Who's the Boss?

You know, it's really not fair. I mean, Hollywood has lied to me about a lot things. Relationships, city life, college, the list goes on and on. But one of it's biggest fibs, I'd have to say, always involves the job search.

I mean, the Hollywood heroine always gets the dream job, and it always falls right in her lap. She meets someone on an elevator, and next thing you know, dream job, cute boyfriend, great apartment, life is perfect. She storms out of her crappy old job, and suddenly people are beating down her door because they respect her so much (yeah, right. Has anyone ever seen this happen? If I could think of one instance where it worked in real life, I'd have bitch-slapped my current job to the curb months ago.) Even when Hollywood purports to show the difficulty of job hunting (The Pursuit of Happyness, I'm looking at you), massive obstacles are overcome and everyone is employed and financially secure by the end of the 108 minute run time.

What Hollywood never showed me was the people who would never call back, never even acknowledge my resume. Okay, fine, I can live with that. Even worse are the people who phone interview you, and then you never hear from them again. But what really, really gets my goat are the people who drag you through hoop after hoop, make you take tests, provide writing samples, fly down to Washington DC for a personal interview that winds up being this awkward meeting in a coffee shop during which you discuss nothing of substance and nothing relating to your actual ability to do the job, but where you can tell the interviewer is evaluating based entirely on whether or not she thinks you'd fit in if she invited you to a Christmas party with all of her sorority sisters (hint: I would NOT.) Then, after all that, you still kind of want the job even though it's clear the boss is a wackjob, but the work itself would be really interesting and look great on a resume, but the manager proceeds to tell you at the end of the interview that she is then leaving the country for 3 weeks and will "try to be in touch, but can't make any promises" so you spend the next month emailing her just to try to figure out where things stand, and she takes her sweet time getting back to you, puts you off for another week, and finally emails you back to say that she just can't offer you the job because she "needs someone with more experience creating systems in an international context." and you're like "The what with the what, now? A) Why didn't you actually ask me about that sort of experience in my interview, you twit. How do you even know that I don't have it? B) You will not find any more experience than I have at the salary you are offering, you twit and C) You are a twit. That is all."

Banging my head against a wall. There's no way I can stay in the position I'm in now for another year. Something's got to open up soon, or it's back to the midwest with me... and if that happens, I'm not sure I'll ever make it out again.