Day 3: Hitting the Pavement
That’s right, friends. I got out of the apartment today and pounded the pavement like a Mormon who was taking a half-day, or who had a lunch date, or something. That is to say, I went in a couple of places I’m interested in working and dropped off resumes. Let’s see if this saying no to a face theory really holds water. I mean, I at least know for certain that these people have looked at my resume. I saw them do it. I even saw one lady put it in a mailbox for one of the executives that work there. These have to be good things. Unfortunately both places I went, the people I really needed to talk to were out, but I thinking getting out there was the most important part of the day. It was a timid foray into the unknown, a bashful introduction into the hard, cold world of pavement pounding, but it wasn’t too bad. Much less intimidating than I thought.
The cool thing about actually getting out and going places is that you feel way more productive than you do just e-mailing resumes around. I actually feel like I did something today, which is not a common feeling you have as an unemployed person. Unless you feel like you accomplished something very mundane, like organized your rubber stamp collection, or color-coded your closet. (No, I’ve never done those things, but they were the most mundane things that I could think of, so chill out).
The other thing that is great about getting out in the real world is that you have real world interactions with people, and people are weird. For instance, one of the places I went today was a huge law firm in downtown Memphis. As I got on the elevator to go up the thirty some-odd stories to the firm’s offices, a whimsical middle-aged balding man who happened to be going to the same floor joined me on the elevator. We greeted each other as he got on and then began our long vertical trek together. Now, after about 5 or 6 floors had passed no further conversation had been conceived between us, and I thought it was safe to assume that we would weather this journey together silently. I was totally fine with this. I’m not a huge elevator conversation guy. I mean who has time to get to know someone on an elevator? If I can get to know you in the thirty seconds it takes to get to where we’re going, chances are I don’t want to get to know you. I don’t say this to be mean; I’d just rather sit down and have a cup of coffee with someone, alright? Alright. In any case, as we near the halfway point in our expedition, the whimsical bald man starts talking to me. But it’s not that he just starts talking to me. He starts talking to me like we’ve been talking the entire time we’re on the elevator.
He looks over at me with his gleeful little eyes and says, “You know, I like to read philosophy sometimes because it intimidates people.” This is verbatim. Honestly, who starts a conversation this way? Though I was thrown off, I answered immediately, “Oh, really?” Because whatever was going to come out of my little elevator hobbit next had to be interesting. “Yes,” he answered, “In fact, I was just reading Jean-Paul Sartre’s indictment of Freud and it’s very good.” Then several things happened quickly: The elevator doors opened. He stepped out first. And then, he disappeared in a flash around the corner without another word. In case you missed that, let me recap what happened quickly. I was on an elevator with a man who didn’t speak for half of the ride, and then we he did speak to me, he immediately brought up Jean-Paul Sartre and Sigmund Freud. And then as soon as he appeared, he was gone. Who does that? But far from being annoyed by this guy, I’m actually a big fan of his. Every time I think about what happened I can’t help but smile. I mean how often does that happen? This guy must be the elevator king of the building. I can only wish that we had a couple more floors to talk about Sartre and Freud, who knows what revelations would have been made.
Even if all this pavement pounding isn’t what ends up getting me a job, at least it’s better than sitting around the apartment with my roommates and commenting on the same Facebook album. That gets old. Maybe instead I’ll start reading more philosophy, so I’ll have something to talk about on elevators.
(P.S. if you want a more in-depth study of elevator exploits check out This Guy Being Clever)
No comments:
Post a Comment