Second interview and second jobs

Second interview this week, for the department store, was today.

The interview itself went ok… except for being told that actually, they are doing a job fair where they will do apps, interviews, and hiring next wednesday. So, since they have 2 rounds of interviews (for a seasonal position?), I still have to go to the job fair thing anyway… I just get to skip a round.

I’m thinking I’d have rather saved the trip and done both at once… but whatever. At least round 1 is over.

Actually got a call today to do an interview for another store’s seasonal workers tomorrow. So from nothing to 3 interviews in a week is a nice switch!

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However, there was something that sort of hit a sort point today… and kind of surprised me that it did.

As I was waiting while my interviewer resolved a situation for someone, another applicant was talking to the other HR person.

She was telling her how she could only work nights and weekend afternoons, because she works full time during the day. She then continued how she “only makes $12 an hour”, and how she needs the extra money to make ends meet around the holidays “in this rough economy.” Said in this “oh poor me” tone of voice.

I so so felt like saying “must be nice!”

This is a $7.50 an hour, minimum wage, part time, seasonal job that I’m trying to get “to make ends meet” aka keep the utilities on…. and she’s trying to get “to make ends meet” just around the holidays, aka pad her gift buying budget.

And, of course, if she’s got the experience to be making $12 an hour someplace, and to be full time and day shift, she’s probably way way ahead of me on the list of people being considered…. and ahead of everyone else in the applications who needs this to put food on the table or pay the rent because they can’t get anything better to hire them right now.

If you think about it… the people who need it the most are probably the least likely to have the best qualifications, or they’d have something else. And the ones who need it the least and have the best paying jobs elsewhere are the ones most likely to have the best qualifications to get it… as a short term addition to their current income, rather than just to have an income at all for a little while and maybe a hope they can prove themselves enough to have the time be extended.

And considering that earlier while I was waiting she’d mentioned her resume wasn’t updated with something that had changed, and she wasn’t sure on some of her past employer info, I’m thinking she probably hasn’t been doing many apps to have to try hard to get it.

Now I know that I don’t know her story and there’s probably more to her… and in most cases I’d probably be applauding her for seeking out extra work instead of just going into debt… and I can’t say that if I were in her situation that I might not be doing the same thing (though right now I’d totally love to try). And for all I know she might have other negative things on her record to prevent her from getting it either.

And it’s not like I’d want to ban people from having second jobs, or make companies take people’s lives into account, or anything else major it would take to make it a different playing field.

I guess it just hit a sore spot on how crummy and stacked against me things feel right now.

Someone making more than I could even dream of making after so long of chasing low paying and often part time jobs… will probably have a nice Christmas financially. And as for us… well, maybe we will still have the water turned on at the end of the month, maybe not.

Suppose life goes on either way…. and there’s a lot worse off people around. And massively worse off people in other places.

But it’s still incredibly frustrating.

Without the Name

As I’ve mentioned a little bit, right now I’m working in a job experience program through the state that outsources to private companies to get hands on experience with various types of jobs.

So, I got assigned to this company… pretty much at random from what I can tell.

Seems ok… fairly straightforward. Supervisor seems decent enough.

About a month into the program though, one of the girls who had become one of my friends started having some major issues in her life outside the program.

And I found myself amazed at the lengths the program went through to help her.

The supervisor letting her use his personal cell to try to resolve things… allowing her to give the number out to people who needed to call back.. letting people contact him… getting on the phone himself on her behalf to see if he could get things resolved… getting his supervisor seeing what she could do from her end to coordinate things.

They really went to bat for her… and seemed just as annoyed as we were as things didn’t go right through no fault of hers.

Our supervisor is honestly the first person in this whole process from unemployment on who has honestly seemed to be looking out for the best thing for people and their families… rather than just what makes for the best numbers on the page. He’s been actively involved with us… and has gone to bat for us more than once when things were taking negative spins.

