Did I forget my deodorant this morning?

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 for all the visitors trekking out here. Some crazy unemployed guy has an apartment here too, where he composes mad rants about the state of his life for the enjoyment of millions (by which I mean his wife, his mom, twelve unemployed people, six spam-bots and three of the Google hamsters running on a giant wheel out in Mountain View, CA. That is how they keep the Internet going, right?) Outsiders just avoid the whole borough of Queens. Someday, when average property values cross the half million-dollar mark, that may change.

But something happens here every summer about this time. Tennis fans return to roost, like swallows to San Juan Capistrano. The 7 train – called the International Express because of the many ethnic neighborhoods it passes through – becomes decidedly less international. Ultra-proper English can be heard. Country club attire can be felt brushing by. Hands can be seen protecting wallets and iPhones from would-be pickpockets reading or sleeping on their way home from work. The annual visitors follow the DIRECTV blimp floating high above Flushing Meadows. It’s US Open time again, and locals are warned to hide their Heineken. Here come the tennis fans.

I’m a card-carrying white person, but I’m not so big on the tennis. Sure, all the back and forth, combined with the grunting and sweating, can be exciting. But I still prefer to watch eleven large men in pads running into eleven other large men in pads, all of whom are grunting and sweating. (Maybe those last two sentences don’t belong together.) I played a lot of tennis as a kid, in summer camp and with my grandfather. We would hit tennis balls on his neighbor’s court many afternoons and then ruin our dinners with watermelon and root beer floats. But even fond childhood memories couldn’t make me a fan of the sport. Tennis can be kind of boring.

I went to the US Open qualifiers last Thursday. The week before the tournament, the wannabes and also-rans compete for the chance to lose to the players you’ve heard of. The timing once again lined up with my unemployment – another seemingly annual event. Entry was free, but the crowds were sparse – mostly teenagers and old people. It was a great way to spend a breezy summer afternoon, without shelling out your hard-earned tax dollars.

I watched Sam Warburg take on Michael Berrer on the largest of the courts outside the stadium. (Stadium courts are reserved for the real tournament.) The crowd routed for Warburg – the American – though he didn’t show much personality. He did let out a convincing grunt with each racket swing. Sometimes there would be a delay between swing and grunt, as if he’d momentarily forgotten and then remembered he was contractually obligated to make the noise. Berrer – the German – was much more fun to watch. He yelled at himself after bad shots and pumped his fist after good shots. He repeatedly excoriated the official for obviously bad calls. (The officiating was horrible all around.) His accent made the complaints sound more menacing than he probably intended. The players were evenly matched, and points sometimes stretched beyond my interest. Each player just toed the baseline and ripped shots at his opponent, only to have them returned. My neck tired from the constant head turning. Warburg twisted his ankle late in the match, giving Berrer enough advantage to pull it out.

I found myself easily distracted throughout the match, first by the corporate sponsor banners lining the court’s perimeter. Chase, American Express, J.P. Morgan, Citizen, and, of course, Heineken… are these companies targeting me and my vast spending power ($430 a week, baby)? Am I supposed to leave here and go buy a beer or a watch or an investment that gets repackaged and sold to another giant financial institution, over and over, until the economy crashes, I lose my job (were I to have a job, which I don’t) and they get government money to market to me at professional sporting events? I guess actively not caring about these companies and their products further proves I’m not a tennis fan. Maybe I’ve lived in Queens too long.

More interesting than the match and the advertising was the ball boy etiquette. Each match had a six-person ball boy crew. (Half the crew were, in fact, girls, but I’m not going to derail my informative yet whimsical prose with a pointless gender dispute.) Two were stationed behind each player and two manned (see, womanned just sounds weird) the net. Before a point, a ball boy offered the server a ball, and then another, and then another, from which the player chose two. The player served, the other returned it, blah, blah, blah. Afterward, a net ball boy fetched the shot that ended the point. Another offered each player a towel to wipe his brow and racket handle. The others threw balls to each other, ensuring that ball boys behind the server had an ample supply. The process repeated for a couple games. The players then got a rest, but a ball boy’s work is never done. One held an umbrella above each player’s head to block the hot New York sun. Others provided towels and water. The remaining stood at attention until the match started back up.

