Being offered an application for a mechanic’s job in Yuma, Ariz., was weird in a couple of ways.
But I’m getting used to it. After I was laid off as a New Haven Register science writer after 30 years with the company, I put my name on job-seeking websites — and soon grew accustomed to odd come-ons.
Such as the mechanic I position presented to me by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
The bureau is concerned with water management in the Western U.S. Like any agency worth its brine, the people doing the reclaiming need someone to tell the public what they’re doing.
I figured that being an experienced journalist, I could be just the person for the job.
This is typical of the news coming out of the bureau:
“The Bureau of Reclamation has released a Draft Environmental Assessment (EA) and Draft Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) for the Santa Clara Conduit Shutdown, Inspection, and Repair Project that defines actions necessary for maintenance and repair of the Santa Clara Conduit.”
Now, we don’t care whether the Santa Clara Conduit gets shut down, inspected or repaired, although the FONSI makes it sound like a good idea. The people who live near the Santa Clara Conduit probably care quite a bit, which is why the bureau hired someone — probably not another William Faulkner or even a Charles Bukowski, from the looks of it — to write the press release.
That’s pretty much the kind of job an unemployed English major aspires to, now that newspapers are self-destructing like, oh, the Hindenburg . Zeppelins never made much of a comeback after that.
So I asked the Bureau of Reclamation for a job writing press releases — only to be offered an application for a job as a mechanic. (The bureau also wants your high school and college transcripts, which is bizarre.)
The Get Rich Quick Sector
There’s a whole other branch of potential employers out there who are also mysteriously out of touch, but their apparent motives are not innocent. They don’t just goof up like the Bureau of Reclamation.
They somehow get your name and promise you wealth. And they are persistent. And “friendly.”
Take, for example, a company that we will call Athenian Ingrown Life.
I got two or three phone messages from Chelsea, in the human relations department of Athenian Ingrown Life.
Wow, I thought. They must really want me. This sounds urgent! Should I ask for $100,000 or $200,000?
So thinks a multitude of suckers.
After I made an appointment with Chelsea, she sent me two more emails and made one more phone call to make sure I would be prompt and dress suitably. Expect to stay one or two hours, she said.
Hello, big time.
The first inkling of something amiss was that the building was in an industrial park. And for sale.
The second trouble sign: I was dressed better than the person interviewing me.
He looked over my resume, such as it is: A circus layout of different size fonts, some with serifs, some without, ranging from agate to 72 points.
“Do you have any experience in retail?” the interview man asked.
“No. No I don’t,” I responded.
“Zero,” I emphasized. “I’m more into ‘communications.’” I said.Would I like to recruit people to sell insurance?
“Yeah, sure. I’ll try that,” I said, apparently unconvincingly.
I should point out that my “resume” mentions nothing about salesmanship. It says neither “sales,” “man,” nor “ship.”
On the way out I suggested he install a coat hook on his door. Just trying to be helpful.
Elapsed time, about 10 minutes.
A subsequent Google search revealed that a fair number of people hold Athenian Ingrown Life in low esteem. The phrase “Ponzi scheme” kept popping up.
Having a potential employer appear on the Rip-off Report.com website is also not a good sign.
A week later, the phone rang, and a very animated “Steve” offered a job recruiting for a company we’ll call Amerislime.
A big opportunity, he said. “Do you want to make a lot of money?”
I dutifully wrote down his name, number and the appointment. Force of habit. What the heck.
Then I Googled Amerislime, which seems eerily similar to Athenian Ingrown Life. They could be tentacles on the same cephalopod, for all I know.
So I called back Steve, fortunately reaching his voicemail, and told him I don’t know how he got my name, but that I do not sell insurance or anything else. In the interest of saving both of us a lot of time (at least 10 minutes for me), I told him, I was canceling the appointment.
What have we learned? For starters, if you post your resume on a job-seeking site, even if it’s all but illegible, predators of many stripes will try to sink their hypostomes into you.
Separating the parasites from the legitimate sites is not always simple.
Second, strangers who call you out of the blue, for any reason, are probably not acting in your best interest. Generally, they want your money.
And finally, being a mechanic in Yuma is downright altruistic compared to what the get-rich-by giving-us your-money folks offer.
Although it’s a long commute.
Science writer Abram Katz was laid off Nov. 13 from the New Haven Register after three decades at the paper. Previous entries on his encounters since then:
Oh, Rude‑y!
Can iTunes Save Newspapers?
Unemployment Tx? Or Dead End?