I Hunt for a Job
Brown, Paul
I HUNT FOR A JOB By PAUL BROWN SEVERAL months ago a series of minor calamities overtook me which I still do not see how I could have prevented. They resulted in the loss of everything I owned...
...After a week's effort I had succeeded in convincing two merchants of the value of the scheme...
...I had money again...
...No sales, no pay...
...I could ride anything I could get on and sail a small boat...
...The only difference between me and the rest of them is that I actually tried to do so-and was more astonished than anyone else could possibly have been when I discovered that I could also sell what I wrote...
...Apparently there was a better market for second-hand overcoats than there was for second-hand watches...
...Everything else remained the same...
...possibly even as a private detective, I could have found nothing else...
...He positively beamed upon me as if all that was necessary to effect that transition was my acquiesence...
...They frankly told me that my inexperience made no great difference but that conditions were such that they were obliged to reduce their staffs, rather than increase them...
...As the spirit moved them, there would be an occasional milling about of the mass of men and one of them would indifferently claim the job...
...Even when I was unexpectedly retired for physical disability it worked no hardship for I had saved enough money to buy a small farm, furnish the house comfortably and my retired pay was adequate, if spent thriftily, to provide for myself and my family...
...It was futile for me to insist that I was intelligent, or that the work involved in the job was manifestly simple...
...I asked, vaguely...
...Experience was unnecessary...
...My watch and overcoat were procured promptly and that day I had a lunch that was a lunch...
...I wouldn't fool you...
...Demonstrations of actual selling would be given and the new salesman turned loose on his own to earn what he could-if anything-on a strictly commission basis...
...I approached him, intending to ask what I had to do to ship on any of the vessels leaving the port...
...Five references were also required and I hope the five friends whose names I always gave will eventually forgive me if they had to reply to as many queries as I suspect they did...
...A newspaper in the city began a series of daily articles at this time regarding that very condition and frequently reported actual cases, with names, dates and figures showing that jobs commanded a price usually a little more than two weeks' pay...
...The rooms were comfortably, even expensively furnished...
...skips, chippers and openers...
...I needed money and needed it badly...
...And that was the fly in the ointment...
...I had not been wealthy but prior to my misfortunes someone had always been taking care of me...
...Every newspaper office in the city was visited and while I was cordially and courteously received by every city editor I received work from none of them...
...There was a very dirty room in an old building on the water-front with a long counter running its entire length nearly filled with a motley collection of idle sailors-white, black and brown...
...It was a terrifying situation when I found that I had to work and my apprehension increased when I promptly discovered that I could do nothing which interested a possible civilian employer...
...even fixers-and never any explanatory text to intimate what the job really was...
...Nothing could have been more convincing, if anything had been needed, of my total unfitness from an employer's viewpoint...
...I had done some work for the office of naval intelligence while in the marine corps and I felt qualified as an investigator...
...As I passed through the hall of my rooming house the following morning I looked idly at the mail spread on a console just inside the vestibule...
...The standard marine corps jest that the initials of the corps meant Useless Sons Made Comfortable seemed to be based on fact in my own case...
...Certainly I could not find a job...
...No one seemed to know what had become of the check and they were sorry, but my money could not be returned until it was found...
...I returned to the employment agency to get my money...
...He deliberately and intentionally ignored me and superciliously continued to do so until the utter futility of trying to get any information from him became evident...
...The city I was in is a seaport, where the United States Shipping Board maintains an employment bureau for the benefit of unemployed seamen...
...I have never received a reply...
...Then you must be something...
...But warm and fed, I felt sure that I, could get work...
...There was no hesitancy about telling me that there was no job for me, either, even though it was always done sympathetically...
...All were languidly scrutinizing a great blackboard behind the counter where a slovenly looking man in a filthy shirt would occasionally scrawl "A...
...I am sure that I could not have relied upon it for a living...
...But if I don't get the job...
...Do you want a job or don't you...
...The fee...
...Most of them were employed in stores, as clerks...
...But I don't know anything about it," I objected...
...Shamelessly I tore the page from the directory and began a canvass of them all...
...bushelers, scrapers and tracers...
...Ask 'em for plenty...
...The only possible jobs I saw listed the first day I searched the classified columns was one for an investigator...
...There were many of them...
...He was positively bland...
...Effort meant nothing...
