of people that, more often than not, have never met you. They’ve based their decision on a peripheral glance at the very carefully calculated and time-consuming cover letter which you’ve painstakingly put together. Many jobs don’t want to even receive a letter. They want you to fill out the dreaded online application form.

I have an excel file with, I’m not kidding, about 100 different passwords and usernames for as many sites. Every time you fill out an online application they ask you to register with their web address. This usually involves having your passwords rejected about six times, because you’ve doubled up on characters, you need upper- AND lower-case letters, you need more numbers or symbols, or you have to kill a snake during the harvest moon and dance The Watusi with three infant lemmings.

Then there is the tiresome task of filling out questions like; previous employers, previous education, previous salary, references, and everything else you already have on the resume from which you are copying the information. Then, after all this, they ask you to upload your resume in “.doc or .pdf”. Sometimes, the first thing you have to do is upload your CV, and then some witless program divides it into keyword categories and presents a version back to you which is so horribly mangled it looks like it passed through a pig’s stomach after being beaten into submission by four guys with hockey sticks. On it, you find out your name is “Manterex 11 Video Productions”, your address is “Voicetracked evening show at CFNI-FM” and your previous job was “Prague, CZ”, after being educated at the well-respected “+44 07660 695 004” University.

The online application strips you of any humanity you might have had. You fill one of these bastards out and a prescient robot sends you an email which says, “Thank you for your application to (insert company name). Due to the high number of applicants, only those selected for an interview will be contacted. Please do not email or call us. In fact, the best thing to do is dig a deep hole in a field somewhere, stand at the edge and shoot yourself in the forehead. When you get reincarnated as a door-hinge, we’ll contact you.”

And I feel like time is running out. Thanks to the generosity of my landlord I’ve already extended my contract for an extra month in this flat. On Sunday I’ll be moving back with the girl I stayed with the first week I was here. This will give me another month and allow me to extend my finances a bit farther in order to find a job in a world that is going down the toilet employment-wise. 

Let’s face it, I’m 37 years old, no job, no money, no girlfriend. The last item is a direct result of the first three, make no mistake about it. I want things. I want a house, a car, a child and a wife, not necessarily in that order. Most of all I want to be able to pay back the people that have helped me out the over the past many, many years, but in order to do that I need a job. And in order to do that someone has to give me a chance.

And how do I get that chance? I go through the hellish and pride-crushing rigmarole of this nightmare they call ‘the job hunt’, just like I seem to have been doing my whole life. There was the famous Language-Less Quest of Holland, 2010. Before that was the Deadly-Depression Desperation Search of Vancouver, 2009. Before that, the Post-Radio-Degree Optimistic Hunt of Several Months While Working a Shit Job in a Restaurant of Ottawa, also 2009. Before that was Prague, where I probably over-stayed my welcome by about five years.

Which raises questions about the choices I made in my life, and how relatively good or bad they were. Because, whatever they were, I’m not happy now. And don’t tell me to be positive, because I’ve learned this lesson repeatedly for the past many years: The higher in altitude you are, the more fatal the landing when you hit the ground. I’ve hit the ground a few times now. Also, don’t tell me everything happens for a reason. Because it doesn’t. That is the hopeful pleading of the utterly directionless.

All in all, though, I’ve still got my sense of humour. There is that. I’ve always said: If that goes, I’m screwed. And in Vancouver I lost it for a while there. And that’s when I just gave up. And you see where that got me?

London, dancing on its streets

More thoughts on London. 

I figure the city is so vast and historically-enriched, along with being culturally-stewed, socially-conflagrated, and many other adjectives, that I can devote more than just one post to its stupendousness.  At least, before I become so over-awed with London that my brain starts emitting television static and I have to be rushed to the local (free) hospital for a stupendectomy.

Last time I wrote about London I started trying to cover everything about it with the wide stokes of a paint-roller.  Madness.  What ended up happening was a rant about the London Underground, or as it’s modestly called: “The Tube”.  Calling the London Underground “The Tube” is like calling World War II a “Relations Hiccup”, it really doesn’t do it justice.  But I’ll stop myself right there.  I’ve already babbled incoherently about “The Tube”.  Let’s move on to slightly more focused items.

A few British People things I can’t get my head around:

As many of you know, they drive on the wrong side of the road here.  A problem that stems, no doubt,  from the driver sitting on the wrong side of the car.  As someone that has driven in countries where you sit in the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road I know the two incongruities cancel each other out.  The logic being, as long as your body is in the middle of the road when you’re driving, you’re okay.  Of course it helps if everybody else is following the same rule.

