The Job Hunt

The Village Voice lay on the desk in front of him, a Dark Shadows tape on the tube. Mitch read the back page of the Voice, opened to the Help Wanted section. Help Save Wildlife! in big spacey letters brought him to the columns. Above, Tavern On the Green. Over here, Bartender, in big dark letters. See Section 428. There, Airlines. Next, Bartender. Down, Hotel/Cruise Jobs. Last, Travel. No experience. Will train. Paid training, start today. The voice within reminded that the bills were two months over, third month they start to get testy. Maybe this would be fast money. He circled the ad.

The next morning a sunny but vapid girl voice on the other end of the phone asked no questions, told him to come at noon. He wrote down the address and room number.
He couldn’t understand why she didn’t ask anything about his background. Well, the training part could explain that. And sometimes they didn’t ask names; sign of a lowlife place. Age? Perhaps there were very few requirements. But the voice urged him on. Sometimes it was his own voice, sometimes his mother’s. Sometimes society’s.
The ad sounded as though he’d be going somewhere for training today, so he left the cats lots of food. He could always call his mother in Jersey and ask her to go feed them and check the house every couple of days if necessary.
He read the ad again. Enthusiastic! Well, he might be able to fake it, hide the cynical nature infamous among the few people he knew. The voice giggled.
Free to work and travel in U.S. And there, he’d missed it before, in small letters hidden above the big TRAVEL letters: Sales. Oh god, why was he bothering! Well, he should go check it out, see what the story really was. Of course, that was the voice talking. He was sure he’d be back home soon. It was an excuse to get out of the house, at least, said the voice.
The Thirtieth Street office was in a small, old building, the entrance surrounded by trucks loading and unloading garments and electronics. The only sign leading him to the room was a yellow legal pad sheet taped to the wall, an arrow pointing to the door it hung beside, the one word TRAVEL written below.
Inside he found the receptionist whose voice he recognized behind the sliding glass. She gave him a pencil and a clipboard with a generic looking application attached. She pointed her smile and he followed to a doorway into a roomful of people – young, middle-aged, well-dressed, shabby. They sat on folding chairs arranged in zigzag rows. He stepped amongst the bags and crossed legs to a back seat, the only available, sitting between a plump man who smelled of garlic and a skinny girl in tights and a T-shirt noisily chomping on gum, occasionally grasping the end and pulling at it.
Some people were writing; others waiting, reading, chatting with new brief acquaintances. He bent over his board and began. Name, address, education. Rent? Live Alone?
These last probably to determine availability status.
He finished, waited. Everyone was finished now, most everyone quieted down and gazing at the door.
“Good morning,” came through the door, immediately followed by a big, round, jolly looking man. Not Santa Claus, but that’s probably what he did for Christmas.
“I’m Mr. Baker. Could you pass your papers forward please?”
The papers rattled through hands toward the front of the room. When Mr. Baker had them all, he put on a big smile.
“Thank you. Now may I ask you to wait here for a few moments? I’ll be right back.”
Without waiting for a reply he left the room. A new hum arose, the voices of surprise and puzzlement. Some, like Mitch, silently awaited the verdict of rejection or candidacy based on perusal of the applications. By the time Mr. Baker returned, most were once again a captive audience of the door, stolen glances at watch faces more frequent as the minutes passed.
He sat at the front desk and called names. Those people gathered around him, his voice floated in an unintelligible hum from the inside of the circle, and those people then proceeded quietly out the door.
“Well,” Mr. Baker closed the door after the last of them and clapped his hands together, “congratulations are in order for the rest of you. You’re all eligible, at least on the surface. Now,” he sat on the corner of the desk, “what we’re going to do is test your personality. This is a sales position; you’ll travel around the country selling kitchen and houseware items at hotel conventions. Not much to it, you just tell about the product. We provide you with that information. But it’s pretty much ad lib, so that’s why we dwell on the enthusiastic personality. Anyone not interested so far?”
No one raised a hand. Mr. Baker waited a few polite heartbeats.
