CHAPTER 6: JOB FAIRS, HOOKERS, AND REPO MEN

Dear Reader:

Admittedly, I haven’t posted here for the last several weeks. To be honest, I have been extremely occupied looking for work. I MAY even be one the verge of actually getting a real job. Say some prayers, keep your fingers and toes crossed for me------ and for some good news. As crazy as it sounds, I don’t want to blog about the possible job until it happens. I don’t want to screw up the karma. I’ll keep you posted.

Earlier this week, I attended a job fair. This particular one had been promoted in the local news media for more than a month and was being billed as the largest and “best-est” job fair ever offered in this part of the country. With seemingly almost everyone in America having been laid-off from work, job fairs are popping up everywhere---- churches, hotels, restaurants, government offices, companies, and surprisingly, even unemployment offices. I've heard on the street that there are even some job fairs being held at landfills as well as a f ew houses of ill-repute. It seems as if wherever four or more unemployed people get together, there is a potential for a job fair to take place. (I've even heard about a job fair that took place on a bus last week!)

If you are new to the unemployment arena, job fairs are events where employers and would-be employees meet each other for the very first time---kind of like singles bars except that you meet employers instead of a member who is necessarily of the opposite–sex. A similarity is that as a job-seeker, you hope that your new "friend" will take you back to their place. Having hopes that your new acquaintance will still call you "in the morning", you also exchange phone numbers. Of course, these phone numbers have your resume attached. (If you are new to the job fair scene, you should be warned that although job fairs are, in their own fashion, a lot like singles bars, you probably won’t get laid at a job fair-----unless you really get lucky or unless you are exceptionally charming.)

Having been “on the job market” for a while now, I must confess that I have my suspicions about job fairs …about some of them anyway and who they really benefit. For one thing, I have never met someone who was actually hired as a result of going to a job fair. I am sure that some people have been hired in this manner ---- it's just that I’ve just never met one. (I guess its kinda like people that you see on the local TV news as an eyewitness to a plane crash, or a murder, or a fire etc. You see them on TV once, but you never ever run into those same people on the street. Never. Seems to me that you should occasionally run into that “…fat woman with the bad hairdo who told the local news reporter all about how the fire at the neighbor’s house actually started.” Once you see these eyewitnesses on TV though, you NEVER see them in person. I figure that some of them must go into an eyewitness protection program or something.) All of the people that I've ever known were hired in their jobs because of someone that they knew at a company or was a friend of a friend of a friend who worked for the same company. It's the all-American way. But in the spirit of “trying something new” ---as well as being desperate----I decided to give job fairs a chance.)

The job fair that I attended this past week was held in an airplane hanger-sized building located near, oddly enough near Atlanta’s airport which, when you think about it is where an airplane hangar ought to be located. This building was brand new and reputed to be the size of twenty football fields laid end to end! It was HUGE. I think that you could've actually flown a Cessna around in this building. (I’ve noticed over the years that the owners of big buildings often describe the building in terms of the number of football fields that it could contain. This seems a little strange to me unless you’re actually going to play football in these buildings. It seems to me that you should describe it in terms of the number of people that it can contain as opposed to the number of football fields that you could put on it.) This building could obviously hold a lot of people, which was a good thing since it appeared that every single one of the 13,500,000 unemployed Americans was in attendance. Every damn one of us! The only time, I’ve ever seen more people in one place was the time that American Idol was in town to audition (or embarrass) all of the bad singers in Atlanta, who actually think that they can sing. But, I digress…

This was truly a crowded affair, and although it lived up to its billing in terms of size and attendance, everyone was on their best behavior and dressed in their Sunday finest even though this was clearly a Tuesday. (Acute unemployment will bring out the best behavior in almost anyone…sort of like sitting next to your mother in church when you were a little kid.) Even though a number of the open jobs were for positions such as like landscapers, fry cooks, janitors, and security guards, most of the men were dressed in dark suits, white shirts, and their best guess at what a “power tie” was. Women were dressed in two piece business suits, although there were a couple of women who were dressed in very short mini-skirts. I figured that they were either hookers or were auditioning to be back up singers for an R&B Group. Quite frankly, I was glad to see the odd dress of the two women in what could only be disappointingly described as a vast sea of conformity. You’d think that at least a few more of the other people, desperate to set themselves apart from the pack of conformists would have dressed in a cowboy suit, a clown suit or perhaps worn some of those floppy clown shoes. I was really rooting for this reader, but there was no such luck. Everyone there was dressed like they were a member of the Republican Party (including myself). Drat!!!!!

While job fairs are generally free---at least, officially----- you have to give the management of the “Tuesday Job Fair” credit, they knew a money making opportunity when they saw one. For although the vast majority of the attendees were unemployed and presumable as broke as I was, they charged $5.00 for parking. They even had a bunch of concession stands opened for your convenience while you waited all day to see the employer of your choice. (Maybe the management was confused and set up for one of those 20 simultaneous football events.) They charged $3.00 for a small glass of coke and $2.00 for a bottle of water. Hot dogs were $3.50.

After I demurred on any kind of refreshment, I glanced out of one of the huge glass walls on the side of the building and noticed a eerily familiar site----a man driving a tow truck, circling the parking lot and checking license plates. I recognized the same repo-man, an ex-linebacker type, whose name was Rupert. I have been playing cat and mouse with him for several months now. I then saw two other tow trucks driven by two other big, burly white guys come into the lot. These repo men apparently knew that a big job fair would likely be the site of probably at least several dozen of the cars that they had been looking to repossess in the past couple of weeks. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of the "hooker or back up singers" run out of the building cursing a blue streak and questioning whether or not Rupert’s parents had ever been married. Suddenly I was glad that I had taken the bus...and wondering who really benefited the most from such a large gathering of the unemployed.