In March I was laid off from my job as the Director of Legal Recruiting for a large global law firm. I’d thought that switching from investment banking recruiting to legal recruiting was a wise move given the comparative stability of the industry, but after September, 2008 and the demise of Lehman even the most prestigious law firms have experienced unprecedented declines in business. Now law firms have cut summer program sizes and durations, decreased salaries of both starting and senior attorneys, laid off as many 200 attorneys in one round, and pushed off new arrivals.  Most law firms have delayed their 2009 graduates’ start dates from Fall, 2009 to January or February of 2010, and some have even pushed the start date of incoming 2009 lawyers until 2011! Posters on legal industry blogs have speculated that these new hires will never be able to start at all, and the declining demand for lawyers has dramatically decreased the need for legal recruiters.

While registering with headhunters I’d become fascinated by all the advertisements and job postings that promised the unemployed easy cash.  My AOL mailbox was full of amazing stories of people who made thousands of dollars each month posting ads online (“I’m glad I got fired!”), and every newspaper I picked up seemed to have listings for well paying gigs envelope stuffing and assembling CD cases or “angel pins” at home.  Exciting jobs doing extra work on movies beckoned to me from multiple avenues. I wondered if any of these jobs were legitimate or just schemes to profit from desperate unemployed folks who would have to pay a fee to receive information on how to make easy money? Could stuffed envelopes be spun into gold?

Looking for part-time work to supplement my unemployment coverage - roughly half of my monthly mortgage and maintenance - I decided to investigate postings on “Odd Job Nation.” The positions advertised on this site, which describes itself as a resource for the part-time opportunist who has been pink slipped, are truly odd.  Some are simply misleading, such as an ad for a $100 in-person focus group on contact lenses which led me to a series of non-paying online consumer surveys.  Several seemed like thinly or not so thinly veiled enticements for prostitution, pornography, or fetishism (including one calling for women with large feet that I felt somewhat qualified for).  A significant number called for women from 18-25 who were willing to work or wrestle in bikinis.  Even if I wasn’t above the age range the only job I’m currently bikini-ready for, unfortunately, is posing for a “before” picture in a weight loss advertisement.  A typical week’s worth of listings for New York area “odd jobs” included the following: contortionists needed for an album cover, woman wanted to appear in a webisode about breastfeeding in public, a fit Latino boy wanted to bartend shirtless on Cinco de Mayo, and a pig and parrot needed for a photo shoot on snouts.

After ruling out a number of listings ranging from pole dancing to dry-walling, I found an advertisement for temporary carnival game workers at street fairs.  The pay was advertised as $50 a day and no nudity seemed to be involved.  While not exactly commensurate with my previous six-figure salary, I’ve always loved street fairs and the idea of spending a few days outside entertaining children seemed like a pleasant diversion from crafting cover letters.  I sent a resume and email highlighting my undergraduate drama minor and public speaking skills, and stressing that I’d have no problem hawking games on a microphone.  I got a call from Lynne, the co-owner of the game booths, the next day.  She told me she’d been overwhelmed by applications, but that she could start me the following week.  She also told me that if I did well I’d be eligible for commission above the $50 daily, or a “slice of the apron.”  I prepared by going to see “Adventureland,” a movie where a recent college graduate is humiliated by having to take a job that I’d be assuming more than fifteen years after my graduation, and looked forward to a few days of zeppoles, corn dogs, and cash off the books.

My first day call was for noon and I was told to report to a street fair scheduled for a ten-day run in East Harlem.  It was a one block long affair with a sausage stand at the front, flying saucer type rides on one side of the street and games on the other. More food vendors would pop up, I was told, after the first day inspection by city officials. Lynne greeted me with a surprisingly formal application for employment that I had to fill out awkwardly standing in the street, but when I was half-way through entering all my past starting and ending salaries and reasons for leaving each employer she grabbed the clipboard and said “That’s fine, you’ve been writing for long enough.” She didn’t ask for any identification or proof of ability to work legally in the country.