“Good. Now how we do this is by actually putting you through a test run. We’ll take you to a hotel today in New Jersey. We didn’t rent a space here because it would be too expensive without having an actual show. We’ll take you by bus, put you up overnight at the hotel, feed you, and test you all between today and tomorrow. You’ll be home by tomorrow night. So, without further ado, let’s get right to the crux. Who couldn’t go right now?”
A few raised hands, a couple of people just rose and left. The hands followed.
Mitch waited quietly with the halved group, still surrounded by his neighbors, ready to retch from the garlic smell, wanting to wrap the noisy gum around the girl’s eyeballs. Even if he were the sultan of gloom and doom he had more of a chance at the job than these two.
Around them, the variety of people left made him wonder that there seemed to be no basis on character or appearance. Surely they weren’t going to house and feed people who weren’t at all likely.
Mr. Baker waited at the closed door quietly for a few moments, watching the group watching him, his hand resting on the knob.
“More opportunity for you, eh?” He smiled a big one, showing lots of teeth this time. “Ok. A mini-bus down the block will drive us out to Jersey. Let’s go.”
Downstairs at the sidewalk he pointed down the block, and everyone proceeded on. The mini-bus was black and just said TRAVEL on the side. When they piled in past the seedy looking driver, Mr. Baker wasn’t there. A few noisy minutes later his smile appeared at the door.
“I’m afraid something’s come up and I can’t go right now. Mr. Franklin at the other end will start you off and I’ll be along later. Goodbye. Good luck.”
He rolled the van door shut and the truck pulled jerkily from the curb.
Mitch cursed the luck of having a seat between a window and the garlic eater, with the gum snapping girl right behind. As the bus made its first turn he hoped this wasn’t going to be a long trip. At least the window would give him some space relief, if only visually.
When they pulled into the hotel parking lot two hours later Mitch was sweaty, sick to his stomach and half asleep. The hot sun coming in his side of the bus and the chubby man’s body heat and odor had him despairing and groggy. They were cattled into the lobby where a small suited man greeted them.
“I’m Mr. Franklin, your host here. Right this way, please.”
Mitch never knew a time when he welcomed air conditioning so much.
They were again cattled into a large room filled with folding chairs and a few long tables. At one end was a small stage.
“Unfortunately the supplies and equipment have not arrived yet. Please make yourselves comfortable and we’ll get you some lunch soon.”
Grumbling arose as he left the room. They waited an hour for food, which manifested itself as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, on white bread no less, and coffee and milk.
“I’m sorry. Our supply truck broke down on the road and we won’t be able to get the things for a couple of hours. We are truly sorry, but we’ll be under way as soon as they do arrive.”
Two hours later they were delivered to their rooms.
“We’re sorry. We won’t be able to start until morning. Such a mess. Usually this runs very smoothly.”
Many threatened to call relatives and leave, but when the group reassembled in the morning Mitch didn’t think anybody actually had gone. Of course, he’d had the room with the garlic eater who had rip sawed the night away. Mitch finally did get to sleep, to be awakened around ten, thinking briefly that it was rather late. Surely the stuff must be here by now. He only wanted to go home and sleep now. As did most everyone else.
They regathered in the same room. Two hours later Mr. Franklin arrived.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are truly sorry. This has become such a fiasco. The bus will be here soon to take you home. Please accept our sincerest apologies.”
Four hours later he came and led them to the front door of the hotel, the bus and driver waiting right outside. They arrived back in New York after dark, and Mitch went right home.
As soon as he put the key in the lock he knew something was wrong. It wouldn’t turn. He turned the knob and pushed the door open.
Inside was empty. Everything. Gone. Just some garbage items, torn pages on the floors, and the kitties.
In the living room he looked around the emptiness, his breath and heart paused. The furniture, computer, TV, VCR, stereo, books, tapes, records, sentimentals, everything vanished without a trace. All for a job he knew he wasn’t interested in anyway. The voice inside him chanted its litany: check out everything, just in case, you never know.
Mitch fell in the quiet apartment to his knees, screaming and sobbing. In his ears the voice laughed and sobbed with him. The Village Voice lay on the floor beside him, still opened to the circled ad.
Rent? Live alone?
The kitties watched quietly, one in the kitchen and one in the bedroom, smiling heavenly down upon him, swaying gently like angels by their necks from the light cords.
(flavien matheson)