I had gotten an invitation earlier in the week to attend another job fair sponsored by Goodwill, and I registered for it. I got the printout of the QR code and everything. I also ran out of paper while printing résumés, so I’ll have to get some more. It turns out my résumé is now about a page and a quarter, so I ended up expanding it to two full pages. Front and back seemed like a good idea.
Thursday dawned, and I started getting ready. I looked for the right clothes. I took out the very nice shoes I bought for dance practice, which I have never attended. I took out the nice pants I got for the dance class I never went to. I found a nice polo shirt, and it all fit nicely, so what the heck? I decided to wear my sneakers for all the walking I would have to do and then switch over to the nice shoes later. I don’t know—keep the dancing shoes as indoor-only, maybe?
But while I was going through all that, I also sorted my laundry for some god-awful reason. This thing was scheduled between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., and if I wanted to get there on time using public transit, I had to leave at right about five minutes to 10. And here I was, neck-deep in laundry, sorting like an idiot.
But then, it was a job fair. If I was a little bit late, no big deal. I would just walk in, do what I had to do, and leave. I also had a CT scan scheduled for 3:20, so I would be leaving a little early anyway, even though that trip would take maybe half an hour from the Hyatt Regency.
I finally got out of my apartment at about 10:15. I walked about a mile, got on the MAX, rode in relative comfort, got off the MAX, walked over to the Hyatt Regency, and went inside. I didn’t even ask anyone where to go. I kind of just saw a crowd and went that way.
There was a line. I didn’t know how long it was, but I knew it extended into the hallway where I was standing. It turned out to be very long. It wound all the way down the hall—about 200 feet—turned right, went another 50 feet, looped around an interior room, and then came back around to the table. It was a good two blocks’ worth of people standing in line.
I had some banter with the people near me—nothing consequential, but, you know, it kept things going.
At my initial place in the line, a guy came out wearing a badge that designated him as part of the organization. He was carrying a protective sleeve containing a QR code that he was encouraging people to scan so they could register for the event while standing in line.
This genuinely confused me. I had registered when I got the email. I showed him the document with my QR code on it, and he said, “Oh, you’re all set.”
And I’m like, well, of course I’m all set. You guys sent me the invitation, and I registered. Yet there were people scanning the QR code he was holding and registering while they were standing in line.
It seemed to me that the recruiters, once I saw them, should look at my piece of paper and say, “This guy knows how to plan ahead. This guy is organized. He’s all set.”
But I knew that wasn’t how it was going to work.
When I reached that big loop-around area, a fellow came out to promote the event. “There are real people here,” he said. “There are recruiters who will hire you—who will interview you here on the spot. You probably can’t walk down the street, see a recruiter, and get them to do that.”
What he didn’t say was: How would you know a recruiter if you saw one on the street anyway?
But whatever. He was very much promoting how wonderful this was going to be. When I finally got near the door, I saw they had one of those tables set up outside to show their credentials: StandUp Colorado, StandUp Los Angeles. This organization was great for us. When they came here, they were great! There was a lot of that.
Because of my laundry-sorting shenanigans, I showed up at about 11:30, but there was a line, still. According to the display on the wall, the room had been booked from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The email invite for the event said it was scheduled from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. I, of course, joked with my line-mates that maybe they had several shifts and everyone would be gone by the time we got in there. While they weren’t humorless, they pointed out the extra time allowed four hours to set everything up beforehand and two hours to tear it all down afterward. Yeah, I’m not the only one on the hamster wheel, and it causes stress for us all.
To recap, I got there at 11:30, and I ended up waiting a good 45 minutes before I actually entered the main room. Let me just say that this event was both exactly what I expected and very disappointing.
At the main doors was the worker from the loop speech, the one who came out to pump us up. Now he’s giving more encouragement, and saying, “I’m gonna start you with the first booth right over there. Talk with them, then go to the next and the next, and just wander the room. Smile every time, and you will enjoy this.”
He also pointed out that off to one side there was a free résumé review section. “Take advantage of that. After all, free is good, right?”
I did consider it. After all, I had ended up with a two-page résumé, front and back, and I’m old-school enough to have it ingrained in me that a one-page résumé is best. With online PDFs and everything, that’s not necessarily true anymore. It’s also true that they have AI scanning these things now, and AI can scan a two-page résumé just as fast as it can scan a one-page résumé.
