My sister came over yesterday and watched the girls while I had another job interview. I had been applying for “good” jobs (tech writing/editing, etc.) that offer telecommuting, part-time, or odd hours and got no bites, so now I am applying for anything that has an opening posted. I am now leaving my Master’s degree off of everything. I am filling out applications that say things like, “Fill in you’re availability hear.” It makes me want to stop and say, “look, can you just hire me to edit your forms?”
Yes, I will be your dog washer / chick sexer / flenser. There is no point in lamenting about whether or not the job market in Seattle sucks or if I do, the fact is that I have to get a job and have not gotten one yet. I think I have one, after yesterday’s interview, but I am not holding my breath, even after having an interview and hearing the woman say, “you’ve got the job.” (I’ve heard that one before.) Apparently my background check hasn’t come back yet, and I haven’t been scheduled for the required UA, so I suppose they could change their minds. Or, next week at this time I could have a job that “we’ve never hired a woman to do before, but we’d like to try something new.” Ay yi yi. Details will follow, I hope.
Anything would be better than working for this espresso place in the University District, Sureshot Espresso. I was a barista in college so I thought it was worth a try to apply to be a coffee jerk again. Before job hunting recently, I had gone into Sureshot twice and had been ignored by the counter help for a significant amount of time, and so had walked out again. On a desperate lark, I picked up an application there and asked if they were hiring. For once, the barista there was friendly.
“Yes, but you have to come in on a particular day, because the owners will want you to turn the application in to them personally,” he said. That’s weird, I thought.
As I started to read the application it got weirder. The first part of the application is pretty normal, but at the very top of the application is a small box where one is required to sign a declaration: “I understand that Sureshot is a non-smoking establishment.” Then you have to check a box, just like in grade school when you get one of those “Do you like me? Yes or no” notes. The applicant must declare “I certify that I am a non-smoker” or “I am a smoker, but I will not smoke during my shifts.” Can they tell you what you can do during your breaks, as long as you are engaged in a legal activity?
The second half of the application is a riot: date of birth, marital status, number of years married, number of dependents, have you had any serious illnesses in the past five years. They even want to know if you own or share a car. I imagine the interview involves them looking at your teeth, knocking on your flanks, and administering a psychological test.
I had long been told that these sorts of questions are illegal, and I wondered if it was true. I wondered if there was a watchdog organization online for employers like this. I googled around and what I discovered is that these questions are not illegal, per se, it is just deeply, deeply stupid to ask them, because a person who doesn’t get the job could feel that they were being unfairly discriminated against and sue. Applicants are not required to answer such personal questions, but who would hire someone who fills out half the app, and then starts talking about personal rights? None of the fuckasses I worked for during college and high school. And what employee would want to work in such a hostile environment?
Of course, a lawsuit less likely to happen with a single-location, hole-in-the-wall espresso joint exploiting ignorant eighteen-year-olds, as opposed to a large corporation that has millions of dollars and is hiring for jobs where an employee has a lot to gain, such as a livable wage.
In the end, though, I decided I liked Sureshot’s application very much, because most applications won’t give you that much of a red flag about the management. “Things can only get worse,” it says.
There have are corporations who have recently begun to fire employees who are smokers because it raises their medical insurance rates. Apparently, that is not illegal although deeply disturbing.
Yep, Kim’s right. It’s not illegal. My large fortune 500 blood sucking corporate employeer has 3 full pages in their application devoted to “I will not smoke while at work”. So, I uh lied. I figured I’d go to the car and sneak my smokes, you know it’d be a flashback days to sneaking around school. Thankfully, they provide a smoking section.. go figure.
And if my company ever does go smoke free.. they can fire me at anytime. Because I did sign the form after all…
Red flag, sirens, and possibly a sandwich board being dragged around by one of their poor schmuck current employees reading ?Don?t work here!?
I can get you a job as a ‘tard herder or a jizzmopper like *that*.
well, if you lived in denver, i could get you a job at my company. but you don’t, so i can’t.
last summer, i spent a couple months looking for work, and filled out a similar application. there was a “man or woman?” box to check at the beginning of the application. they wanted to know if the applicant was married, and if they were, individual sections for men and women to fill out followed. under “women”, there were questions like “husband’s age, occupation, does he allow you to work outside the home, is he willing to pay for a sitter if you work after the time he comes home, etc.” i looked at the bottom of the application, and it was dated 1958.
the company was run by an ancient couple who’d owned the company since the 50s. my guess would be that they had those applications from day one, and never updated. the mrs. of the couple asked me into her office for an interview, read down my application, saw that i’m a student and said, “college students are irresponsible. i won’t hire you.” yee-haw.
