On the Perils of Job-Hunting, or, My Day as a Marketer

About a year ago, I started my hunt for a job in the Boston area.  My parents had convinced me that if I didn’t start looking for a job months ahead of everybody else, I’d never be able to get one.  I had taught ESL (English as a Second Language) for three years in Poland, and prior to that had had part-time jobs working in my university art gallery and for an arts festival in my hometown.  It hadn’t been too easy to find jobs in Poland when I first moved there, because I was young (only 21, but I was told I looked even younger) and had no real work experience.  I figured this time around it would be a breeze.  I knew Boston was full of young people looking for jobs, but now I had three years’ teaching experience under my belt, plus a Master’s in English from an excellent school.  I dutifully sent out my resume and cover letter to a few charter schools in the Boston area.  I got to go visit Boston Collegiate Charter, a wonderful school, and did an interview.  I patiently waited, convinced I would get a response.  After about a month later, I was forced to acknowledge that even with my Master’s degree, I wasn’t quite appealing enough for these schools. 

I began hunting for more schools to which to apply.  I emphasized my years of experience with a variety of age groups, and talked about my passion for English.  I mentioned my high school mentor, Dr. Torrance, who inspired me to want to study English.  I explained that with my twelve years of intensive piano classes, I would be happy to help start an after-school music program.  And yet, despite claiming that they only wanted teachers who had passion for their subject—a year of teaching experience was only a plus and a Master’s was not necessary, although it was preferred—most schools did not consider me worthy of so much as a response.  Of the 90+ schools to which I applied, only six ever wrote back to say they’d either received my information or had decided to go with another candidate.  Needless to say, I pretty quickly began to feel bitter and discouraged.  I began applying for jobs I knew I’d never be good at—receptionist positions in small offices, administrative ones in larger companies, even personal assistant jobs for business directors.  Of course, my lack of enthusiasm (and relevant experience) was probably very clear, and the majority of those places never wrote back, either.

I decided I was aiming too high. After all, was a Master’s really useful?  Did it really make me qualified for anything?  In fact, was my Bachelor’s even particularly necessary? 

I started applying for different kinds of jobs.  Dunkin’ Donuts, Bruegger’s Bagels, Friendly’s Diner, you name it.  Domino’s was looking for drivers, and I had an excellent driving record, but they decided to go with a high school student who inexplicably had more driving experience.  Barnes and Noble seemed like it would be a good fit—I love books, after all—but I was sent a kind rejection that said I didn’t seem to have enough “book experience.” 

Finally, one bright May morning, I finally got a response that sounded promising. A marketing agency in Waltham was looking for new people to hire.  I looked at their site, and they had glowing reviews from both clients and employees, and had even been named one of the top places to work in Boston.

Now, frankly, I had (and have) no interest in marketing.  I appreciate that it’s an important job.  But between doing marketing and being a math teacher, I’d probably pick math teacher, even though I can barely add.  At this point, however, I was desperate.  I didn’t feel like I had a lot of options.  I managed to convince myself that maybe I’d actually enjoy doing marketing for a year or two.  After all, a lot of it has to do with psychology, and being good with words is probably an asset, and heck, maybe even my art history degree would be put to use.  I started to feel excited.  I had visions of myself in power suits, speaking to rooms full of business people, all hanging on to catch my every word.

I woke up the day of my interview prepared to go sell myself as a would-be marketer.  I put on my nicest professional-looking clothes and my brightest smile.  My dad drove me to Waltham and stayed calm in spite of the bad traffic.  I walked into the small office and was a bit alarmed to see how much more business-like all the other interviewees looked.  But I told myself to relax.  Obviously, they’d found something worthwhile in my resume, or they wouldn’t have called me.

I went in for my individual interview.  The director was pretty young and friendly.  He didn’t seem perturbed by my humanities background.  When he asked me to rank the following in order of least important to most important in a work environment—I said “Growth, fun, and money”—I saw him grin and write something down.  Our interview was over.   

I went home, certain I wouldn’t be called back, but proud of myself for thinking outside the box and at least getting an interview.

But I was wrong.  Later that day I received a voicemail, inviting me for a follow-up interview.  The ten “most promising” candidates had been invited back, and we would be shadowing some of the company’s most successful marketers.  My excitement came back.

