Hopeless Job Search April 4, 2008

Oooh, I’m really liking the new WordPress interface. It looks so inviting that blogging suddenly seems like the thing to do.
 
It’s been a week since I was given the axe at work. The job search has been fruitless thus far, but then I can’t say I’ve been very motivated to look too hard. My outlook on life has been pitifully grim lately. I’m feeling pretty hopeless.
 
I feel handicapped by my social anxiety and depression. Every administrative job ad that I read calls for an enthusiastic self-starter, an outgoing, friendly team-player… They want someone with a positive, can-do attitude, excellent verbal communication skills, a pleasant phone demeanor, stellar customer service skills and all the attributes of the ideal administrative assistant that I just don’t have, can’t have, will never have.
 
Administrative support is not the right career for me. I’m not cut out for it. No one wants to hire a quiet, self-effacing assistant who sees the glass as half-empty and likes to be left in her own little world.
 
The truth is that I like to work on my own, in my own space. I don’t want to have to deal with clients, either on the phone or in person. I want to spend as little time with my coworkers as possible. I want to do something that is so straightforward and repetitive that I can just get lost in it and not see the time go by. I want to go to work to pay the bills and nothing more.
 
I chose administrative support as a career because I didn’t know what else to do at the time. When I got into it I had no real professional experience whatsoever; my college major was useless; I didn’t have any money for specialized training; and I was neither motivated nor smart enough to seek out more demanding jobs. Being a secretary seemed like the easiest way to join the white-collar workforce and so I went for it.
 
Although I hated the people interaction aspect of it, I was fortunate enough that the jobs I landed involved little interpersonal involvement. Now that I’m unemployed and looking again, however, I’m realizing just how hard it is going to be for me to find another position where I will be left in my little corner in peace.
 
I’ve been trying to think of other career options for someone as socially anxious as I am that don’t involve additional training or education. I was breaking into the payroll and accounting fields in my most recent job, but it seems that if you’re not an actual accountant, you’re pretty much stuck doing customer service stuff, especially when you’re first starting out. I’ve been considering legal file clerk or records management positions instead. Though some human interaction is required, at least these jobs wouldn’t have me answer phones or constantly help people. The problem I’ve been running into is that most companies seem to be looking for someone with some experience in the field and I don’t have any.
 
I’ve thought about other career paths like medical coding, which apparently doesn’t involve ANY kind of client interaction, but it seems like it might be way over my head with all the complicated medical jargon and my laughable incapacity to remember much of anything.
 
So at this point it doesn’t look like I’m going to be employed any time soon. I fear I will have to go back to the blue-collar workforce and stay there indefinitely. Maybe that’s what I’m cut out to do, clean other people’s toilets. It’s easy enough and I don’t have to talk to anyone while I’m scrubbing away.