Most of my desperate job applications of recent weeks are located in the city or surrounding area. To be honest, this was the main reason Adam and I relocated from the Burning Tyres Shire to Sydney’s inner suburbs: a welcome elimination of daily hour-long smelly, sweaty commuter-crammed public transport experiences.

Yet as the job market - and all those who participate in position shortlisting - continue to find new ways to wipe their collective bot-bots with my newly redesigned, super-readable, friendly-on-the-eyes, consolidated gee-whiz-gameshow-host resume; I’m applying for jobs I never originally planned to take up. Or, as I would explain to a recruitment agency when applying for a janitorial job located two hours from where I live - to drastically expand my scope of globally appliable skillsets to an arena in which I will simultaneously excel and acquaint myself with new and exciting experiences on a daily basis.

To clarify: for the first time in my life, finding a job is harder than overcoming the gripping wanker-cramp pain experienced after a shameful one-off shot at one of those arcade dancing games where you flail your arms around like Iggy Pop to badly remixed J-pop music.

Yet there’s not quite such a quick-fix to this situation as some hastily slapped on Dencorub. After beginning to apply for jobs located in suburbs some distance from where I sit typing this, I’m faced with a particularly unusual prospect with my next job.

I may very well end up reverse commuting to work.

So as the beleaguered workers of the ‘burbs shuffle trustily into the city each weekday in the early hours, I’ll be setting out from the city to the very suburbs from which they come. As the city workers sigh contentedly after a hard day’s slog and begin their travel home from a busy city station, I’ll be impatiently tapping my foot at a sparsely-served regional rail station, waiting for a train which only arrives every forty-five minutes.

Not that this bothers me - it’ll just be an unusual situation, and somewhat negating the reason Adam and I moved to the city. In the long run, this may not even be an issue: our move to Melbourne has been postponed until this time next year for financial and slightly-less-than-bouyant job market reasons, and we’re going to move to a cheaper apartment when I get a new job regardless. We may very well end up moving somewhere closer to where I’m working, although likely still close to the city.

Thus, it was my slowly increasing bluster of job applications in nearly every Sydney suburb - sorry, an expansion of my future career-path possibilities - which lead to my interview at a suburb which initially prompted Adam to inquire if I would require his services as a bodyguard when I travelled there.

Not in any way jumping to conclusions about this particular region of Sydney’s socio-economic standing in the grand scheme of things, but I felt slightly out-in-the-open walking down the road in my job interview garb and unable to spot anyone else in the immediate area sporting a suit or tie. This uneasy gut feeling was cemented when a young man came flying over a backyard fence in front of me, landed on the pavement with a slightly startled look and bulging backpack over his arm, then skedaddled in my opposite direction.

Eventually locating the recruitment agency, I cautiously entered a ramshackle reception area occupied by three young men. Looking at some of the informational pamphlets randomly placed around the room, I realised this was a government-operated recruitment agency. A sign placed on the reception desk instructed me to ‘knock on the wall if reception was unattended’. They’ve transcended belldom, I mused.

A lanky, stressed-looking man with curly hair appeared at the reception area and hurriedly thrust some forms to two Adidas-clad men.

‘So what positions are you looking for?’ the lanky man enquired, a monotone exposing his feverish enthusiasm.

‘Radio DJ, work in a music store ‘n that, um… telly stations ‘n that,’ one of the Adidas guys replied.

‘Me too,’ the other guy added. ‘Bro.’

Convincingly nodding, the lanky man promised he’d do his best and contact them as soon as anything popped up. Compared to most agencies I’d dealt with, this was certainly a very different environment. Where bubbly and hopeful job applicants with neatly typed resumes would normally smoothly flow a job agency like crystal-clear water, this agency was more attuned to a substance not dissimilar to maple syrup: gluggy, slow, messy and leaving traces of irremovable remnants which refuse to disappear.

‘Can I help you?’ the lanky man asked as the Adidas crew exited.

‘I have an interview at 2pm,’ I explained. Then as an afterthought I added, ‘I think.’ Just on the off chance this was all some strange idea I’d conjured up in my head.

