Remember my two theoretical options from Thursday�s ramble on what I should do about getting a job?

1. Find a job, any job, to help with the money situation.

Or

2. Hold out for a job, any job, that's even vaguely connected with graphic arts.

Well, Friday morning my temp service called me to tell me they had a temp job lined up for me to start on Monday, a receptionist/admin position about 20 minutes from here. She mentioned that there was a possibility it could go permanent, but no guarantee. They are looking for someone to hire permanently for the position, though, so if they like me there�s a good chance they�ll want me to stay. I was pretty pleased that they were able to find me something with potential so quickly.

After she told me the name of the company, I looked them up online and lo and behold, it�s a graphic arts supply business. How cool is that? I mean, while I�m pretty sure they don�t do any actual design or printing at this company, they might just be interested in hiring someone with half of a graphic arts degree, perhaps even with a chance to move up to a better position at some point. But even if there�s no real room to grow in that company, their customers are real live graphic arts people who might just, at some point, be interested in giving �that nice receptionist from over at Graphic Arts Supply company� a job.

I am extremely pleased with this development, however, all this potential is contingent upon their liking me enough to actually hire me. I�ve got lots of good skills, so unless they want something really unusual I�m pretty sure they�ll be pleased with what I can do and the conscientious way I do it. There is an area I am less confident about though.. my appearance.

I once had an experience where I was up for a receptionist job with a small but somewhat swanky company. My first interview was with the assistant to the president. I was very qualified for the position, and the interviewer and I hit it off well. I was elated when they called me in for a second interview, this time with the company president. I got myself all duded up in a dressy-professional outfit and heels, and I was feeling pretty confident when I walked into the president�s office... right up until the moment the guy looked up from his desk and I could literally see his face fall as he looked me up and down. He recovered himself enough to be able to give me a perfunctory interview, but I could tell he wasn�t a bit interested. At one point he said patronizingly, �Well, if you don�t get called back, you should at least be proud to have made it to the second interview!� �If� I don�t get called back... yeah, like I was real optimistic at that point.

Now, I know that he was a shallow prick, and not everyone is like that, and fat women get decent jobs every day. But I have to say that little incident really did a number on my self-confidence, which wasn�t very high in that particular area to start with. It�s made me a lot more nervous about job hunting than I even used to be, and that�s saying something right there. I�ve been wanting to overhaul my personal style (or more properly, my lack thereof) for a long time, and this seems like a good time to get started. Ok, financially it�s not a particularly spectacular time, but I�m determined to look at it as an investment in my future career. I�ve gotten myself all enthused up about this upcoming job, and I�m determined to impress them so much they won�t even bother interviewing anyone else for the position. So to that end, I�ve been out shopping for a few nice basic work outfits over the past couple of days.

Yesterday I went to the �rich mall� in search of a jacket. I rarely ever go to this particular mall, because apparently inside of this poor fat woman there is trapped a rich thin one, and she's pretty fucking bitter about it. But actually, it is a pretty cool mall... and literally, if it happens to be wintertime. The shops are not indoors under one roof like in most malls. You walk around outside in kind of maze of open hallways and go in and out of the shops. The place is huge. Most of the stores are upscale and expensive... Nordstroms, Bloomingdales, Pottery Barn, Sharper Image, Crate and Barrell, Coach, and dozens of other boutiques and designer shops. And Sears. (Who knows... maybe so the guys will have somewhere to hang out.)

It�s actually a pretty fun place to browse, they have a lot of extremely cute shit that I can neither afford nor fit my big fat ass into, but it�s cool as long as I let myself imagine that maybe someday I�ll be rich and skinny enough to actually buy things there, at least once in a while anyway. I mean, my god, the clothes really ARE nicer at Nordstrom�s than at JCPenney�s, and there�s way more of them to boot. And oh, THAT�s where you go to get all the $450 shoes I keep seeing in Lucky magazine!

The fact that I actually was shopping to buy stuff yesterday made the trip much more fun that it would have been otherwise. The whole reason I went is because they have a shop that carries petite plus sizes. I have a horrible time finding jackets to fit my stupid goofy height-weight disproportionate body. Manufacturers of plus-sized clothing seem to assume that every woman who wears a size twenty must also be at least 5� 10� tall, therefore when a short pudgy broad like me puts on a size twenty jacket, the shoulder seams hang halfway to the elbow, and the sleeves reach the ends of my fingers, giving me the strange appearance of an aged, tired-looking little girl playing dress up in her mother�s work clothes. Not exactly a great look for getting taken seriously at work.

