Yes, I'm still alive.
STILL hunting down a job here in Rochester, if you can but believe it. I've found out why it's so hard here, or so I think.
This town is subcontracted to hell and back. A web of intrigue worthy of Arachnae herself. It's also tied in with the local college, big-time.
Fairly recent example: You guys know of my tech-support past. If I don't know how to fix it right then, I'll get it figured out, and my customers love me.
Having had bad luck with trying to break into Mayo's tech-support team (among other things), I figured I'd shop around for some local guys. Look in the paper, and pow, there's a PC/Macintosh tech job that'd fit me like a glove.
I get the address and try to find the place. It's a tiny leased office underneath one of the hotels here--so tiny and cheap that they don't even have their logo on the door, just one of those signs where you can rearrange the little white plastic letters sitting behind the glass. When I go in, there's no computers, nothing being sold (which is directly in contrast to what the company website implies), just a few desks, empty cubicles, and two people, the owner and his secretary.
Turns out that this company, plus three others, handles
all of Mayo's phone-monkey tech job hiring. They don't list the ads as being for Mayo spots, they list 'em as if you were going to work for a separate company.
Applied, turned down, didn't even get a rejection letter.
To add insult to injury, I've dug around all the local schools, and would you believe they have a 'Help Desk Specialist'
degree? Said coursework includes
twelve freakin' credits on 'Help Desk 1-4', out of some sixty total credits. So far as I can tell, you either have that degree or another like it, or you don't get hired, decade's worth of in-the-field experience be damned. The class descriptions for those Help Desk credits read like something ripped directly out of 'Office Space', acronyms and all.
THEN there's the whole HR attitude here. Very,
very passive-aggressive. I don't get called back, even if I contact them inquiring about my app. If I get interviewed, nobody calls my references. I know this for a fact, as the last time I was in S. Illinois I went back to my old workplace and specifically asked everyone I'd listed if they'd
EVER gotten a call about me for trhe last 2-and-a-half years. None. Not one. I call HR people and leave very polite, detailed messages (date & time of interview//app, etc.), and nothin'. Bupkis.
A politely worded request for information from one of Mayo's HR people (basically, "What can I do, given my current skillset and experience, to become a better candidate for Positions X and Y?") got me a very cheerful "Just keep tryin'!" with no elaboration.
So, yeah. 350+ applications, 20-25 interviews over the last years, and I got nuthin'. That's basically one application every three days for three years straight, and no bites yet. I've not limited myself to technical jobs, either. Had a nice shot as a hotel courtesy van driver last month, interview and all, but I didn't even get a real rejection, just a 'we're not hiring now'. Insult to injury--I'd applied there in
March, and then out of the blue
they call
me for an interview... and after that, they can't even tell me to my face that they hired someone else.
A bit depressing. On the plus side, Mrs. Bug and I are not hurting financially. Pragmatically, she can support the both of us just fine. My testosterone, however, is compelling me to get a job. So I'm going to work through the system--found a nice 2-year degree I can hammer down at the local college that'll get me all kinds of neat stuff. Namely, aside from the regular computer//networking classes, I should end up with a few credits of AS/400 and over a dozen credits of Cisco, not counting whatever certs I'll get through those classes.
AS/400 I'm pretty sure I can handle just fine--mainframes from IBM
always have encyclopedic manuals, and with such a beast of paper I can nail things down very fast. The Cisco part worries me a bit, but hey, we'll burn that bridge later.
I'm hoping said degree will suddenly improve my success rate.
*grumbles about people not respecting raw experience*
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As for Mrs. Bug, yes, she's fine. As per my big cancer post, everything's done. Reconstruction is almost completed (they need to make a fake nipple for the boob that was removed), and aside from a little lump scare we had last week (it was scar tissue), all be well.
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Perhaps my largest concern that's not work or health related is the yard. It's a battle I'd rather not fight. See, when I was a kid, the going maxim for a person's yard was 'If it can't survive on its own, too bad. Keep it under knee-level and it's good.' Unfortunately, I live in a
city now, and some of the neighborhood has this crazy idea that they want golf greens for front lawns.
Would you believe that up until about two weeks ago (middle of the 100+ heatwave), I'd never, ever used a lawn sprinkler before? Finally broke down and got one because while I don't like taking care of a yard, even one as small as ours (as opposed to the 7+ acres I mowed when younger), I don't want it to
die either. Turns out there's a patch I can't bring back to life no matter what I do, since it's on a very steep angle, so the front yard looks OK on the left side, and almost totally dead (not counting those very hardy,
very green weeds that crop up) on the right.
