Mad skills!

Snow swirls from wind bursts in the parking lot of the airport as I walk toward the double doors. Billy Ocean's "Caribbean Queen" dances over the speakers through the airport. The terminals are crowded with pasty Ohioans eager to embark on planes set for spring break destinations and sunny shores.

I am 20 minutes early, so I duck into the bathroom for one last check. I curse myself when I notice a coffee drip on my blouse. Damned cheap travel mug. Luckily, I can cover it up under the lapel of my blazer jacket. I give my hair a fluff, apply some lip gloss, and head out to the information desk.

A middle-aged woman greets me with a cautious smile. "How can I help you?" she asks politely.

I am here to meet Cindy and David to gauge my candidacy for becoming another cautious smile behind the information desk. I find my way up the stairs to a conference room and sit next to Cindy and across from David at the round conference table. Cindy takes out a sheet of what I presume are interview questions. They both glance at copies of my resume (which they received 10 days ago) in silence.

Cindy mentions the schedules, which vary, and that they can only offer me up to 25 hours, but that some weeks it might be less. She shows me a print out of the current schedule, with names highlighted. We discuss briefly my experiences with customer service and then David interjects. I appreciate his candor. Give it to me straight.

"We put a lot into training the people who work at the information desk," he says. "The woman who this position is replacing was here for 22 years, and another woman was here for 15." He gazes firmly into my eyes. "I'm concerned, given your resume..." he pauses diplomatically, "that we'd just get you trained and you'd leave us for a full-time job. And given the pay rate..." (he continues, and I realize I don't even know what the job pays, but I presume it ain't pretty if he has to preface it like that) "...I'm also concerned about your commute. How long did it take you to get here?"

Forty minutes. 

The pay rate? $9.25 an hour. $1.40 more than minimum wage. And no benefits.

The interview lasts all of five minutes before I'm told in so many words that I am "over qualified."

And this information was gleaned from my resume, which was in both Cindy and David's hands over a week ago. Couldn't they have concluded a week ago that they found me "over qualified?" Before I spent the better part of the morning driving nearly two hours?

I've considered, lately, hiding my degree just so I can get a job - any job.

Today, I contacted the university where I received my degree from - and where I also was a faculty member until 2010 - to request copies of my transcripts. An awesome job opened up nearby, but transcripts are needed to apply.

"It looks like there is a parking hold on your transcript release," the woman at the registrar's office said.

"Oh?" I replied, thinking I could give her my card for the $20 or whatever amount was preventing me from obtaining my transcripts and be on my way. "How much is it for?" I asked.

"One hundred and forty three dollars..."

"What?" I exclaimed.

The hurdles of achieving employment seem impossible. This is the modern day Holy Grail. At least for me. I spend half my days looking for and applying for jobs that I seem to just miss the mark on; I'm either over qualified, under qualified, "second choice" if the first choice declines the offer (yes, I've heard this twice now), or can't afford to pay some overpriced ridiculous parking ticket to the university to release my transcripts. And now documentation of my college career - eight years of my life - will be held hostage indefinitely because I parked on a slab of concrete for a couple hours without a piece of plastic on my window stating I had privileges enough to park there.

In the words of Napoleon Dynamite, I don't even have any good skills.

While filling out my profile on monster.com, I am stumped by the "skills" section.

Please note how resourceful I am by the tab within the screen shot labeled "Taking screen shots on a Mac OS..."

I have mad skills. I am awesome at Photoshop, pretty good with a camera, fearless in front of an audience. I have great rhythm, am decent with semi-colons, damned resourceful and hella persistent. I'm a great debater, don't ever back down from a challenge, and damn it if I'm not versatile.

So what gives?

Submitted respectfully,
Hopeful (and yet hopelessly unemployed) in Ohio.

Shannon Miller is a freelance writer and photographer from northeast Ohio.  Her mad skills can be viewed here

"In the room the women come and go/Talking of Michelangelo."

