Rant #2,455: Shake Me, Wake Me (When It's Over)

The key to surviving what I am going through now is to not veer too far off of routine as I go through the process of looking for a new job.

About the only thing different that I am doing is getting up a bit later--I got up today at 6 a.m. rather than at 4 a.m. as I had been doing--but otherwise, it is best to keep the status quo as I go through this latest journey.

Today, as I have been doing for decades, prior to when I get showered and dressed, I will shave, because I have been shaving on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday for as long as I can remember, probably since late high school and college.

And yes, after I eat breakfast, I write this column, and after writing it and putting it up on Facebook, I go right into my email, and see what jobs are available that I might like to send out resumes to.

I still don't trust the job listings sites, but let me tell you what happened yesterday when I went on the Indeed site, just one of the many sites that I use to search for jobs.

Lo and behold, once again I viewed by old place of work's bogus listing posted, and I got furious.

I went to Indeed's Facebook site, and I saw that they still had not answered me, so I wrote to them that the listing was still up, still running, deceiving people into sending out their resumes to a company that is out of business.

Finally, they replied:

"Hi Larry, thanks for contacting us here! To clarify, job postings on Indeed are uploaded directly by the employer and we always encourage them to close their jobs when they have made a hire. If a job appears on Indeed this means the employer has actively posted the job themselves and should mean that they are hiring for the position. That being said, while we encourage employers to keep applicants updated on their individual hiring processes, we are unable to guarantee that all employers will respond to your applications on Indeed. Unfortunately, we cannot communicate with all employers regarding every job that they post.

"We have passed the job along to our internal team to investigate. We'll let you know here once we receive an update."

Well, that is all fine and good, but it kind of sashays around the problem, doesn't it? Again my former work claimed that they never put the job posing up, that Indeed and other search engines put up such posts in order to generate business.

And by the way, in my post to them, I threatened to alert my local legislators about what I see as a major breach of truth perpetrated by these sites.

Well, a few hours later, that promise to them seemed to have worked.

Here was their next reply to me:

"Hi Larry, just to follow up with you here, we have received an update from our internal team and they removed the jobs from Indeed."

Well, that still leave me nowhere, but at least it gives me some type of personal satisfaction that I have exposed them for their double talk,

Did my old place of work lie to me about placing this ad months ago, or did Indeed lie about how they gather job listings?

I still don't know the answer.

Anyway, yesterday I spent scouring the job listings, finding several jobs that I applied to, and the biggest thing I did yesterday was finally to apply for unemployment.

This, itself, has been made a more complicated process by the fact that one must do this either online or over the phone. In New York State, you cannot just visit the Unemployment Office and do this. In fact, my old local Unemployment Office is now a Social Security office.

Anyway, I was finally able to fill out the form, and I am now officially registered to collect unemployment in New York State.

One problem is that I have to check in with them on next Wednesday to actually kick this in and get this going, so I probably am not going to receive a check for a few weeks ... and yes, the money I will be getting from the state, the money I have been paying into for years, is fully taxable, so when we do our taxes, those monies will have to be taken out.

I also discovered that there is a job fair being held next Monday not very far from me--ironically, it is being held right across the street from where I worked in the early 1980s--so I will be going to that next Monday. I don't think that job fairs are all on the up and up either--I think a lot of firms go there to see what exactly is out there--and it is a bit of a cattle call, but I will go anyway and hope for the best.

After I write this entry, I will search the job listings, will send in my resume to a couple of potential employers, and then, I will try to contact the New York State Education Department and see if it even pays for me to try to re-up my teaching license, something I haven't used in more than 30 years.

Subbing is a possibility, but it might not be a reality for me if it takes too much to get certified again. Hopefully, since I had my teaching license from about 1983 to 1993, I won't have to take any further tests, but if I do, then it simply might not pay to do. But we will see.

Other than that< i am officially a free agent, and I will play each day as it comes to me.
There is really nothing else that I can do right now, and I have to hope for the best.