On Looking For a Job

I'm unemployed and looking for a job right now, which, as usual, absolutely sucks shit, but whenever I complain about it, even just in my head, I imagine a disappointed older man springing up to despair at my laziness, ie: 

How dare I, an able-bodied young person etc, not work, when in your day, you didn't even have a college education, and you were able to get, on a slow day, millions of jobs all at once, merely by walking into the town square and shouting the word "JOB" in a commanding voice while making assertive eye contact with the passers-by (as of course nonverbal body language is extremely important)? Dozens of employers would pour out immediately into the street, like grubs out of a kicked rotten log.

Now I could argue with this imagined critic as many intelligent people have before, telling them how, for instance, their generation had an unprecedented economic situation  due to America winning the war. Not to mention, the decreasing value of receiving a paycheck at all in today's world, where wages have stagnated, costs have risen, and a decent portion of each paycheck must go to pay off not just expenses but also the accumulated pile of negative money in the way of debt. It is no wonder that there is no fun in capitalism for most people: it's like playing Monopoly but only the second half of the game, when you already know you've lost and are desperately trying to sabotage yourself so you can go to bed before 5 AM. 

But I will admit: maybe there's something in what this inner old man says. After all, I'm not always the picture of hardworking conscientiousness that my peers exemplify. I've been known to miss an application deadline; I've been known to refuse to network; I've even been known to use a few dollars on an avocado instead of placing that money into an interest-earning  account. 

It is at this point that I remember my father's father, a World War II veteran who was wont to scold his six sons with this saying: "You have the world by the tail on the downward pull." The meaning is clear. 

Actually, it isn't, but what my father told me it means is this: picture you’re standing on a hill, trying to pull, say, a cow. You young people are uniquely lucky compared to me, since I had to pull the cow uphill by the horns, whereas you only have to pull it downhill by the tail, which, despite any furious resistance from the cow that you might be imagining, is a laughably easy task. In short: don't complain. 

So let me examine my grandfather's life, and see what lessons I might glean from a member of the Greatest Generation.

My grandfather was an immigrant from Quebec. Like many migrants to the USA, he had crisscrossed back and forth across the border a dozen times before he was twenty to work or go to school or stay with various relatives with no particular intention of staying in the country permanently. Nevertheless, when the war started, my grandfather eventually renounced his Canadian citizenship to join the American Airforce. 

At this point in time, he spoke English and French. However, he was utterly unprepared for the onslaught of accents he would hear in the American military. This fact became particularly clear on the first day he went up in a plane, when he realized all at once that his flight instructor, a man from the rural south, was absolutely incomprehensible to him.

Unable to understand the increasingly vituperative instructions, my grandfather flew the plane once around the sky in a circle until the other man angrily grabbed the controls and emergency landed the plane, at which point my grandfather was thrown out of flight school.

Nevertheless, he persisted. Next, he answered a request from the military command for men with experience in handling pigeons. "I have knowledge of pigeons," he thought, as he theoretically knew what pigeons were, and so he was placed onto the pigeon unit. 

At this point in the war, pigeons were still used to send messages, and the Airforce wished to benefit from this technology. However, there was one problem: when messenger pigeons were released from planes, they were frequently sucked into the propellers to be instantly triturated. The chief task of the pigeon unit at this time was to solve this fatal flaw.

My grandfather dedicated himself to this task, and quickly designed a special pigeon-releasing sleeve that could be lowered to slide the bird a safe distance from the plane:

However, upon attempting to use this technology in the European theater, it was quickly realized that there was a second problem with pigeons: enemy pilots simply shot them down. The pigeon unit was immediately disbanded. 

Fortunately for my grandfather, at this point, the military had need for French-English interpreters to accompany military officers from France, and he remained in this position for the rest of the war. 

My grandfather spent the rest of his life occupied in a variety of occupations that unfortunately mostly no longer exist today: carpenter; cowboy impersonator (he started a Western-inspired theme park in which children would help him capture bandits); unionized factory worker. Through his persistence and willingness to lie about his qualifications to the United States military, my grandfather, like so many men of his generation, supported himself, a wife, and six sons on a single hourly income, buying the family a house with the GI bill. 

As I return to my daily task of applying to dozens of jobs that have already been applied to by hundreds if not thousands of more qualified applicants, and comb through my resume to carefully play down my education (as I know that will only further hurt my chances at getting a low-wage job) I think about my grandfather and wonder how I would explain to him getting employed in today's economy. 

Maybe something like this: you stride confidently onto a hill, shout JOB, and begin to pull a cow by the tail. Suddenly, in the distance: the thunder of hooves. A herd of a million cattle materializes on the horizon, anxiously driving towards you at hundreds of miles per hour, driven by a group of bandits wielding whips. When the cows finally stampede you into the ground on their way past you, there is little you can do against their power other than try to survive. I’m sure the meaning is clear.