I picked up my name tag and walked into the reception hall juggling a tripod, two cameras and a video camera. My eyes focused on the open bar, and I made my way across the room. I needed a drink for tonight.

I ordered a run-of-the-mill Cabernet Sauvignon even though I really just wanted a beer. Yuengling didn't seem swanky enough for this crowd, though.

"Do you have your white ticket?" the bar tender asked.

"White ticket?" I raised an eyebrow. "No, I didn't know I needed a ticket. Where do I get one?"

I left my glass on the bar and trekked to the woman in charge of the white tickets, feeling strangely reminiscent of Willy Wonka seeking the Golden Ticket. The woman was portly and looked unhappy that I did not already have a white ticket. She fished in a pocket of her large, elastic wasted pants and handed me the coveted white piece of paper. I trudged back to the bar to fetch my wine.

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

On the way there, I saw at least a dozen people I knew from my "old" life. Colleagues. Movers and shakers of the city. Politicians, directors of non-profits, hospital officials. They smiled for my camera, and we made idle chit chat about life, catching up on the last five years.

I don't dare tell them how four months ago, I abandoned everything to live in a one-room cabin in the northwoods in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, or how I came back because I was busted flat for cash. There's more money in this room than I care to think about.

I clutch my glass of Cabernet and seek out my seat at my assigned table, #18 where a salad of mixed field greens awaits me. The room smells like onions. I sit next to the contact who hired me to shoot videography and photography of the event. Next to the plate of field greens, two forks sit neatly next to each other; another fork rests above the plate like the number 12 on a clock. Rule of thumb says to start from the outer-most utensil and work in toward the plate, but the rule of thumb forgot to mention this third fork. I assume it is for the lavish dessert that is already placed at the 12 o'clock position, above the fork. I choose the outer-most fork and dig into the greens.

Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

As I finish my salad, the person next to me frowns. "I used the wrong fork," she says quietly and looks disappointed with herself. There is prattle about lipstick shades.

A caterer brings dinner ("a spinach and artichoke stuffed braised chicken along with a grilled salmon fillet topped with caramelized onions and a side of potatoes") to my place setting just as the guest speaker is announced.

The speaker is an author. She tells stories about being a reporter, breaking the mold, dancing to her own drummer. Her stories seem to illustrate various ways she is an awesome leader and those around her are lemmings. She speaks of a friend who "has arrived" because she has five houses; she sings the praises of this room full of philanthropists for raising over $2 million for "those less fortunate" and for doing all they do for the community. She encourages us to "live for today."

I am immediately bored with her "carpe diem" spiel. It is so played out. I try to focus on my cameras, but my mind drifts back to my dogs, to winter. It feels like a sort of culture shock to be back here, among faces familiar enough, but strangers nonetheless. I feel alien in these heels instead of my boots.

I have sent resumes off for so many positions just like the ones the people in this room are locked to. I've tried for months to land a "real" job, get my career back.

It all seems so stifling and phony. These same people are inspired by the cliched unique individual who tenaciously clings to their individuality despite pressures to conform, the fictitious protagonist in the blockbuster movie who is revered as a hero. Meanwhile, they go home to their own lives in sub divisions with growing ulcers and fretful brows about the mortgage, the car payment.

In the real world, the one who follows their own path is not the protagonist. The one who follows their own path is the outsider, the antagonist.

I left this dinner tonight with a few hundred photos, an hour's worth of video, and the quiet knowledge that I cannot go back to that life.

As I walked out of the meeting center, about 30 women stood in the foyer of the building waiting on the valet to bring their cars to them. These same women had just spent two hours at a dinner to celebrate the independent pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps woman who makes things happen. Ironic?

I stepped out of my truck after the 40 minute drive back to my seven acres in the sticks and sighed at the swirl of stars, invisible within city limits, but twinkling bright out here. My rooster crowed from the barn, and my dogs - my beautiful, amazing dogs - danced in circles around their houses, elated to see me. Genuine.

