Monstrosity

The proverbial straw fell about two weeks ago.

It broken the camel’s back concerning the futility of my ongoing employment search.

Like most people in the market today, I thought I’d have a job within a month or so. The reality of the my job search is no where close to my battered expectations.

The monster.com job fair was absolutely the worst. A complete waste of time for every person who schlepped to the Holiday Inn Merchandise Mart.

As if job hunting for nearly six months isn’t demoralizing enough, the hundreds if not thousands of other job seeks at the fair truly let me know how rough it is out there.

I’m not bullshitting. The line of job fair attendees wrapped around the entire floor of the hotel.

And that was within the first hour of the doors opening.

When I got to the end of the line, I should of known something was up as it moved fairly quickly. From the time I got to the end of this long line to the time I signed into the door it took about 35-40 minutes.

There had to be at least 600 people ahead of me in line.

That should have been my second clue. Then the Monster representative not having a location map of the employers should have been the dead give away as well.

The third clue should have been the size of the room.

Now if this had of been a legitimate job fair with a variety of potential employers, the space would have been much larger.

The room was the size of my dining room.

And while that’s huge for a dining room, it’s quite small for a job fair.

Once I got through the line, signed in (first name only please), dropped off a copy of my resume and entered the room I quickly assessed that this ridiculous waste of time.

Now I’m not slamming the employers that were there but let’s just say that the fair wasn’t exactly geared toward those of us who didn’t want to work for Crunch Fitness or be a salesperson on commission.

And by the way, with that little dustup in Middle East enlisting in the Army didn’t seem to be the right move either.

I threw on my suit and trotted out my Crest smile for this?

It broke me.

In the last few weeks the only reason I left my condo was to take out the trash with the stinky cat litter and to check the mail.

Being in my robe for a couple of days and watching QVC probably didn’t help matters either.

Since the middle of January, I’ve been fighting the urge to give up.

Getting up everyday, checking my e-mail account for Monster and Careerbuilder e-mails, networking my ass off, keeping up with my career counseling services and attending their various workshops kept me involved in my fate and more importantly it kept me busy.

Grasping at every lead, applying for every relevant job---keeping hope alive as Rev. Jackson would say.

It can be quite exhausting.

Wasting time at a half assed job fair with many other people just did me in.

I wanted to give up.

Luckily reality slapped me in the face. And by reality I mean keeping a roof over my head.