What's the frequency, Kenneth?

About two weeks ago, I received an email from a recruiter who found my profile/resume on monster.com. Her email explained that she was impressed with the versatility of my skill set, and that my kind of diversity and original, creative thinking  is exactly what her company - a large manufacturer of "over 510,000 different products used to maintain facilities, solve problems, and fuel the imagination" - strives to bring on board. She ended her email with a request for a phone interview and an attachment for a job description that I couldn't, for the life of me, decipher or decode, so thick was the jargon.

Now, mind you, I spent eight years critically reading, processing, thinking about and churning out words. I've waded through an entire year of Shakespeare and all 52 of his plays; slogged my way begrudgingly through all of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; devoured all 800 pages of James Joyce's Ulysses (as well as Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners);  and spent an entire summer with the entire collection of Willa Cather's novels. I also managed within those eight years to produce God-only-knows how many 20-page essays as well as 100 pages of a master's thesis fulfilling the requirement for my creative writing program. 

If anyone knows drivel, I know drivel. And this job description was full of it. 

Still, what did I have to lose.

Wednesday

So, after a successful initial phone interview, I headed to the company headquarters for a three hour interview despite coming down with the first head cold I'd had since I could remember. I stopped at a drug store on the way to the interview for some pseudoephadrine-filled goodness, then headed to the interview. It was a beautiful Wednesday as my gps lead the way through the corporate landscape to the building that would be my destination. The atmosphere was modern, corporate and sterile inside; row upon row of cubicles filled a giant, open room.

A perky older lady with an updo glanced at me through her bifocals at the reception desk. 

"I have a meeting with Cathy at 1:30," I explained. 

She looked quickly at her day planner, then asked, "Oh, are you Shannon?"  

"Yes," I nodded. She smiled warmly and handed me a clipboard with a three-page application. "If you could fill this out, I will let Cathy know you're here." She smiled briefly, dismissing me to a corner of the reception area next to an art-deco looking sculpture of giant rectangles in primary colors stacked in an alternating pattern. 

I met with Cathy, a slightly rotund blond with a button nose in a mundane burgundy cardigan and matching t-shirt. Very "office casual." She spoke a language I did not speak, referring to a large catalog of over 500,000 products. 

"Clearly we care a lot about presentation," she said. "You can tell that by this catalog of our products. The paper is of the highest quality, and even though it is thin, it is superior in strength." She pinched her fingers along the edge of about five pages of the giant catalog and picked the whole thing up by these pages as a demonstration.

She went on, "Our signature catalog contains more than 500,000 of the highest-quality, highest-demand products, and our supply chain and logistics management allows us to deliver those products to our customers quickly and reliably."

I met with Allison, a bubbly 20-something with calf-length boots and blond highlights through her mouse-brown hair. She spoke the same language as Cathy. I asked for clarification about what the position entailed. 

"Your job as a Generalist would be to guide our diverse clientele quickly and effectively through our enormous inventory to the specific products they need to meet their business goals," said Allison without skipping a beat. 

I listened attentively. As it turned out, Allison formerly worked in my field, in health education, and knew a former colleague of mine from the medical school I worked at two years ago. We discussed the struggles with grant-funded positions and why health educators aren't valued more in the medical field over nurse educators. 

I met with Beth, who would be my manager. She explained her vision of the Generalist position. 

"This job as I see it is not only to quickly and efficiently supply customers with the products they need, it is to ferret out more information from them so they do not have to ask the same questions the next time. Our job is to figure out what the customer needs before they even need it."r 

So this is a customer service job answering phones and taking orders. The picture finally began to come into focus. 

"Escape"

I left feeling confident I would receive a job offer.  I thought of the relief I would feel receiving, finally, the first paycheck and how I could finally get caught up financially. 

Thursday

But then, a dread began to fill my heart. My career spans fifteen years in education and non-profit work. I am driven by jobs that do something good for others, give something back. What would this job provide? At the end of the day, I could go home knowing I helped Mr. Jones find the perfect air carbon-gouging electrodes? Sure, I could catch up on my credit card bill, but where is the intrinsic value? 

Friday finds me in near panic mode, convinced I would be locked into a corporate job that lured me in with its compelling salary and sexy predictability. 

So imagine my shock when I opened a rejection letter from none other than the "industry leader in distribution, operations and customer service." A generic form letter, Cathy stated that upon review of my credentials, they had chosen a candidate that more closely matched their needs. 

I sighed with relief, thanking God for narrowly escaping corporate hell. 

Then, I scratched my chin, furrowed my brow and thought, "who the hell do they think they are? Rejection letter! Pfft!"

It's hard to receive a rejection letter, even when it's from a position you don't necessarily want. But I seem to receive them weekly these days. I feel a solidarity with the thousands of unemployed masses seeking to find that golden opportunity, seeking to find that someone who will recognize our talents for what they are and scoop us up into their arms.

I keep trying to understand the lesson I am supposed to learn from all of this. I am trying to accept that I am exactly where I need to be right now, despite the fact that I want desperately to change where I am, both in latitude and longitude, as well as figuratively.

 Monday

Perhaps what I need is another job waiting tables and bar tending.  I put on some make up, curl my hair, and put on something other than a hoodie and sweatpants and head to town to an upper scale restaurant/bar. I meet with the manager who I spoke with on the phone just two days before. He is middle aged, clearly anxious for he is fidgety, constantly looking around, wringing his hands.

By Monday afternoon, I am employed as the newest member of their wait staff and bar tending crew.

Forty years old, a masters degree, and 15 years of experience in non-profit outreach, education and communications/PR and I am a bartender. It might not make a dent in the $85k I accrued in graduate school, I might not find the satisfaction or intrinsic value of "doing good" divvying out martinis and plates of Chicken Parmesan. But maybe, just maybe I can get caught up on my credit card.

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