...I went immediately to the address given and found a small, cheap credit store specializing in selling shoddy merchandise to foreigners at exorbitant prices...
...It sounded plausible, even if it was not convincing...
...seaman, to Sidney on Motorship Perry...
...Later during the week I answered three advertisements for insurance men for debit work...
...I never discovered the exact effect...
...It became necessary to scrutinize the other classified advertisements very carefully...
...I didn't always, for I expected little, if any, mail...
...It must be right, mister...
...I did not, of course, earn a great deal...
...Great was the surprise I met everywhere...
...Then we'll give you the fifty back...
...It's a good job, believe me," he urged, "I've known these pipple a long time and they'll treat you right...
...Of course I do...
...and many of them as salesman, evidently prosperous...
...Well, then...
...In two weeks I earned $17.00...
...That morning there were two letters addressed to me and each in the envelope of a magazine publisher...
...Each contained a check...
...It restored my confidence in my ability to get a job and I remember wondering if possibly I had not been reflecting uncertainty in my attitude and thus defeating my own purpose...
...I left the place and later in the day wrote a letter to the local office of the Shipping Board asking for the information I desired...
...Why, I cannot say...
...We were to receive $5.00 for every sale we made...
...Sure...
...B., to Calcutta on S. S. Sprite," or "Cook, to Bombay on S. S. Vixen" or "Ord...
...There were always crowds of men answering the advertisements for insurance jobs...
...Now I began to wish that I might return to the service...
...What I would sell seemed a matter of relative unimportance, as long as I was paid for doing it...
...As I continued in the marines the only material change in my situation was the increased pay I received as I rose in rank...
...I imagined it might be as long as a week before I really found employment...
...It was like a new lease on hope to enter any of the large agencies, and I visited them all...
...At first I attempted to sell newspaper advertising over the telephone...
...A girl, "my secretary" in the selling talk which was on a mimeographed sheet attached to every telephone, was sent to get the checks for the advertisements and did so, I presume, for the advertisements later ran in the paper...
...It happened that I made the rounds of the newspaper offices the first day I was in the city...
...It was very evidently buying a job but I did not care so much about that as I had not been able to get one any other way...
...in fact, I could navigate a ship, but it was worthless ability for I had none of the authoritative documents needed to get a job as mate or skipper of a merchant vessel-even if some owner had been willing to trust me with his ship, which was most improbable...
...I merely stopped payment on the check...
...The advertisements were not all truthful...
...Everybody must be something," he pronounced importantly...
...It was not long before I found out...
...That, as it happened, is exactly what they wanted and naturally I was not employed...
...Voice," according to the chap in charge, was the only requisite...
...It soon became evident that experience in any given occupation seems to be the prime, and possibly the only requisite for future employment in the same capacity...
...Now, all we need is the fee and I'll send you right down...
...Determined to sell my ability as a writer I went to the nearest large city-one of the four largest in the country-and tried to dispose of my only accomplishment...
...It turned out to be a house-to-house canvassing proposition, with the glib excuse "all our store positions were filled at once almost before the advertisement appeared...
...At various times, while in the United States marine corps, I envied certain and sundry individuals whom I would meet-civilians in every case who seemed to do so very little and get such large rewards for it...
...It was safe...
...It cost $60.00 when I bought it and I received $3.00 for it...
...In the first office there were little individual compartments where applicants for work could be examined and I was shunted into one of them after I had completed a form giving my life history from the time I was weaned...
...He began looking importantly through a card index on his desk, occasionally registering deep thought as he glanced apprais-ingly at me as though he had just become aware of my presence...
...In-the restaurant, before leaving, I opened it at random -at Private Detective Agencies...
...Nevertheless, I tried several salesman's jobs...
...I pawned my watch...
...I knew books and had gradually built up a library of nearly ten thousand volumes before it was swept away in the economic high wind which left me destitute...
...Nevertheless, with all my knowledge of books or my enthusiasm for them, I could convince no one-or essentially no one-that I had something to sell which they wanted or ought to want...
...I still had just enough money left to write the check and then I was given the information I needed to see the "pipple" who needed an insurance executive...
...When I was a child it was my mother...
...The only thing I was sure I could do, and that not so very well, was to write...
...I still did not know what I might do but I was so confident that I determined to try whatever the classified telephone directory might indicate...
...It too, had cost $60.00, but I received $20.00 for it...
