Tag Archives: Craigslist

I’d better update the resume

Every once in a while I’ll get this urge, something like, you what Rob? You’ve got to turn it all around. What are you doing here, waiting tables, writing nonsense on this blog? You’re losing it, man, you’ve still got time to make something of yourself, of your life. You’ve just got to get out there, you’ve got to get hungry. Are you hungry Rob? You better start looking, come on man, making some opportunities. You better update the old resume.

And then I get a physical reaction in my stomach, shit, my resume. Where is my resume? I look in the documents folder, scroll down to R. There are a few files, resume.docx, resume(1).docx, down the line, all multiple files that I’ve saved with the same title. Every time I do it, I’m not really changing anything, a date here, some made-up achievement over there, I click save and my computer tells me, “Rob, a file named resume already exists. Do you want me to save this anyway?” and I’m like, “Yes, computer, just save it, just save all of them, just push them under the rug, OK, stop judging me computer, I know, all right, I’m well aware of how many resume files I have, that they’re all basically identical, minor variations of the same baloney document.”

What am I doing in the documents folder anyway? It’s much easier to just head to my email outbox, just find the last time I’ve sent out a resume, that’s got to be the most updated version. March? Really? Yikes. I guess I’d better take a look and see what I’ve got to work with.

OK, everything seems … basically the same really. I’ve just to change all of the 2013s to 2014s and … and what? This is terrible. This is just a really, really bad resume. I can feel whatever it was that motivated me to find this resume in the first place start to die down a little. Like, maybe I’m not doing so bad, sure, I’m getting a little sick of the same-old, same-old, but it’s not that bad, not really, not worth going through all of this … this resume stuff.

Because man, college was a long time ago. And yeah, the Peace Corps, that was something substantial, that a pretty big shot of adrenaline to the heart of my resume. At least, it was back in 2011 when I got back. I think it’s started to look a little dated again. I can already see the interview in my head, “So Rob, what have you been up to for the past two and a half years?”

Ha. That’s funny. This resume would never lead to an actual interview. Even if I did manage to spruce it up. What would I do with it? I’d send it out. Where would I send it to? To a bunch of random email addresses that I found on the Internet. I’m sure that ten thousand other people aren’t doing the same exact thing. I’m sure that whatever’s inside of my resume will be just the thing that gets my name out there, prompts someone in charge of hiring to reach out and get in touch with me.

And for real, where am I going to send this thing to? What am I looking to do exactly? I browse all of the listings on craigslist and I’m left with even more questions. What are all of these companies searching for in an employee? You know, besides being a motivated, eager, self-starting go-getter who works great both independently and as part of a team.

Why is five years experience “a must” for a job that starts at less than thirty thousand a year? Why is everything on this job listing either “a must” or “a plus?” Ability to finish projects is a must! Knowledge of Microsoft Office is a must! Being open to work through the weekends is a plus!

I can’t even look anymore. You know, I guess my job isn’t that bad right now. Sure, I don’t want to do it forever, but man, I can’t make sense of craigslist anymore, everything’s blending together, all of these duties and responsibilities, nothing’s really explained, why do so many hiring managers write out their job postings IN ALL CAPS!!!!!! WHAT KIND OF PERSON WOULD I BE WORKING FOR THAT SEEKS EMPLOYMENT ON THE INTERNET WRITING LIKE THIS?????

And here I am, I’m just making fun of everything, I don’t have a current resume, I don’t think I’d be able to put one together, not really, not with out blatantly making stuff up, even more than the stuff that’s already on there. No, my job’s not that terrible. I have a pretty flexible schedule. I go to work and I’m running on autopilot.

Maybe I’ll go to grad school. That could beef up the resume. That could be something. Maybe I could make up that I already went to grad school and put that on my resume. I mean, it’s not like they’re going to ask to see my diploma, right?

New furniture

I’d been meaning to get a new couch for a while now. Not that there was anything necessarily wrong with my old couch. It was perfectly comfortable. But it’s been through a lot, a few moves, more than a fair share of spills and accidents. My dog came of age with this couch, meaning that a couple of times I’d walk into living room only to find that he’d torn open the fabric and strewn all of the stuffing across the floor.

I did my best to collect all of that cotton and put it back in the cushion, to sew it all up. And it was fine, from a practical standpoint, it was usable. But the lines from my repair job were an eyesore. Also, it used to have an electric chord that would make it vibrate, there was a seat heater I think. I never got to use any of those features because my dog chewed through the wires almost immediately after I got it.

So I made up my mind that it was time for something else. Only, making that decision is a lot different than actually executing a plan, picking out a couch, figuring out how you’re going to pay for that couch, how to get if from the furniture store to my living room. And what was I supposed to do about the old couch? Is it one of those things where I just have to drag it to the curb and wait for it to disappear?

I figured that before I just tossed the couch outside, it wouldn’t hurt to see if I couldn’t make a little money. It had to be worth something. I mean, yeah, it looked kind of beat up, but it was comfortable. It was clean. Maybe a hundred bucks? I took a photo and put it on craigslist for a hundred and fifty, hoping they’d try to bargain me down to a hundred.

I’d act out a little bit of reservation, “Jeez, I don’t know …” making all of these pained facial expressions before I’d cave, “All right … I guess I could do a hundred.” And then I thought, man, maybe I should have put two hundred and have them bargain me down to one fifty. But the ad was already posted, and someone emailed me back immediately.

