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Review: applying for jobs

“Oh man, you know I’m just applying for a job”

“Yea, I’m out here trying to get this money”

” I’m just doing some job hunting”

Applying for a job is a never-ending saga. There are so many job sites and a seemingly endless list of jobs posted. My question is, who is getting hired for these jobs? And where are they located? No one I know is working at any of them. I’m certainly not working at any of them. What’s going on?

The other day my dad suggested I print out my resume and go to a radio station to try and find a job. Unfortunately for both of us, this isn’t 1982 and most companies have a little thing I like to call security that prevents people from barging in and demanding to speak to the president of the company.

Everything is digital, applying for jobs consists of trolling job sites like indeed, media bistro and monster.com. It sucks

It sucks because you know your resume will most likely never see the light of day. You’ll get one of those automated email responses like: ” Thank you for applying to this position. If we are interested in moving forward with the application process, someone will be in contact with you”.

Please let me help ease you’re nerves while your waiting, you won’t hear from them. IF you’re lucky you might get the generic “We regret to inform you that you have not been selected for this position, please continue to check our website for future opportunities”.

You’ll check back, reapply and the whole cycle will repeat itself.

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I just don’t get myself, you’d think I’d have learned by now that drinking during the week needs to be limited to one drink, not 8.

 

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Stop telling me to smile

If there’s one thing you cannot avoid while being a living women, it’s the phrase “hey baby why don’t you smile”

Most likely it won’t be uttered by some hunky business man, a Micheal Ealy type perhaps who finds you crying the rain under a weeping willow on a hot summer day. It will come from a creeper, ages 55+, probably homeless.

Stop telling me to smile.

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“Why don’t you smile sweetheart?”

Why don’t I smile? Lets examine a few reasons why I’m not smiling.

Because you decided to bring your creepy presence into my otherwise serene and peaceful world, because someone just said “God bless you” (if you’re not a pastor, please don’t take this as a real blessing). I’m not smiling because for some reason the places I used to hang out in are no longer appropriate for my age. The movie theater I used to go, to the restaurants I used to frequent. They’ve been infested with teeny boppers. Teeny boppers who look uncomfortably mature, like they could be my age. I can’t party like I used to, boozy brunches are no longer a Saturday tradition and neither are 5 hour Sunday naps. I’m grumpy because it’s the first week of Spring and we’ve already had snow. I’m not smiling because I live at home, I’m underemployed, and I’m sad.

If you want to see someone smile, go home, step in front of your bathroom mirror and enjoy.

The bottom line is this, No, I will not smile for you no matter how nicely you ask.

Just remember this, you don’t actually live here. We’re just letting you temporarily stay with us

Thanks mom

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Review: Living at home

When you’re in high school, living at home is “nbd” (that’s no big deal for those of you over age 50). It’s normal, it’s expected, and everybody does it. But once you move out and go to college, your eyes are opened to a whole new world. Everything is at your fingertips, your dorm room, your friends, the cafeteria, restaurants, bars, everything. It’s beautiful, liberating and sometimes (always) hazardous to your health. Sadly, like all good things it comes to an end and if you’re lucky ie. you graduated before 2007 you had a job and an apartment right out of college. Unfortunately for me, I graduated in 2012 and I neither had a job nor an apartment, just two parents and a dog. For those of you contemplating moving back home, here’s a word of advice, don’t. Every pro you can think of has an even bigger con. You don’t pay rent? That’s all find and dandy but it means you literally own nothing. You can’t come and go as you please, you can’t change the furniture, throw a party, or paint the walls. You can’t buy those cute pink appliances from Bloomingdales or altuzarra cups for your cocktails. That beautiful headboard you saw in Restoration Hardware? Forget it. Every single piece from the Zara home collection? No way. It doesn’t go with the your baby blue walls that were painted when you were in 7th grade. And forget trying to have an at-home happy hour: trust me, parents do not respond well when you start drinking at 5:15 on a Wednesday afternoon. They just don’t get it.  You don’t have to go grocery shopping? Fantastic, bye bye ramen hello baked chicken, mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables. But wait! It seems as if while you’ve been gone your parents have adjusted to being empty nesters and forgotten how to work the stove. So it’s back to ramen for me.

“At least you know where your gonna lay your head down every night shit its hard out here for a pimp”

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I miss the Bronx

I never though I’d actually say this but I miss the Bronx.

I miss the piles of random wood and trash flying around the streets. I miss the toothless men saying ‘God bless you’. I miss the smell of rotting flesh and most of all I miss the 4 a.m. pizza runs and the 1p.m. grocery runs that would usually end in disappointment since the businesses in the Bronx tend to make their own hours.

I miss the rainy season, which lasted from November till April. I miss the way the sun would hide behind massive clouds that seemed to go on for days. I miss walking up four flights of stairs to get to my tiny apartment. I miss eating 39-cent ramen for weeks on end because I was too poor to buy anything else.

I miss the windstorms that lasted for days, the 80-degree February days and the 50-degree days in May. I miss walking down the street and dodging crack heads, actually crack heads. I miss going to Tuff city to get my ear pierced and I miss my ear piercer asking if he can come smoke with us. I miss the 3 a.m. block parties on Wednesday nights and the car alarms that seemed to go off for days

I miss the D. The long dirty D. I miss the homeless people that would fall asleep on the seats, taking up whole rows sometimes. I miss the mariachi bands that would play from that stretch from 125th to 59th street. I miss the children who would try to sell you candy on the metro and the men on the street advertising their business, usually boost mobile, no credit? No problem.

I miss seeing 9 year old children running around the streets at 2 a.m. on a Saturday night, why are they awake? where are their parents? It’s not important. I miss going to a bodega that has food on its shelves from 1997. I miss almost stepping in dog [or human who knows?] feces on a regular basis, because Bronx residents don’t care about the law.

But most of all I miss getting security alerts about gunshots being fired down the street from my apartment, hearing those gunshots, and running. Literally running for my life back to the safety of my teeny tiny fourth floor walk up apartment.

I surely do miss the Bronx.

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Hahaha but seriously between spring break and paying my rent I dropped $1,000 this past week and I looked at my balance and it was 10 dollars and I’m about to spend 5 on a subway sandwich

#brokegirlproblems

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Review: Taking the metro

The DC metro is like none other. Not only does the cost rise and fall depending on how far your travel and what time of day but you can always count on one or more stations being closed on the weekend for track work. This work that the transportation department keeps talking about doesn’t seem to be helping alleviate the commute on metro since the trains are always single tracking during the weekdays. You can also depend on an escalator being broken and coming across it when you’re in a rush.

The Green, Yellow, Orange and Blue lines: I’m not really sure where these go and I never take them so I can’t really speak on their performance.

The Red line: Everything is on the red line: you want to out drinking? Go to DuPont Circle, venture to the movies? Silver Spring, try a trendy restaurant? Chinatown, trying to transfer to any other line? Metro Center is the place for you.  Are you a teenybopper looking for a new outfit? Try Wheaton, White Flint or Grovesnor and of course, if you are unemployed or between the ages of 3 and 95 go to the zoo! The red line, really the heartbeat and the blood (because its red!) of the DMV…. well not really the V but the DM.

Besides the finicky nature of the metro the locations of the stations are a tad inconvenient. For example the White Flint metro station isn’t really at White Flint, the Grovesnor one is, and the Grovesnor station is the closest to Montgomery Mall, but you still have to take the bus there. AND THERE’S NO METRO IN GEORGETOWN. Honestly this is the greatest travesty of all.