It Matters Who You Know

It really does. On Wednesday, we had our daily jobless persons' meeting. While we were meeting, a group came in from running and among them was Mike Gause, a 6 foot, 5 inch tall hulk of a black man who formerly played basketball on the Ohio State team. Mike, since he set foot in the city, and for obvious reasons, has been inundated with job offers at every turn. He also had a ton of leads, so Captain Zag (our nickname for David ZagRodny, our job coach) suggested that Mike take a group of us around the city and help us find jobs. Mike, being the outstanding and nice guy that he is, agreed to be our Coach for the day.

There were rumors that stores at O'Hare Airport were hiring for the summer, so we took the train all the way out there. The trip took about an hour, even running express for a few stops, which really put a damper on my enthusiasm for the jobs, if there were any. When we got there, we realized we couldn't get into the concourse to check out the actual shops. A security guard directed us to an employment office, which took us about 15 minutes to find. And when we found it, it was closed and we found out we had to apply online. So O'Hare was pretty much a bust, which was a bummer.

Mike and I, along with two other guys, headed back into the city and got off near Michigan Avenue. There's a brand-new Chik-fil-a down off Chicago Ave and the city is really taking to the restaurant. We stopped by to get some food since the other three guys had never had Chik-fil-a. The line was out the door and around the corner to give you an idea of how many people there were. It was nuts, but the service was surprisingly quick.

After we ate, we hit up the adidas store and Best Buy. adidas said they were hiring, but that it would take about two weeks for them to get back to us. By that time, there would only be 5 weeks left in the trip. Best Buy also said they were hiring and needed part-time workers. I got the manager's business card and was told to fill out an app and then follow up in a couple days.

I actually followed up today and got to talk to the hiring manager, Kay. She told me it would take about 3 days for the application to enter the system (I filled mine out Wednesday) and then a couple days for them to call me. I got to talk briefly about what positions I applied for, which I fit best, and why she should hire me. It was really encouraging to finally get talk time with a manager. Hopefully, she'll see that I'll be a hard worker and hiring me for 7 weeks will be worth it. Otherwise, I may just have to get a job in fast-food.

The thought of that makes me cringe.