...They resulted in the loss of everything I owned except the clothes I stood in and for the first time in my life it was imperatively necessary for me to go to work-to hunt for a job as nearly everyone else has done at one time or another...
...Instruction would be provided...
...Employment was never a factor in any of my considerations...
...I resigned myself to agreement with such certainty, and wondered what I was going to become now...
...The advertisements, almost without exception, were most alluring...
...Two days later, after more fruitless job hunting, I pawned my overcoat...
...Later I was to discover how difficult it is to retain personal ethics without $60.00 to cushion the possibility of their loss...
...This job pays from $4,000 up...
...they evidently were regarded as desirable...
...To continue my quest I did the only thing I could think of...
...in offices, as accountants, perhaps...
...Again I encountered questionnaires, dozens of them, of every kind and length...
...Like most service men I had a firm conviction that I could write...
...The fee for getting you the job-one week's pay...
...I looked for something else...
...I had no worries, no cares for the future...
...I learned, in a casual conversation with another job hunter, that an irate and desperate man had recently shot an employment agency owner for repeatedly deceiving him in connection with jobs which he had acquired-or failed to-through his agency...
...I believe it was true, for all the editors I saw were unanimous in deploring the situation...
...I saw what I considered mediocre men doing work that I was positive I would be able to do...
...Well, they may have been, but I was extremely sceptical...
...Some of the positions to be filled which were advertised were so strange to me that I did not even know what they were...
...There was no place I could think of to look except in the employment agencies...
...Make your check for $50.00 and we can adjust it afterward if it ain't right...
...The man in the soiled shirt would then cross it off the blackboard...
...What difference does that make...
...Perhaps that was true, for I left and never returned to ascertain...
...Here it is...
...These pipple want an insurance executive to run their casualty office and you know all about it-don't forget that...
...One in particular was especially suave...
...I bought all the papers on the news stands and searched the classified help-wanted columns...
...Evidently, an opinion based upon the contents of the questionnaire I had completed would be that I had no occupation, no accomplishment of value, but the chap attempting to fit me into a job absolutely refused to consider that as even a remote possibility...
...It was disappointing not to get work, but not particularly discouraging...
...You are an insurance man...
...There were wanted slaggers, shaggers and burners...
...Three days were spent trying to become a private detective, without result...
...I complained...
...In fact, most of them described the duties of the men wanted as quite different from what they really were...
...It was not enough...
...I decided that I would become a salesman...
...It was always necessary to complete a long questionnaire on which we supplied our personal history for the past ten years...
...I still had $60.00, and because of that, retained most of my ethics...
...At that age life could hold very little, it seemed...
...The jobs consisted in taking a collection book and visiting all the company's policy holders in a given area to obtain their weekly premium, but I got none of them...
...Rudyard Kipling probably would have been turned down again had he been looking for a job as a reporter...
...Books also came in for a whirl...
...I did not expect to get a job at once...
...I frequently applied for unimportant positions to be told bluntly that if I were inexperienced there was no need for me to make application...
...Even so, with $3.00 I could eat...
...Evidently someone knew, for those advertisements always disappeared promptly and completely in the course of a day or two...
...I did not get the ten dollars I had earned, however, for there were vague explanations that she had to resell the proposition when she collected the money and consequently was entitled to the commission herself...
...That was a representative procedure of all the employment agencies I entered...
...The jobs were really bona fide, were frankly being sold and at outrageously high prices...
...The situation became serious...
...I could shoot a rifle very well, a pistol well enough...
...Perhaps it is just as well...
...I nodded...
...You're someone, ain't you...
...When I had attained the ripe and mature age of seventeen I entered the marine corps and thereafter all my wants were supplied automatically-food, clothing, shelter, medical attention, travel, adventure and even $15.00 a month in actual cash...
...Ah," he puffed finally...
...There were at least ten men already there for the job, waiting to be interviewed but I would not have taken the job if I could have gotten it-for I was informed that it required ability to compel people more poverty-stricken than I was to pay the balance of their delinquent accounts and to locate those who had moved away...
...Large incomes were assured...
...It asked for men for agreeable sales work in stores, with demonstrating as a part of the job...
...It sounded reasonable enough...
...Occasionally I managed to equal my meagre retired pay in a month during which I would have several articles or stories accepted, but not frequently...
...I probably impressed my prospective employers as being hopelessly inept or thoroughly stupid or both...
Vol. 11 • March 1930 • No. 20
