"Underemployment Office. May I help you?"
"Hi, uh.... ....maybe. "I was told to come here to fill out some A1072 forms. I guess I'll also hafta look for a job 'cuz my last one ended"
"Are you one of the guys that was recently laid off at Exco?"
"Yeah"
"Did you work in the foundry?"
"No. I worked in the fabrication department. Sort of like an assembler. I ran a contraption called an 'AutoPress'"
"I see". She grabbed some papers nearby and pushed 'em over to me. "Here are the required forms you need to fill out to collect unemployment. Can you give me a little insight about the position you held? I'm not quite sure I understand what you did"
"If you're thinking there might be another 'position' in a similar field available, forget about it. What I did was a very unique, specialized, and archaic job, one that is not even worth description. Technology made what I did totally obsolete anyway"
"Ok then.... uh... ...what other skills do you have? Carpentry? Mechanical? You look the tradesman type"
To that inquiry "Oh Gawd, here we go again" I inwardly sighed. "Down the road to nowhere!"
I hedged a bit, mentally retrieving some dusty files, before I got back to the patiently waiting lifetime civil servant. "You don't understand...... ...let me explain..."
I tried to give her The Story, you know, about how there has never been a job out there for me. She was only trying to help, as all of them do, but what they can't conceive of is the notion that 'what I do' has never even existed!
Rumor is, there is job fulfillment out there.
David Siglin- Unsplash.com
Now I know that sounds strange and rather impossible, but it's true, for 'what I do' is not in any career manual and no matter how many corporations exist or have been formed in the entirety of my life there has been no job created, visualized, think-tanked, proposed, or ever briefly spawned that has ever matched what it is I 'do'.
Thus, my fate. Always underemployed.
Like a stranger in a strange land have I wandered, through the business world, the structured world, the world that says that there are X number of options or slots or positions or avenues. Choose one! Find fulfillment there.
"No can!" say I. To that. You don't understand me.
"Balderdash!" and "Harrumph!" (good words) thunder those of The Republican Party, if there is such a thing anymore, dour entities I picture as having the energy, say, of railroad tycoons of the nineteenth century. "Get a job! Fit in!"
"Nay" say I. "I have tried".
"You have not applied yourself!"
We could go round and round with this. You just don't understand.
Jobs... ...well.... ...they're supposed to come with some kinda juice, right? I know they don't want me (God forbid!) 'lounging around' on the dole but, you know, if you're not on top (definitely lounging around) the offerings of the job market are, to me, uh.... ...how can I say this politely? 'Less than delectable'?
Whatever. Choose a word! Many descriptors fit. I don't know why but for some reason or another my expeditions in the world have been through numerous unfulfilling shadowlands, only 'cuz the job that fits for me has never showed up. It's like I landed on the wrong planet or something or was born in the wrong time and have been waiting, waiting, waiting.
All I can tell you is I'll know it when I see it. So thanks for the guidance, Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, Entreprenuer, Money, and all those other magazines. Thanks for the glimpses of what could be, SportsCenter. Thanks (I guess) to Monster.com, Indeed, Glassdoor, Career Builder, Craigslist, and the Classified Ads. Though all your input hasn't helped solve the issue it has whiled away the hours, like watching TV does.
Oh, should it be that the great and glorious day finally comes for me, as I imagine it has come for others. "I shall be a dentist!" exclaimed one in a moment of realization, a moment that also delivered extraordinary happiness. "An airline pilot!", gushed another, during his "Aha!" moment. "A professional golfer!" fist-pumped another still. At a portentous moment in time each citizen saw possibility (and passion) for them in what was being offered, honed in on it, and eventually realized their dream.
Least they had one, which is something the underemployed don't. But I feel I'm not alone in my underemployment angst. From talking to people I sense that there are many, many others who carry this burden. However, don't pity us. We don't want that! Nicht, nay, und nein! Keep sending offers our way is all we ask, and pul-eeze don't worry about us. You'll know when we've found 'it' because we'll never stop telling you about it!
It's something we really look forward to 'cuz man, we've been listening to your stories for years.