It’s still Monday morning and the job-de-jour or rather scam-de-jour has already graced my inbox. Since registering on a variety of career websites I have been repeatedly mistaken for an available credit card number. The local newspaper is not doing much better.
The front of today’s classified employment section features six listings. Half of them require the job seeker to spend money, with no certainty of ever getting it back. How many unemployed folks do you know who have enough cash to attend massage school for a while and also pay their bills? Rubs me the wrong way.
The fourth of six offers a chance to earn extra cash by entering a wet tee shirt contest. This is a family-friendly column so I won’t elaborate, except that the concepts of gender and age discrimination come to mind. The other two jobs involve actual work and wages and/or commissions if you can find anyone with money to buy stuff they want you to sell.
The few job ads inside that section mostly require skills and certifications that most of the 20,000 or so regional unemployed are mostly not likely to have. The paper’s website, promoted by a page and a third of house ads in an otherwise anemic Sunday jobs section has a handful of jobs in my category, called Arts and Media. Two of those are sales openings at the company that sponsored my free-agency. Most of the others are for truck driving schools. If that’s art, I’m a spatter-painter.
A photojournalist job showed up on the Tennessee Career Center’s list. I tried to apply, even lied about my age, but the U.S. Navy wasn’t interested. Apparently Avon does not want me calling, either. And the remaining jobs I am otherwise qualified for require lifting 55lb or standing for 8 hours or accurately handling money at warp-speed. If I could do that I’d be a bonus-grabbing CEO at a major financial instead of a jobless journalist. (to be continued)
Tags: Chattanooga, gender, news, news media, people, photograph, photography, politics, unemployment
