I looked up when she came in the door, this girl in her twenties wearing jeans and an old tee shirt, blond hair pulled back in a messy pony tail.
“Can I help you?” I asked, thinking I sounded like a stereotypical sales girl.
“Uh, yeah.” She leaned forward against the counter between us. “Do you have any job openings?”
Since it’s not my place to make personnel decisions, I told her when Those in Charge would return. “Or,” I added, trying to be helpful, “You could always drop off a resume.”
Her eyes lit up. Ah. This was the perfect solution. “Great! Where can I get one?”
For a second, I couldn’t speak. Perhaps I’d had an advantage, as the daughter of small business owners, but this seemed like common knowledge. Then I reminded myself that she probably thought I meant to say “an application”. I tried to decide how to phrase this tactfully, in case she truly had misspoken.
“Well, actually, I’m not sure where the applications are,” I told her slowly, thinking aloud, putting a bit more emphasis on applications. “But if you write up your resume, then you can come back with it.”
She wrinkled her brow in confusion. Okay, so apparently it was possible that someone in her mid-twenties might not know what a resume was. Maybe she’d never needed one before. But she must have had other jobs. I tried again. “You know. A resume? Where you list all the jobs you’ve had?”
“Oh. Okay.” Her eyes drifted toward her hands. The left moved vigorously, picking at the cuticle on her right thumb. Then she looked up. “By the way, what do you guys do here? I’ve done lots of cashiering. I have tons and tons of experience with it.”
I glanced around the room, which held plenty of evidence of our products. Itching to explain the finer points of job-hunting — including dressing professionally, researching the company, and preparing the appropriate paperwork — I summoned up a kindly smile and briefly outlined our tasks, none of which included working the ancient cash register hunched on the counter between us.
“That sounds fun!” she chirped, swinging her sagging pony tail in her enthusiasm. “I’d like that a lot.”
Moments later she skipped out the door, full of cheerful promises that she would return later that afternoon to pick up an application. I never saw her again. Perhaps getting a job the traditional way just turned out to be too much work.
After working with college students who are about to embark the world in the midst of existential crises, such a situation seems quite plausible. Note to self – make sure my clients know what a resume is and direct them to career office to learn how to write one.
True story? Unbelievable!?!
I begin teaching my College Comp class on Thursday for the Spring Semester. I just wrote myself a note to talk about resumes. 🙂
@Becca & Keri – Good idea! It seems so obvious to us, but maybe not everyone’s getting this information after all? When I was teaching I did a unit on resumes and cover letters, but many of the kids had already done them before, when they needed them for their after-school jobs.
@Cath – Yup! 100% true. It happened a few years ago, in the place where I used to work. I was thinking about it today, with the whole jobs/economy issue and just had to write it up. It was so crazy that it stuck in my mind.
Wow. Just wow. I wonder if someone told her she had to look for jobs, “or else.”
I believe it. At several companies that I have friends at and mine as well, you can’t just go the HR and seek an application, most will tell you to visit their company site and upload your resume to their server and then the waiting game begins.
We’re doomed.
It’s just baffling sometimes, isn’t it?
This is the result of an education system designed to foster self-esteem and produce no marketable skills. Between that and the horrible sense of entitlement most kids are raised with? I get nervous.
@Kristi – Ooh. Excellent point. Maybe she was trying to get state assistance or someone was tired of her sponging off them?
@Dru – I’m not surprised to hear it. Some jobs in our town will only take applications through the state agency, even though they’re not state jobs. And who can blame them? It must make hiring much easier.
@Pam – Look at it this way: If either one of us ever has to change jobs in this economy, we now have an advantage. 🙂
@Amy – Maybe, although I know plenty of people who do learn about it in school, so it may not be fair to dismiss an entire system and everyone in it out-of-hand. Even if it wasn’t taught where she went to school (and perhaps it wasn’t) I’m just amazed that she made it to her age without even knowing what a resume was, let alone doing one for at least one of her other jobs.
Please tell me this is an excellent piece of fiction you drummed up?!
I’m speechless . . .