Of course, there’s another problem with expanding a résumé, though. Eventually you start filling that extra space with older experience. Then suddenly you’re putting in something you did back in 1990, and somebody reading it does the math: “Wait a minute. How old is this guy?”
So, fighting against my own self-interest, I decided to ignore the résumé review people. All they were going to do was make me feel bad about having a two-page résumé—or point out I’m giving potential employers more ammunition to figure out my age. Yeah, I know.
But I’m tired from running on this wheel and I don’t want to just take a detour and then get back on.
Inside, it was a healthcare booth first. Really? Well, I’m going to avoid all healthcare. It is very unlikely that they would hire me, as I’m an IT guy, and the only medical qualifications I have are which bandage to use on my owie. Unless they have IT positions, it’s not going to happen. Plus, every healthcare agency I have ever interviewed with for an IT position has hired internally. It’s like they train somebody who was a chemical tech and then install them in the IT position. So I decided to skip all the healthcare organizations.
A good 50 percent of the organizations there were staffing agencies. Goodwill was there. WorkSource was there. There were also a couple of staffing agencies whose names I can’t remember. Looking at one of them, it sounded more like, “We help people with diverse backgrounds get jobs.”
So I asked the woman specifically, “Are you hiring or recruiting?”
She told me they were doing both. The positions they were hiring for were basically life coaches, job coaches, and home-help aides. I listened to her entire spiel and then told her truthfully, “This isn’t going to be for me. My life is a bit chaotic, and I don’t think anyone wants me teaching that to somebody else.”
She was very understanding and said, “Well, this isn’t for everybody.”
I walked around a little more. There were two prisons—or correctional facilities, if you prefer—basically recruiting. I’m not going to work for a prison.
There were at least four healthcare organizations there. Again, I wasn’t going to apply to any of those. Most of the remaining organizations were some kind of staffing agency offering contract positions—perhaps contract-to-hire—but frankly, I am really over contract work. I want a real, permanent job. I may end up going back to contract work, but I’m not going to start that process at this job fair.
So I ended up leaving pretty early. The job fair was scheduled until 3:00, and I had a CAT scan scheduled for 3:20. It’s a very short jaunt from downtown to the VA hospital, but I left at about 1:30.
Earlier, while I was riding to the event on the MAX, I checked my email. Someone had sent me a free cup of coffee. Frankly, I’d never heard of thnks.com and had to go through my verification process to make sure it was legit. (Open it in an incognito tab, check through it, etc.) It verified. I was able to pick from four different options, including Dunkin’ Donuts, Krispy Kreme, and Starbucks. I was going downtown, so I figured Starbucks would be the best bet. I hadn’t opened my Starbucks app in so long that I had to set a new password, but once that was done, I was able to add the credit to my account.
Walking out of the Hyatt Regency, I discovered that the two nearest Starbucks, according to Google Maps, were permanently closed. There was one a little farther south, though, so I walked there. I got a small iced mocha, which cost me an extra 65 cents over the $5. No problem.
Then I walked back to the MAX, took that downtown, and got myself a Philly cheesesteak at The Block. This is where we discovered that my stomach is out of training.
When I was not regularly employed—less active, I guess you could say—I would typically eat one meal per day. Sometimes I would have something to drink in the morning, but then I would eat one big meal, and that would satisfy me for the day.
Well, the large at The Block is a full-size cheesesteak, and they really stuffed it full of meat. On a normal visit, I will buy the cheesesteak, take it home, and eat it there. Sometimes I eat only half of it, and sometimes I eat a bit more, but I always have some leftovers.
This time, though, I had my CAT scan later that afternoon, so I decided to sit at a picnic table outside the food truck and eat the whole thing there. I ate every bit of it, and—oh my goodness—I’m feeling a little drowsy now because that was a lot of food.
Early in my Army career, a doctor who took my history and asked about my diet gave me a soft diagnosis of being an “overburner.” It had been discussed on TV—Today, Good Morning America, or whatever—as something in the news at the time. It described people who would eat a lot, only to have their heart rate rise, their brain get a bit foggy, and then get really drowsy while their system processed the food, only to be hungry again just a few hours later.
Well, I’ve always been something like that, and the doctor just kind of confirmed it. I honestly don’t know whether that’s a real medical diagnosis. I never saw it in my medical records, but that is what the doctor told me.