Being a ball boy is a science and an art. I found myself waiting for points to end so they could execute their duties. I even wondered what it would take to be a ball boy, aside from a time machine and parents who pay my bills. Could I dart across the court at any moment, scoop up a tennis ball and duck into my corner before a 120 mph serve took my head off? Could I remember how many tennis balls to offer up the serving player, and how and when he wants his sweaty towel? I don’t mean to sound flip. I actually thought about this stuff. Alas, it’s not the job for me. I need work that allows me to buy beer, watches and financial products. Maybe then I won’t find tennis so boring.

What's so interesting, lady? Haven't you ever taken a picture of yourself outside Dunkin' Donuts?

Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood?
In your neighborhood?
In your neighborhood?
Say, who are the people in your neighborhood?
The people that you meet each day

Once upon a time I had a job. Or maybe I just dreamt it up to kill time between layoffs. The neighborhood where I worked was filled with tourists and people trying to sell them “I Love NY” t-shirts and sightseeing packages. Navigating the long block between the subway and my office made me want to kill everybody from the Midwest so they’d stop visiting. Of course the important people in my neighborhood were my coworkers. I interacted with them all day everyday. Together we got things done. So let me break off a little somethin’ somethin’ for them…

Oh, the sales guy always brings up the tale
Of the deal he made without fail.
He’ll talk and talk the whole day through
But get your paycheck safe to you.

‘Cause a sales guy is a person in your neighborhood,
In your neighborhood, he’s in your neighborhood.
A sales guy is a person in your neighborhood–
A person that you meet each day.

And let’s not forget the other marketing guy, my former partner in crime…

Oh, the other marketing guy is smart it’s said.
His writing brings the company cred.
If there’s a fire anywhere about.
Well, his words will put it out.

‘Cause the other marketing guy is a person in your neighborhood,
In your neighborhood, he’s in your neighborhood.
And a sales guy is a person in your neighborhood–
Well they’re the people that you meet
When you’re scrounging for free eats
They’re the people that you meet each day!

I don’t go to that office anymore, what with the layoff and all. They even stopped putting money in my bank account for some reason. I spend much of the day in my dining room, in the company of two furry creatures who sleep and drool a lot. My trips out into the world give me some fleeting human contact. Over the last several months, certain individuals have become the new people in my neighborhood.

A friendly middle-aged Hispanic woman runs the register at a local fruit stand. Fruit stands in Jackson Heights are only slightly less common than cell phone stores, eyebrow threading places and people handing out fliers for English lessons. But this one is the cheapest, something I appreciate given my limited cash flow. A pint of fresh blueberries there goes for $1, and a pound of apples less than that. I shop there multiple times each week, and this lady is always working. She smiles when I reach the front of the line and asks after me and wifey in what little English she knows. The questions are generally one or more of the following…

• You go to gym today?
• You no working today?
• Where your wife?
• You cooking tonight? (This one is generally followed by a laugh.)

My answers are generally of the yes/no variety to ease the exchange. She’s probably saying more than I’m understanding. I don’t know much about her, except that she works a lot and her teenage daughter attends the school catercorner to the stand. Our conversations last the time it takes to ring up a basket full of fruits and vegetables and rarely stray from the aforementioned topics. Her boss – the old Korean guy in a “git r done” hat – is usually sitting right there and itching to ring up the next customer.

Oh, the fruit lady always has the kale
And all the other fruits and vegetables that if they were organic would be collected along a trail.
She works, and works the whole day through
To get me the cheap berries blue.

‘Cause a fruit lady is a person in your neighborhood,
In your neighborhood, she’s in your neighborhood.
A fruit lady is a person in your neighborhood–
A person that you meet each day.

The young Indian guy at the Dunkin’ Donuts knows what I want on sight… medium ice coffee, black. This is a high-traffic store on a high-traffic street corner. The 7 train station is directly above and trains rattle by, shaking the store, about every five minutes. The sidewalks are generally too crowded to walk in a straight line for more than a few steps. Inside are always the usual types of characters – a hospital employee on his way to work, a cop or two on a break, some gangly teenagers getting a sugar fix and an old lady of dubious residence with a plastic bag fetish. Random customers come and go. The cashier will yell out my order from wherever he is the moment he sees me. Sometimes he’s helping another customer. Sometimes he’s in the back, if it’s time to make the donuts. Sometimes he’s at home on his couch watching television. It doesn’t matter. I look up upon hearing his voice and nod. He brings my drink. I pay with exact change and leave. That is the extent of our interaction. There was some confusion a few months back over whether “black” coffee meant no milk or no milk and no sugar. That’s long since been resolved, at least as far as we’re concerned. This is the most basic of customer/cashier relationships. But I enjoy it for what it is. And his recognizing me does make me feel important for a few seconds every afternoon. That in itself is worth the $2.37.