Right now, if a dumptruck full of gravel crashed in my front yard and just happened to cover the whole thing in about 3 inches of half-inch pebbles, I'd be a happy man.
In a perverse attack of irony... the back yard, which I do not water, mow, or even pay much attention to, is doing great. It's stopped growing higher at five or six inches, it's very successfully killed and eaten the rampant thistles that grow in our neighborhood, and it's host to a trio of very cute rabbits. And it's more emerald than the Jolly Green Giant.
Go figure.
So yeah, the job situation has me peeved. I ain't alone though, as my sister-in-law is having similar troubles in Dallas, and what I hear says the job market is pure hell right now. On the plus side, I'm going back to school this semester (barring a total distaster) and we're healthy and doing just fine for money.
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Story Time!
Now, for those that don't know... despite our age difference of twenty years, Mrs. Bug and I had fairly similar childhoods. Smart, hardworking parents with kids in a tar-pit economic area of the state. Not hillbillies by any means, but by no means able to luxuriate in lots and lots of material comforts. She grew up on a farm, I grew up in the yard of a part-time shade-tree mechanic.
Slightly redneck, in other words. Both of us can recall times where our fathers had a dozen-plus cars stacked up somewhere in the back yard. Heck, Cindy's dad still farms, and he's got a pile of cars he uses as parts supply, just like my dad did when I was young.
Suffice to say, neither one of us qualifies as 'city folk'. See the yard paragraphs above. Well, one of the things we've run into is that, living in a city, you can't just make a brush-pile somewhere in the nieghborhood or the back forty. We also buy pieces of furniture every so often, or have to get rid of grass clippings.
As a side note, apparently in Minnesota it's a cardinal sin to strap things to the roof of your car. We bought a couple of papa-san chairs a while back, and not having anything to haul them in, had to strap 'em to the roof of our Honda Civic. Par for the course for the two of us. We got some rope, rolled down the windows a bit, and proceeded to lash those suckers down tighter than a mainsail in a storm. We
also attracted a crowd of people watching us. Apparently, they'd never seen anything like it. (We asked, too.)
SO, we decided it was finally time to do two things. 1) Sell my Escort, as it's the far more valuable of the two vehicles we own, and 2) buy a small truck to replace it for those times we need to haul stuff around. The Civic, btw, is the car to keep as it has a CD player, cruise control, and delayed-wiper controls, which the Escort does not. 160K miles and still chugging along just fine.
We went truck-hunting. After a few dead-ends, we found a classic beater truck, a little Mazda with 165K miles on it. Two owners previous, it had been used as a 'first car' for three kids over the span of six years. One owner previous, it was a replacement for a kid's vehicle that he'd rolled over on accident. Said previous owner had replaced the tires and the kid put in a nice stereo system.
Four hundred bucks.
We jumped on it. Yeah, it's rusty as all get-out, and we're gonna have to put some marine-grade plywood in the bed before we can haul anything heavier than a sack of leaves, but it runs nice and as it so happens, the stereo and the tires are worth more than the price we paid for it. (only about 1500 miles on the tires!)
Well, we immediately christen it with the name of 'Spot' (yuk yuk) and drive it home. Next day, the muffler has a problem and starts dragging. Eh, no biggie, we can get that fixed for about sixty bucks at the local shop. But we can't have that muffler dragging on the pavement while we get an appointment set up.
Enter a roll of electric fence wire, pliers, and a quick-fix repair in the driveway.
My God, I swear the neighbors thought the Antichrist had just moved in next door. Here I am under the truck, Mrs. Bug is unrolling and cutting lengths of wire for me while I'm dodging rust-flakes from the bed, and I could feel the eyes on us from two blocks away. I got the muffler strapped back to the frame well enough to get it to a shop, but I think our neighbors had a collective heart-attack. Thankfully our uphill neighbor is a pretty cool guy, but I think our across-the-street and our downhill neighbor have fully moved myself and Mrs. Bug into their 'totally freaking insane' column on whatever checklist they keep.
Ah well. We'll have Spot into the garage once the Escort is sold, then they can heave a sigh of relief and watch us from behind their drapes.
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*chuckle* As much as I'm griping here, folks, things are actually pretty good. Yeah, I'd like a job, and I'd like for a healthier yard, but we got our health and no financial worries, so I can't really complain. Things are looking up!
And yes, I do play PlanetSide. Dropped City of Heroes for it. Markov>>Vanu Sovereignity>>DecayingRose if you want to look me up. PS even has fully free accounts you can use if you want to come visit but don't want to pay. Just hit up the PlanetSide website and look for the 'PlanetSide Reserves' program.
