Dealing with unemployment - anyone else?

[ZenSojourner]

I, too, get the distinct impression that the original poster has some unrealistic ideas about us elderly types.

The current generation always seems to labor under the misapprehension that they're the ones who invented revolution.

I have to laugh when I see things like interviews of youngsters on TV regarding, say, internet access or the AMAZING idea that there are people over 30 on FACEBOOK! These kids say things like, "Oh, I think it's WONDERFUL that older people are figuring out how to use computers!"

LOL! Who do you think INVENTED them?

And talk about restrictive dress codes! I was in junior high school before girls were allowed to wear slacks to school, because it was considered "immodest". Yes, much more "modest" to walk up the stairs in a skirt while boys stood at the bottom yelling, "I see London, I see France, I see whosis' UNDERPANTS". Teachers weren't allowed to wear slacks to school until I was in High School.

I have my own "unusual" dress choices, but I don't dress that way (stretch pants, hippy tops, Salwar Kameez, sandals) when I NEED a job. Now when I have job CHOICES, it's a different matter. I once turned down a job that would have doubled my salary because they required women to wear 2" heels and dresses. You had to have a (male) supervisor's WRITTEN PERMISSION to wear slacks to work - as a PROGRAMMER.

But I already HAD a job. I didn't have $100,000 in debt and a cat to take care of with no income in sight.

Speaking of which, it's women like us who opened up engineering professions for other women. The school I attended ran their computer sciences department from the College of Engineering. That meant it was heavily math/engineering/electronics oriented. In nearly all of my classes I was the only girl, or one of only 2 or 3 (the others generally being foreign grad students). The attitude of the instructors ranged from full on chauvinism and unfair grading, to treating me like some kind of cute mascot, with the odd sexual predator thrown in. But every one of us dowdy, conservative women who forged ahead in a program like that made it easier for younger ones coming behind us to follow in our wake.

For years I was considered a bra-burning, ball-busting, man-hating Femi-Nazi for doing things like:

1) refusing to act as a typist when I had been hired as a software engineer
2) insisting that my boss call me by my name instead of "honey" or "dear"
3) informing my boss that it was unprofessional for him to touch me and stroke my hair and that I expected him to treat me professionally at all times
4) offering to sue the company for refusing to send me to a professional society convention (important to professional development and considered when granting promotions and raises) that ALL the men in the office were going to because, according to management, it "might make their wives jealous"
5) refusing to divulge my then-husband's salary to a potential employer during a job interview

And on and on ad infinitum

You may think the color of your hair and all those tattoos don't matter, but I guarantee you, they do. Especially in an employer's market, they are going to choose the LEAST controversial looking potential employees. Businesses are in business to make money. That means they cater to CUSTOMERS, not employees. And they are highly unlikely to hire someone that gives even the least hint that some customers might find them off-putting. I doubt that you would refuse to buy coffee at Starbucks because you were faced with an employee conventionally attired and coifed; but I guarantee you, however "judgmental" it may be, there are a whole lot of people who won't frequent an establishment where the employees are tattooed, pierced, and dyed in extremely unconventional ways. That means employers catering to those customers are not going to hire you, even if they have no personal qualms about your appearance and even if there's nothing formal in their hiring rules about it.

You're 25 years old. If you think you are never going to change, your taste in music, your preferences in attire, your taste in food and entertainment, the type of men you date, what kind of friends you make and keep, well, all I can say is you've got a lot of surprises waiting in store for you. We ALL have "phases" we are going through. It's called LIFE. Growth brings change. If you continue to grow, I guarantee you will change your mind about LOTS of things. Personally I'm looking forward to growing into and out of a whole LOT of phases yet as I progress through life. The ones I've already outgrown are strung behind me like pearls; I'll be making new pearls and leaving them behind my entire life. I hope you do, too, whatever you feel about the pearl you're making right now. Not growing, changing, and learning would be such dreary tedium.

I'm on my fourth or fifth career change. I started out in biology and medical research, then software engineering, retired to homestead for awhile, then medical again, more homesteading, now I'm attending a doctoral program in clinical psych. Lots of pretty pearls, but I outgrew them and moved on.

From what you've written so far here, all I can say is you seem very inflexible and rigid in your thinking. You expect the world to conform to you and accept you as you are without remark or hesitation.

It just doesn't work that way.

Obviously your choice of attire and appearance is just that, YOUR choice. But do not fool yourself into thinking that when you are on the far extreme of appearance that it will not have a negative effect on your chances of finding a job in such a bad economy. And those of us who are telling you so are not fools blinded by conformism. We're women, many of us revolutionaries in our day, and some of us revolutionaries still, who have twice or three times the experience of the real world as you do, and who are trying to share some of that hard-won knowledge with an up and coming member of the sisterhood.

Nobody is telling you you can't dress and look however you want in your free time; but work time isn't free time, it's time you're getting paid, and that gives the employer a say in what is and isn't acceptable during work hours. If the job requiring dresses and 2" heels had been my only option, I'd have taken it, worn the heels and dresses - and kept looking for something else. But I'd have taken it in the meantime and CONFORMED, externally only, because that would have ultimately served MY ends.

In a GOOD economy, you've got a lot more leeway to be revolutionary in your appearance. But in a BAD economy, you'll only be hurting yourself by presenting yourself to an employer with a "Here I am, take it or leave it" attitude. As you are finding out, they're leaving it.