Day 180 - Recruitment Story

Recruitment Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Julia was at the convention center attending a job expo. She had spent the day shaking hands and collecting business cards. Julia had no idea what she was looking for. She had an undergraduate degree in communications, but always told herself that was just a first step towards grad school. Early on in college she had considered getting an MBA. A year later it was pre-law. A year after that she had looked into nursing schools. It seemed as if everyone in the know was saying the job market was in terrible shape and most of the best careers for the future were in medicine and technology. She had no interest in medicine, and lacked the skill-set for technology, but her student loans were mounting, so she was just about ready to try anything. She changed majors too many times in college and tried to study too many minors and had ended up spending six years in college to get one questionable degree. She fully intended to continue studying something, even if she didn’t know what yet. The pressure to get a job was mounting though, so for now she was out hunting. She had been to a lot of job expos. She had printed a lot of business cards and resumes and handed a lot of them out. But she was young and lacked experience and she had received very few phone calls in return.

While Julia ate her lunch, she flipped through business cards and brochures and flyers. She separated everything into piles—piles to research, piles to keep, piles to throw out. There were ads for graduate schools, online programs, and software seminars. She threw most of those out. While some sounded interesting, she was in no mood to accrue more debt. Internships and summer jobs were set aside to research later. Business cards were stacked neatly, to be followed up upon over the next several days.

Then she came across a series of business cards that made no sense. They listed no names of people or places, had no contact information, and were most certainly not advertising anything. They all had strange and silly slogans printed on one side, with phrases like “Give in, Give Up, Bottoms Up!” and “Tired from your work day? Go outside and play.” or “Forget working overtime… go start a conga line.” and “Don’t get a job... Join the mob.” She didn’t remember seeing the cards before or who had been passing them out, but she must have passed the person or table several times because she had a dozen cards like that.

Julia wondered who would be handing out cards like that at a job fair. Maybe it was a prank, she thought. Maybe an art or design student was having some fun. Or maybe it was someone’s idea of a revolution. They were all fairly innocent slogans basically telling the reader to enjoy their life more. Some of them made more sense than others. Some of them had poor excuses for rhymes. Some were funny; most weren’t.

After lunch Julia searched the floor of the convention center, trying desperately to find the person that had been handing out these cards. But she had no such luck. Maybe they left. Maybe they had been asked to leave. It made her sad that she missed the person. They seemed so much more interesting than anyone else she had actually met at the expo. She might have believed she imagined it all, except she had the cards to prove it was real.

Julia left the expo early. The job fair was ruined. She couldn’t get the card-maker out of her mind. Her spirit had been reawakened and she couldn’t stand to waste the day searching for a job she didn’t want. Besides, it was a bright and sunny day. That was so much more fun than being cooped up inside all day.

A day later she couldn’t find any of the handouts from the expo. She must have left them all on a table at the convention center. She told herself the cards had been real, but perhaps she really had made the whole thing up. She had no evidence to prove it either way. She decided she would have to print cards of her own and pass the message along to someone else. Perhaps she could save someone from a dead-end job, and if she could save just one other person, then it would all be worth it.