All the while keeping his cool, being more patient than I can imagine being with people who really didn’t want to be there, while not taking the bull from them either, and calling them out when needed and relevant without being combative about it. The more time went on, the more impressed I became with this guy for not going bitter or bonkers in his job… and while being open enough to show that things were possible.

So, while he’d never once openly said so, it wasn’t too big of a shock when a discussion between about 3 of us about churches also got him telling us about his church.

A followup discussion a few days later found out more… that it was a church built very strongly on equipping people for their own ministries instead of seeing itself as a ministry. And then that he’d been attending the church even when it meant he was driving from the area near work up to the church which is where he now lives, about 45 minutes away or so.

Then a while later, discussing the age ranges at churches and large families…. we found out that the company head actually attends the same church too.

Which got me to thinking a little bit.

Because in the discussions in the first week of classes with his supervisor, she’d also been pretty open about attending church, and against swearing even in non-work situations, and against violent movies and games, etc.

And then about a week later, one of the other workers picked me up from the site to go work on resumes…. and had christian music playing in the car softly, and in her stuff in the back seat (she was moving at the time) was an obvious christian book. (my site supervisor had directly said once that he kept the radio on a neutral station rather than his preferences, knowing that now everyone agrees on music)

So, it’s an organization helping people get jobs and get back on their feet…. and at least 4 of their key people are open christians, 2 of which in a very ministry building church. It’s obviously working helping clients who don’t have jobs or other income, pretty much assuring they are poor and lacking in better options.

At some point… do you ever start wondering exactly what makes a ministry different than a business?

I have little doubt that if I asked them, they’d probably admit that they see it as their personal way of ministering. But does collective individuals make the whole?

It’s not like it would be anything different to openly be a christian ministry…. the local homeless program is affiliated with united methodist… two of the local sliding scale clinics are religious based… one of the other work program placements that seems to be popular is catholic…

For that matter, so is one of the local groups of hospitals, though there seems to be little difference from the non-religious one. And even some non-helping related businesses like hobby lobby and chick fil a have openly been christian based.

But from what I can find… there’s no real mention of anything religious with this company, anywhere. It was originally started to help teens that were on a team coached by the founder.

Which makes it sort of intriguing to me.

Is it any less a ministry for not calling itself such? Or for not being officially affiliated with some church organization?

Not everything we do to help other people as individuals is frequently going to involve mentioning God, even in situations when that’s our reason for doing so. Sometimes there is a time for evangelizing and telling them why you are helping, but often there isn’t.

Is it really that different to consider a business doing the same? Helping without openly telling you why they are motivated to be in the business of doing do?

And should it really be so unusual seeming as to surprise me?

The baby parent

Every year on parents night for the new school year, I’m amazed by how much older many of the other parents in kiddo’s class seem to be.

Maybe part of it is where she goes to a traditional magnet… but it seems like a lot of the parents are closer to my mother’s age than to mine.

Yeah, I was a bit young when kiddo was born… but not that young.

But to top the weird?

I figured out that one of my daughter’s classmates is the child of one of my high school teachers.

Granted, yes, he was one of the younger teachers during my sophomore year…. probably early 30′s at the time… so probably late 30′s when this kid was born…

But it just still strikes me as sort of interesting each year.

This year particularly, as it seemed like I was probably the only one under 35 in the half of the class of parents attending the same time period I was.

Touching worlds

The last three posts have actually been attempts at writing this post that went into different directions, because it’s hard to phrase right exactly what I’m feeling.

But I think the thing that has thrown me off the most with the job program is that I feel like I have feet in about three different worlds.

It sort of does a weird number on things when you sit with coworkers through a discussion of the benefits of local organizations from their perspective as a client…. then go to church that very sunday to hear an announcement about helping out serving those poor unfortunate people at one of the same places…. and it suddenly sinks in that “those” people being helped with such a tone of pity are the same ones I consider peers during the week and hadn’t particularly considered in need of pity.

