10 Jack App

Despite a work interest level so low it's negative, I'm minding my own business in Starbucks in Joshua Tree, when my fingers go on automatic pilot and bring up DICE.com. I blame Microsoft for their shortcuts.

Wham!

Suddenly, as if the gods orchestrated it, the screen in front of me is filled with a fulltime position available for Jack Henry in San Diego.

San Diego? California? Sun-drenched paradise on the coast? Closest thing the mainland has to Hawaii? Good god. I’ll be there in a couple of weeks anyway. Is this coincidence – or something spooky connected to omens and the like?

No matter how tempting, anything connected with a return to work should not be rushed, so I sit back with another Americano, this time laced with an extra triple shot.

Hmm, let’s see… skillset requirements:

PL/I – check.

COBOL – check.

DB2 – check.

Desire to transition to Visual Basic and learn SQL server database design over the next few years – check, check, check oh yes indeedy, check, check.

Desire to learn? Training? Wow, oh fucking wow!

It says ‘fulltime’. Although technically meaning 40 hours per week and therefore applying equally to permanent, salaried, or any form of contract position, it’s qualified with ‘permanent’.

Permanent doesn’t have to mean forever. It’s all a matter of perspective. After thirty years of contracting, a few years of permanence with training could seem like a holiday. What’s the worst that could happen?

So I decide to apply.

I’m at edge of the client’s site, redirected automatically by DICE, but going any further requires a Jack Henry membership with User ID and password. This is increasingly common in everything, not just job applications. How many people get discouraged at this point?

Happily, the site has no issue with my chosen membership details. I’m required to agree that I’ve seen their policy of non-bias and equal opportunity, then come some ‘pre-registration’ questions. Where do I live? (ha ha ha). Will I relocate?

The first stumbling block is education, which has to be selected from a drop-down list. None of the entries apply to someone coming from England – or anywhere else – and there’s no space to enter anything different. Despite the pretext of equal opportunity, it’s evidently necessary to have an American education – or at least pretend to.

I give myself High School Graduate which is, of course, a blatant lie but it’s slightly better than K-Force in Seattle, who believe I have degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge universities.

The system now requires a complete work history. Even the prospect of training isn’t enough to make me sit here all day and manually enter thirty years of contracts, but an allowable alternative is to upload a resume and let the system generate one. Ah hah!

So I do – with the results you might expect. It calculates that I have a total of nine years’ experience beginning in 2004. The period from 1975 has been expunged and about half of the positions shown began on the ever-so-familiar January 1st 1900 and never ended. Don’t you just love computers? Technology is so wonderful.

A checkbox appears for indicating the correctness of what it's generated, but the list is uneditable. Continuing without confirming its correctness does not work, so I am again forced to lie.

Now there's what seems to be a pointless question: What salary do I require. Doesn’t a job come with a specific range, dependent upon relevant experience? I could say anything, but that would be silly. Anyway, it’s a drop-down list of ranges, so I pick the highest. This is like bartering for a gourd in some Middle East street market.

There has as yet been nowhere to enter my age or date of birth, so that generated section, with its significantly truncated  length of experience, seems to have lopped three decades off my life. I am renewed. I don’t mind, of course, but the gray hair might come as a shock should this ever get to an interview.

I’m waiting for the ability to enter some explanation of my real-life experience or supply a cover letter but it never comes.

The final screen is a warning message indicating that – due to high volume of applications – the company will not contact applicants.

It is up to individuals to log on to check their application status – but the web address is not given. Since I was re-directed here, I have no idea of what it is.

Wonderful.

Well, that was thirty-two minutes of life I’ll not get back.

09 Toe

My left big toe hurts.

Actually, it’s not the toe – it’s the knuckle that joins the big toe to the foot. There’s no sign of injury – no bruise, no swelling – nothing.

It feels like I got run over by a truck that I now don’t remember. When I touch it, the sensation is like a needle being pushed through my eyeball – in the foot.

I keep taking the sock off and squeezing it to see if it’s magically gone away. People in restaurants probably think I’m strange. It’s like having a loose tooth when you’re a kid and you feel all the way around it with your tongue, poking to see if the hurt has gone. Then the tooth falls out.

I hope that doesn’t happen to my toe. How could I count past nineteen?

This is supposed to be a hiking vacation. Hobbling and using the left heel for stability is all I can do. How can I hike on one foot? I’m a mess; a wreck. Self-pity is easy this week.

Sympathy would be nice. So would knowledge – what is it?

If it was broken, it would be black.

If it was dislocated, it wouldn’t move at all.

So WTF?

Do I have gout?

Is my body rejecting me?

Am I the first victim of an alien task force of nano-beings that take over civilizations by invading their extremities?

I hope it’s the last one. That or something innocuous that will cure itself after a few days of inactivity, then I wouldn’t have to face the horrors of the American medical system again.

Two years ago I had a knee issue – ironically, also in Palm Springs. The immense difficulty acquiring attention for what was a minor issue, followed by a billing and insurance fiasco lasting more than a year, left me in doubt about whether even I’d survive a serious problem.

After two x-ray sessions, an MRI and four ‘extended’ specialist visits, I cured it myself with ice and Ibuprofen. That’s what I’m self-prescribing this time.

I don’t think my toe will kill me.

But let’s wait and see….

08 Coastal Betrayal

The Townhouse Motel experience made me feel like I'd just had a clumsy enema. Driving the coast wasn’t the same afterwards. Is this how prison newbies feel after their first male bonding experience?

I didn’t stop much. How many pictures of crashing waves can you take? Towns blended into a continuous memory, each with a biker bar, two gas stations and the obligatory McDonalds.

Stops for gas and restrooms became something to look forward to. San Francisco beckoned.

But then the sky turned to the color of cardboard and stayed that way. Was Seattle chasing me? By the time the odor of dead skunk started to smell good, something had to be done.

Over a few brews in another anonymous bar with good burgers and customers sporting creative facial hair, the decision made itself. San Francisco could wait – it was time to head for the desert. There’s been too much driving, sitting, eating and drinking. My boots were made for walking.

Abandoning the ocean at Navarro River next day felt like betrayal.

Compared to the glacial speed of Rt 1, traffic on Rt 128 flew. Scenery soon changed to fall colors and then vineyards – and blue sky.

Lunch in St Helena was a shot in the arm. Why did I stay so long hugging the coast? Betrayal, as an emotion, is overrated.

A day later, after an interesting Mexican meal where the waitress didn’t speak English and a surprising night in a Motel 6 that could easily pass for a Sheraton, I reached the Coachella Valley.

It was slightly after sunrise and the turbines standing on red-gold mountains spun their arms in welcome.

Time from leaving work to reaching Palm Springs: twelve days. Time from check-in to first steps on a hiking trail: 43 minutes.

These boots were made for walking…