Sunday, February 6, 2011

Procrastination and job searching

A blog post? HOLY CRAP.

So as I posted on my other blog, thanks to some bullshit at work involving a made up customer complaint and a manager who refused to even consider that the bitch may have been lying, I was given the choice to either go over the road (and thus give up anything even vaguely resembling a social life) or to quit. I chose the latter and resigned effective January 7. The job hunt so far has been almost nonexistent. I put in a resume at one place, under the suggestion of one of my roommates; I finally received a rejection letter earlier this week. I don't even know where else to put my name in, honestly.

Perhaps the biggest problem is one that goes beyond merely not wanting to take the time to do applications. I don't see myself as having nearly any marketable job skills. Sure, I can type 80+ words per minute easily and have a pretty decent handle on multi-tasking, but I don't have any formal certifications in anything that isn't related to driving. Even then, the only good thing my previous job will likely say about me is that I'm eligible for rehire; I have no professional references, aside from claiming a friend who worked for the same company and whose path I almost never crossed as a co-worker. I don't really even know where to begin, as this is the first time I've seriously wanted to get something at least resembling a professional desk job.

I'm not in any massive hurry to get things done in part because I have a fair amount of savings I can draw down from. In reality I know I probably should be searching high and low for anything in this market, but... I just lack the motivation. If I managed to get forced out of a job when I was actually doing it right, why bother dealing with the work force at all? Because we're all "supposed to" do that crap? We're supposed to go to some place we don't want to be, earn just enough money to keep some minimal shelter and a few shiny things for amusement, then repeat until we're too old and get dumped into a hole somewhere? I unfortunately realize that the alternatives are all either incredibly improbable or illegal - such as winning the lottery or robbing a bank - but I still find the entire situation to be disgusting.

Despite all this, on Monday, I'm going to try my luck with a local temp agency and see if they can at least find something that's a match for my skills, whatever they may be. I'd like to think that I'll be ushered into something rather quickly, but considering how shitty the job market is right now, I may be stuck for a while.