The Job Slog

My, what long time it's been since I posted. I didn't intend that, life just got away from me-- as it does. More specifically, I started working temporarily at Phil's office to bring some cash in, and help solve a little not-enough-hands-on-deck-in-the-middle-of-a-hurricane crisis there. The work has been just fine, thank you-- equal parts data entry and customer service, which translates into entering people's subscription orders into the computer, and then sometimes calling them up to ask just what the hell they actually want, since what they've written makes no sense at all. Given that the average age of a theatergoer in this country is somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred and three, this makes for some long, unpredictable conversations, and I've learned more about various people's daughters in Fort Worth, and the history of Menlo Park, than I ever thought there was to know. But that's what I'm being paid for, and I must say that the patrons of TheatreWorks are a good deal nicer and easier to deal with than the nasty coffee addicts of Manhattan, and in any case they're on the other end of a phone line, which makes the whole job pretty damn easy.

But I digress-- which may be the point of a blog, but I'm trying to be focused. Today's official subject, now that we've got the preliminary update section out of the way, if my job search. I'm told by others (not immediately involved in it) that it's going just fine, but the whole thing seems to me to be roughly akin to an endless slog uphill in knee-deep semi-frozen molasses. In other words, it's slow.

And here's the thing that makes this job slog particularly frustrating: as I learned in Chicago, the business community seems to have a very hard time, these days, thinking outside its own boxes. It's very hard to get considered for anything unless you've already done that exact job before, preferably in at least three world-renowned companies for at least five years apiece. Now, my resume, as anyone who knows me might guess, is pretty damn eclectic. Even since I quit dancing, I've managed coffeehouses and an off-Broadway revue, toured with a one-man show, run Real Pilates, worked freelance doing graphic design, web design, and marketing consulting... it's all related, and every part of it has evolved naturally from the previous credits, but what it adds up to is an extremely broad range of skills and expertise, not a neat, focused, single job description. That sort of broadness seems to leave recruiters and upper level managers scratching their heads and then looking up at me with furrowed brows, saying, "But you haven't done this job before," to which I always want to shout, "Oh course I haven't done it before, you dingus! Why would I want to do it now if it was just some retread of something I'd already conquered?" Honestly, I like to learn and be challenged-- am I the only worker out there who feels like that today?

I wonder if this all points to a more disturbing issue, though. Business, in this day and age, seems to be a very peculiar creature. What I mean is, the actual daily practice of business is essentially practical. You're either selling people things, or staying behind the scenes and planning to sell them things (which is more or less what people like marketers and advertising execs do), or perhaps staying really far behind the scenes and advising other people how to sell things better (consultants). But in any case, what you're talking about is a practical activity, and the pragmatic issues which affect it. But given that most of business today is run by MBAs, who have a sort of pseudo-academic patina eggwashed over their nuts-and-bolts outlook, the whole business universe seems to have become extremely muddy, weirdly ritualized, and, let's just say it, insane.

I remember my father, a career academic, decrying the rise of business schools in the early 70s (if I'm recalling aright.) The story seems to have gone like this: because the business world began to pine for some increased respectability in the 60s and 70s, or else because various universities wanted some easy access to the cash held by the business world outside their gates, or because of some combination of the two desires, business colleges began to appear. They are utterly professional in scope and focus. Think about it-- understanding the history of literature is vitally important to an English teacher, critic, or writer, but knowing the precursors of modern business practice is just a waste of brain space for Donald Trump (who has precious little to spare). However, in order to fit into the university system, these business colleges and programs had to create a kind of spurious, quasi-academic superstructure on which to hang their more practical instruction. In other words, selling people things suddenly became (supposedly) theoretical, governed by immutable laws of psychology and sociology (fairly spurious and unreliable disciplines, themselves). The intent was to release a bunch of super-educated business professionals into the world to kick up efficiency, explode sales, and create forms of exploitation barely dreamed of by earlier generations. Let's not question the morality or horror inherent in those goals this time around-- let's just look at what's really happened.

Well, what I seem to be finding is that the whole thing has devolved, not surprisingly, into a sort of particularly banal mysticism and cliquishness. In Chicago I found myself faced first with a string of people who couldn't see that my skills did, in fact, add up to their job descriptions, regardless of how I'd acquired them; and later with bosses who spouted ideas about shopper psychology and environment creation without showing any signs of understanding the reality behind those theories, let alone the steps necessary to translate them into a real world setting. Now I'm facing Problem A again, and have thankfully-- after obnoxiously forcing my way into one temp agency office-- been offered some tips on how to restructure and restate my resume so as to convince understanding-impaired readers that I can actually do what I can do.

I do not mean to be nastier than necessary here, and I also don't mean to encourage any horribly negative perceptions (either in myself or in anyone else) about these people with whom I hope to be interviewing. But I question the environment that encourages this sort of narrowness of perception and total lack of imagination. There was a day, I believe, when a strong general education was considered the best possible preparation for a professional career. The idea was that, if one had well developed universal skills (the ability to write and communicate clearly, a basic understanding of logic and reasoning, a level of comfort with current technology) one could attain the specialized expertise of any particular workplace or industry. But today I seem to be finding almost the opposite-- a reverence for specialized knowledge in the form of jargon and entrenched ritual, and no acknowledgement whatsoever of universality, let alone its obvious value. If some potential employer had said to me, at any point in this process, anything like, "look, you just don't have some of the skills we're looking for-- you can't do A or B or C, and your experience with D is fundamentally unlike what we do," that would make sense. Then I would have the choice of finding some training to get my AB&C skills in shape, or else looking elsewhere. But the only thing anyone has ever said to me is, "You haven't done precisely this before," which seems like another way of saying that I'm not a member of the right club, rather than that I can't do the job. This is disturbing, and not encouraging for the future, either mine or ours as a culture.

So that's my diatribe for today. I have some better thoughts for how to develop this blog, by the way, and you'll be reading those-- if anyone is still reading at all-- next time. I'm picturing a Hall of Fame and various other fun stuff-- fun for me, at least, and, I'm sure, future generations who will recognize and revere my brilliance. Meanwhile, does anyone know anything about forcing tulips? I have a jar full of wilting stems at this point, and I'm not sure how to store the bulbs or what to do next.