Anyway, that’s exactly what was going on. I ate that entire cheesesteak—every last little scrap. I even asked for a fork so I could pick up everything that had fallen out. It was very good, and I enjoyed it, but it did make me extremely full.
I was a little concerned that they might tell me at the imaging department, “Oh, you shouldn’t have eaten first.” But this wasn’t a blood test, so they did not.
There was a little confusion when I got to the VA hospital. It was about 2:00 at this point, and when I looked at the directory, it didn’t list anything called “Radiology.” So I went to the front desk and said, “I need to get a CAT scan. Where is that?”
The helpful volunteer said, “Oh, that’s Imaging, on the second floor.” Then he thanked me for my service, which is typical of those volunteers. They’re usually veterans themselves, but it’s still very, very cool.
I took the elevator up to the second floor. At this particular VA hospital, it is genuinely easier to take the elevator up or down just that one floor because the stairs are a long way from the elevators. From the third through eighth floors, the stairs are pretty close, but for some reason, between the first and second floors, they are a long way apart.
Anyway, I took the elevator to the second floor and followed the signs. When I got there, they had another sign that said “Radiology.” Obviously, they had changed the name of the department, supposedly because they also perform sonograms, which don’t involve radiation, so they now call it Imaging—but they hadn’t changed all the signage. Welcome to the VA.
I went to check in, but there was a guy who seemed to be in more of a hurry than I was, so I let him go ahead of me. I was more than an hour early, so why not? He did his thing, I checked in, and then I sat down expecting to wait a while.
Somebody came out and said something, but I didn’t hear her. I had my noise-canceling headphones on and was listening to a podcast. About a minute later, she came back out. I pulled out an earbud, and she was saying, “Richard?” while looking confused.
“Oh, yeah, that’s me,” I said. “I didn’t expect you to call me so soon because I’m here so early.”
“Yeah, sometimes it works out that way,” she said.
Then I went through the procedure: lie down on the table, put my hands over my head, and go into the scanner. She told me I would be scanned three times. Each time, they wanted me to inhale and hold my breath, and they wanted me to take in about the same amount of air each time.
She also explained that this was a follow-up on the nodules. Okay—now I knew why I was there.
The nodule that my doctor talked about during my main physical was basically nothing, in my opinion. I had pneumonia back when I was in college, and that can scar the lung. It may never fully recover, and the scarring may form these nodules. It hasn’t caused me any problems in two decades, so that’s probably what it is. That’s basically what my doctor told me, too. This was simply a follow-up CAT scan.
So I did the thing. I lay down and grasped the handles above my head. Those are handy. They give you something to do with your hands instead of just holding them uncertainly above your head.
Then a nice recorded voice told me to inhale and hold my breath. After the scan, it told me to breathe normally. We did that three times, and it was crazy how quickly the whole thing was finished. Then I was out of there.
I started heading home: took the bus, got off the bus, walked to the MAX, and got on the MAX. I was still drowsy from all that food I had eaten, so I planned to take a nap when I got home. After that, I would scan for more jobs. Just hop on the wheel, another Thursday.
That coffee from Coursera was considerably nice, considering Coursera has not helped me find a job despite all the work on my part. One of the things somebody said during all that waiting in line was that 90 percent of jobs are now found through referrals. Yeah, I’ve experienced that myself—and that’s the problem. I don’t have many networking possibilities.
But I’m going to keep pushing through. I’m going to find something great.
I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me—as Stuart Smalley used to say on Saturday Night Live.
Of course, being all drowsy, I ended up missing my proper stop on the MAX and rode down to 185th, where WorkSource is. Since I had just filed for unemployment and could see on my end that I needed to verify my identity, I figured I might as well stop in. The last time I did this, I had to go into WorkSource to complete the verification.
However, they had not yet received the notification. Without that notification, they didn’t have a button they could push to clear me. They said that even if they tried to clear me once they did get the notification, the button would reappear and I’d have to go through it again anyway. More hamster wheel stuff.
So, mission unaccomplished—even though it was an impromptu mission.
I am now genuinely on my way home.
Yeah, I made it home, and no, I didn’t nap. With the almost-mile walk back from the MAX stop, I guess I digested just enough that my stomach was no longer pressing outward and I wasn’t so sleepy. So I took those 15 résumés—not a single one of them had I even pulled out of its packaging to hand out—and put them away.
Frankly, it was a rather disappointing day outside of that nice coffee. No golden tickets today, but there’s always tomorrow.