Why yes, yes, I *am* still going on about this …

I’m having (yet another) crappy job-search week … I’m frustrated as hell with the current job market as it is very much an employer’s market at present. I get calls saying things like “Do you have IP experience? No, oh well never mind”. Pointing out that you only need experience in a specific area of law if you are the attorney is a waste of breath. Admin support jobs are all the damn same — you work on a computer, you type a lot, you answer the phone now and then, you keep things organised, you try not to punch-out the idiots who think they are somehow superior to you because they are in management … even though they couldn’t do what you do to save their lives and even though the company would collapse without a solid admin staff core. Sure, you need experience and skills, but I HAVE THOSE. Since it is an employer’s market right now they can be as picky as they want. “We want somebody with 5 years experience in pest-control defense, 17 months in anti-defamatory personal injury … somebody who has previously worked for a pompous twit with the nickname of Skippy … oh, and she must know the recipe for pickled eggs and fried baboon testes. No, we don’t actually *need* that, we just want it because we can get away with that right now.” … I am college-educated, have 25+ years of experience, superior professional skills, and great references … and I still can’t find a bloody job!! In my last job I was a legal assistant/office manager for almost six years. I was abruptly laid-off back in January when my then-boss basically replaced me with his recently-graduated-from-law-school son. Which saved him something like $55,000 per year in my salary and benefits. Meantime, I am scraping to find a crappy legal secretarial position which I will most likely hate … it will most likely mean taking at least a $5,000 pay-cut … and I will most likely have to work downtown and I positively HATE commuting to downtown Houston with a passion. For those of you who are not familiar with downtown Houston, let me explain. You have to park on the 133rd floor of Building A. Take an elevator down to the ground. Walk 2.84 miles to Building B. Take an escalator up to the lobby. Find the elevator that goes only to Floors 17-36 and wait for the lift to arrive. When that one is full, you wait for the next one. Or the one after that. All while frantically and repeatedly pressing the call button over and over as if it will summon the lift that much sooner and keep you from being 2 minutes late much to the horror-filled glare of your supervisor. Total time from leaving car to arriving at desk: approximately 21 minutes. You even get to pay out the ying-yang for this unreserved, far-distant parking space. But wait, before you order … you have to run this marathon dressed in business attire and clutching a handbag and/or briefcase and most likely your hastily-packed blandly-tasteless lunch. Said lunch being akin to soggy cardboard by the time you arrive at your desk in a dazed and sweating swarm of molecules that an hour before resembled something more or less humanoid. That is, of course, unless I get a job in another location. Then I’d only have to deal with all the “rush” hour traffic and construction.

If only the bastard lottery would cough up my numbers then I could abandon this heart-wrenching job search and begin to accustom myself to a lifestyle more to my liking.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 26th, 2006 at 1:37 pm and is filed under Humour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.