This sort of thing creates an interesting environment for pedestrians, of which I am one.  Firstly, when I’m crossing the street I still don’t know which way the cars are coming from.  This can probably be chalked up to stupidity, or ‘failure to learn’.  Which is fine if the mistake is mis-hitting the ‘enter’ key on my computer.  But this is the kind of thing where learning the hard way can involve you wearing your spleen on the outside like a fanny-pack.  I deal with the uncertainty by looking every possible direction anything could approach from, and observing when other people are crossing.

This last is also dangerous because the entire city — maybe the entire nation—ignores the green-man pedestrian crossing signal.  The result is a mild curb-side tap-dance on my part as I try to gauge oncoming traffic versus what other pedestrians are doing versus what the light says.  Needless to say, every time I cross a street in London I fully expect to be turned into peanut-butter.

The other aspect of the doing-things-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-road thing is that I’m never sure what side of the sidewalk I’m supposed to be on.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve ended up doing the preliminary steps of a waltz with a complete stranger as we try to pass each other on a footpath.  I have never encountered this problem in any other country.  Where people drive on the correct side of the road pedestrians correspondingly do the same off the road — they stick to the right.  Logically, here, where people drive on the wrong side, you should take the left lane when you’re walking.  As a matter of fact, in most Tube stations they have signs that say “Keep Left”, but this could just as easily be an instruction for your political compass because above-ground these rules don’t apply.  I can only attribute this to the massive amount of foreigners in London which have reached such a critical mass they have thrown the “Keep Left” rule into confusion, and British natives have just given up trying.  Being larger definitely does have advantages in the on-coming pedestrian scenario.  On the other hand, I have, permanently imprinted on my chest, the concave dent of the average Londoners’ face.

Something that has started to cause me mild twinges of anxiety is the informal British greeting of “All right?” or, more accurately, “Awight?”

This is something you hear every time you encounter anyone in the service industry, whether it be store proprietor, cashier, or bouncer.  You hear it from English friends, and complete strangers in a bar.  And I never know how to handle it.

Presumably it’s a contraction of “Are you all right?” which, because it sounds a little too concerned, has been condensed into one —bordering on two— syllables.  When I first arrived, when someone gave me an “All right?” I replied with, “Huh?”

Awkward, because if the “All Right?” is repeated it suddenly puts emphasis on a question that’s not really asking for an answer.  Fear awashes the “All right?” askers’ demeanour with the sudden realization that the social transaction is going to go on much longer than they expected or wanted.

When I finally realized that they were saying “All right?” I started to panic because I thought it required an answer and I came out with a stuttered:

“Well, I ah, I’m okay.  It’s been a weird day, I almost got hit by a car, and someone fell on the Tube tracks—“

This would cause one of two reactions:  Their eyes would start to glaze over, or, again, a look of absolute horror would crawl across their face as they realized the can of worms they had just innocently opened.

Later on I tried responding much more simply:

“All right?”
“Yes.”

But, not only could you drive a freighter through the silence that ensued, I felt like a liar.  And then I felt resentment towards the person for making me lie, not only to them, but to myself, because I was not all right, nor am I usually.

Taking a cue from how the natives handle this I tried responding with my own “All right?”, but because I lack the appropriate accent to pull it off it comes out as a slightly accusatory, “Are you all right?” Immediately a cloud of unease envelops the conversation because I sounded like I actually cared whether the person was all right or not.   This leads to that person wondering if, in fact, they are all right, which causes them to wonder if I’m all right for asking a question like “Are you all right?”.   Then they wonder if I see something in them that’s not all right, and wonder if they don’t look  all right because maybe they are not all right which dregs up some deep childhood trauma causing them leave an imprint of their face on my chest. 

What I do now when I get an “All right?” is not say a word, maintain an expressionless face, keep eye-contact, and wait for the thrill of the question to subside.

Sometimes, if I’m feeling mischievous in a store or a bar, I’ll throw an “All right?” over my shoulder as I walk out the door.  That confused them, I think smugly to myself.

