Visitors

I mentioned in my last posting that someone had come by my office looking for a job.  This seems to be happening at least once a week.  It very rarely happened at our last location even though that was in an industrial area as well.  And, since that location was in Portland, I would think that it would have happened more since there are more people than in Saco.  I think the whole nine years I worked at that location, we had people stopping in to ask for a job maybe six times.  Ok…maybe nine.  Once a year. Since we have moved?  Once a week.

I’m sitting at my desk, I hear the front door open and I’m just about to get up to see who came in when some guy will be standing in my door.  Each one of them doesn’t even wait to be greeted.  They head towards the first office door. And my office isn’t even off the lobby.  It’s off the next room.  I ask them if I can help and the person will say, “Are you hiring?”.  “No,” I say,”we aren’t that kind of business.  You have to have an advanced degree to work here and we only hire through networking”.  Which is true.  We aren’t a manufacturer who can just take someone off the street, give them a day of training and put them to work. So I give them a business card so they can say they stopped in and escort them to the door.

The one thing I noticed about these visitors is that they don’t seem to care whether they get a job or not.  They don’t dress like they are really looking.  One guy even showed up in shorts and flip flops.  I’m sorry but we aren’t McDonalds.  And even if he showed up like that at McDonalds, I’m not sure they would hire him.

The guy who stopped in this past week was an older gentleman and seemed to be past the age to be looking for a job so I asked him what he did.  He said he was a machinist who was 64 years old.  He was six months from retirement when they layed him off three months ago.  So he is out looking for a job since he can’t collect Social Security for another three months.  He worked hard his whole life and now he is just hoping to make it through so he can collect Social Security.  I told him I was sorry but we really didn’t have anything available and wished him luck.

Since this is happening more frequently in a small town in Maine, I think it shows that the economy still sucks.  I know they keep talking on the news that the recession might be over and things are looking up.  And, since the big financial yahoos on Wall Street are feeling better about things, they feel it’s ok to give each other millions of dollars in bonuses.  But small town America is still suffering.  Small town America still is looking for a job.  Small town America would just like enough money to pay the rent and buy some groceries.  Small town America still needs help.