Oh, a Dunkin’ Donuts guy is brave it’s said.
His store is orange, brown and, if there’s a police incident, maybe a little red.
If Norm is near about.
Well, my order he’ll yell it out!

‘Cause a Dunkin’ Donuts guy is a person in your neighborhood,
In your neighborhood, he’s in your neighborhood.
And a fruit lady is a person in your neighborhood–
Well they’re the people that you meet
When you’re avoiding strollers and garbage on the street
They’re the people that you meet each day!

There are other characters around too. It’s a rare day that I don’t see the blond ponytail guy with the spiderweb tattoo on his shoulder. He’s generally rocking the mirrored sunglasses and the outsized attitude, like Dog The Bounty Hunter, with only slightly better hair. Sometimes he’s leaning against a wall, and looking important. Sometimes he’s holding court, and looking important. Sometimes he’s hurrying somewhere, and looking important.

Jackson Heights has no shortage of characters, though no one else I see everyday. My interactions with the people in my neighborhood are brief, but I appreciate them for what they are. It’s nice to be recognized, to be appreciated outside of your own home. Work offers a sort of validation that unemployment doesn’t. Sitting at home alone all day can skew your reality. But a quick trip around the block can bring it all back into focus.

I don’t wish I were a woman. Being a manly, guy-type creature of the male species works for me. It’s nice to have a built-in excuse for my noises, smells and propensity to stop channel surfing on any sports-related event. (I actually just watched a replay of an all-star high school football game while eating dinner.) The common drawbacks, such as body hair, male-patterned baldness and a complete lack of fashion sense, don’t bother me much. And the double standards tend to net out in my favor. So why complain? But on some days – like, say, any summer day in New York City when I have to go to work or a job interview – I’d rather wear women’s clothing. It’s just cooler.

Today’s weather wasn’t that bad for July; 78 degrees and sunny, with humidity thicker than Heidi Montag in math class, is practically Fall in this part of the world. We usually get temperatures 15 degrees higher to go with our atmospheric soup. But it also wasn’t suit weather. I had a job interview (yeah, me!), which meant putting on my finest (boo, me!) and hopping on the subway (again, boo, me!). The meeting seemed to go well, but my travels were less than pleasant.

A couple of my suits are dark and made of heavier fabric, perfect for all my Wall Street power lunches. A couple are light and made of lighter fabric, more suited for summer evenings sipping Mai Tais at the yacht club. Heavy or light, the bottom line is they’re all made of wool. And they’re all really, really, really, really hot. People keep telling me that wool breathes because it’s a natural fabric. It pants… maybe. Breathes… no. Wearing a wool suit in the summer is like wearing fiberglass insulation with slightly less itch. Would someone please bring back the Miami Vice look, and quick? I’ll happily embrace the feathered hair.

I opted for my favorite suit – a charcoal, pinstripe number made famous in a certain New York Times article – matched with a white button-down shirt and a blue tie. It may have been a tad conservative, though entirely appropriate for the occasion. This was a job interview, after all. I considered going with a blue-gray “summer-weight” number. But I opted to sweat out an extra half pound of water weight and not risk being under-dressed.

I managed to remain cool while waiting for and riding the 7 train. My station is above ground and attracts a nice breeze, and the train car was air-conditioned. The Grand Central station – where I transferred – was a little warm, though much more bearable than it will be as summer drags on. Subway stations are like oceans in that they maintain heat long after the weather changes. Some sort of giant fan thing circulated the air. That helped a little, until the cool-ish air mixed with the heat generated by other trains sitting in the station. I draped my jacket over my arm. Sweat began to form on my brow and drip down my shirt. My collar chafed my neck. That was the beginning of the end. I wiped myself off and boarded an uptown 4 express train for a little relief. Hopefully it would catch the uptown local 6 train I’d just missed.

