adventures in job hunting: part two

after my interview at cigna (did i mention that they were featured in michael moore's movie sicko?), i bought a pretzel from these kids across the street who were trying to raise money for some sort of program for youth. i sat down and breathed in the strange corporate culture that surrounded me in the heart of this urban business zone. then i biked a few blocks down the street to apply for another job. this one was just posted a few days before and it was to work at a restaurant opening here next month.

i had never heard of max brenner (mb) or its "chocolate by the bald man" before, but i soon learned they it is a growing "international restaurant group" and in addition to locations across australia, israel, one in the phillipines and one in singapore, there are two of these chocolate-based concept restaurants in new york city. and now, the company is preparing to spread its "chocolate culture" to philly. um, okay...

the space where it is moving into is right on walnut street amidst a concentration of other high end restaurants and boutiques. i entered the building, signed in, and took the elevator up to the second floor. they had set up a temporary hiring office, sort of assembly line, where they greeted us with a application and clipboard and asked what position we were interested in. people were spilling out of this room and i almost turned around and left as lv was meeting for lunch down the street. but i decided to stay and go through with it.

i came back later and ended up being interviewed, one by one, by each of the various managers of this new establishment and by the end of the afternoon i was filling out tax formers and being welcomed to their weird cultish family as a barista. so i finally got a job! but the feeling was pretty surreal and bittersweet since i wouldn't actually start working for a few weeks when training starts. there's a lot more to say about all of this too. i'm sure it will all come out eventually...

as june's rent starts to loom over my consciousness i still need to figure something out. the challenges continue but whatever happens should be interesting. we'll see.

adventures in job hunting: part one

as spring begins to morph into summer i look around and there's so much going on. a lot of people i know are in a transitional moment, whether they're graduating from school or moving somewhere new, travelling or getting ready to start a summer job. although part of me is nostalgic or even jealous of this state of affairs i am not exactly in a grounded, static situation here.

earlier this month i resigned myself to truly prioritizing employment. i carved out a daily routine of looking at every job listing on craigslist upon waking up and applying for as many as possible. over coffee and cereal i would bust out disingenuous "cover letters" detailing my passion for filing papers or making coffee drinks. i rewrote my resume and fine-tuned my references. for the most part the result was a defeaning silence of an empty e-mail inbox, with the exception of two bizarre possibilites that came to light last tuesday.

at 1:30 in the afternoon i found myself being interview on the fourth floor of one of the tallest buildings that compose philadelphia's skyline; the headquarters of the nation's largest pharmecutical corporation's: cigna. yes, pure evil. but no, i was not applying for some sort of office job there. the position was to be a barista in the new "coffee bar" of their cafeteria. crazy, right? i could say a lot more about this but long story short is that after competing with 20 other desperate unemployed folks, they didn't call me at the end of the week. phew!

to be continued...

returning to the fold (part II)

i've been having a lot of vivid dreams lately, ever since it starting getting warmer outside. i wake up missing all of these people from my past lives. i run into some of them in real life too and meet for coffee and have really fantastic conversations about where we came from and where we're going.

my mind is racing too much these days to abandon this now. i'm here. come back to visit soon...