Job Hunt

My boundless enthusiasm for finding work as soon as I was back on Irish soil has deteriorated a bit of late. My two fingers-crossed, looks-promising gigs have fallen through and I am left contemplating a return to the world of foodservice....an industry dominated in Dublin by those of Eastern European origins. Because my American brand of customer-service involves a lot of smiling, inane chatter directed at the client, and at least 26 high-energy ‘Thank yous’ before letting them leave my sites, I’m not sure I would mix well with the local coffee shop staffers. Getting service in Dublin generally involves interrupting the cashier from his/her cell phone conversation, placing your often complicated and slightly ludicrous order while receiving no indication that the cashier is listening to a word you are saying, requesting the total of your purchase because they will not tell you and there is no conveniently placed register screen to read it off of, and then vaguely drifting off to the side of the counter, wondering if you will receive your order within the next hour because you have to get to wherever it is you are going within 15 minutes.

I have recently started frequenting a chain establishment around the corner from my new digs, a chain that offers, aside from mediocre coffee and better-than-average pre-packaged sandwiches, wi-fi service. The internets won’t be coming to 17 Hadleigh Court until the middle of the month, so I occasionally have to scrape myself off the sofa and don both pants and shoes in order to find out what’s available on the Dublin job market. However, because chains the world over are crafty bastards, here’s the catch on the ‘free’ wi-fi service...the patron only gets it for 30 minutes at a crack. Then said patron, in this case unemployed broke-ass me, has to haul it back up to the counter, only to be treated as if they had never set eyes on me before even though they’ve only had 5 people in since I sat down and go through the whole rigmarole outlined above in order to obtain another more-precious-than-gold username and passcode to log on.

Once online, I am forced to use my time wisely, which generally means chatting with Annie, writing emails that don’t get me any closer to employment and catching up on all the pointless but no less delicious celebrity news I have been deprived of. When I do manage to get around to the job sites, I am hard pressed to key in the right buzzwords that will bring up:

‘Rookie film archivist needed to inventory and catalogue rare collection of 16 mm and small gauge amateur film for centrally located historic home of largely forgotten but no end of fascinating Irish movie star whom you’ve probably never heard of but worked in 20s/30s/40s era Hollywood. Aside from generous salary, perks include exclusive use of house on evenings and weekends, long-term loan of any furniture, fully-catered lunches, paid days off when the sun comes out, robe and slippers, affection of ‘Chauncey’, the live-in bulldog. Occasional travel to the south of France may be required. Two year contract.’

Yeah, weird, just not finding that one.