The 86th St. station was much worse. I steamed for another ten minutes, until the 6 train came along to take me to 110th St. There I began walking and continued sweating. I arrived at the offices for my interview dripping. My shirt sleeves, where I’d draped my jacket, were soaked through and stuck to my arms. My hair was wet with sweat. My face was on fire from the razor burn. Oddly enough, my nerves were calm. I found a spot under a tree to cool off, without much success. Shade doesn’t relieve humidity.

But air conditioning does. A few minutes in the bathroom was enough to sponge off and become presentable. My suit jacket would cover my soaked shirt; I’d be fine as long as I kept it on. The interview seemed to go well from that point. The ride home was also infinitely more pleasant. I grabbed a downtown bus to avoid a sweaty backtrack, and transferred to a Queens-bound train at 59th St. without waiting. And then I was home, to bask in the coolness.

Today was sort of an extreme example. I don’t generally wear a suit in the summer, or at any time of year. But when working, I still have to wear slacks or khakis, a button down or polo shirt with an undershirt (can’t have those giant sweat marks) and shoes that cover my feet. Imagine how much more comfortable a breezy skirt and a light blouse would be. Maybe you don’t have to. Some sandals that let the air dance across my toes would be just divine. I’d happily paint my toenails if I could get away with flip-flops in a business environment. And what about capri pants? Aren’t these just shorts by another name? A friend from a previous job and I used to joke about wearing shorts to work and claiming they were capri pants. They’re becoming all the rage in urban areas, so maybe I’ll get my chance, under the guise of “fashion.” Until then, I’ll just have to deal with my sweaty manliness, all the while wishing I could just dress like a woman.

Where working out meets rocking out.

Unemployment took away my last excuse not to go to the gym… work. And for that I will never forgive it. If you’re reading this, unemployment, consider yourself out of the will. The cats now get my ever-shrinking pile of assets. (Wifey will have to take it up with the furry ones.) My gym membership is cheap and paid through some time next year. All that prevents me from going these days is laziness and achiness (by which I mean laziness).

My gym has three reasonably convenient locations and many more totally inconvenient locations. One is in midtown, across the street from a previous employer and a short subway ride from home. Working out was so convenient until layoff #2. I still go there sometimes in the late morning to avoid the lunch-time and after-work crowds. Another location a few stops further downtown in Chelsea is bigger and better, but also more crowded. Working out during off-peak times is still perfectly pleasant. And then there’s the Elmhurst location within walking distance of my apartment, where I go if I’m pressed for time or – like today – just don’t feel like riding (or paying $4 to ride) the subway. That place is a madhouse.

I left for the gym at about 9:30 this morning. It was drizzling and sunny, and the sky threatened thunderstorms, portending another day of confusing weather. There was also a 30% chance of snow, a 20% chance of tsunami and 10% chance that the atmosphere would solidify into some sort of jello-like substance making it impossible to do anything. I crossed underneath the subway tracks as the 7 train rumbled overhead, and wound through Elmhurst past the hospital and the park. I turned down through a neighborhood of houses, most of which have been converted into apartments, judging by all the doorbells and Direct TV dishes. A few have been remodeled or torn down and rebuilt into some blocky, tasteless monstrosity. Many more are just kind of drab. At Queens Blvd., I crossed over to the gym.

The one-story box of a building sits right on the boulevard of death next to an LIRR overpass, some used car dealerships and a few hotels that probably rent rooms by the hour. One dealership I’ve watched shrink over the last year from two lots and 60+ cars for sale to half of one lot and about ten cars. And one motel I’ve watched go up right next to it; all they forgot was a sign big enough for passersby to actually see. A huge billboard on the overpass advertises Big Macs at McDonalds with the words, “Sobrang masala may kasamang extra bun.” Who knew that “two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions” could be boiled down to four words? A huge public intermediate school sits behind the gym, and buses line up next to it. If I go around 8:00 or leave around 3:00, I inevitably end up following a group of 13-year-olds and looking like a total perv.

The gym was packed, because it’s always packed. Every person in Elmhurst is required to hang out at this gym for two hours each day; working out is optional. I signed up for a couple aerobic machines at the front desk. The earliest available was in an hour. Every machine looked to be occupied when I got inside. Some people were working out, some were talking on cell phones, and some were trying to do both. I jumped on a recumbent bike when one opened up.