Again, I woke up early.  Dressed up and ate a big breakfast and packed myself a lunch.  Again, my dad drove me to Waltham and wished me luck.  I went excitedly in to the room of nine suit-wearing males.  I thought that being the only female in the room meant I was extra-impressive.  I was assigned my marketer to follow, a young guy in a suit that was way too baggy for him.  He was also in the process of training another would-be employee.  He didn’t make the greatest impression on me—anyone who chuckles when I say I got a Master’s in English generally gets on my bad side—but I was still optimistic.  I was going to convince this guy I would be a stellar marketer.  I started taking in the notes while he bragged about his success at the company.  If you’ve ever watched the American TV show “The Office,” think of Ryan after he gets promoted to corporate.  That’s what this guy was like, except shorter.  But it was going to be okay.  I was going to learn so much today!

We pulled into Cambridge and parked on the side of the road.  The guy had told me that Verizon was one of their biggest clients, so they were in charge of selling Verizon to other companies.  I was excited.  I was a bit surprised when he left his laptop in the car and didn’t take his briefcase, and it also seemed odd that we were walking along a tiny street in Cambridge, full of boutiques and bakeries, but appearances can be deceiving.

We walked into a 7-11 and I assumed he was stopping for water or coffee or something to give him an extra kick before he performed his pitch.  He went up to the cashier and said, “Excuse me, sir, I’m with ABC Marketing, and we wanted to know, are you happy with your internet provider?”

My heart sank. 

For the next hour, I followed the guy (and the trainee) while he went into all the stores along the street, asking if they liked their provider and if maybe they wouldn’t prefer to switch to Verizon.  In other words, I was essentially shadowing a telemarketer, except instead of using a phone, he was doing it in person. 

The lowest point came when we went into an old record store.  The owner looked like someone who had probably been at Woodstock, and he very angrily told the marketer that he had switched to Verizon and his cost had gone up.  My marketer obsequiously began apologizing profusely. 

I found myself wondering if the music store owner was looking for an assistant.

The final straw was when the trainee managed to whisper to me that you could earn big bucks at the company—if you could make a sale.  Otherwise, every hour you worked was unpaid.  I finally realized that it was my putting "money" last in terms of importance that resulted in my being called back.

We stopped for lunch at a little sandwich shop.  I ran across the street to Dunkin’ Donuts on the pretense of needing the bathroom and texted my dad that I didn’t think I could do this job.  And—in another example of how wonderful my dad is—he wrote back and told me to tell the guy I was done.  He would drive to Cambridge to get me.  Although my dad knew how desperately I wanted to find a job, he also understood that there were some jobs I wasn’t meant for. 

I went in and nervously told my marketer I wanted to quit the follow-up process.  He proceeded to tell me it was okay, he understood that some people weren’t willing to think outside the box and take risks.  I didn’t bother telling him that even applying for a marketing job was already taking a risk in my case.  He insisted on driving me back to Waltham (I was too embarrassed to admit my dad had driven me).  He spent the whole car ride talking about how much money he’d earned.  I got out in the parking garage and said I would go look for my car and thanked him for the opportunity.  They drove off.  I was left standing in the parking garage.  Worried they might come back and find me still standing there, I walked down to the Waltham Costco and sat on a rock outside the parking lot.  Instead of feeling chagrined at yet another failure, I felt oddly at peace.  Yes, finding a job was difficult, discouraging, and depressing.  But it was also a relief to realize that just because I was desperate, it didn’t mean I had to take just any job.  Ultimately, having a job I’d hate and would be terrible at wouldn’t really help in the long run.  Although I felt pretty sorry for myself, sitting there on that rock, I also realized that in a few hours, I’d probably find my one day as a wannabe marketer pretty hilarious.  

