What Did You Do Today?

It's a question these past days have caused me to dread. There really is no dignified way to say that you spent the day getting turned down for waiter jobs. There just isn't.

So here's what I did yesterday: in addition to the standard practice mentioned above, I completed and mailed a resume, cover letter, salary history, and references to a local university for an academic advising job. I also wrote and mailed two queries to magazine publishers for stories I'd like to write.

I trotted down to the local bookstore to find a copy of Writer's Market, which is the Bible of freelance writing. Both Borders and Barnes and Noble have only the "deluxe" edition of the book's 2007 edition, and it costs $50. I held off on buying it. I've always tried to avoid being one of those people who goes overboard about something before he really understands what he's getting in to.

But maybe overboard is where I need to be. The ship itself may be sinking.

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The Bottom of A Black, Black Hole

The guy I handed my application to was white and pot-bellied, not unlike the pigs his restaurant smokes. His grey hair stood in a ridiculous two-inch spike pattern, and his thick wire-rimmed glasses kept sliding down his nose from the sweat. It was 110 degrees in the Inland Empire today, and I had walked all over downtown Riverside, ducking into coffeeshops and restaurants with the standard inquiry.

But I'm done with all that now. I'm done because this manager, in his striped short-sleeved shirt, looked over my application and suggested I could start as a busser. He looked at the front and the back of his restaurant's poorly copied application, saw my masters degree, saw the salary of my last job, and suggested that I could work for him bussing tables.

I offered that I had waiter experience, grandly overstating what it is to work in Princeton Seminary's private dining room. "Yeah," he said. "But we're high volume." The six people presently patronizing his establishment cast no little doubt on that assertion, but to point that out would have been foolish. So I thanked him for his time and stepped outside.

I think I'm done with this. I'm still waiting to hear from a handful of places, but this is a very bad use of my time, and it's making me miserable.

Next plan of attack: get a copy of Writer's Market 2007 and start working on my freelance writing career.

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Notes on A Job Search

"Incontinence."
"Feminine Hygiene."

These are the words occupying my attention while Becki, the very friendly HR manager at Vons grocery store in Riverside, is explaining to me that the position in the store's Starbucks kiosk has already been filled. She's more detailed and courteous than she needs to be, because all the while I keep looking over her shoulder at the labels protruding from the shelves of aisle 3.

"It's over. This is stupid. Why did I even come in here? Why have I gone any of these places? What am I doing?"

I can't quite decide if this is a needed serving of humble pie or it actually is the humiliation it feels like. To have a Masters of Divinity degree and to be an ordained minister are not credentials that mean much outside of certain ecclesial or academic contexts; as my friend has put it, "We're uniquely unqualified" for anything but ministry. So I don't expect that the people at these restaurants and coffeeshops where I'm looking for quick part-time work will be impressed, it's still very hard to take.

Because I thought this part of my life was over. I thought I was done asking complete strangers, "Are you guys doing any hiring right now?" And what's worse is that these strangers are now uniformly my juniors by five, even 10, years. They are cordial and polite, but all the while I know they're thinking, "God, I hope I'm not that guy when I'm old."

Meanwhile I'm waiting for the phone to ring, and for church people to be on the other end. But I've been waiting for that since well before we moved. But it's not happening. It's funny, because as I left the church I was serving in Kansas City it was amidst a chorus of positivity, with friends and congregants affirming gifts and saying things like, "Some church in California is going to be lucky to have you." I knew what was really going on, though, how this place is full of people just like me and so every church out here is lucky to have somebody else. I smiled politely and was genuinely thankful for the compliments then. Now they echo like a taunt.

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