Friends,<\/p>\n
As you may know, my contract at my “forever job” wasn’t renewed and the bosses wouldn’t tell me why. My superpower, to make a simple thing into a catastrophic thing when I lack information, has led me down many soul-crushing paths. Maybe they didn’t renew my contract because of that one day when I wore Converse All-Stars into the office instead of fancier basketball shoes favored by my colleagues. Or maybe it was simply lack of funding.<\/p>\n
Hint: It’s always funding.<\/p>\n
Then my cool software administrator job started. Knowing that we had a 4-year contract with the client, I figured that I could work with that. It would be plenty of time to show them our talent and hopefully extend that contract. What could go wrong!<\/p>\n
Funding? Again? That’s what they said when they cancelled the contract two months in, so that’s what we’re telling everyone else.<\/p>\n
Now it’s time to look for new jobs and talk to recruiters, including the friendly guy from Texas who’s recruiting for a tech job at a local hospital. Big round trip to find people in a five-mile radius, but I gladly took his call. “I’ll send you more details in a moment. What’s your preferred email address?” he asked. Then nothing.<\/p>\n
Hours later, still nothing. He probably got the address wrong and the email bounced. No worries, I’ll just call him back.<\/p>\n
“Oh, hi. This is Bob Therieau. Is this [redacted]?” *click*<\/p>\n
Of course I called back and the call went straight to voicemail.<\/p>\n
It’s important to note at this point that I’m not all that qualified for his job. I did that work years ago (it seems like I’ve done a lot of jobs at some point), but I’m not currently doing that work. I could figure it out, just like I figure out the computers and software that I’ve been asked to support before I’ve ever seen them, during my entire career, but that’s everybody’s objection, isn’t it?<\/p>\n
“The client is looking for a copywriter who has recent experience writing cat food radio commercial scripts.” “I wrote dog food commercials a few years ago.” “Oh dear, I don’t know. That’s not really the same, is it? Two different markets…”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There are a few more things in the pipeline, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a recruiter actually hang up on me. This is a wild time to be looking for a new job, but that was really weird. He could have just said something if I don’t meet the criteria.<\/p>\n
You know. Just say something.<\/p>\n
Your pal,<\/p>\n
– bob<\/p>\n
WEIRD UPDATE: Did Texas recruiter call back today? Yes, he did! Something, phone’s messed up, didn’t see the voicemail, etc. You legitimately have earned extra points if you saw that coming. But, you know. You could’ve said something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Friends, As you may know, my contract at my “forever job” wasn’t renewed and the bosses wouldn’t tell me why. My superpower, to make a simple thing into a catastrophic thing when I lack information, has led me down many soul-crushing paths. Maybe they didn’t renew my contract because of that one day when I … <\/p>\n