Want To Work

    She was strolling along the central business district. Not in a hurry. Not smiling. Not really in focus, actually. Just a middle-aged woman neatly dressed but looking a bit frayed at the edges. She was wearing a homemade sandwich board around her neck. It was made from a brown cardboard box and measured about 12 inches by 15 inches.  She used a ballpoint pen to write on it instead of Magic Marker, so it was rather light. But the top line was unmistakeable. It read:

    "Want to Work."

     Below that was the line "Need Advice On:" followed by a list of several items  unreadable at 15 fifteen paces. Stunned at first, it was several moments before the vision made sense. I turned back to find her and confirm what I thought. But she was nowhere to be found. No matter.  I can tell you her story anyway.

     A woman with lots of work experience, yet too young to retire, finds herself without employment one day. No problem, she says to herself, I have a good resume and the economy in Perth is better than in many places.  I'll find a job in no time. But instant employment does not appear. She goes over to the unemployment office, Centrelink, to apply for her entitlement while making a mental note never to dress like the permanent down-and-outers also in line. She's obliged to prove that she makes at least five applications a week. Piece of cake, she thinks, I won't be doing this long.  But she finds that she gets no response to her applications and little useful feedback from rejectors. Our gal is eventually referred to a government contractor for help. This is an agency charged with  giving people the assistance they need to get employment. But she is deemed to be at the lowest tier of need: literate, educated, previously employed and not disadvantaged in any real way. So all the agent (half her age) can do is offer her the same advice given to the simpletons who also walk through the doors. Frustration mounts. Why am I not getting a job? I'm not even getting many interviews! Is it my resume? Are my cover letters out of date and ineffective? What about this "selection criteria" thing? Am I pre-interviewing myself properly? Why is my network letting me down?  She gets no help, no answers and no job offers.

    A critical mass is now forming.  Her employment gap is starting to get rather long and unexplainable.  Unemployment  benefits are woefully inadequate for anyone paying rent or making mortgage payments and her savings that make up the difference are rapidly being depleted. Panic is rising and her self-esteem is dropping. She is now being obliged by Centrelink to volunteer one day a week at any nonprofit organization that will take her to keep up her puny payments. During the 1980s, there was a phrase being bandied about in this state, "You're too young at 18 and too old at 22."  Could this ghastly maxim still be true? Facing financial ruin and permanent career damage, our desperate woman parks her dignity and reaches out in the only way that seems to remain.  She made a sign.

    I wish I knew what kind of results this lady got from her sandwich sign. She wasn't asking for a job, just effective, real life assessment of her CV presentation materials.  I  wish I could tell you that her case is unusual but that would be an untruth.  I don't bother to find empathy for 25 year-olds who wish 50 year-olds would fall off the perch already and open the top jobs for them.  I wonder how, in the face of this obvious ageism, the federal government can expect people to work until they are 70 to keep the pension demand down. Is this a First World problem? Probably, but this is a First World country. And it shouldn't be a problem.

    I admire your pluck, Lady, regardless of what brought you to it.