The unemployment chronicles part 3: an open letter to the creepy foreign guy who interrupted my interview.

Hello readers,

So as I mentioned yesterday I had an interview today for a temp position organizing the cervical cancer walk in D.C.. The woman who I met with today told me to come dressed casually as she would be in jeans. We were meeting at a Starbucks near Dupont Circle in D.C. Although she told me to dress casually I decided to pull out my elusive 'street' gear. You know, the kind of outfit that makes me seem laid back like I'm totally comfortable in any situation, but cool like I shop at over priced consignment shops, listen to death cab for cutie exclusively, and drink non-fat lattes from organic recycled cups. My outfit was topped off with the piece de resistance, my trendy Strand Tote Bag which I ordered online ( If you live in near NYC you know the store, if not http://www.strandbooks.com/).
Anyway I drove into the city because today was cold and rainy. This was a bad idea. If you live in D.C. you know the city is designed like a maze for a giant rat...the catch is that there is no fucking cheese in this laboratory maze of a city. What D.C. does have are lots of one way streets, miserly cab drivers, and.... you guessed it! A fucking Starbucks on every corner. The Starbucks we were meeting at was at 1500 P street. I should have known there are 7 Starbucks on P street; all of which are located within 5 miles of each other. I found what I considered to be an awesome, too good to be true, parking spot in front of what I thought was the correct Starbucks....I was wrong, and it was too good to be true. I wound up having to power walk 1 mile to the correct Starbucks. Why did I walk instead of drive to the next Starbucks you ask? Three reasons.

1- I found a parking spot in Dupont Circle at all.

2- I started walking to the correct Starbucks, and before I realized how far away it was from my parking spot, I was too dedicated to the walk to return to my car ( believe me I analyzed the situation for at least a minute before trekking on).

3- I have decided to avoid the gym for the next few days and figured this was good exercise.

Once I arrive at the correct location, I go in and order a Venti coffee with room for milk ( my standard). I give my interviewer a call to see where she is located. She tell me she is parking across the street, and I am instantly jealous of her parking situation. I'm informed she is wearing a hounds tooth coat, and I instantly like her because I like hounds tooth ( I'm fickle). There was no room at the any of the tables inside, so I headed outside and found a table that was recently freed up....so I jumped on it. It may have been cold, but I had just power walked a mile and the cold was now a york peppermint patty of awesomeness.
She arrived and we shook hands (very standard). after running inside to grab a drink we began chatting. We exchanged pleasantries at first, but it quickly turned into business. She asks me about my past experience, and I answer obligingly ( because I love talking about myself). I feel like I am kicking ass and we are getting along great. Halfway through my tales of retail terror a man sitting at a table (close enough to hear our conversation, but far enough away that we didn't really notice him) interrupts. This is where my interview gets interesting.
Now this man was obviously foreign. I say he was obviously foreign because even if he didn't speak in broken English, ( Really Really broken like a jigsaw puzzle that had been left in the hands of a bunch of monkeys on acid kind of broken) he was wearing a line green button down polyester shirt with a leather vest. That's right ladies and gentlemen, a leather vest ( did I wake up this morning in 1985?). Not to mention he was about 40.
He says excuse me and we both turn to look at him. He begins to apologize the best he can in his broken English and says that he is from Turkey, doesn't speak much English ( NO REALLY?!) and will only be in town till Monday.

This is where it gets fun.

He says that I am very beautiful, and that he would like to take me out to dinner tomorrow night.

I am getting hit on during a fucking job interview.

I look at the woman who is interviewing me and she is dying. I tried to politely thank him for his compliment, and apologize for not being available for dinner because I am currently in a relationship. Lucky for me his English is so bad that he didn't understand the relationship comment, and continued to try and persuade me to have dinner. I look at the interviewer again and say " I'm going to be honest here. I don't know how to handle this situation without looking really bad." She steps in and points to the ring finger on her left hand and says like she's talking to a 5 year old "taken." He understood that comment, but felt the need to clarify. He asked," You have boyfriend?" I answer, " Yes. Yes I do." However, I answer with an inflection in my voice that says ' I'm in a very very serious relationship. cancer serious.' ( no pun intended). He says I'm beautiful yet again and apologizes about 5 more times before he gets up and leaves.
The woman and I start cracking up. From that point on the interview went smoothly. We talked for an hour about everything from her 13 year old son stealing his fathers porn, ( she mentioned this after I told her the gym story) to how fat Ice T's wife's ass is. Even if I don't get the job, I at least have an awesome interview story to tell.