Give me real. Give me genuine, even if it's not pretty. Give me muddy boots and a sweatshirt. Give me no forks but my bare hands.

Give me real.

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?

* The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock  by T.S. Eliot  

Shannon Miller is a freelance writer and photographer from northeast Ohio.

My unemployment journey

I walked into the cabin to find a message blinking impatiently for me on the answering machine. It was from Red, the owner of the bar I had put my application in at a few days prior.  He wanted to meet.

I pushed the door open and stepped into the restaurant hopeful. I needed this job desperately. My unemployment from my job at the medical school in Ohio was about to run out, and this tavern was the closest thing to the cabin in a very desolate, remote area.

Built like a large cabin, the room was warm and rustic. Red's intense blue eyes met mine, and he immediately made me nervous. The back of his black t-shirt said, "Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard." Quick on his feet, he began showing me where jars of mayonnaise were kept, how he made a Long Island, how to do prep work. He hired me on the spot. Before I knew it, I'd made $50 in tips.

But just then, the eastern U.P. decided upon a fluke heatwave, with temperatures soaring to nearly 50 degrees in December. The snow melted rapidly, and along with it, the snowmobilers disappeared. And so, almost as quickly as I found myself employed, I found myself unemployed. Without snowmobilers, there is no economy in the winter in Deer Park.

I was back to square one.

6.7 % of the workforce in Ohio is unemployed as of December 2012. In Michigan, at the same time period, it was 8.9%, putting it in the top seven out of all 50 states.

I dabbled in freelance articles about obscure topics such as "How to raise a pet mongoose" for $25 an article. I sold some of my photography on etsy. I helped at my friends' Tasha and Ed Stielstra's kennel hooking dog teams for tours with eager and bright-eyed tourists from Indiana. I stopped into a cutesy tourist shop to sell some of my artwork on consignment; the owner humored me, but then said they didn't sell much photography. I checked the Ace Hardware in town, as well as the two grocery stores, the feed store, the hospital, the health department and a handful of gas stations. No one was hiring.

Gradually, my means of survival narrowed.

One Friday night, while sitting at the bar commiserating with my also-unemployed friend, Mike Betz, I noticed Larry, the owner of the Pine Stump and Robert, his pizza cook, eying me from the other end of the bar. Betz and I had frequented the Stump regularly all season, and had come to know Larry, Robert, the 19 year old server, Marissa, and her mother, Debra who was also a server quite well (there will be other stories about the Stump and my adventures with Betz soon).

If there is one thing I am, it's persistent. I had become known as "that girl who wants a job" to Larry and the crew who ran the Stump. My number was tacked above the bar. I asked him nearly every time Betz and I went there to hire me. Finally, one night, he succumbed.

The night I sat there with Betz, the Stump was crawling with half-drunk snowmobilers, the sounds of their revelry a constant drone that swelled occasionally with laughter and the clank of their beer steins. Larry and Robert continued to talk and look over at me. Finally Larry approached me.

"What are you doing tomorrow?" he asked. I smiled triumphantly.

"What do you want me to be doing tomorrow?" I responded with a smirk.

"Can you be here at 1?"

But of course.

I rolled into the parking lot of the Stump in a way that would likely seem off-putting to a non-Yooper but which seemed perfectly appropriate for Deer Park. The bed of my truck was half-full of firewood, half-full of snow, and there was frozen deer pelt at the end of the bed. Betz had hit it with his Jeep a month prior, killing it instantly (and doing significant damage to his Jeep) and brought it to me for dog food, the fresh, young buck still warm. He'd taught me how to hang and gut the deer, and we stripped it of its soft cape that was just thickening up for winter. The cape lie frozen in the back of my truck.

