I Got a Rejection Letter.

Ed. note: Welcome to the latest installment of “Janet Raiffa’s Recessionals,” a column by a laid-off recruiting manager in New York. Prior columns are collected [here]. You can reach Janet Raiffa via LinkedIn, leaving a comment here, or emailing 405club@gmail.com.

Last week I got a rejection letter.  Rejection is nothing unusual to me these days. In fact, you can say that it has become my new middle name. I now consider myself lucky that my old middle name was Robin so I don’t have to worry about changing my monogram.  This letter was unusual only because snail mail rejections are increasingly uncommon; in most other cases I’ve received the news via email, or in more than a few cases have simply never heard from an employer or a headhunter again.  The other things that were notable about this rejection were that it was from a university I’d hired from successfully for years as a representative of one of its most wildly desired employers, and that the job would have required me to take a $120K+ plus pay decrease from what I earned in my last two jobs.

Receiving the letter didn’t surprise or hurt too much because it was weeks after the first round phone interview – perhaps the most rigorous and unpleasant phone interview I’d ever had - and I’d already drawn the conclusion that the response wasn’t positive.  In fact, the thin envelope made me faintly nostalgic for my senior year in college.  That was way back before email correspondence was the norm and seniors proudly displayed their rejection letters on the doors of their dormitory rooms, or papered their walls with them.  They were called “ding” letters on my campus, and I remember that receiving them then was somewhat more humorous than I’m finding it now. I briefly wondered whether it would be appropriate if I mounted it on my apartment door, if only to put off the well meaning neighbor across the hall.  He persists in asking me if anything is happening on the job front every single time he sees me.

This return to the reality of unemployment came after one of the best months I have had since my layoff…

I was gainfully employed for all of October with four weeks of in-person temporary coaching work with one university, and two to three weeks of remote work for two other universities.  I’d go to my in person gig for anywhere between two to four days a week and put in as many as twenty hours, and on the remaining days I would force myself to remain at my computer at home corresponding with students for what felt like a full business day.  I cheated during this latter process quite a bit, starting off with business casual attire during normal business hours, and ending up working in the middle of the night in my underwear, but I got the job done.  It is very hard to put in your normal face time when there is nobody to observe your face, but by the end I got fairly good at forcing myself into a normal work routine.  I allowed myself to leave my apartment for an hour for lunch, and sometimes after I had completed enough work for a day I would allow myself to go somewhere on the train to simulate a daily commute.

The three gig period enabled me to have one of my happiest trips to the mailbox, the daily ritual which during my months of unemployment has frequently been the highlight of my day. On this particular day I received not only one, but two paychecks! One was just an automatic deposit slip from the local job, but the other was an actual live check with a pretty blue patterned background and the historic insignia of the world-renowned university.  I unfolded the check and statement, struggling a bit to figure out where the perforation was, and ended up with a scraggly ended check that I hastily put in my bag on the way to the gym.  On the way to the Chelsea Piers I stopped to deposit it at Chase on West 23^rd Street, and after waiting on a surprisingly long line for the one working ATM, was dismayed to have the check rejected twice.  The screen message not only declared that the check was rejected, but instructed me to ask to be issued another check.  I’d love to ask for another check, I thought, one every two weeks in fact.  I’d applied to the university for a full time job after the Director contacted me based upon a referral from a colleague at another school, and still haven’t heard about the second round he had discussed even though several months have elapsed since our initial chat.

What was wrong with the check?  Was my money literally too good for them to accept?  Had the bank somehow decided that I was now only capable of receiving unemployment, and that the check had to be counterfeit? Or was it just that the fancy blue patterned background confused the machine?  I went over to the counter to see if it could be accepted manually, and the helpful banker swiftly called up my account and went through a standard drill of services I should think about.  I’m familiar with this routine because in my early days of unemployment I did some “mystery shopping” to test the skills of bankers for a marketing research company.  My job was to go in and inquire about opening a new account or obtaining a new product, and determine whether the banker went through the necessary information and offerings that I’d be eligible for given my real balances and history.  I enjoyed the acting challenge and the $15 payment for about 30 minutes of work, but after explaining my somewhat truthful story I had bankers calling me all the time to follow up on my fake desires and I felt too guilty to continue.

“Before I deposit the check,” the banker said, “I want to tell you that you’re prequalified for a home equity line of credit.”  I politely declined, and then she turned back to the screen and said “You don’t seem to have automatic deposit.” I was a bit surprised that the automatic deposit for my temp job didn’t seem to qualify, but said “I’d love to have automatic deposit, but I’m between jobs right now.” This sent her into the back room to process the check.  She appeared a few minutes later to tell me that they couldn’t accept the check because the tracking numbers on the bottom indicating the payer’s account number had been torn off.   As I turned to head out, she continued to pitch other services.  “You’re also preapproved for a credit card,” she offered brightly.  My withering look must have told her that I was not receptive to more offers at that point, and she backed off a bit and said, “I’m sorry, but they do phone surveys to assess your satisfaction with your last visit.” I could only reply with my usual candor and say, “How satisfied could I be with this transaction? I wasn’t able to deposit the check!”

