Job Hunt Day 1

Allow me to explain the parameters of my little social experiment here:

The Applicant:

Emerson R.P Graves, a 28 year old, white, transgender male located in Dunn County, Wisconsin.

My Qualifications:

• Bachelors Degree in Computer Science from Full Sail University
• 10+ Years of experience in customer service (revel in my eternal serfdom!)
• 5+ Years of sales experience
• 5+ Years in order, account, and project management
• Microsoft Suite literate
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Great with animals and small children

My Requirements:

• I need to make at least $22/hour to pay rent and just barely cover my bills
• I share my vehicle with my roommate, who works the night-shift at a local hotel. He leaves for work when I go to bed and doesn't return until around 8 in the morning, so a flexible schedule is a must if I'm going to work on-location
• I am not interested in any independent contractor positions, or employment that relies solely on commission. Any job offer I encounter with either of these labels I will automatically assume is a scam
• I need medical and dental benefits because this is America and I don't want to get sick and die because the company I work for would rather pay the shareholders than keep its workers healthy
• A strong union presence is preferred, and if there isn't one then I will do my damnedest to get that ball rolling

My Methodology:

Ray Bradbury encouraged young writers to write a short story every week because it was statistically impossible to write 52 bad stories in row. Basically, if you do something enough then eventually you'll hit the mark. And in a world filled with scam ads, AI, and ghost job listings- casting a wide net is key.

And fuck it! If they're going to use AI to deny everything that doesn't match their keyword searches, then I'm just going to lob my resume at everything regardless of whether or not I actually qualify. Screw carefully reading the job descriptions and getting depressed that I don't have the required years of experience in a similar or related field. If I think I'm at all capable of learning how to do the job, then I'm applying for it.

My current rate is sending out and tracking 10 applications every day until I have employment.

There are a few metrics that I want to keep track of through this process. Obviously, I need tabs on what position I've applied for and which companies I've reached out to. My first follow up, following the submission of my resume, will be 2-3 business days. I will then contact the company 3 times to follow up unless I am rejected beforehand. From there, I will track which contacts resulted in an interview or offer, whether or not I take them. Lastly, I'm going to track which offers are scams. If a company requires me to pay them for training, certification, or if they fully ghosts me, I will consider this a scam.

I figure that I'll do a tally at the end of every week and record my findings here while meditating on the American relationship with work and what a nightmare the job-hunting landscape has become. While I am optimistic that all this work will pay off eventually, I'm afraid that optimism comes from my stubborn addiction to hope. Essentially, I live and die by the notion that "delulu is the solulu" in just about every facet of my life. 'As I will it, so mote it be,' and all that jazz.

But while I've got one foot planted in a Hello Kitty roller-skate, the other is planted firmly in the darkness. It is a dark chapter in American history, ladies and gentlethems. This morning I finished my second 'refresher' reading of Les Leopold's 'Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice' and with every page-turn I found myself getting more pissed. The Updated 3rd edition came out in 2018, before the pandemic and the end of Trump's first term, and even then the disparity between working and owning class was jaw-dropping. We've really been on a steep decline since Reagan took office in 1981, and continue to gracelessly hurtle towards a completely avoidable collapse- all because a few soulless ticks want to suck a few more drops of blood from the lower classes.

Yesterday, in between writing yesterday's blog post and working on my second attempt of a novel, I took a break to make dinner for my roommate and I. While I was chopping up carrots and waiting for the bread dough to rise I found myself imagining what life would be like if the policies Leopold suggested were enacted. Oh, how different things could be if we'd reigned in and leashed up Wall Street following the the 2008 crash instead of putting them on taxpayer funded welfare.

Of course, I am using the term 'we' loosely. I was fucking 12 when the financial crash happened. Maybe if I had invested in those foreclosed properties instead of fussing over my clothes and eyeliner in middle school I'd have a future ahead of me.

Still, the 'solutions' chapter of Runaway Inequality pisses me off because nothing about it is even that radical. Republicans can shout "socialism!" until they go blue, but what they call socialism I'm going to call 'shit that just makes fiscal sense.'

How'd we get over the Great Depression again? Was it uninhibited business practices and tariffs that fixed everything? Of fucking course it wasn't. We got through the Great Depression by enacting strong social services (for white people) and giving the people who actually make society function the financial help they needed. Y'know what would be exponentially less expensive than taking care of a ruined planet, constantly doing emergency repairs on our crumbling infrastructure, and putting millions of dollars towards arresting poor and homeless people? Universal Basic Income. We need Maximum wages, and to increase the minimum wage to something that's actually livable. All of this is stupidly fixable, and it feels like I'm going insane watching the billionaire-funded millionaires in congress and on the supreme court say that it isn't.

Oh yeah, and blaming trans people for everything. How could I forget that society is crumbling because I shoot testosterone in my ass once a week? That's what the Trump cronies say, so it must be true. Why wouldn't we believe the guy who aspires to be like Hitler?

Alright, I'm done doom spiraling. I'll be back with more stuff soon.