My tenure involved alternating between two games under master “carnies.” One was a water race where filling a clown’s mouth with water sent Sponge Bobs racing to the top of the pole and the other was a clown car race where balls had to be rolled into holes indicating the speeds of the clown car racers.  The first day of the street fair wouldn’t begin until evening and the official sign from city inspectors, so I was given a cleaning assignment.  The two game trucks were absolutely filthy after months in winter storage.  I don’t really clean my own apartment much, so the prospect of industrial cleaning on the cold street was somewhat daunting, but I threw myself into it with gusto.  I wiped the counters down with Fantastik and then an array of progressively stronger cleaning fluids, and stripped the multicolored banner from the bottom of the truck to clean it at a better angle.  Lynne surveyed me stretched in the street with the banner on the ground trying to get silly string off of it with a sponge, and decided that a small broom might work somewhat better.  She ventured back and forth to a local market several times, bringing me new implements and cleaning fluids which I responded to with feigned excitement. I held up filthy rags periodically as a sign of my achievement. As I stretched out on the sidewalk scrubbing vigorously I could not help but long for my comfortable office on 5^th Avenue in Midtown and think about how I’d literally fallen into the gutter, but part of me was strangely proud for taking a job that none of my former co-workers or even college-age cousins would likely consider. I would survive the recession any way I could!

My first day on the job ran past ten p.m., a long shift outside in chilly Spring weather, and I quickly learned that the job was harder than I thought it would be. “Cash handling” proved to be a particular challenge.  Each game charged two dollars, and I soon developed a wad of cash that was difficult to manage.  All bills had to be kept in the same direction and sorted by denomination, and I had to walk around with the bills in my hand while operating the game, enticing customers on the headset, pulling down prizes, and making change.  Nothing in my prior jobs had prepared me for displaying a fistful of cash, and I fought the native New Yorker’s instinct not to show money publically.  Terry, the seasoned carnival man whose life story between customer visits revealed that he was essentially homeless, berated me the entire time I worked with him.  “You’ve got the money all jumbled up,” he bellowed.  “You’ll never make it in the business if you can’t keep the money straight.” He had an elaborate system for determining the prizes to give based on the number of players at each game, and glared at me each time I went for a prize. “You’re eating up all the profits,” he’d complain.  “Give’em a small prize!” The clown car race also proved a physical hurdle to even enter.  The booth had no doors or steps, so to get into the narrow walkway I had to climb on a wooden frame and propel myself up quite a height without touching the plexiglass covering the lanes.  I narrowly missed an injury several times that would have been very hard to explain to a gynecologist. Each time I tried to enter or exit the attraction Terry looked at my splayed limbs unsympathetically and yelled “You’re going to break it, step on the wood and not the plexiglass.  You’re doing it wrong!”

By my third day at the carnival I was physically exhausted in a way I hadn’t been since being a sleepaway camp counselor the summer before college.  When it was slow I paced back and forth intoning rhyming couplets on the joys of playing and repeating lines like “You’ve got to be in it to win it,” and “Every game has a winner, every winner gets a prize.” I suffered the indignity of being snubbed by small children more focused on cotton candy, and strained my voice trying to be heard above the music from the rides.  When it was busy I could barely keep up with the constant thrusting of dollar bills at me and distinguishing the players from the huge crowds that gathered to watch. The balls used in the clown race disappeared completely and appeared in the wrong lane or got stuck, necessitating periodic do-overs and consultation with customers. And then there were the scammers who threatened to extract the equivalent of half a day’s wage by taking advantage of the hustle and bustle that surrounded a larger race.  During one round with 14 players I was making change of a twenty-dollar bill for a man when a woman appeared out of nowhere demanding change for her twenty.  I’d been passing the larger bills to Terry as I went and only had one twenty, but she insisted.  “Give me my “expletive” twenty,” she demanded over our protestations that neither of us had taken a bill from her.  She continued screaming that we’d robbed her and disrupting the start of the game until we capitulated and gave her eighteen dollars.  She then stomped off saying “I don’t want to play your “expletive” game anymore!” I went home after ten p.m. that night and stopped at the nearby McDonald’s where my carnival wages incited a strange attraction to the dollar menu. As I ran to the subway in front of a housing project in the dark I computed my hours, and realized that for two of the three days I’d worked my hourly wage added up to a little over $5. That’s $2 less than the minimum wage.

The next day I called for my start time that afternoon, debating whether I could tell Lynne that I was upset about the constant verbal abuse from my supervisor and working long hours at less than minimum wage. I wasn’t sure if I could make the whole day ten day stretch without contracting pneumonia or breaking my neck vaulting into the booth. I needn’t have worried.  When I identified myself on the phone she said solemnly “Thank you very much for helping us, but I don’t think it’s going to work out. Best of luck with your job search.”

Have you ever answered a suspicious advertisement that promised easy money, or taken an “odd” job while searching for unemployment?  If so, please tell us.

-By Janet Raiffa, Guest Blogger & Recruiting Manager