Old Woman Needs Job

I get a speculation job on percentage of future sales for editing a book about suicide. This means that I have to be alive to collect reimbursement. There are signs everywhere.

@@@@@@@@@@@*****!!!!

My son sees that I have saved one of my files under the title FU. He begins to laugh even though I assure him that it stands for Florida University. It doesn’t.

@@@@@@@@@@@******!!!!

I answer a job posting that requires an innovative writing sample on a specific topic. I win an interview, one of few granted out of thousands of applications, but when I arrive my interviewer is less than half my age. We get along famously; he asks me for ideas, writes vigorously, and tells me he plans to use my innovative suggestions. Then he remarks in his naiveté’ that he really had a “young technogeek guy” in mind for the position. I bid farewell to all of the twenty-somethings in the office. I should have asked for my interviewer’s arm, or perhaps a wheelchair assist to my car.

@@@@@@@@@@@******!!!!

Another interview – I know I can do this one. It pays an entry-level wage and is 40 miles from my home but I just need to get my foot in the door, I tell myself. The interviewer is the owner, over 70 (to be kind), and very unfriendly. The company publishes free apartment and condo guides—requires loads of creativity like listing how many bathrooms and describing the toilet fixtures. He won’t even look at my writing samples, published articles, or credentials. He keeps yelling, “Show me some sizzle!” ala the phrase coined--in what?--the early 1900s?

I’m still trying to get over the fact that I was so desperately polite to this man.

(I didn’t get the job.)