I walked into the Stump, which was also built like a large log cabin, rustic and warm. While some found Larry intimidating, I felt at ease with him. He was tall and always donned a pair of black Wrangler jeans and a neat, button-down shirt and cowboy boots. His blue eyes were sharp but softened behind his glasses, and his brown hair fell in feathers on each side, and probably hadn't changed much since 1985. Larry didn't pull any punches, and I respected that. I went to work in the kitchen, stocking the cooler full of beer that seemed to disappear into the bellies of thirsty snowmobilers almost immediately. I also had the insurmountable task of washing dishes. By hand. For nine hours. On a standing-room-only day at the Stump.

After several hours, I left the mounting stack of plates to relieve myself, looking forward to the brief respite in the can. As I walked through the dining room, a snowmobiler grabbed my arm and pulled me next to him for a photo. He had stripped down to only his black winter bibs, the suspenders pressing softly against his salt-and-pepper colored chest hair. He smelled of Bud Light and pepperoni. I feigned a smile, then quickly headed to the bathroom.

I sat on the cold toilet seat and exhaled, relieved to be sitting for a moment even if only to pee. As I washed my hands at the sink, I startled at my reflection in the mirror. My own eyes searched to find the person behind them.

How did I get here? Interest grew daily on my student loan from eight years of college and a master's degree that seemed to garner nothing. An 11 year marriage to the father of my child had ended. My kids were back in Ohio, and I missed them with the most debilitating ache I'd ever known.

I brushed these brooding thoughts aside. I had to get back to work.

As I washed dishes and chopped onions, I talked to Debra, who was 49 years old, but looked older. She had a cigarette-stained voice and a cackling laugh. She gave me Advil when my back hurt from standing on concrete bending over a sink for hours, and a can of Keeweenaw "Pick Axe Blonde" beer to ease the pain. She was shocked to learn I had a master's degree.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Trying to make a living," I said, referring to washing dishes, although I knew the "here" she was referring to was Deer Park, Michigan.

That night at the Stump, I made $80 washing dishes for 9 1/2 hours and received free beer and dinner from Larry. I also sold the deer pelt for $20 to the fry cook, who used it to bait for coyotes. And I was extremely grateful for it all.

******************************************************************************

After living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan - where jobs are even more scarce than other places in the country - I finally had to throw in the towel and crawl back to Ohio, penniless. I've been on four interviews in the last week, and have sent my resume out to half dozen or more potential employers.

This week, I met with a staffing agency. The lady at the staffing agency glanced at my resume, then looked up at me as if in disbelief.

"I can get you a job in a rubber factory for minimum wage," she said. "But it's dirty. Your resume is quite impressive. I wonder why you're not getting anything in your field?"

Because my "field," which is full of like-minded, talented aficionados of creativity - Writers/Photographers/Multimedia Specialists/Public Speakers/Educators/Marketing Communications Specialists/Event Planners - is completely saturated. The last two jobs in my field I interviewed for, I was one of 500 candidates. 

My friend Meg said it best: "The challenge for people like you and I (creative individuals with multiple skills and talents) is to figure out how to plug in to a world of very 'defined' positions."

I recently had two interviews in the service industry, and was offered a job at a popular coffee house chain 45 minutes from my house.  I was offered a whopping $7.85 an hour.

It only took me a quick minute to calculate the math: driving a V8 truck 45 minutes to said coffee house would cost me roughly $11.80 a day. I was offered 30 hours a week, which is about $280 before taxes. Subtract from that $50 in gasoline to and from, as well as probably $75 in taxes, and voila! I'm bringing home a whopping $110 a week.

Seriously?

Hank Williams said it best (and thus, is the title of this blog): my bucket's got a hole in it.

"Well, there ain't no use - of me workin' so hard..."

No thanks. I think I'll keep pounding the proverbial virtual pavement for a job in my field.

Shannon Miller is a freelance writer and photographer from northeast Ohio. Her professional resume for those who might have a job that pays more than minimum wage is here: www.linkedin.com/pub/shannon-miller/30/a23/306/