I have the world of people struggling with accepting that they can’t afford a brand new car right now…. mixed with a surprising number of the program participants that don’t have any car, even a shared vehicle. Participants that whine about the fact that the program requires them to be picked up and dropped off by their supervisor, and those for whom it’s the only way they’d be able to get there without a long walk to the nearest area covered by bus routes.

Those who’ve made the sacrifice to give up cable, and the two families that I know that have gone multiple weeks without having power in their homes. And the ones that don’t even have a phone that I could call them without leaving a message with their relative, let alone be online… which makes me realize exactly how spoiled to technology aided communication I am.

But it’s not really the contrast in the worlds that gets me.

It’s how close they really are to each other.

I feel somewhat in the middle right now…. in a place I’d never have aimed at being and have spent most of my goals and ambitions trying to avoid.. pretty much a lowest place in my life looking at things on a material level.

But, really not that far from the lower middle class of previous jobs… close enough to see it as as a reasonable hope.

But it sort of scares me a bit realizing how close the “unfortunate poor people” really are… I kind of tend to try to imagine a distance there…. between us and “them”… that I’m quickly realizing isn’t an across town sized division…. it’s an across the street one.

Maybe even a next door one.

But it’s sort of a different position for me in other ways, because most of the time when I’ve gotten this feeling, I’ve been in a position that I’d intentionally gotten into, a position to help. Handing out sandwiches or giving resources or connecting them with places for help.

This time… as much as I’d have given to be able to pay off that electric bill for someone I now considered a close friend… this time I’m not in this by choice, and have no quick escape back to better times…. no bag of solutions i’m under the impression will make things feel better.

This time all I can do is be there.

And it’s different. A bit helpless feeling… a bit scary… a bit relieved at not having to have solutions or answers or even confidence in my ability to pull myself out of messes let alone a superwoman feeling of being able to drag someone else out.

Can’t say it’s a place I would have visited voluntarily, but it’s become an interesting trip.

Looking like you belong

So as mentioned in the last post, right now with the job program I’m working 30 hours a week at a retail store, department store in this case, for about another month.

With the exception of anything involving cash registers, we basically do the same tasks as the store employees. Lots of hanging clothes in the back room, bringing things out from the back, putting things away, going through and picking things up, setting up displays, sorting things, organizing things, fixing things.

One of the things that has amazed me though…. is that even though we have no name tags for the store, and we don’t wear the store communication headsets like the employees, and we wear the same clothes we would if we were just shopping…. customers can still tell.

Sometimes of course it’s obvious, I mean if I have a big rack of a random item that I’m putting away then yes they are going to assume I work there. Or if I’m standing behind the desk in the fitting room handing them numbers and re-hanging things.

But there are a lot of times that I really have no clue how they picked up on it.

Times I was wandering through the clothes racks checking for sizes in the right places, and probably could have been mistaken for shopping.

Times I was sitting down in front of the shelf in the shoe department picking up random pairs of shoes that I couldn’t see the size labels to make sure they were paired right.

Times I was wandering through the purse section with only one in my hands because I was looking for more of the same brand for a display.

Times I’ve been holding and refolding a rug on the rug and throw pillow aisle… my least favorite row of the store.

And times that I’ve randomly turned a corner, with nothing in my hand, just walking around looking for my supervisor, and had someone ask me if I work there.

It’s just sort of a weird thing… that people are able to somehow sense that I’m not just refolding the rug because I decided not to buy it… and that I’m not just looking for a purse I like.. or even that I’m not just randomly wandering down the towel section.

Do I work there? Technically no. I’m a volunteer with the work program who is assigned there.

But there’s enough of an “act like you belong and you do” thing going on that even when you aren’t even actively doing anything distinctive to an employee, there is a sense that you must be one.

Even when you are literally just standing there, in a t shirt and yoga pants, staring at the clearance section to see if there’s anything interesting marked down.

It continues to baffle me.

Hit lists and prayer

Remember this post?

 

 

Well, yeah.

Somehow I just knew the minute I’d admitted it was something I found myself fearing was the minute it jumped to the top 3 items on the hit list.