Hope you are all having a great weekend!!!!!!!!!!

The unemployment chronicles part 2

So as I mentioned yesterday I go to the gym in my apt complex because working out helps me detox.
To start this story I will briefly describe the gym. It's fucking small . There are three treadmills, one exercise bike, three elliptical machines, a weight bench with a weight rack next to it, and a giant wall long mirror that makes the gym look twice its size ( great marketing ploy for the apt complex, because when you pass by the gym quickly it looks enormous). On a side note the gym generally smells like potatoes, but it's free.
Well, the past three days no matter what time I show up at the gym this man and his two sons are there 'working' out. I suppose this man brings his kids to either babysit them or to set a good example; however while hes working out these two boys maybe aged 11 and 13 are running around, spending maybe three minutes on each machine before getting bored and moving on. I assume this happens until I arrive at which point the boys station themselves on the elliptical machines which are facing the back of the treadmill. Fucking great.
Now I'm fine with sharing this tiny gym with others, ( even though I prefer to have the room to myself so I can dance like a fool on the treadmill and watch VH1 on the plasma t.v.) and I'm even fine with energetic kids being there, but what I am not fine with ( although apparently I am fine ) is while I'm trying to get my sweat on, maybe listening to the fall out boy radio on Pandora ( because listening to pop-punk is like taking amphetamines) is seeing these two boys staring at my ass like I have the imagine of Jesus miraculously chiseled into my yoga pants. Now it's cool if you want to take a quick peak at what I'm packing here or there, but staring at the goods is not only rude, but fucking stupid considering there is a WALL LENGTH MIRROR THAT REFLECTS THE WHOLE ROOM. Now, I can empathize with the boys because obviously their father didn't teach them how to check out a girls cheeks properly. I feel comfortable blaming this behavior on their father because while his kids were staring at me from behind, he was making a show out out his weight lifting attempts in front of me.
Now ladies...I know we find nothing sexier then a middle aged man sweating and grunting on a work-out bench, but the creepy icing on this carrot cake of a situation ( I say carrot cake because it's disgusting. I don't know anyone who likes carrot cake) is that he'd smile and wink at me after each set.
The best part of this sorry excuse for sexual harassment is that I dropped my ipod on the treadmill (which happens occasionally when you're trying to switch songs mid-walk) and all three of them dropped what they were doing instantly to fetch it for me. This would have been sweet, but all the commotion caused me to loose my balance and fall off the treadmill flat on my ass ( oh the irony). Who said chivalry was dead!

So unemployment is still going strong two weeks and counting WOOT WOOT! I applied for unemployment today, and I hope I get something, because my bank account is starting to act jealous...like I'm cheating with another bank.
I do have an interview tomorrow for a temp position so wish me some luck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!

The unemployment chronicles par 1

For all of my hard working hommies out there who are out of work,
worried about being out of work, or simply want to choke their jobs in
unconsciousness...this ones for you.


So after being shit canned from an amazing yet VERY underpaid job in
September, I have struggled to find the happy medium between finding a
job, finding a career ( which are apparently two very different
things), and finding a way to make some monies while looking for the
former. What I have found thus far is an unhappy medium. The kind of
medium where people tell me, " at least you have your health even if
you don't have health insurance."
About one week after loosing my amazing yet VERY VERY underpaid job, I
got hired onto be the assistant manager for a high end retail store in
the bougieist area of D.C. I had almost NO retail experience, except
for a few stints in high school all of which I was fired. There was
Brookstone for which I was fired for making out with a security guard
and getting caught on tape; and Pier One which I was fired from
because I would hide in the stockroom in order to avoid organizing and
re-organizing the pillow shelf ( on a side note every time I go into a
Pier One now I go out of my way to fuck up the pillow shelf, because
I'm still bitter). Then there was Bed Bath and Beyond, where I
actually quit because they put me in the area rugs soaked in
formaldehyde section. I quit because they refused to move me from this
section after I repetitively complained about the rashes I was getting
on my arms from their embalmed rugs.
So I had a total of 1 year worth of retail experience from 6 years
prior which isn't much, but what I did have was a friend who was the
manager of the store, who wanted someone fun to work full time. I
thought, " Fuck yea I'm fun, fuck yea I need money, and fuck yea I'll
be there maybe a month until I find something better." Well that
shitty stores response to my fuck ya's was ' FUCK NO." I wound up
staying with the shitty, employee hating, corporate mother fuckers for
nearly 6 months. That's right 6 months of sweeping, wrapping, dusting,
re-re-re-re-organizing, and eating vegetarian shit from the obnoxious
clientele of this particular chain of over priced bath products. As a
protest I use Suave exclusively.
Around December they hired a new area manager. She was to put it
lightly, a fire breathing, commie, hypocritical, mindless, bitch; who
I swear only kept me on as long as she did because her fat ass could
not fit into the window area to change displays. My manager left on
disability because the company forced her into a nervous breakdown.
I took the new area managers bullshit for almost two months after my
original awesome manager left, because I needed the cash. Here's the
list of reasons I left my grave of a job.

