Hello, my name is AC and I'm a job hoarder. "What in heaven's name is that?" you ask, as you sit there at your computer, staring at the screen and wondering why you're here instead of checking your stocks or emailing your business representatives or whatever it is that successful adults do. Well, a job hoarder is someone who doesn't recognize that jobs take time and so searches for many jobs, and, even when a job has been attained, the search continues.
"Nonsense!" you say, enraged over the thought that one could work too much. "One cannot have too much money or too little free time", you advise wisely, as you organize your portfolio, add a finishing touch to your resume, and set up a meeting with your associates for no reason at all, because you're a successful adult and that's what you do.
Well now, that's the issue isn't it? You are successful and I am not. I am recently graduated, with a degree I am not using, and thousands of dollars of debt that I need to pay back. I'm used to part time jobs and slacking off of my primary job (being a student) with no ill effects to my purse. I have not yet adjusted to spending 8 consecutive hours away from my bed, my computer, my place of residence and I do not like it.
But that is beyond my point. I began looking for employment approximately five months before graduation, first for professional occupations that utilized my degree, and, the closer and closer I came to graduation, the less I wanted to have a job in Environmental Studies. So I looked for blue collar jobs that would hold me until I managed to go to graduate school.
Very few returned promising results. I ended up with my job in the college cafeteria, and a month after graduation, I landed a catering job which yielded a few extra dollars on the weekend, and which evolved into a job as a prep cook. I kept going from there, though. I still applied to jobs, talked to a friend about becoming his assistant, kept an eye on the Craigslist ads, and kept my eyes out for opportunities. It seems that my work ethic is this: "Sleep, food, and free time are overrated. Work always and work hard until you drop dead from exhaustion."
Extreme, but true. A sub shop just opened across the street from me last week, and though I am already working 35-40 hours a week and earning enough money to support myself, I entertained the thought of applying because I could always use another paycheck and another demand on my time. Somehow I forgot the all-important fact that I am never home because of work and when I am, I am usually sleeping or staring into my refrigerator, trying to figure out when the last time was that I went grocery shopping because I have no food.
My schedule is so complex that sometimes I have to think it out and plan it down to the minute. I sound like a military operative that you see in the spy movies, that majored in logistics and legalistically sticks by a plan set out for a strict and rigid timeline.
There's just something about a help wanted ad that attracts my need to be useful and needed. I want to be the next person on their team. I want to be their help. I want to be so important to them that they beg me to stay and work for them forever. I see a giant poster that says "now hiring" and suddenly I lose all previous thoughts in my head. My exhaustion dissipates, my fake extroversion flares up, my resume rearranges itself into promising formations of letters and experience. Suddenly I'm ready to fill out a ridiculously long application with all of my personal information, just for an interview in which I blow the manager away. Not only do I need that job, I want that job. That job was designed just for me, I'm the only one who can do it well, and if only they could meet me, they'd hire me on the spot.
I have a serious problem.
I can't say no to a job. I can't even say no to the idea of a job. I am a job hoarder. Help.
