I had a job interview for an Account Manager position… a very odd job interview. I don’t really know what to make of it. So maybe teasing out my thoughts into an epic blog post, laced with humor and vitriol, will clear things up. What would really clear things up… having this post picked up [...]
Category Archives: New York
Open letter to Conan O’Brien offering job search help
Friday, January 15, 2010
Norm Elrod
Jackson Heights, NY
joblessandless[at]gmail[dot]com
January 15, 2010
Conan O’Brien
Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien
100 Universal City Plaza
Building 2220
4th floor
Universal City, CA 91608
Dear Conan:
I’m so sorry to learn of your recent job troubles. Employers can be such a pain sometimes. I know from experience, having been laid off four times in the last decade, most recently in October 2008. [...]
Unemployment vs. sick day, the home edition
Friday, December 18, 2009
Unemployed people get unlimited, unpaid sick days, in case you’re considering unemployment as a career move. But I haven’t taken a sick day in forever. Sick days were a rarity for me even when employed. I’m generally a healthy guy. And laying about seems like such a waste when things need to get done. (Hear [...]
The holiday season job I didn’t want and didn’t get, part 3
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
[Read the holiday season job post, part 1 and part 2 so this post makes sense.]
Around 1:30, a full three hours after my arrival, an interviewer led me out of the horribly misnamed Turnover Room and into the interview room across the hall. Set up were two rows of five narrow tables, each with two [...]
The holiday season job I didn’t want and didn’t get, part 1
Saturday, November 28, 2009
What better time to find a job than the holidays? The whole retail industry staffs up to meet the demands of the year’s busiest shopping season. More eager shoppers require more overworked sales people to serve them while wishing they could just go home. It’s a holiday maxim, as accepted as Black Friday and mall [...]
Onward with the unemployment… my one-year anniversary
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Here I am riding another bus, trying do some work and trying not to get motion sickness. Working on the computer while traveling is a much better idea in theory than in practice. The bus ride gives me a solid block of time to concentrate and tick things off my list, or dive into a [...]
Unemployment gets a man off the subway platform for a change
Friday, October 16, 2009
Life used to be so easy when I had a job. Okay, maybe that’s overstating it a little. Subway travel was easy, or at least buying a fare card was. Life was hard then too, just in a different, more financially enriching way. And subway travel was and is always an adventure, like the flume [...]
Advertising Week… unemployment still weaker
Friday, October 2, 2009
Many of the daily emails I receive are useless. They may even be less than useless, costing me two seconds to delete, two seconds I could have spent scratching myself or staring off into space. The nextNY newsletter is actually worth the time. The first of the week gives a huge list of technology events [...]
Adventures in unemployment… trial membership at the fancy gym
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
I was walking down Broadway last Friday evening, south of Madison Square Park but north of Union Square. This is a ritzy part of town, where nannies pay other nannies to push strollers and restaurants offer $25 lunch specials one week a year, by reservation only. Design Within Reach – whose name assumes the customer [...]
Unemployed guy fits right in at the US Open
Friday, September 4, 2009
Tourists and Manhattanites don’t come to Queens. They’re still scared of Brooklyn’s tonier neighborhoods, where killer mothers, nanny henchmen and four-headed demon newborns of death rule the parks, boutiques and cafes. So this side of the East River, a little north of Brooklyn, where all the foreign people live, might as well be Sadr City [...]