1- fire breather accused me of stealing from the deposits twice. First
of all, if you know me at all, you know that I grew up in a
middle-upper class household where the idea of stealing never came up
because I could and can ask 'bank daddy,' for cash whenever I'm short.

2- She put me in the windowless stockroom to organize and dust for 8
hours. I'm allergic to dust about the same amount as I am allergic to
embalmed rugs. I would come home with hives. Hives are not terribly
sexy.

3- She hired on new employees for me to train without telling me.
These newbies would come in asking to be trained, only to be greeted
with " who the fuck are you?" as a response.

4- She cut my hours.

5- She told me I could no longer have weekends off. FUCK THAT NOISE.

6- She asked me if I was still in school around the area. I guess she
didn't take the time to look at my resume, because if she did she
would see that I was a college graduate with a degree from a top tier
university with enough experience at 24 to put her 36 year old- with 3
kids that are all in high school already, I used to manage a fucking
Gap- ass to shame.

7- She had me clean up a dead rat.....and that my friends was all she wrote.

After number 7 I told her to shove it politely with my 2 weeks notice.
I tried to be respectful up until the end; however on my last day she
accused me and a co-worker of stealing again, so I clocked out early
telling her that the idea of working with her one more minute gave me
more hives then the dusty stock room. My conclusion is that she is
really just a pile of dust.

So here I am two weeks later and very much unemployed with 200 dollars
in my bank account. I don't need to tell you that unemployment fucking
sucks, so I try to give myself a routine to keep myself from going
crazy and it goes as follows.

10am - I wake up and check my phone hoping that the resume and cover
letter avalanche I sent out the night before warranted at least one
response.

10:10- I make breakfast for myself, because it is the most important
meal of the day.

10:20- I do about 15 minutes of Yoga because I think it helps my
spirit or whatever that means.

10:45- I finish off my fourth cup of coffee because my spirit needs
caffeine to concentrate.

10:35- I e-mail my head hunter AGAIN hoping that he has found an
interview for me....most of the time he has not. This does not stop me
from e-mailing him daily. To make it fun for him I include a comic
strip in my note so at least he can look forward to something funny
along with my pestering.

11:00- I look on linkedin for about an hour and apply for at least 3 jobs

noon- I look on career builder for about an hour and apply for at least 3 jobs.

1- I look on monster.com for 10 minutes before I remember how much
monster.com sucks.

1:15- I run errands.

2- I work out because I need to detox early in the day from the amount
of beer I drink later on in my time line.

3- I search on craiglist for about an hour and apply to at least 5 jobs.

4- I put up my own ads for babysitting, dog walking,and tutoring.
Pretty much anything to make some extra cash.

4:30- I take a shower.

5- This is about the time I start drinking.

6- still drinking.

7- check out indeed.com for about an hour and apply for at least 3 jobs.

8- I drink some more, and make dinner.

9- I'm generally drunk by this point. I eat dinner and chill out with
my boyfriend who tries to catch up.

10- I start to contemplate life, and where I went wrong.

10:01- I get over my pity party because 10pm is when the best
television shows are on.

1- I do one last browse on craigslist to see if I missed anything.

1:30-2:30- I pass out.

Rinse and repeat.