‘Oh! Yes! Jeb, isn’t it… um… okay, I haven’t organised myself at all, so… why don’t you fill out these forms and I’ll get an office set up in the meantime.’

Taking the clipboard and photocopied questionnaire from his hands, he quickly added a warning. ‘Don’t sit on the wooden chairs, they’re prone to collapsing,’ he nodded at a row of seating arrangements on the far wall.

Shrugging, I decided to sit down on the only available non-self-compactable seat left, which was next to a guy in his late teens, dressed as a goth. Traversing around a knee-high semicircular table, I sat down and began scribbling away at the forms.

The goth slowly raised his head and glowered at me through his spirit-levelled fringe. ‘You could have walked the other way,’ he hissed at me.

‘Excuse me?’ I jumped, taken aback by his sudden introduction.

‘You walked the long way around the table, it’s just illogical, it makes no sense,’ he spoke, then descended into mutterings which I couldn’t quite hear.

‘Isn’t it semicircular?’ I protested.

‘No, it’s BLOBBY SHAPED,’ he waved his hand at me.

‘Do you want me to get up and do it all over again the right way?’ I checked.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake; that’d be an even further futile use of time,’ he spat.

‘I’m sorry,’ I replied, tapping my pen on my clipboard. ‘I just didn’t want to have to walk over the top of you.’

Continuing to work through my questionnaire, I noticed some slightly left-of-field questions began appearing. Of the tens of job agency registrations I’ve completed, none had prior asked me if I had a criminal record or a gun license. Also, I could feel eyes burning into the back of my skull. I turned around to find the goth angrily glaring at me again.

‘Are you hommo-phobic?’ the goth immediately accused.

‘What?’ I mumbled, confused. ‘Where’d you get that from? I’m gay myself.’

‘Oh!’ he perked up. Then, with slightly less trepidation: ‘Do you hate goths?’

‘No,’ I reassured him. ‘Goths are good value-’ Before I could continue, his mobile phone began ringing and he answered it with a flip of his wrist.

Frowning, he listened to a shrieking voice on the end of the line, before replying ‘I’ll do the freaking assignment when I get back home, don’t freak out! You guys can keep working on it! Fuck!… Okaybye.’

‘Oh man,’ I couldn’t help observing. ‘I would’ve found out you were gay anyway. 90% of gay people end phone calls by rushing the words ‘okay’ and ‘bye’ together. Makes them sound like they’re being lead around on a leash by their social life.’

‘Oh, shut up!’ he trilled, leaning forward. With horror, I realised he was wearing a cape. Fortunately the lanky man entered the room to rescue me, and invited me into an interview room.

As we entered the dimly-lit room, I suspected ‘interrogation cell’ would have been a more accurate description. This suspicion was fuelled by the lanky man’s request for three different pieces of identification.

‘This is very formal,’ I observed.

‘Government regulations,’ he shrugged. ‘You didn’t have to wear a suit, you know,’ he noted.

I wasn’t expected to wear a suit to a job interview? I could only marvel at what kind of employment opportunities ran through this place.

After we confirmed that I was indeed Jeb - because hey, harassing others by masquerading as them and landing a decent job is ILLEGAL, mmkay? - the lanky man commenced reeling off a list of bland questions from a sheet of paper. He advised me that, due to government regulation, he wasn’t permitted to ask any other questions other than those which were in front of him.

Most of his verbal enquiries related to hypothetical work situations. I’ve been asked these questions so frequently over the last two months that my brain switches to autopilot as I respond. However, I wasn’t even given a chance to fully explain my answers - he was amazed at the first one or two sentences of everything I spoke. The conversation was by and large conducted as follows:

Interviewer: You haven’t delivered work for your client as promised, and they’re angry. They want a resolution - how do you respond to their phone call?
Me: Well, firstly I’d sympathise with their situation and agree completely with everything they say. A lot of the time, angry clients forget that your job is to help them. Then, once-
Interviewer: WOW! Next question.

