It's All Relative

DAY SIXTY-ONE: The Pauper Loses the Paup

Well kiddies, unemployment isn't all the champagne wishes and caviar dreams the positive recession images would have you believe.  In fact, it's surprisingly the exact opposite!  I'll give you a moment to close your shocked and gaping mouths while you process this information.

In the meantime, here's an image to restore your equilibrium: a shark pony.  Or a Shpony.

The thing is, no matter how much money you save before self-induced unemployment begins, you will need to get back in the game eventually.  For a half-Arab saver like myself, that panic button gets hit much earlier than you can ever anticipate.  So after what seemed like months of applications and agony while waiting for responses, I had two interviews today.  (Please remember that in reality, it has been just over a week.  Time is relative, people.  Time is relative.)

The first position was for a marketing coordinator - the type of career I can see myself doing if this whole writing thing never fully pans out.  The type of creative job that I wouldn't mind calling home if I never become the next Woody Allen.

Or sell out and become the next Roland Emmerich

The interview turned into the longest interview I have ever encountered.  I got along really well with the interviewer.  It seemed more like a "shoot the shit" session peppered with remarks about my experience.  Three hours later, we were shaking hands and I was told the next step would be narrowing down the interviewees for a short list and going from there.  An arduous process that would hopefully end on happy news if I did as well as I felt.

And then as Jay-Z would say, on to the next one!  A restaurant position to tide over the Arab saver half of my person.  Finishing my chapter of "Gone Girl" early in the Starbucks down the block, I paced around the blocks near the restaurant trying desperately not to get there "too early".  I arrived a few minutes before 5:00 and asked the hostess for my contact person.  He ushered me to the back of the restaurant where a family most likely in from Cleveland mangia'd on a sheet of pepperoni pizza.  He asked me if I was currently employed.  I said no, and briefly explained my self-righteous answer that I left a job I saw no future in to pursue my dreams and felt that I wanted to return to a job I found I truly enjoyed: serving.  He cut in with "when was the last time you worked in a restaurant?"  I timidly mentioned "2008..."  He looked over a sheet of paper and then said, "Ok, so we'll have you start on Monday at 4:00.  Black shoes, black pants."  I found myself asking more questions than he had.  Suddenly that moment of rehearsed "interview questions" you are meant to spew out of courtesy of interest became necessity.

I shook his hand, and walked out of the restaurant.  I checked my watch: 5:03.

Ba-da-bing.  I got a job.