31st
On a morning spent at the unemployment office
Recently discovered, via cheeky summons in the mail, that Club 405 is neither exclusive (already suspected as much) nor free. Not that they make you pay money, mind you, they’re quite attuned to the fact that you don’t HAVE any money, hence the weekly $405, but instead they bleed you dry in terms of time and sanity. Said cheeky summons demanded in no uncertain terms that I report at 8:45 AM (sweet jesus is the sun even up that early?) to 75 Varick St. with a copy of my resume in hand for an Employment Assistance Workshop.
Up at 7am seething with vitriol, and down to the office I go. Things start badly, when I am sharply reprimanded for sitting on a low wall (apparently NOT a bench) in the lobby of the building while I wait with about 10-15 other cranky people. I start swearing and muttering under my breath. I bond with two women near by, when one of them sits down too. We seethe with indignation and pass the next 10 minutes comparing “what i could be doing right now” stories, which are all some variation of ‘working, looking for work, working out…’
Upstairs things start to go terribly wrong. After shutting our little group of maybe 35 govt-assisted unfortunates in a small room crowded with long tables and chairs we are held captive for over an hour as a woman plays a powerpoint presentation (‘I called it!’ I crow to my new best friends, the lobby ladies) and tells jokes about Bernie Madoff, AIG, and oddly Martha Stewart. Then again, her idea of topical humor was understandably off as she proudly proclaimed that she not only didn’t own a computer, but she didnt know how to use one, and didn’t believe in cordless phones. Or push-button phones. She owned a rotary phone, she’d have us know, and that was good enough for her. As the lobby ladies and I sat playing with our blackberrys and beloved iphones, we snickered meanly. ’What decade is she from?’ we asked eachother…’I hope i dont get in trouble’ I faux-whispered as I emailed and texted double fast just to prove a point.
Soon, everyone abandoned all pretense of listening to poor Rotary Phone, and just read their Wall St. Journals and NYTimes. One of the Lobby Ladies was studying for a real estate licensing exam. A woman at a neighboring table was reading Emily Bronte. I read the Economist ‘Drugs’ issue. (Summary: Legalize ‘em). Between laughs with the lobby ladies and our new friend Ex-financial-advisor-at-Goldman-Sachs, I was lulled into a false sense of security. I sulked subversively and fiddled with my darling iphone and my Economist. We shared tips about which job websites were the best, and why LinkedIn was more professional but less fun than Facebook. People’s names were called occasionally from the doorway and they disappeared. Permanently. After this happened a few times I started to get nervous again. Real Estate Lobby Lady soothed me saying, what, is the Govt going to open an art gallery and give you a job? No, they’re just calling people they think they can place in Govt jobs…..
“Ms Bronson?” I hear. I turn bright red from a combination of shyness, fear, and rage. I turn to face my fate. My fate is a very short extremely elderly woman with frizzy grey hair, a baggy tweed suit, a floppy red hat with a large brim and SUNGLASSES. Sunglasses. Indoors. at 10am. I mutely follow her, too alarmed by her appearance and the sudden disruption of my new social club with the Lobby Ladies and Goldman Sachs to introduce myself or say anything. She points me to a chair in her cubicle and I sit, still mute. Sunglasses remains standing, which doesn’t matter much because of the short. We argue about my previous employment for a while. She wishes that i was an “Archivist” at The Met- her favorite museum- and that the job title of “Archivist” meant someone who dealt with ancient manuscripts or first editions of famous books. She is quite stern with me when I describe my accustomed contemporary art world environs, effete and chic, with limitless connections and confusing ‘living artists’ with whom I “liaison.”
As I talk, I watch my friends, the Lobby Ladies and Goldman Sachs, filing out the main door. They’ve been released from Rotary Phone’s crowded conference room. Goldman Sachs spots me trapped in the corner of Sunglasses’ cube like a cornered animal and mouths ‘good luck.’ I smile wanly.
Just as I have resigned myself to a full day with Sunglasses’ disapproval of most aspects of my being - the type on my resume is ‘too small’ and ‘hard to read if you wear glasses’ and I really ought to consider secretarial work, which is an ‘honest living,’ and I should go by my full name “Eleanor,” (jesus god, if she says Eleanor Rigby I’ll throw my resume at her head i really will) I am released. Perhaps she senses her words are falling on deaf ears, perhaps it was the spectre of her own imminent demise hovering in the cubicle with us, I’ll never know. She pumps my hand, says nice to meet such a ‘determined’ young woman. Without pondering or caring whether that is yet another dig, I flee. Outside I call and vent a torrent of obscenities to my long-suffering parents (who else in my life would listen to such complaints) and head home to my beloved east village with its comforting squalor and the lull of my new no-job routine of NPR and lunch…OK… All My Children and emails.