From that day on, I decided only to apply for jobs I realistically thought I could do.  I wrote to a few more schools, set up a nanny profile, and looked for international school positions.  I was still depressed and discouraged.  I still dealt with a lot of rejection (or worse, no response).  But eventually, in the same week, I was suddenly invited for three interview, two of them for ESL teachers.  Both ESL schools offered me jobs within 24 hours, and instead of having to take whatever was offered, I got to choose which offer I wanted to take.   And now I happily work at one of the top English language schools in the United States.  I have fantastic students, I get health insurance, and I work with other people who are interesting and intelligent.  I’m exasperated when I see articles about how lazy my generation is, and how unwilling to work hard we are, or when I hear people complain about how much they hate their jobs.  I’m a lot happier than I expected to be, this time last year, and I was willing to take just about any job.  The problem isn’t that my generation doesn’t want to work.  The problem is that there are so many of us who want to work that we outnumber the available jobs.  All our degrees and experience count for nothing when there just aren’t enough jobs.  At this point, though, I’m inclined to think that maybe eventually things will work out.  After all, I might have been knocking on your door asking you to switch to Verizon.  Instead, things worked out, and I’m doing something I’m a lot better at.

Happily teaching

The Best Pierogi in Krakow

I have a long-cherished memory of the first time I tried pierogi.  I say long-cherished because I have clung to this memory, as though it reveals some important detail from my past or explains the significance of my pierogi obsession.  It doesn’t.  And I’m even willing to acknowledge there is an excellent chance I’ve crafted this memory out of my imagination. Maybe it never happened.  Maybe I’d tried pierogi before this time.  Maybe I wouldn’t try them for many years yet. I suspect that many of our memories are woven together from hazy details, given a shape and meaning we ourselves inscribe onto them.  I think maybe this memory has become so important to me because when I was a child, we traveled a lot, and I didn't feel very stably American (or Polish).  Pierogi somehow became a point of consistency in my life.

Either way, I remember being in Olsztyn, the town near my mother’s hometown of Ostroda, and which my mother’s sister and aunt lived in.  It had been raining, which seemed to be common for Olsztyn in the summer (and was one of the reasons that, as a teenager, I dreaded the thought of going to Poland in the summer.  For a California girl, summer should mean dry heat and sun).  But at last the rain had stopped, even if the rain hadn’t stopped.  My Wujek Krzysztof (my uncle) and my father decided to take the three little girls (my cousin Natalia, my sister Magdalena, and me) into the Stare Miasto, possibly to get us out of our mothers’ hair.  At this point, I must have visited Olsztyn at least once or twice already, but while some things about the town seemed beautifully familiar, other things remained a surprise.  I was always excited when Wujek Krzysztof turned onto Ulica Lipowa (Linden Tree Street), and my sister and I would try to remember which red-roofed house was Ciocia and Wujek’s.  Walking down the steps that ran along the side of their house, we followed side paths (I think) and eventually came up to the small river, Rzeka Lyna, that runs through Olsztyn.  Compared to the Wisla, which runs through many of the main cities in Poland, the Lyna is very small and narrow.  But for all that it’s much lovelier.   Many parts of its winding path are lined with old, leaning trees, and even in the dead of winter you can find swans lazily floating by.  I remember thinking that Olsztyn was a beautiful city, and although I then didn’t visit it for quite a long time, the last few times I went back I was again struck by its small, picturesque beauty.

Rzeka Lyna in winter

Eventually, our walk led us to the Stare Miasto in Olsztyn.  Wujek or Natalia had a place in mind for us to go to, so we went in, and each of us ordered a plate of pierogi z miesem (pierogi with meat).  We sat at a big wooden table with wooden benches around it, under a big umbrella, right on the town square.  It was still overcast but no longer cold.  My father and uncle must have managed to communicate, probably through some translation (and interpretation) on the parts of my cousin, sister, and me.  Eventually, the pierogi arrived.  I don’t recall if there was anything spectacular about these particular pierogi—there probably wasn’t.  And there’s no real reason why I am so convinced that this was the first time I ever tried pierogi.  But I think of this as my first real pierogi experience, and from that point on, pierogi became one of the main things I associated with Poland.  