I’ve kind of noticed since then that sometimes I think I shy away from praying about certain things for the same reason. It’s like I know the minute I actually put it into words and acknowledge it, I’ve tossed it onto the target list. So sometimes the most tender things that probably should be discussed but that I know won’t have the best chances for surviving an attack stay locked within.

Probably not a good thing.

In this case with the car, it turned out ok. Starter had gone out, which I’d actually just replaced less than a year ago right after student loans, so it was covered except $100. Though the other car issue remains an issue.

And the laptop has had the old problem fixed, only to now develop a new one where the fan is acting up. Something I can do myself, but need to buy the part. And so, until then, it’s giving me about 20-30 minutes at a time until the temp gets too high and it shuts itself off to cool down.

This does not bode well for blogging right now…. so things may be even more random on timing than usual around here for a while.

 

 

Uplifting vs downtrodding

I’ve come to find that certain types of books meant to be helpful and useful to improving your life somehow rarely are.

At least to me.

The biggest two of these for me always seem to be the ones on the topic of “lost child” / “ghost child” / “invisible child” family roles in a dysfunctional families, and those for dealing with parenting difficult children.

These books always seem to make me feel worse after reading it than I did before.

I’d be the first to admit I’ve got my issues… but the books about lost child role always leave me feeling like i’m one step from the psych ward…. and like there’s soo soo much different from being anything passable for a productive member of society.

I may not be someone who will ever pass for being normal, but under general conditions I like to feel like at least some progress has been made.. some things have been worked out… there’s some hope for at least being somewhere in the middle of the spectrum rather than a hopeless case forever doomed by defense mechanisms learned in a different environment that are overreactive and no longer appropriate for the situation.

Whether or not it’s true, even if maybe I’m just under delusion most of the time when not reading this stuff.. I fail to see how making me feel that way is productive. Even if they are right, and the work to aim towards dealing more and more with the past issues as time goes on isn’t going to fix things ever… at the very least it’s not making strides in the other direction. Feeling like a hopeless cause on the other hand could head that direction pretty fast.

And the books on parenting difficult children either make me feel like I want to lock them in a room with my kid for a few hours and let them learn what a difficult child really is… or make me feel like I’m raising the next ax murder. I get enough of both feelings from dealing with people in everyday life, I don’t need any more of either, thanks.

What exactly is the point of a self-help or life improvement book if it’s not going to be aimed at the purpose of being uplifting and hopeful? I mean, you’ve got to believe there is hope at the very least to have anything else the book might say matter at all.

Icebreakers and team things

Icebreakers and other such team building games are a pet peeve of mine.

So annoying… and so pointless.

No, knowing three things about me isn’t actually going to make us any closer or any better acquainted. Especially when they usually tend to be trivial things like “I have a cat.”.

I’m always so tempted to completely start making things up, and see how long it takes until someone actually really gets to know me and realizes I’m not a hang gliding expert from Alaska who speaks French and has 7 kids.

But the sad thing is that in most of the cases where the people in charge decide that an icebreaker game is needed…. it’s really unlikely that anyone ever would get to know me enough to be able to say for sure.

And yes, falling backwards and relying on other people to catch you will produce an emotional experience that resembles trust. But no, it’s not going to suddenly make me trust you… and if there is so little trust there that it requires me falling backwards to prove there is anything at all, good luck with gaining it.

Can we just skip to the point already and get to know each other in an actual authentic way as things go on?

Clinging to the towel

And related to the last post is…

Dealing with the fact that sometimes the line of ability is self-imposed.

Particular example: Bikes.

My daughter had a small bike with training wheels for several years. Either 14 or 16 inch wheels… not a regular sized kids bike.

She had absolutely no trouble at all with the training wheels, and overcame issues with understanding the pedals and that backwards was the brakes. She rode that thing back and forth and back and forth and was getting really fast on it.

But, of course she outgrew it. I kept raising seat and moving handlebars forward until we met the limits of how far it could go, and she still rode it until her knees just could not manage anymore.

