Transplanted Life
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
 
Looking for work
I hate it. I remember that I used to have friends who were constantly looking for work even while they were gainfully employed, always looking for a better opportunity, especially when we were fresh out of college. They said it was like with sharks, where you've got to be swimming forward constantly or die. They weren't interviewing constantly, but there was always a chance for one. Me, I'm more likely to wait until any severance pay I've got is half-used up before doing much more than updating my resumé.

Not this time, though. Heck, right now, I'm just trying to reconstruct a resumé. Alexei, in what I presume was an effort to keep me from finding out too much about Michelle's past, deleted it from Michelle's home PC, and off the network at BioSoft. I've been trying to get HR to cough up a paper copy, but they're busy working on severence packages and the like. Digging up my resumé is a low priority, but they say they'll do it by the end of the week.

I really don't want to use Michelle's resumé, but I can't exactly use mine. Can you imagine what happens if someone tries to call one of my references or previous employers? Disaster. And it ticks me off; I could accept being a receptionist when I thought snooping around BioSoft might be useful, but now I'm just thinking about the four years of college and six years of work after that which are basically going to waste now.

And Carter... I basically told him that I wasn't likely to find a job that paid as well as what I had at BioSoft on short notice, so I'd really appreciate it if he started looking so that we could make June's rent. But what's Samantha got? She worked for cash selling T-shirts on the Common last summer/fall, but Carter doesn't know who she worked for. She probably had some sort of summer or after-school job, but has no documentation. Calling the Haskinses is evidently out of the question. Sure, it would sound odd asking what "your" employment history was, but it would really help in terms of filling out a job application.

But Carter doesn't want anything to do with Samantha's family. I get it, he doesn't want to feel like he's deceiving them by acting differently than their daughter, while at the same time he doesn't want to hurt them by telling them what really happened to Sam. So what'll probably happen is that I'll call them.

That's not the real problem, though. The real problem is, obviously, that this means admitting that he's not in control of his future. Carter's resumé is better than mine, what with that military service and other experience, but he can't touch it. He's basically looking at retail, and he worked way too hard to be reduced to that. Plus, if he goes out and gets a job that Carter wouldn't have given a second thought but which is what Sam would have had to settle for, it means it's permanent. He knows it is intellectually, but this is having an everyday life as Samantha. And he's seen what having an everyday life as Michelle has done for me. He's probably already envisioning nametags, and a co-worker flirting with him, and just having to be Sam eight hours a day. Right now, he can be Carter around me and Maggie, and that's really all he has contact with. Not so once you're out working.

But we're going to need the money, and when I told him he needed to find work, it sort of hit him that he'd been living off me for the past month. I don't mind at all, but I think he feels guilty, and he knows that wasn't going to last forever.

-Marti
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Note: This blog is a work of fantasy; all characters are either ficticious or used ficticiously. The author may be contacted at JaySeaver@comcast.net