Rant #2,489: Ruthless People

As the president was being impeached by the House--a move that is sure to be blocked by the Senate--I was being upended by people who know no pity, who are vicious, and who evidently have no moral backbone and are cowards to the core.

While making the long drive home from seeing my wife and my father in law at the Veterans Home in Stony Brook, Long Island, my wife and I were about two-thirds of the way home in the afternoon when the music from the radio was interrupted by a text message from my phone. I have the phone connected to the car, so I often get these things while I am driving, and I got a big one yesterday ... or so I thought initially it might be one.

"Hi Lawrence. Our Director would like to sit down with you for a one on one interview. Please text back the time that suits you the best ... ."

Yes, I did edit what was said, because the text was a bit longer.

Upon hearing the message over the ca radio, we both initially got excited, maybe for five seconds. I mean, in nearly three months out of work I have gotten exactly one phone interview, and that is it, so any semblance of movement in that regard is a rare treat, so to speak.

But then reality quickly came to me, and I said to my wife, "Let me check this out when we get home."

That is exactly what I did, and as I posted on Facebook yesterday, sometimes things that seem to be so good are, in reality, too good to be true:

"Well, I almost got involved in a job scam, but they picked the wrong person.

I was suspicious right away because the messages I received--both email and text--were too eager to speak to me.

And another key was that in the messages, the job they contacted me for was NEVER MENTIONED. I scanned through all of the companies I have sent resumes to, and this company was not one of them.

The next clue was that the email asked me to pick a time to speak with them face to face, but the times were today--and there was no way i could make the times, since some of the open spots had passed by the time the message was sent to me.

Doing some additional research, the firm might be nothing more than a placement agency looking for clients. Heaven knows where they got my resume from.

And finally, I called the phone number, and the phone just rang and rang without any response.

When I say it is like the Wild West on the job market, I am clearly speaking the truth. There are so many scams and semi-scams out there that one really has to be careful.

The bottom line is this: even if you absolutely despise your job, be happy that you have it, because no one wants to deal with today's job market like I am currently doing.

My.resume is out there, all over the place, and heaven knows who has my information.

I think this episode is the perfect example of this situation that nobody needs to get involved with."

Yes, it was nothing but a scam, preying on myself and I don't know how many others in my position who are desperate for some good news, but all that we being fed during the holiday season is a lump- of coal.

Funny, yesterday was a pretty good day on the job front, as I actually found five jobs to send out my resume to, jobs that I would love to do, including two or three right on Long Island in the vicinity of where I live.

But this incident put a real damper on the whole thing, and brought me back to reality; I am no closer to finding a new job than I was five years ago when I started this quest, including since October 10, nearly three months ago, the day I lost my job of 23 and a half years.

I also wonder how many people actually fell for this scam, and are looking forward to something big today, only to find out that they were snookered later on. They carved out a piece of their day to devote to this, got all dressed up, maybe came from great distances to have a "one on one interview"--notice, no hyphenation, another giveaway that this is a scam--and later find out that this was a long run to absolutely nothing.

During the past five years, I have fallen for one or two of these scams, and I have probably fallen for countless others, because as I have explained previously, many of these job posts are fraudulent to begin with. They were either put up by legitimate companies to see what talent was out there--with no job actually open to fill--or they were unscrupulously placed by the job site, without the knowledge of the company involved, to try to drum up job postings from the company on that particular job site.

Who knows how many of these types of job "vacancies" I have replied to, but all that I know is that this situation simply made a good day into at the very least a questionable one for me.

I know it is difficult for others to understand this, but when you think you get a glimmer of light, and all you get is another walk into a brick wall, it does kind of play on your senses, whether I smelled a rat or not.

And to those perpetrating these scams, I hope they have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year, because if they do things like this to unsuspecting people, they have no heart and no feelings anyway, and I guess their ignorance is bliss.

Me, I will just continue to move on from this, and do what I feel I have to do to come to my own rightful conclusion to this nightmare that I am experiencing right at the moment.