A Question Unanswered

Some people are not supportive of the lifestyles of the broke and unemployed. Waking up to my friend sending me a link to listen to the song “Get a Job” is not ideal, especially after waking up to my father chewing in my ear as a means of retaliation from the last post. To all my friends and acquaintances that choose to associate themselves with me, please note: I do not yet have a job, I do not liked to be asked about it, and no the job search is NOT going well.

I had lunch with a friend of mine who graduated from Maryland the year before me and she is very supportive of my sedentary lifestyle. We lived together for a year so she is quite understanding of how I choose to live and knows that food is the way to get me out of my house. We chose Chipotle because for some reason it has that sort of sense of nostalgia to college life; it could be because there was one month where we basically ate there every day. Every time I see this friend she tells me that she understands how difficult it is and reminds me that it took her a year before she was able to move to Washington. A year living where I do seems more like an eternity and I refuse to believe that it will take me this long. She then, like most people I see these days, asked me how the job search is going. I guess she could see the look in my eye when she asked me this because she quickly apologized and said “I know its not going well because if it was you would have a job.” This is not a friend who will lie to spare your feelings, she recently told another friend that she didn’t like her new highlights, they were not new and they were not fake. In any case, I respect her for her honesty and enjoy spending time with her because of the sheer nonsense that comes out of her mouth.

The rest of our conversation turned from jobs to just catching up, but once I left I got to thinking about this one question “how is the job search going?” On a daily basis I am probably asked this question about 10 times, whether it’s by a friend, one of my parents, a sibling, it comes up more than I would like. My dad will come into the office where I am diligently working to make moves in my life and stare at me for about five minutes before asking “any leads today?” I understand someone who I never speak to asking me if I have a job, but the people I speak to everyday do not have an excuse. Don’t you think if someone handed me a job I would at least tell the people that are closest to me, let alone my own father? To the people that graduated before me, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize from the bottom of my heart if I ever asked you this thoughtless and utterly inappropriate question. I can now relate to the rage you feel inside when you know someone is about to ask you that question and you just want to stop them mid sentence so that you don’t have to respond with “it’s not going well, thanks for asking!”

Being unemployed is not the easiest lifestyle in the world. At least if I had a job there would be a wider range of annoying questions that people would ask me on a daily basis. I know some people may be thinking that I have it pretty good if all I am worried about is someone asking me a simple question, but this is not the case. I am not the world’s most tolerant person and if you are going to ask me something that you can answer yourself, don’t bother. It’s like the phrase “if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say it;” “if you have nothing useful to say, don’t say it.”