its blizzarding jibby jobs!

When I woke up this morning it was snowing outside. –It’s blizzarding, L-innocence squealed! She was giddy like a schoolgirl, dancing to the kitchen for cups of homemade joe and dancing back to the living room to attend to her laptop. Not that she is particularly fond of the snow, but the novelty of it always tickles her kind, Hawaiian roots. She was right too; it did have a blizzard like force to it. The flakes were large and heavy; the wind pushed them slanted with a virile gusto. In the end it didn’t matter though, because they didn’t stick, and the streets were a charcoal slush by the time I left for the subway.

I had a work seminar at the Department of Labor this afternoon. Got a letter in the mail about it a week or so ago. I would have skipped it, but they said they would cut my benefits if I did. Way to play the upper hand, assholes. So at half past noon I slid into their downtown office to get myself educated on how to find a jibby job.

First thing I clocked was how most everyone there looked almost twice my age. Geezers of all creeds and colors, some dressed in suits, as if they were going to an interview, some in jeans and a t-shirt, like me. Most were in the middle, sporting nice, creased slacks and a casual knit sweater. One dude was an Orthodox Jew [or is that Hassidic?], and he wore the standard uniform [black pants, shoes, and hat, white shirt, black vest]. He looked beyond elderly, slumping exhausted over his cane as he slowly shuffled around. I couldn’t imagine what he was doing there, surely he was too old to work, at least legally, and wouldn’t qualify for a job, let alone be given job placement. There was another gal of senior citizen status, I could be remembering this wrong, but I believe she carried behind her a respirator.

We were seated in what looked like a classroom, though it could have just been any old room, but filled with those chair/desk combinations that you find in most grade schools. One by one our names were called and one by one we trudged to the big [teachers] desk to collect our next assignment, which turned out to be to sit back down in our tiny school chair thingy’s and wait until our names were called again. We had filled out a questionnaire, and after a quick glance and a few grunts the headmaster [?] would just wave us back to our seats, anxious to find out what magical money making schemes the New York Dept. of Labor has in store for us.

Turns out it was a movie. A movie about how to search on the internet for jobs. And within that movie, another movie that told us how to learn how to search the internet so that we may in turn exercise its modern capabilities, utilizing it for finding ourselves a job. Also it told how to write a resume, or more accurately, how to find sites on the internet that would help us learn how to write a resume. We also learned how the internet can allow us to send cover letters and our resume to prospective employers, and how we can post said resume on job listing sites, and the work will just flood in. I got the feeling that the DOL hadn’t had much experience with the internet since 1998. Oh yeah, and we also learned that mayor Bloomberg is rooting for us and supports our quest for work. That Bloomberg, he’s a stand up guy.

Then we took a tour to the Resource room [room C for those in the know]. There was a bunch of computers in there and on the wall hung various job openings ranging from cashier at a low end shoe store [$8/hour] to options trader at an investment firm [$112k/year]. There were a bunch of security positions [averaging $24k/year] and a lot of construction jobs [averaging $45k/year]. I looked over all of them briefly, but hardly qualified for any.

We eventually got to leave, and when I stepped out onto the street the sun was shining high overhead. There was still a lot of dark, muddy puddles in the gutters, and the air was still crisp and restless, but I could feel the day begin again, and everything before just fell away, forgiven. Deeper into Brooklyn was my empty house, sandwich fixings, and the internet, here to save us all.