now i have even more people to hate

The interview last week went much as suspected. Interview on Thursday. Rejection letter on Friday. Though it wasn’t actually a letter, but rather an email…because rejection done electronically is so much faster. To top the week off, I got a note from my landlord on Saturday. It seems that my rent is going up by quite a few Abe Lincolns starting in August, which, coincidentally, is also the month that I’ll stop receiving unemployment.

And the newspaper is now even taunting me.

The Post-Gazette has started to run a weekly column summing up all the ‘movers and shakers’ that have recently been hired by the more prestigious companies in the city. Not only does the paper report those folks that have been hired into impressive sounding jobs…jobs which have names such as CEO, and Vice President of Marketing and Public Relations…but even crummy sounding jobs like Mortgage Consultant and Admissions Officer are posted.

And while I view this as the city’s way of rubbing my face in the fact that I don’t have a job, I think there’s something more to this column. Getting a job around here is much akin to winning the lottery. Your chances are slim, at best…unless you enjoy working retail for minimum wage, that is. So the fact that some people are actually being hired in Pittsburgh and given a salary that they can actually survive on without needing to scrounge around in McDonald’s dumpsters for dinner, is a major event. A human interest story and the newspaper’s way of assuring us, the unemployed population, that ‘there are jobs out there, and people are getting hired…just not you’, with an emphasis on the ‘not you’ part.

This morning while scanning through the ‘Newly Hired’ column, I saw before me a picture of some lady that was hired for a job I recently applied for. And I doubt that I’ll be getting a call for an interview now that this job was given to Tara Rush.

While I don’t know Miss Rush personally, I now hate her. I don’t like her stupid Liza Minelli looking hair-do. Or her giraffe-like neck, atop which sits a large pumpkin head. And I don’t like her smug, better-than-you attitude…which I couldn’t really tell from the picture but that I’m sure she has.

But I suspect that my hate for her has less to do with ‘HER’ and more to do with the fact that she has a job. MY job! Or, rather, a job which could have been mine if I had been offered it instead of Tara Rush.

And did I mention just how much I hate Miss Rush?