As if the crowds weren’t bad enough, the noise levels were just ungodly. Pumping club music covers of 80s songs blared from the aerobics room, as the instructor yelled instructions into her headset microphone. Some of the TVs played corporate music videos of beautiful, disaffected white guys rocking out in construction sites and on the tops of buildings. The accompanying audio came through the club’s speakers. Other TVs tuned to CNN played the news. People yelled into their cell phones over all of this and to their friends across the gym. I hoped my head wouldn’t explode.

I moved from the bike to a cross-trainer when my turn came up, kicking off the woman who tried to take my spot and putting my towel in the drink holder not lined with hardened bubblegum. The air conditioning wasn’t really on, and I was sweating profusely. Soon after, a 40-something-year-old woman busting out of her stretchy black and white gym outfit took the machine next to me. She was all silicon and botox, and damn proud of it. I glanced over, and she flashed me a smile through her lipstick, at least what amounts to a smile for someone who can’t move her face. Distracted from a New York Times Magazine article about aesthetically unpleasing construction, I looked over again a minute later. The Williamsburg Bridge may be ugly, but who could possibly ignore a living, breathing disaster two feet away? She smiled again. I cringed.

When construction lady was done, one of the two people I know at the gym – an unemployed engineer – took over the machine. We chatted about what would happen once unemployment insurance ran out. He has his eyes on a job at McDonalds. I’m thinking Starbucks. My reasons are simple… I don’t want to get fat, and I’d much rather be scalded by coffee than grease. The conversation moved on to the situation in Iran and places to play ping-pong in Flushing. I finished up on the cross-trainer and went for some water.

By the water fountain in the locker room, I ran into the one other person I know at the gym – a heavyset retired guy who enjoys science fiction and Broadway shows. We met many months ago when he commented about The New Yorker magazine I was reading. He was surprised to see it in a gym where no one even speaks English. We chatted briefly about the drag cabaret show I saw over the weekend and what movies we wanted to see.

My time on the elliptical trainer was uneventful, except for the OK Go’s brilliant orchestrated treadmill dance routine video, which came on. Someone programming the music videos for Big Gym TV has a sense of humor, or not. It seemed appropriate either way. The old Jewish guy who works out like he’s on a mission was nowhere to be found. Nor were his right-wing buddies, whom he greets by yelling political nonsense across the room. The Tourette Syndrome guy who spouts off randomly in Italian wasn’t there around either; I think he comes in evenings. The stretching area was unusually quiet. The crew of old ladies who sit around telling dirty jokes was noticeably absent. I finished up my workout in relative peace.

Leaving the gym, I passed an employee returning from her smoke break and waited at the corner for the traffic light. I was tired and had the beginnings of a headache. It had been a relatively quiet workout, but I was still less relaxed than when I arrived. Tomorrow I’ll spend the four bucks and go workout in peace.

I finally had another job interview, after four months of nothing. During the drought, I managed to secure numerous interviews with various press outlets. They all wanted to talk about my unemployment. None of them, of course, wanted to do anything about it. So while a little more famous, I remain equally unemployed. For those playing along at home, the score now stands at 8-3; press interviews are beating job interviews pretty handily.

This most recent interview came to me out of the blue. I was just minding my own business – blogging and not finding work and tormenting small furry creatures who meow too much – when a contact from my last job reached out with an opportunity. His company places creative professionals. The opening was for a marketing director at an online agency. The details were fuzzy, but the job seemed within the realm of possibility given my experience and empty wallet.

I prepped for the interview as I always do – drinking raw eggs and punching sides of beef in a local meet locker. That just gave me salmonella  and bloody knuckles, so I decided maybe Rocky didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. (That’s the last time I model my life on a movie montage.) So I took to the interweb to learn me some stuff about the company and its industry. As it turns out, they and their competitors have websites – flashy ones with lots of fancy words. I read up, then reviewed my answers to common interview questions. Voila, I was prepared.

The morning of, on my way out the door, I received a message from my contact. The company higher up scheduled to meet me was in the hospital. I offered to show up bedside with carnations and play a ditty on my pan flute, but my contact thought rescheduling would be best. A few days later I found myself going through the same routine – drinking, punching, learning, leaving. The phone didn’t ring with word that aliens had abducted the company rep, so I figured the meeting was a go. And it was.