It was two guys that had just moved to the neighborhood, they stopped by later in the afternoon to check it out. “We’ll take it,” they told me after patting it, sitting on it, bouncing up and down a little. That was way too easy, almost no negotiation involved at all, I totally should have at least tried for two hundred.

But a deal was a deal and they had the couch out of my place by evening. Wow, I thought, that was so easy. I basically went from being overwhelmed with having no idea as to how I’d go about starting this process to standing right here in my living room, no couch at all. This place looked a lot bigger with no furniture, and dusty, I guess I should try and use the Swiffer over this way every once in a while.

Then I wanted to watch some TV before going to bed, but without a couch, I tried using one of the kitchen chairs, a hard-backed solid wood piece. It was so uncomfortable. I gave up after half an hour or so, telling myself I’d watch on the laptop in my bedroom, but I fell asleep as soon as I hit the mattress.

The next day I had to work, so I couldn’t go couch shopping, and it was the same deal the day after that. Finally I had a day off and I went to the furniture store, everything was like a thousand dollars, fifteen hundred dollars. Sure, they had some stuff for a lot cheaper, but everything felt not right, like if I had spent four hundred dollars on a basic model, it would have been a downgrade from what I was using before, albeit a brand new downgrade.

I turned to craigslist, and after weeks of nothing, I found an ad for my old couch. I called up the guys, they said they liked it, but it wasn’t really meshing with their apartment. I told them I’d be glad to take it back, but they wouldn’t budge from the advertised two hundred dollar price tag. I met with them for like an hour, my best defense amounting to me standing around saying, “Really? Come on. Seriously? Two hundred? Come on.” But they were good, I caved. I paid up.

After I handed them the cash, I was like, “Can one of you guys help me carry this thing outside?” And they were like, “Yeah, man, we’ll help you get this back to your old place if you want also, we’ve got a truck. What do you think, twenty-five bucks sound good to you?” And I didn’t know what to do, they got me again, I thought about saying, “Really? For real?” again, but whatever, I just wanted to watch some TV, so I took out thirty dollars. Neither of them had a five to give me change.

Craigslist Missed Connections: The K Train

I was waiting for the N train. You were waiting for the K train. You asked somebody when the K train would be coming, but the person who you asked must not have spoken English, because he didn’t respond. He just stared at you for a while until you turned away. Somebody else overheard the conversation and informed you that there is no K train. You got defensive. You pulled out your cell phone and showed him a picture of a K train. You insisted that the K train does exist. The man looked puzzled. He eventually shrugged and walked away.

I went home that night and looked up “K Train” on Wikipedia. There was a K train, in the 1980s, but the service was discontinued in 1988. On the Wikipedia page, there was that same picture of the K train that you showed that guy in the subway. I couldn’t stop thinking about you. Were you from the past? Did you somehow wind up in the future, but underground, and you couldn’t figure out how to get back home?

Maybe you were a ghost. Maybe there’s a hidden meaning. But then I remembered that you had pulled out a cell phone, so you couldn’t be from the past, because cell phones didn’t exist yet. I mean, I think they existed, but nobody had them. And they were huge. And they didn’t have screens, definitely no high-resolution screens for showing pictures and stuff. Those didn’t come out until like 2005. And you probably weren’t a ghost, because, while I’m not discounting the existence of ghosts, it’s just that I’ve never heard of a ghost with a cell phone.

If you’re a ghost, is your cell phone a ghost too? Is it a ghost phone? If I asked you to borrow it to make a call, and you said yes, and you handed it to me, and if indeed you were a ghost, would the phone make contact with my hands or would it just pass through me, like I’d expect a ghost phone would? And if it passed through my hands, would it pass through the ground also? And then I’d be really spooked, I’d realize that you were a ghost. If I looked up, would you still be there? Because that’s when I’d imagine you’d probably vanish. It’s always right when the person figures out that the other person is a ghost that the ghost vanishes, and then the person who got spooked gets chills up their spine. I think I just spooked myself a little.

But now that I’m thinking about it even more, why did you pull your phone out underground anyway? What, did you have that picture of the K train preloaded, ready to go? Like you looked it up on the Internet while you were above ground, and you saved it to your phone in case you had to prove to some stranger the existence of some non-existent train?

I wish that you had asked me when the K train was coming. I’d have had so many questions. Well, that’s what I think anyway. I’m saying this all with the benefit of hindsight. How many times do you find yourself in situations where you’re simply at a loss for words? And only after the fact, like much later do you say to yourself that I should have said this or I should have asked that. Maybe if you had asked me about the K train I would have been so stumped that I would have just stared at you like the first guy.

And the more I’m thinking about it, that’s exactly what would have happened. It’s like, I could have approached you and said, “What are you talking about lady?” but I didn’t. Again, I don’t know if this was because I couldn’t think of anything to say, or because when I’m riding the subway, I’m just locked in my own world, somewhat aware of what’s going on around me, but really very conditioned to try to at least pretend to ignore it, like I’m a statue, or a robot. Yeah, a robot, because statues don’t move.

I was waiting for the N train. You were standing there confused, helpless. The N train came and I got on. The doors closed and I looked at you through the windows. You turned around and we made eye contact. I could feel something, a connection, a missed connection. I put my hand to the glass. You maintained the eye contact. Then some guy walked by and bumped into your shoulder, and you stumbled just a little, not too much, it wasn’t that strong of a bump. And so I figured, yup, definitely not a ghost. Unless that guy was a ghost also. Ghosts can make physical contact with other ghosts, right?