So, 3 years ago, she got a new bike for Easter. (Because it makes no sense to give her one in the middle of winter around here when she can’t ride it till spring anyway).

20 inch wheels, normal sized kid bike, similar in styles to my bike, very pretty. With the seat at the lowest setting it fit her perfectly, but with lots of space on higher settings to grow.

For the first day, in excitement, she rode it pretty well.

And then promptly lost all ability to ride a bike with training wheels.

She did regain it once… because she wanted to take her bike to an event thing that I refused to let her take it unless she could ride it.

And again once last year when she wanted to take it to a nearby track where my mom was going on a walk.

But every other time… it turns into this huge “I can’t” drama struggle.

She lunges hard to one side enough to almost intentionally flip the bike on it’s side, then yells “See?!?”. She can’t figure out how to get the pedals to work, and can’t help accidentally hitting them backwards to hit the brakes. She gets mad and gets off and kicks it.

When she does get it moving, she’ll throw her weight back and forth from one side to the other really hard, so that it jars very hard against one training wheel and then the other. So then, they either come loose and have to be re-tightened, or the metal bends because they aren’t meant for that kind of abuse from a 65 pound kid on a full sized bike. We’ve now gone through 4 sets of them. They make heavy duty ones… but they cost more than I paid for the bike, and are designed as more of a permanent thing, not a training thing.

Logic goes nowhere. Trying to help goes nowhere. Trying to show her that she can actually do it goes nowhere.

Trying to skip the wheels and go directly to learning to balance without them just makes things worse, even the “remove the pedals” style balance training done back on the smaller bike. And, she does have a 2 wheel scooter that she loves and has done wonderful with for years, so inability to balance doesn’t seem to be the issue there either.

So as my friend’s 5 year old rides without training wheels, and so does the kindergartener down the street, and every other kid I see anywhere near her age even within about 3 years younger…. my kid can’t manage to ride her bike even _with_ the extra wheels!

And so, of course this drives me bonkers. Because I know that she can ride this bike with no issues. She’d had no problems with these exact same things on the smaller bike, and she’s successfully done ok with this bike when she’s been motivated to want to.

I know that the problem is not physical capability, as she claims each time.

But it’s hard for me to accept that she may not be mentally or emotionally capable.

What specifically the exact hang-up is, I’m not sure.

But for whatever reason, the physical ability and the mental or emotional ability are not on the same level right now. She can do it physically easily, but she can’t manage it at this point mentally.

And somehow this is a lot harder to accept than a physical limitation would be.

While googling for stronger training wheel options, I came across a “camp” that they run across the nation, including one week here in town. Where they specifically work with special needs kids on learning to ride a bike independently, with a really high success rate within the week of classes a bit more than an hour a day.

I went to read more about it, hoping to get ideas. Instead, I found myself really surprised… because with their definitions of disabilities and kiddo’s official label now, she actually qualifies. It was even specifically listed on their facebook page. She also qualifies on their ages, sort of reinforcing what I already knew on the fact that she should be able to do this by now.

I was a bit shocked.

As I saw these videos of kids learning to ride, most seemed more along the lines of down syndrome or autism… so much more severely impaired.

Even though when she was younger she did score within a point of where they would consider aspergers to start… it was just totally not on my radar to even think of making a comparison to my kid and think that her bike issues might be along those lines. It’s just not where my mental vision was.

But more and more as I’ve seen little pieces come into the picture and turn out to be related to each other… the more I’m not sure that vision actually matches the reality.

And I’m not sure if that’s just because its such a grey area… or if I need to come to better acceptance of exactly how far reaching the issues really can be and check my expectations a bit in areas where I know there is no physical capability issue and so may be jumping a bit on assuming that it’s a clear case of not wanting to try something if it’s not easy.

But of course the other logical side comes in wondering where the line is between mental and emotional issues being allowed for and given space to settle, vs allowing easy “can’t” excuses to run rampant so that she never reaches and realizes that she actually can if she put the effort into trying.

When do you drop the towel, and when do you keep clinging to the thread?