Surprisingly I did find a nice, business-casual black jacket for much less than I expected, so I headed off to check out the Lane Bryant I never even knew was there until yesterday. The place turned out to be twice as big as the one I usually go to! So I tried on clothes all afternoon it seemed like, and kind of enjoyed all the personal attention the salespeople lavish on. It�s pretty nice to hand off your armload of shit to some smiling lady who hangs it all nice and neat in the dressing room for you. (All the stores at the rich mall give service like that... Nordstroms actually arranged my selections in kind of a display!) You just don�t get that at the mall I usually frequent, which I will from now on be referring to as the Bum Mall. I found one lone pair of black pants that actually fit both my pudgy waistline and my relatively slender hips and thighs, instead of billowing around my lower limbs like MC Hammer pants in a stiff breeze; as well as a really nice shirt that is fitted in such a way that it is supposed to be left untucked and still looks tailored and dressy.

Today I picked up a pair of khaki�s at Kohl�s that fit almost as nice, and a couple of T-shirts that will look nice under my new jacket, and even got myself insulted as part of a special they are apparently running at the jewelry counter. The place was incredibly busy today, and I wound up having to wait several minutes for the salesperson, an extremely obese woman who looked like being on her feet another second was about to kill her dead, to finish waiting on an annoyingly indecisive couple so she could show me the bracelets I was considering buying to accessorize my new and improved image. While she was finishing up with the couple, another lady walked up to the far-opposite side of the counter from where I was, and the salesperson, who had apparently not noticed me, went over to wait on her. The other customer was nice enough to tell her that I had been there first. Stupid saleslady looks at her, looks at me and said, �Oh, I thought you two were together. I mean, you look like you are together...�

Now, the other lady and I had not been anywhere near each other. So the two dried-up peas knocking around inside of Stupid Sales Lady�s brain had made a connection between us based upon what? Oh, the fact that we were both middle-aged fat broads! Because we are known to run in packs, you know. Great sweaty angry hordes of estrogen-dependent perimenopausal obesity, we converge upon unsuspecting department stores, leaving chicken grease and perspiration stains all over the piles of stretched-out size 14 clothing we try on and abandon in the dressing rooms, our multitude of chins wobbling madly as we cackle with evil fat glee. Then we go lean on the jewelry counters until they break and have to be repaired with duct-tape. But I digress.

I was not pleased at her remark, and from the look on her face neither was the other lady amused. (Probably each of us thought the other to be fatter and uglier.) But I went ahead and had the saleslady get out the two bracelets I wanted to try on, and when neither of them fit properly I handed them back saying �Nope, guess not.� Whereupon she looked at me, snorted and bellowed, �Oh, you�ve got BIG FAT HANDS like I�ve got!�

Now maybe she did have big fat hands... probably she did, because she was an extremely obese woman, probably close to 350 and not in a tall way, either. But still... even if she had a set of mitts on her like a pair of Smithfield hams, I don�t think that negates the rudeness of bellowing an unflattering comment at a customer at the highest decibel level your overstrained respiratory system will allow. I wasn�t actually mad about it though�mostly just incredulous at the thought of what a low level of intelligence it must require for someone to believe it appropriate to make such a comment to a customer while on the job. I don�t know, maybe she was trying to bond with me in hopes I�d invite her to run with the Sisterhood of the Fat Pack or something.

Well, at least I got all the clothes I planned to buy, for the time being. This will give me enough nice-looking outfits for a week, and I�ll just rotate them for awhile. I�m losing weight again, and by the time I can afford more stuff in a few weeks (assuming I get to keep the job that long) I will hopefully be in a different size. Oh, and I also got some stuff to try and blow out my straggly stringy mop-head into some semblance of sleek-and-straightness. I used it hurriedly this morning before school, and it still looks like it needs combed five minutes after I comb it, or really only one minute if I should be so bold as to move my head at all. But at least all the products I put in it today must be doing something for it. It does feel smoother and has more body to it. My kid won�t leave it alone. ADD�ers are known to be attracted to shiny objects, so I guess that�s a good sign.

Tomorrow, we go look for shirts for the Prince at yet a third mall. I swear, my system just isn�t used to so much this shopping without Wal-Mart TV blaring in the background. Maybe I�ll even get lucky and find a cool, not-to-expensive bracelet with an opening you could drive a truck through.

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Last Five
Crappy job crap, weird neighbor, and someone whose baby I apparently want to have - 2006-05-08
Live from the dump - 2006-04-09
Kind of like a muzzle for your brain - 2006-03-29
...and then she fell ass-first into my cereal bowl - 2006-03-28
Playing catch-up - 2006-03-27

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