The company’s offices are located near Union Square – a great part of town to work in. A previous employer has a satellite location right across the street, and I fondly remember traipsing down to the year-round farmer’s market on my lunch hour and returning with a bag of fresh, homemade pretzels. I showed up on time, after killing 20 minutes in a Starbucks drinking liquid tar. I always allow for the subways’ unreliability. The 7 train has told me numerous times – in its own special way – that it hates my guts and hopes I get stuck in the doors. The company’s offices seemed nice, if sparse and oddly organized. They had that Internet bubble start-up feel, combining people and space in a way that felt a little unnatural. Maybe things were just moving to fast to stop and worry about decorating and organizing.

The interviewer was saddled with a severe limp and appeared to be in some pain. I asked after the injury and was told it might be a torn ACL. He didn’t seem terribly pleased about it, so I didn’t inquire further. We sat in a windowless office, and he reviewed the specifics of the company and position. The company is a leader in its field with a good client base. The position involved marketing the company to potential clients through a variety of mediums – trade shows, PR, advertising, collateral, Powerpoint. It seemed very similar to my previous job and well within my range of expertise.

We moved on to my resume and how my skills and experience fit the position’s requirements. I gave specific and concrete examples. He nodded and asked more questions when I stopped talking. The interviewer seemed more in the mood for a leg rest, a TV remote and a large dose of Percocet than a job interview. He was utterly humorless, but a good sport, especially given his circumstances. After an uneventful 30 minutes, void of any “gotcha” questions, the interview ended. He assured me that this was just an introductory, get-to-know-you meeting. The other company heads would have me in when they returned to the office. This was a good sign.

I received a call from my contact a couple weeks later. There would be no further interviews. The company already hired someone. He apologized for not relaying the information sooner, but he’d only just found out himself. The company had retained multiple placement firms to fill the position. I didn’t lack any needed skill. I didn’t smell bad or talk s**t about the interviewer’s mother. I just came along too late. That was that.

What networking looks like for kids at Wal-mart.

I hate networking events. Let me rephrase that. I despise networking events as the unholy creations they are. They fall somewhere below gefilte fish and riding the 7 express train during rush hour on a rainy day after a service delay. I’d rather perform an emergency tracheotomy on myself with a Bic pen. The what-I-despise-most scale is of course slightly less than scientific. But networking events are a proven tactic in the job search, and can lead to valuable contacts and even those job thingumajigs people keep talking about. I take part whenever I can bring myself to.

Good intentions always lead me to sign up; this will be the one with all the job openings and recruiters offering six-digit salaries. But I often manage to talk myself out of going the day of. Pouring over job postings for wavers on Craigslist suddenly becomes way more urgent than hobnobbing with people who might get me work. This time I convinced myself to go. Event organizer, The 405 Club, is a quality unemployment site that deserves my support. The Search Engine Strategies conference, which has kept me from jobsearching and blogging all week, was only three stops away, killing the travel excuse. And most of all, I am unemployed.

Success at a networking event is largely about selling yourself, face-to-face, in a few minutes and a few sentences, while wearing nicer clothes. It’s important to come prepared with an elevator pitch or talking points and then be strategic and forthright in starting conversations… and ending them. Experts recommend keeping conversations short and on topic, engaging and purposeful. The goal is to find those few who can help you by having meaningful conversations with lots of people.

The talking points have been in my back pocket for years. They’re so ingrained that I mutter them when my mind drifts off to its happy place. The strategy is fairly intuitive – talk to the people who can help, whether they are recruiters or contemporaries. You never know who the right person might be. Even conversations, once started, come naturally. I just turn on that Norm charm and bend people to my will. And then I hit them with the Jedi Mind Trick… “You will hire me.” The force is weak in me, so that only gets me a job for about 20 seconds, not long enough to make any money.

Starting and ending conversations is the hard part. I suck at this, always have. Walking up to strangers and trying to get something feels awkward and disingenuous in any environment – reason #142 why I avoid Sales jobs. Then there’s always that irrational yet looming fear of rejection, never mind that everyone else is there to chat too. Naturally cutting off a conversation also seems rude. I feel slighted when it happens to me and mean when I do it to someone else. Why does it have to be like that?

The organizers made it easier to target people, marking job seeker nametags with red stickers and recruiter nametags with green. Colored dots on stickers are a lot easier to distinguish in bar lighting than scrawled names. I spent a good part of the evening trying to decipher names as people had conversations. Aside from a strip club, a networking event may be the only setting where it’s okay to openly concentrate on women’s chests.