When I returned home that afternoon I discovered that the thin strip of paper indicating the account numbers was still intact, and could be easily reattached.  Not taking any chances of being accused of check tampering, I gathered the wounded check, its missing appendage, and even the half page I’d ripped them both from, and headed to my local bank.  The helpful banker there told me that this was a fairly common problem, although it seemed to predominantly impact senior citizens with government issued checks. “I’ve retired somewhat prematurely and unexpectedly,” I replied. He instructed me on how to tape the check from the back, and continued to peruse my account on the screen.  “While I have you, I should let you know that you’re prequalified for a home equity line of credit.  And I see that you don’t have automatic deposit with us,” he said.  I explained my employment situation again, and left clutching the deposit statement he gave me as if it were a ticket bearing winning lottery numbers.

The fact that my three academic assignments all concluded almost simultaneously doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped receiving exciting professional opportunities.  On a recent Sunday morning I was awakened at 9:30am by the marketing research company that I work for on Friday mornings as a “trailerchecker.” My caller was pretty frantic; someone had pulled out of an assignment starting at 11:00am in Bay Ridge, and they would offer me $100 for doing “blind checking” for Michael Jackson’s “This Is It.” I’d seen these types of assignments advertised before, and the idea of going to every single performance of a particular movie and counting the patrons wasn’t particularly appealing.  Still, $100 for going to the movies is hard to top, and these days I find it difficult to turn down work of any sort.  I sleepily agreed to spend the entire day at a theater that I’d never visited, and hurried to get ready and read the rather lengthy paperwork associated with the assignment.

If receiving $100 to go to the movies and count patrons seems like a good deal, I’m going to have to disappoint you and tell you it was one of the most torturous odd jobs I’ve endured recently. The shows were at 11:00am, 1:40, 4:10, 6:35, and 9:30, and I had to count patrons at each of them and remain at least 30 minutes into each show to capture numbers for latecomers.  I couldn’t use a credit card or a bank card at the box office, was required to buy at least one ticket for the first and earliest evening show, and was absolutely forbidden to reveal my assignment to theater staff.  Whenever possible, I was instructed to stay in the theater between shows, and if required to buy additional tickets it was preferable that I do so at an inside kiosk rather than returning to the box office.  This seemed simple enough on paper, but when I got to the theater I discovered that it was one long narrow hallway with theaters on opposite sides, and I could not sneak between theaters, remain in the theater showing my feature, or rest anywhere inside the theater in between shows.  They also didn’t have a ticket kiosk, and there was no way that I could get home and purchase tickets online.  This meant that I would either have to buy multiple tickets at once, or continually return to the box office and purchase tickets for each successive show.

The first show was fine – I hadn’t seen the movie before – but by the third show I was starting to fade as hideously as Michael Jackson himself.  I tried to stay in the theater between shows, concocting a story that I was a junior high school teacher trying to memorize the choreography for a talent show to tell the cleaning crew, but was swiftly ejected by a manager who asked to see my ticket stub.  By the fourth show I could no longer face entering the theater again, so I stood at the box office from 30 minutes before the show counting the patrons who requested tickets to the show, and then watched to see if other patrons entered the theater to not miss online purchasers.  During this time I checked my watch frequently in large exaggerated gestures to indicate that I was waiting for someone.  After the required time into the show I gave up, feigned being stood up, and walked off forlornly in search of dinner.  It brought back a million little traumas from my dating days, but I was hungry and had lots of time to kill in between shows in an unfamiliar neighborhood with not much to do so I tried not to focus on those. At an almost empty nearby diner I ordered a Caesar salad, the largest thing I could think of, and proceeded to eat as slowly as possible.  I also read a newspaper slowly and asked to be hit again on the diet Coke, but I just couldn’t kill enough time in my comfortable booth. I won’t detail everything I did next, but there was an interesting trip to Duane Reade to look at every weekly special, and more time than I would like to admit waiting in the nearest subway to keep warm and have a place where I could go for a long period without feigning any activity.  I made it to the 9:30pm show, completed my survey, and moonwalked in my sleep for two nights following.

The result of my hard work soon paid off in two small ways, both of which resonated much more deeply with me given the absence of positive feedback that unemployment creates.  At the end of one of my remote assignments I’d been slammed with work as the deadline approached, and had full evenings of correspondence with anxious students.  The amount of time I put in far exceeded the payment rate, but I didn’t mind.  I felt busy and useful and needed, and the sudden buildup of frantic activity felt refreshingly like a campus recruiting season in my old job.  I may have looked at my overloaded email from time to time in horror, but when the messages stopped it was traumatic.  I logged onto my special school account for a full day and there was not one message, but on the next day there was a note from a student updating me on his recruiting activities, and telling me that after discussion with fellow students he had determined that I was the “best resume reviewer.” It wasn’t 360°degree feedback, and it wasn’t going to get me a bonus in my first bonus-less year in over a decade, but it felt as wonderful as a straight-A report card.  I continued with my trailerchecking, the only steady work I have now, and a few days before my next assignment was informed that I was receiving a special raise.  I’d be making $15 rather than $12.50 for each screen checked because I’d helped the company out by taking on the last minute blind counting assignment and they were very grateful.  A positive performance review and a raise!  Other than a job, what more could an unemployed gal ask for?

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