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?