Each time we were getting ready to go to Poland in the summer, I would start dreaming of pierogi z miesem.  Within 24 hours of our arrival, I usually managed to get a plate in.  One year, my aunt confused the day we were arriving, and when we got into Warsaw, my uncle wasn’t there to meet us (keep in mind this was in the days before cell phones).  My parents were exhausted after traveling by overnight train from Italy with two little girls in tow, but I was ecstatic to eat pierogi in the grimy Warsaw train station and drink my orange Fanta.  I tried them everywhere we went.  There were some traditional Polish foods like barszcz that I refused to try, all for love of pierogi.  One summer my uncle’s sister, Pani Hania, made huge pierogi with blueberries (even the name--pierogi z jagodami--sounded magical).  Fruit pierogi are traditionally served with cream, which horrified me.  But my mother convinced Pani Hania to give me some just with sugar sprinkled on them, and then I devoured those, too.  My mother’s friend Lucyna once made pierogi with strawberries when we went to visit her, and at first the pink-tinted dumplings caused me some anxiety.  Eventually I overcame it.

Once we started going to Krakow, my quest became to find the best pierogi in town.  Krakow is a big city, and it was no easy feat.  Some places, like the chain restaurant Chlopskie Jadlo, clearly served frozen pierogi they’d bought in bulk and warmed up.  Other places, like the wonderful U Babci Maliny, experimented with different fillings and even baked their pierogi.  I’ll never know how she did it, but one day in the first year we were in Krakow, my mother found the best pierogi in Krakow.

If you walk down Dietla, one of the main streets in Krakow, eventually it will veer off and become Grzegorzecka.  Grzegorzecka is far enough from the center of town that its buildings haven’t been restored after World War Two and Communism.  They are sooty from factory pollution, imposing, and somewhat ominous.  If you walk down Grzegorzecka long enough, you’ll arrive at Rondo Grzegorzeckie, a roundabout, and from there it’s a straight path into Nowa Huta, the city that was a Communist pet project.  If you are walking somewhere with a purpose, as most people who walk down Grzegorzecka are, you’ll probably notice the occasional billboard or see a tram go by, but you’ll mostly remain undistracted.  If, however, you are simply wandering down this street, your eye may catch a dingy yellow sign that says “BAR POD 17, KUCHNIA DOMOWA” (this roughly translates to “Bar at 17, Homey Cooking).  If you decide to go into this place, your eyes will take a second to adjust to the dimness.  You’ll see a bare, tiled floor with about half a dozen little tables in the main room, and a low counter at the back of the room.  Behind this counter will sit a middle-aged man, with dark brown hair and a thick mustache.  He’ll greet you kindly and ask for your order.  He’ll pass on the message quickly to the three ladies in the kitchen.  He’ll tell you to sit anywhere you like, as though there were dozens of tables to choose from, although during the dinner hour, the place is so full of regulars who come in for their break, you might be hard-pressed to find a seat. 

Bar pod 17 decorated for Christmas

Within about ten minutes, he’ll bring you a plate of ten, beautifully-shaped, steaming pierogi.  And when you try them, you won’t be able to stop from scarfing down your plate.  The pierogi are very simple.  There’s no secret filling, no unusual way of preparing them.  If you get ruskie, they’re prepared with pureed potatoes, a bit of onion, and twarog, or farmers’ cheese.  The meat ones are just ground meat.  They’re boiled, then heated on low heat with a little butter and pork fat.  That’s it.  They are perfect.  They are exquisite.  They are delicious.  And if you love pierogi, you will probably go back there almost every day.  When you meet your future husband, you’ll convince him that these are the best pierogi in Krakow, and he’ll start going there, too.  Although his Polish is not too advanced, he’ll manage to communicate to the man that he is your boyfriend and he is there to pick up two portions of pierogi.  When your parents arrive in Krakow for a visit, you’ll go to the man as soon as the place opens, and after you explain why you need six portions of pierogi, he’ll ask his wife to bring you a jar with some of their pork fat so you can reheat them correctly.  Sometimes you’ll see him at the Farmers’ Market and he’ll nod, but even though you see each other most days out of the week, for three years, he’ll properly refer to you as Pani and you’ll address him respectfully as Pan.  When you go there for the last time before you leave Krakow for the States, you’ll thank him for feeding you for all these years, and he’ll shake your hand goodbye, and as you leave, you’ll burst into tears for the first time.

Bar pod 17

And even though you’ll learn to make pierogi on your own and will learn to enjoy the process, you’ll never, ever forget the secret little place on that gritty street, the place with the best pierogi in Krakow.

Making my own pierogi