Wait–does jizzmopper pay more than minimum???
Asking about smoking is perfectly legal – smokers aren’t a protected class even though they act like it. Asking your political affiliation is also legal, by the way.
However, asking for your birthdate, about your transportation, martial status, if you have kids, anything about your spouse and most of the other things you mentioned are completely illegal. You can ask about them after someone is hired but not before. If you had not been hired it would be a slam dunk EEOC suit. I’m surprised these guys are getting away with something like that – it’s a civil suit waiting to happen.
There aren’t “watchdog” groups for this sort of thing. Most of the time action won’t happen until someone files a complaint. Even then they would have to push. Frankly I watch some of the things the owner of our company does and just cringe. The legal test for bringing action is if you have “standing” – you were harmed in some way by the action or policy. Otherwise anyone can call in a complaint to the EEOC office or maybe the Wage and Hour commission but those guys are so strapped for funding these days that unless it is both egregious and obvious they just don’t have any resources to deal with it. I also believe that such groups are under so much pressure NOT to hassle business that they are almost scared to enforce anything.
Hey – that’s all those conservatives saving your tax dollars and getting off the back of business so business can create jobs! Yes- all those piece of shit minimum wage jobs for crappy wages in some shit hole you are supposed to look out of and smile when the boss walks by.
But remember – this is compassionate conservatism. Not at all like the heartless, ruthless conservatism the liberals want to impose with big government and all those rules and laws and such designed to protect all those little people with no money. This is touchy-feely conservatism and it sure makes money!
Gee, I feel better already just talking about it!
So, have you got my latte ready yet, sweetie?
My husband applied for a job at a soul-sucking corporation not too long ago, and he was made to take some sort of personality test AND answer questions in the vein of, “Do you think church attendance makes people more morally upright?” Not to mention that sick time literally does not exist there: you get sick, it comes out of your vacation bank.
Legend has it that the original owner (current owner’s daddy) used to stand at the front door of the office until quittin’ time so no one could sneak out before the whistle blew. My husband read all of these things as massive red flags and declined the job (they *reeeally* wanted him, but he saw the bleak future ahead).
I once applied for a job as curator for a small rural county museum. The initial job description was sane. Tend to the collection, give tours, answer questions etc. At the interview the “detailed” job description required that I bring a “change of pants” and “deodorant” to work every day. I was also asked to sign a statement which stated that I would wash my hands, “wear deodorant” at all times and agree to re-apply this deodorant and/or change into my “clean” pants *if* it was requested by my employer that I do so. The line “at his discretion” was underlined three times in red ink. I read it, I laughed, I paused for a few seconds, I yanked the application form out of the church lady interviewer’s hands and slowly backed out of the interview room. I can only imagine what kind of insane armpit/crotch sniffing psycho hillbilly melodrama I could have walked into if I had agreed to work there. :|
Job seeking sucks. Ass. Have you tried Dice for tech writing gigs?
http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/gentwo/metrosearch.jsp?ma=24
I got my current soul-sucking but high-paying tech writing gig through them. Also, place your resume on Monster, I’ve gotten numerous calls for contract work via that avenue. I’m hoping that you’re lying your ass off on the resume. Label ANY writing you’ve done on the job as tech writing, and when they ask for samples, say it was all proprietary information and that you signed a contract stating you could not use any writing in your portfolio. This is a common practice and they will understand, trust me.
Jizzmopping pays above minimum wage, btw, at least at the Lusty Lady in SF it does.
Uh, that was me right there above.
There’s a shitty company in Michigan (Weyco) that doesn’t even allow people to smoke off the clock and off of company property, and they test for it like other companies do for illegal drugs. Check out the article: http://www.wral.com/news/4126577/detail.html
Since Michigan is an “at will” state (which means they can fire you for any reason at all without justification) they can get away with it.
I think it’s complete crap that a company can fire you for a legal activity done on your own time and
own property, it pisses me off an order of magnitude higher that a tax-payer funded institution (Kalamazoo Community College) also now has that policy. http://www.detnews.com/2005/metro/0501/27/A01-71823.htm
One of the reasons the ACLU pisses me off so much is that they’d rather go after the goddamn Boy Scouts than tackle shit like this (they declined to challenge this).
I guess I could have boiled this entire comment down to “Don’t fucking live in Michigan”
Thanks, sac. I have tried those sites. And Craigslist. But I think everyone else with children wants the odd hours/telecommuting jobs also, and they are few and far between.
I am trying to avoid daycare, which usually means you have to choose less money.