I was in the mood to socialize about job-related things, and so was everyone else, it seemed. Desperation brings out the best in people. I met a couple of recruiters, who lamented the dearth of available marketing jobs, killing me a little more inside. I connected with interesting people, including one woman who runs another good unemployment blog called The Art of Out of Work. I tried to convince her to switch to WordPress as a blogging platform. She tried to convince me to attend Meet Ups for bloggers. We each wondered how to make a little money doing something enjoyable. But after working the room and nursing a Diet Coke for a few hours, I’d had enough. My voice and patience for crowds were waning fast. The night was productive, as far as networking goes. The next event will be a little harder to blow off, though my powers of procrastination and avoidance should never be underestimated.

Last week a letter arrived from the NY Department of Labor. Despite my advice to open anything from them immediately, that letter sat in a pile of unopened mail until Sunday night, when I finally got around to it. Really, my hand was starting to cramp up from playing Pathwords, and I was feeling a little guilty for slacking on my job search over Thanksgiving. Lucky for me I opened it when I did.

The NY Department of Labor was requesting (read “requiring”) that I attend career training. Failure to do so would lead to a loss of unemployment benefits. Though not an idle threat – they docked a friend of mine once – I had never before been summoned. So this morning at 9:00 a.m. I found myself in a desk, in a classroom, in a nondescript office building, in Flushing, Queens.

Let’s wind this back a little, so you can get the full effect. Because all you people who have jobs kind of wish you didn’t sometimes (don’t lie to me, I’ve been there too).

I was the only person on the platform for the outbound 7 train at around 8:30. The inbound platform filled up with commuters. It was kind of weird and depressing to be heading the other direction; the metaphor wasn’t lost on me either.

Downtown Flushing is like downtown Seoul, possibly with more hustle and bustle. But the block where the Department of Labor lives was empty of pedestrians. A few loading dock workers lingered about, and 50 or so people had lined up at the entrance. I flashed to those pictures of breadlines during The Great Depression, obviously an overreaction. But it turned out the Social Security Administration is right next door and everyone was going there.

Inside the Department of Labor office looks like government offices often do – fluorescent lights, drop ceilings, sterile floors, metal and plastic furniture. People waited in rows of chairs for their turn at the counter. Guards sat at foldout tables watching over things. Beyond the counter, cubicles abounded.

I was directed down the hall to room 2, where I filled out a simple form asking my employment preferences. I gave that to the service rep along with my resume and the longer form mailed to me previously and waited for the festivities to start.

As I sat there, slides in a loop projected job search tips on the front wall. The classroom filled up with other unemployed people. There was a wide range of ethnicities, this being New York City (and Queens, in particular). Ages seemed to range from recent high school graduate to senior citizen, class from working to middle. Some were on edge, like the single mother of three next to me recently laid off from a bank. Some were bored, like the young woman in the corner who slept through it all. On the whole, everyone seemed pretty average, pretty normal.

At 9:15, a service rep who looked like a humorless and younger Mel Brooks handed out a packet of job search materials. Pages in the packet – blurry, misaligned and stapled in the wrong corner – outlined the following:

• Job search websites
• Basic skills workshops (resume writing, intro to computers, how to look for a job)
• NYJobZone.org (career management website)
• Tips for re-entering the workforce
• Workforce 1 career center locations (a city government initiative, I suspect)

Then Mel turned off the lights and reviewed the materials using another Powerpoint projected on the front wall. He recommended that we visit NYCareerZone.com and pick up a copy of What Color Is Your Parachute? He also harped on WinWay Resume Deluxe as better than Word for creating a resume (really?… really?). The internet connection was really slow, which made the presentation drag. And the other service rep conducted individual conversations in his regular talking voice, making it difficult to hear.

By 9:50 – 35 minutes later – I was on my way back to the train, having preserved my unemployment benefits but learned nothing. The info was probably useful to some people there. And a young, black, female war veteran spoke highly of indeed.com and simplyhired.com, which I will give another chance at some point. Either one of those could lead to something, I suppose. And I did learn that NY’s Unemployment Office has 130 people to handle up to 160,000 calls per week (no wonder no one can get through).

The problem is that the seminar has to teach to the inexperienced on a basic level. And I just have too much experience looking for work – for better or worse. I don’t mean to suggest that I’m good at it; given my track record for layoffs, I should be better. I just do it a lot. I’d much rather just be working.