As it became increasingly clear that this interviewer had already made his decision based on the fact that I’d bothered to turn up in a suit, I realised whatever answer I was giving to his questions equated to white noise. This was when I began screwing around with my answers:

Interviewer: Do you have any experience with negotiations?
Me: Sure. At my last job, I was required to negotiate fees.
Interviewer: Fantastic! Wow! And you were comfortable with this?
Me: Very much so. Why, I now negotiate with my flatmate on an ongoing daily basis.
Interviewer: Great! Super!
Me: I even banter at the supermarket checkout.
Interviewer: You’re a real go-getter!

It was at this point when some disturbing scratching noises began emanating from walls, but the interviewer just waved his hand in dismissal. ‘Just the rats,’ he assured me. With that, the Q&A session ended, and he provided me with a detailed description of the job I was applying for. It was a medium-sized accounting firm - although it didn’t sound pant-stainingly gripping, you can’t be choosy right now when it comes to jobs.

‘Actually, there’s still one part of the interview left,’ lanky man informed me. ‘I’ll just get you to do a profile quiz on the computer, it’ll take all of five minutes. No right or wrong answers, it’s just so we can get an idea of how you handle certain situations. Um… some of the questions might seem a little bizarre, but don’t worry.’

Nodding cautiously, he lead me into a room occupied by five humming computers which looked ancient enough to be powered by pedals. The goth I met earlier, presumably having been interviewed by someone as well, was already tapping away at a keyboard.

‘Hello again,’ I greeted him. He grunted in reply, transfixed by his computer terminal. I commenced my own test.

The first few questions began innocently enough, such as:

‘Do you sometimes feel you are unable to manage all the work you are doing?’

And:

‘Is enjoying your work important to you?’

Then the true purpose of this computer quiz came flooding forth, as I was asked to answer questions such as:

‘Do you find you often get angry and violent for no particular reason?’

‘When you are bored, do you like to create trouble?’

‘Do you often feel that many people are talking about you behind your back?’

The ‘correct’ answers were blindingly obvious, enough for even the slightly distant goth to frown in irritation.

‘This is fucked,’ the goth observed, as his mobile phone resumed ringing insistently. Answering it, he rolled his eyes. ‘No I’m NOT at home yet, I haven’t even THOUGHT about beginning the assignment.’ An aggravated cacophony of voices began squawking from his earpiece.

Cupping one hand over his phone, he shrugged at me. ‘I was supposed to help my friends with our uni assignment,’ he explained. ‘I honestly can’t be fucked.’

‘Tell them you’re in Mexico,’ I suggested, swinging back to my computer screen.

‘I can’t do it because I’m in… Mexico,’ the goth echoed. The screams from the phone became even more psychotic. ‘No, honestly, I was over on a week-long trip, except we got held up by the police, and… what I’m trying to say is that I’m in jail, in Tijuana.’ With that, he hung up his phone.

‘I’m not sure if they were more pissed off that I wasn’t doing the assignment, or if they thought they were being charged international rates,’ he spoke aloud.

Completing my final question, a dot-matrix printer began vomiting forth a set of complex results on the opposite side of the room. The lanky man rushed into the room, glanced at the paper then congratulated me on “passing” the test.

‘You could’ve answered all those questions in one clean sweep,’ I noted. ‘You only had to ask me if I was psychotic, manic depressive, had a police record or a drug addiction.’

He nodded sadly at me. ‘Government regulations, as I explained. Well, that’s all for now. I’ll give you a call and let you know if you were successful… I’ll just have to send your resume to the accounting firm so they can go over everything. They’ll be hiring two people, so you’ve got a good chance. Good luck!’ With that, he left.

‘Oh my GOD!’ the goth exclaimed. ‘You’re going for the accountancy job too? We could end up working together!’

If a certain sequence of events was about to take place as I thought it would, I suspected a certain suburban accounting firm may never be the same again.

‘How fucking cool,’ the goth continued. ‘Wow. We’ll get you all gothed up as well. Man, we’ll even get you lead poisoning, just like me!’

Indeed, it may be something I’ll require to endure the working week.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 20th, 2001 at 7:54 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.