Okay, so far not too much about the city, more about cultural nuances.  So here:

Every time I walk out the door, I’m happy to be here.  From a purely “things to do” perspective I haven’t felt this good about a city since Prague, and before that, Montreal.  The problem is I rarely walk out the door because there is too much to do.   Ever see a cat chase a laser dot on a wall?  In London, I’m the cat, and there are about a hundred different laser dots all dancing and shifting around me, just out of reach.

A day off from academia, which, granted, rarely came until recently, was like Henry Kissinger with Narcissistic Personality Disorder shuffling though his rolodex to find friends to talk to, “Okay who do I call today?  The British Museum, The Tate Modern, a walk through Kensington, a visit to Daslton Market, some food in Brixton, a lecture at LSE, a photographic exhibition at the Natural Museum, check out the London Eye, an art gallery in Shoreditch, hot chocolate on Brick Lane, a look at Battersea power station, the Observatory in Greenwich, a bookstore on Oxford, a film at the Ritzy —“ until I become so exhausted just thinking about the possibilities I collapse on the floor like I had spent the day actually doing these things.  All the work, but none of the value.

I won’t even try to address the nightlife, suffice it to say that the average “what’s on tonight” poster pasted on your average wall looks like a page torn out of a Dickens novel — if Dickens smoked crack and he had access to any font he wanted, and a colour printer:

PALE HORSE NAMED DEATH @ Borderline, Manette St, Soho, 19.30'Brainchild of Type O Negative's Sal Abruscato, sounding something like Alice In Chains mysteriously sneaking up behind Type O Negative with a butcher knife while being filmed for a future episode of Law & Order.' (Borderline)ANITA MAJ, CAT BEAR TREE, MORNING WIRE plus more @ New Cross Inn, 19.30, £3Anita Maj is 'Feisty power pop likened to 21st century punk Bangles/Suzi Quatro...a Brit with attitude, pro-active, independent, nu asian force of female positivity.  A public, (grrrrrl powered) announcement, with guitars'THE ARCADIAN KICKS plus more @ Vibe Bar, Brick Lane, 19.30The Arcadian Kicks 'solid rhythm, ethereal melodies and honest lyrics delivered with a powerful audacit, RIVAL, VITREOLIC, MY PHAEDRA @ Dublin Castle, Camden, 20.30.  £6'Awooga C-Reverbed vocals and stonky glammy punk indie rocknroll- The Sweet meets The Electric 6 with some debluesed White Stripes elements' (Bugbear)BILLY VINCENT, EYES ON FILM, MISS NEEKS & TH EMASQUERADES @ Barfly Camden, 22.30, £5adv £6doorBLACK DANIEL, BOW MODS, NEON HIGHWIRE, URSA MINOR, THE MANNAKINGS, YOU ME AND THE MOON - Birth Records & Venue flyers.

It also seems that I’ve been lied to about London weather.  In fact, the entire world has been lied to about London weather by people like Charles Dickens, and films like 28 Days later, which constantly depict the city as sitting beneath clouds so thick, and a fog so dense, that people often have sex without any idea who their partner is.  London is painted as gloomy, wet, and as both Dickens and movie director Danny Boyle have noted: teeming with zombies.

Totally untrue.  Sitting here at the tail end of January I have seen it rain about 10 times in 6 months.  It also has been sunny at least twice every week.  I have never once seen one of those gothically fogged-out mornings (or evenings, or afternoons) that people who have never been to London imagine.  The closest I have come to fog here is because I was sitting too close to the smoke-machine at a musical concert.  A concert venue which, by the way, looked more like London inside that what London is supposed to looks like outside because it was teeming with zombies.

So why the darkened image of London perpetuated in the media?

I think it has something to do with keeping people out of London.  There are enough people as it is here, trust me.  There are so many people in London that  a trip to any outdoor public place — like the appropriately named Oxford Circus — becomes a maddening trek through masses of humanity that could only be improved with a cattle-prod and a bullhorn.  To deal with all the people the city has slowly devoured tiny hamlets and villages surrounding the place and renamed them ‘Greater London’ leaving the locals confused as to where they live and where they’ve just come from.

This raises some interesting questions in terms of how the city will perpetuate the gloomy-London myth the media has worked so hard to create when the Olympics get here.  One thing is for sure, if the myth proves to be true during any of the outdoor events it will certainly raise the comedic value of the Olympics; the pole-vaulter disappearing forever into the fog, the long-jumper with no idea where to land, the referee getting speared by a badly aimed javelin.  And if there is anything that could make speed-walking any funnier, dense, immovable fog is it.

All right?