Ghosted by Subway

My ongoing struggle with finding work seems to have reached an impasse. I gave in and finally applied to the Subway near my house, expecting to hear back quickly from them after months of seeing a handwritten sign in their window that they were urgently hiring and offering flexible hours. I heard nothing, sealing the idea that I am simply un-hirable.

The interesting part of my entire endeavor is I was able to easily get two jobs at company job fairs. Perhaps that was because no one wanted those jobs — positions so terrible that my anxiety could not handle them. I know that is why I was able to get the job at Target; hired for a position to which I didn’t apply simply because they desperately needed people with customer service experience. Hired into a group of people who did not know how to communicate, leaving me frustrated and confused and resulting in me leaving for another job.

I have always liked Target, but that store has been a disaster since it opened. Rude employees, dirty floors, Spanish Christmas music and employees who barely speak English… It doesn’t feel welcoming and is nothing like my Target in York — either of them. Or the one in Lancaster. Rather, it is a typical store in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, filled with people who feel entitled and are poorly educated. A pathetic place where I could never fit in.

The other job could have worked out if I would have been hired for stocking, like my husband. It seemed we were hired for two completely different jobs at the Boscov’s job fair — I had to dress nice and take four days of register training, whereas he got to wear non-offensive t-shirts and jeans and went straight to work on the second day. However, given his position, it was unlikely I could work as one of the stocking crew due to rules about not working in the same department as family.

Perhaps I should have tried taking that route, but I thought I had a good chance at another position elsewhere. Besides, my mental health crisis cost me that job either way — I never would have been able to return to the sales floor and be stuck on a register, especially not after the sheer rudeness and insults from two of the employees in my department. And there was certainly no way I could work the schedule they gave me. What was the point of asking the maximum hours I could work if they were just going to ignore it?

A friend of mine had been trying to convince me to apply to Giant, our local grocery store. She worked in the bakery and they needed someone who just unpacked baked goods and put them on trays. That, or bake cookies. I could do either, and such simple tasks were what I was looking for in a job right now, so I applied. I didn’t hear from them after a few days and asked my friend what she would suggest. It’s amazing how many places are “urgently hiring,” and yet they don’t seem to check online applications. Ironic considering you HAVE to apply online to almost every job these days. I went to their next open interviews event, which was every Thursday for probably about a year.

I spoke with the assistant manager at the interview and was told that I could not work in the bakery because my friend worked there. And by friend, I mean a woman who once worked for me and who I considered to be a friend because we kept in contact. This was an odd rule I had never heard of in my 20 years of working. I’ve known rules that disallowed friends from supervising each other — a rule at Joann that prevented me from hiring a perfectly qualified supervisor. I had never heard of a rule that didn’t allow friends to simply work together.

The assistant manager offered me other options, but with my knee problems, I knew there was very little I could do in such a big store and informed her of my condition. She then told me that with a doctor’s note, I could work various other positions that would allow me to sit — cashier jobs that I knew would cause me too much anxiety to manage. I just can’t do that kind of work anymore. Not in an environment where one is stationed at a register and constantly interacting with customers. Plus, a “doctor’s note” was required? I WISH I could get a doctor to properly diagnose the problems in my knee. All I ever get is a response of “diet and exercise.”

So here we are: cannot work at the “urgently hiring” grocery store, unable to handle the only two jobs I could get, and not good enough to make food at Subway. I honestly do not even know where to go from here. I mentioned McDonald’s more than once, but my mother keeps insisting there has to be another option. I am hesitant to even try — our McDonald’s crew speaks mostly Spanish, which I do not. The number of jobs I cannot get in Lebanon because I am unable to speak Spanish — or because I am not Christian — is astounding. Plus I do not think I am mentally capable of coping with a denial from McDonald’s, and I have a feeling that is how it will go.

Maybe I am overqualified for most of the jobs to which I apply. I know I am, but I have to have an income. I know it doesn’t help that all of my former supervisors have left their jobs, leaving no one to speak of my strong work ethic. I had suspected my boss at Michaels gave negative feedback to anyone who called, but he left his position months ago and I still have not been able to get a job. It has been an extremely frustrating several months filled with a lot of self-doubt, depression, and worry over financial insecurity.

All I know is that we cannot live on the twenty dollars a month I make through various tasks, including writing. I wish I could make a part-time salary through writing, but that seems an impossible feat considering my aversion to social media and people in general.

In all honesty, I just want to have a stable home AND hold on to whatever little bit of sanity that remains within me. I guess that is too much to ask.

Originally published on the author’s personal blog