I think with the bike I’m going to just completely drop it for now, and if she hasn’t grown past the issue block by next summer consider the camp.

But I’m sure it’s nowhere near the end of the murky waters of judging questions of internal capability issues vs comfort zone and desire level.

Fears and self acceptance.

So. I got an envelope from the college today. The one I’m hoping to get into for the remaining two programs that I have a shot at for next year.

Nothing too out of the ordinary… I’ve gotten quite a few of them lately from random paperwork back and forth.. they received my app for the college, they received this transcript, then that one, then I was accepted into the college itself, then they needed this paperwork for financial aid, then they assigned so and so to my admissions contact…. etc etc etc.

The degree audit was one of the other letters last week. I feel owe their transcript analyst a thank you present of some sort… as everything transferred perfectly, and the classes they listed as my ones to fulfill their requirements leaves me with all a’s and b’s except 1 c.

But this was the letter for the second choice of the two programs.

I have an interview on monday.

It wasn’t till I opened this letter that I realized exactly how much I’m expected the answer to be “no”.

My first thought on seeing that the letter was from the department was literally to think of sending a facebook message to a friend of mine who also went back to school, telling her “yay, i wont have to take chemistry!”

But… instead I’m on to the next level.

What strikes me the most is how different this is than the first time through college. I had no fears on acceptance, to anything I applied to.

But now… after a decade… I’m both pessimistic and honestly scared.

I wonder exactly how many rejections I’ve had in the past decade. For that matter, in the last few years. I’d guess at least into the thousands by now. Most of the time without even an interview.

Most of the time feeling like I didn’t even really have a chance.. no matter if I could have easily done the job.

So I’m trying to convince myself that this will be different.

That this will be based on ability.

That this is academics, not popularity networking.

But it’s not working well.

And this interview is really scaring me.

Because my biggest fear right now i that I won’t be judged fairly.

You see, the application process said that “those who meet the academic qualifications will be given an interview”. The one question all year has been whether or not they were going to hold the gpa from the former classes against me, or just look at the more recent ones, or look at the official college degree audit.

So if I’m getting an interview, they obviously went with one of the latter two, and that hurdle is passed (for this program anyway).

And with that passed, so is the objective portion. The portion where I would be ok if I failed to get in due to just not having what I needed.

But this subjective portion is starting to terrify me.

Not because I’m scared I’ll freeze up, or won’t be able to come up with good answers…. one perk of going through tons of job interviews that never went anywhere is that they don’t scare me too much anymore.

—

But I’m scared because it’s so easy to be judged by any number of irrelevant factors.

Will they be able to see beyond the fact that I’m older than they other applicants probably are?

Or that I’m female?

Or that I’m not only fat, but fat and trying to go into a profession that’s related to health?

Or that I’m more of an introvert and not the happy bubbly type that instantly makes friends with everybody?

Or even that I have hair that’s starting to get really long in a profession that will probably require it to be pulled up most of the time? Or even that I wear glasses in a profession that requires visual elements?

Or that I’m a single parent if the topic of children comes up?

Should these be things they consider? Are they things they ever realize that they are taking into account?

Should I make efforts to try and minimize them in a last ditch effort to make it into the program?

—

I’m filled with thoughts of running out and purchasing the strongest spanx I can find, chopping my hair off at the neck, wearing my contacts instead of my glasses even though they drive me eyes nuts in allergy season, putting one of my old rings on my left hand… and doing the best fake bubbly impression that I can come up with.

But.

That’s not me that they’d be seeing.

While I have enough comfort in my own skin to not be too concerned about these sorts of trivial surface judgements on most days… with the sort of weight on the future that this interview could end up having, it’s really giving that comfort a run for its money.

That comfortable me is having a hard time being coaxed out from under the bed… and really feels like sending “least possible judgeable factor” me in it’s place.

Will I regret it if I don’t try my hardest to remove irrelevant factors as much as I can, and I don’t get accepted?

Will I regret it if I do, no matter what the result?