I'd Rather Be Eating; My Search for a Job

“You’re lucky we found someone who doesn’t just take one look at your resume and say, ‘She’s overeducated.’ Because you are,” The career placement woman looked like my grandmother – when my grandmother was dressed for Christmas dinner.  She continued, “What is this? – Oh, a Creative Writing major in undergrad and an MFA… Most people would look at this resume and think an office job would have you in tears but I understand, the creative thing is just a hobby.  Don’t worry, I understand.”  She made a note on the paper in front her and then looked at me.  “Do you own a gray suit?  And pearl earrings.  That would really help.”

I imagined being the sort of person who not only owns, but who also regularly wears a gray suit – and is totally fine with it.  The one thing I had been sure of two years ago when I decided to go to graduate school was that I did not want to be that sort of person.  And then I thought of how I cried in the bathroom almost every day for the first year at my last office job because I didn’t like the kind of person I was.  I decided it would be a good idea to lie, “Yes, I own a gray suit. And I have pearl earrings.”  The latter, was the truth. 

She smiled, “Small pearl earrings?  We don’t need anything else distracting people from your brain.”  She looked me up and down again.  “Your hair is fine if you keep it tied back, but you really have to be careful.  You have a certain look – people will think you’re not smart if you’re not careful.  No more lipstick.  But do wear lipstick, no one wants to look at an ugly face all day.”

I nodded.  I gathered that I was overeducated, so I should underplay that but also find a way to be less attractive so people didn’t think I was stupid but also not be too ugly to be employed.  The line was getting very fine and gray.  And my lipstick was too pink.  And the pearl earrings I had would be too big.  The wrong person might get confused and think I was wearing them to compensate for my tiny brain. 

I could feel my brain shrinking as I sat talking to the career counselor.  I should have been a housewife.  I should have found a nice, rich, conservative, sterile man who believed a woman belonged in the kitchen and then while he was at work all day, I would sit at the kitchen table and write.  I do like being in close proximity to the refrigerator.

As it happened, I was going to end up alone with a closet full of gray suits because I would become so depressed again that no one would want to be around me.  No one likes sad people, least of all men.  Most people are a lot like the career placement woman – wanting you to enact their idea of you, while you tolerate them slowly chipping away at your self-confidence.  And see, I’m so over educated, that I’m convinced I’m quite right.

“Do you know how to make coffee?” the career placement woman asked. 

“Of course,” I replied.  I thought of my first job at a truck stop diner in Wisconsin where they had industrial sized coffee makers which I had lied about knowing how to use and then subsequently flooded the whole place with coffee but no one had really noticed as I mopped up the brown mess because the floors were so dirty anyways. 

Interviewing for a job is like dating, if you’re desperate you’ll say “yes” to anything.  And if you’re eager to please, you’ll perform tasks you’re not comfortable with.  Maybe I should have been a prostitute.  I find I have a talent for anticipating people’s needs.

I thought about my needs.  Employment so I could feed and clothe and house myself.  Mental stimulation so I know I’m not dead yet.  And when mental stimulation fails, just plain stimulation so I can compare the sensations of death and dying.

I remembered last spring, being in the back of the taxi, leaving Wolfgang Puck’s on Park Avenue with a co-worker, both of us a bit drunk and entirely miserable.  I kept telling him that I was hopeless, but he kept telling me I was better than that – maybe it was because I kept quoting Joan Didion. And we both needed to feel something – better.  And then he kissed me like I was the best damn thing.  I remembered how that story came and went.  And the thought of wearing a gray suit in another office made me want to have three martinis for lunch on a Tuesday and then have some sex in the back of a taxi all over again.

“If you’re a writer, does that mean you type quickly?”  the career placement woman asked.

I certainly do move quickly, “Oh, sure.” 

As it turned out, the only thing I do exceedingly quickly is have sex.  The career placement woman gave me a typing test with the requirement of hitting at least eighty words per minute.  I couldn’t get past seventy.  I was a writer who failed at writing.  I had written a one hundred page thesis, but I couldn’t write fast enough.  Maybe I was actually undereducated. 

I wondered if there was such a thing as a housewife placement service.  That should be my career, pleasing a man at night and sitting in the kitchen while he was away at work.  Being in an office is mostly about pleasing a man – or several – anyways, and I’d rather spend my days at home in the kitchen; it’s closer to the food.