How To Find Gainful Employment

So I am trying to find a job, (due to my recent layoff from my boring and underpaid desk job at a local institution) and I am sad to report that after two and a half days of searching I have not landed one. I know! I'm as shocked as you are.

Immediately after receiving the news that I would no longer be required to show up and sit in a chair and amuse myself on the internet, the job offers started pouring in. Friends, coworkers, and mere acquaintances called and responded to my need with a variety of possible wage earning opportunities. Just to name a few of the things I could be doing right now:

• House Painter
• Lowe's cashier
• Florida Turnpike Toll Collector
• Med Rep for local Sales Firm
• Housekeeper
• (Unmentionable)

Having no luck finding the kind of job I wanted, I set about creating the world's best resume in order to find a job I could earn a living at. I got up early on Monday. I called references, I called friends, I roped in leads from the paper and the internet. Monday night I went to a job seekers Networking meeting at my church. I was doing the work. I expected a job at least by Tuesday morning. Tuesday morning: Still no job. So I got up again, at 6:30 this time, printed my resume and headed into my alma mater for a quick meeting with career services. (If anybody should be duty bound to find me a job, it's them) Then to the temp agency to fill out forms that indicated where I'd been for the last ten years, where I'd lived, who I lived with, my criminal, medical, and military records, what color my hair was, social security numbers, teeth prints, urine samples, fingerprinting, number of times I'd seen Anne of Green Gables... the works! I felt like I'd been dissected and catalogued, like a bug. So I said goodbye to the temp people and ran across half a mile of frozen landscaping to save my metered car from a fate worse than ticketing. And yet, still no job!!!

I returned to my parents' house (free internet, thanks, guys) and began again; resume rewrite, cover letters and references. My 7 yr old nephew was sitting behind me watching a World Cup game on tape when I turned and asked, "If this was my resume, would you hire me?" I expected a smile and an, "Aunt Sarah, you're crazy!", but instead I got a, "Well, what can you do for me?" I laughed. "I have a broad range of skills and qualifications. What do you need done?" He thought about it. I turned back to my typing. Ten minutes later, my nephew speaks up, "I'll pay you 50 cents," he says, "for every hour you spend talking to students, giving them advice." "50 cents an hour?" I ask. The offer sounds pretty good actually. "But you have to be talking to students. If there are no students, I'm not paying you to wait for them!" "Fair enough. So you want to pay me fifty cents an hour to advise students. On what?" "Advise them on their health." "Right." "In fact," he turns towards me, momentarily ignoring a bad call from the Polish referee, "I'll pay you 20 cents a person or fifty cents an hour." I mulled this over. "So, if I speak to three students in an hour I will actually be earning 60 cents not 50. Are you ok with that?" "Yes," he said. I told him I'd have to think about it. I don't even have any students to talk to anymore. I'd have to find students, but let's say I got a speaking engagement at a local high school - manditory attendance - and I talked to them for fifteen minutes about their health. If there were 300 students, I'd be pulling $60 bucks for a quarter hour's work.