It was a weekday afternoon.
If you ever see a woman sitting on a bench in a plaza, sort of staring into space and crying while eating some of the worst bread she’s ever had in her life, one thing you absolutely should not say is “Hello, miss, what are you doing there?”
Why not, you ask? Because there’s a very good chance that woman is desperately searching for a job, and there’s a near equally good chance that the moment you ask, she’ll snap.
“I’m looking for a job! What the hell else would I be doing?!”
The ordinary woman’s yell resounded off the buildings of the town like a roar, echoing in the quiet plaza in front of the cathedral. Talk about disturbing the peace.
The woman, however, with her messy short-cut brown hair, couldn’t have cared less. She was too busy staring daggers at the two men who had dared to speak to her. “Just look at me… Can’t you tell?” she said, sighing dramatically. She was wearing slim pants and a shirt, a very spring-appropriate ensemble. No, they couldn’t tell.
“Jeez, I think we bit off more than we can chew here!”
“Y-yeah, leave it to us to pick the weirdest girl we can find…”
The two men retreated, awkwardly. It was only natural.
No sooner had the perfectly ordinary woman stopped shouting than she looked at the ground and started muttering, like she was repeating an incantation. “Give me a job, give me a job, give me a job, give me a job, somebody, please, anybody, please…” She was past the point of disturbing the peace; she had become the embodiment of terror.
She had a good reason, though. Time itself, the ever-shifting eras, had left her cornered. She had a sad story—tragic, in fact. Anyone would weep to hear it.
It had all started three years earlier. She’d just turned eighteen and gotten her very first job, at a newspaper publisher, and as far as she was concerned, it was a match made in heaven—destiny, baby! Sure, it was the first place she’d ever worked, but she swore to herself that she’d stay with the company for the rest of her life, for better or for worse, for richer or poorer… Okay, so…it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. They had a habit of sticking their nose into celebrities’ love lives and taking sordid photos for a quick cash grab, which was trashy…or at least, you know, trashy-adjacent…but then again, the comics they ran were sort of funny sometimes, and she liked that about them. That sense of humor came across as all the more charming when compared with the trashy photos.
The divorce, like so many divorces, was sudden and brutal. One day she showed up to find out the president had been arrested. Tax evasion. (How cliché.) The reeling company quickly “rightsized,” and, well, last in, first out. She was shown the door.
Looking back on it, she saw she’d had terrible luck with employers ever since then.
After a short search, the next job she met was a cute little café located in what could charitably be called a back alley. It was wild—handsome, you might almost say—an irresistible splash of glamour on an otherwise seldom-traveled street. A girl in town had handed her a flyer and winked at her: “Wanna come chase a dream with me?” The ordinary woman had indeed chased the dream straight to the café, where she joined right up. She was a real go-getter, and it didn’t matter to her what kind of job she was doing as long as she could work.
Only after she started the job did she notice how short these maids’ skirts were. And the job was constantly referring to some kind of “service” that she didn’t really understand.
“What? You didn’t know?”
She was supposed to be chasing the dream, but she found herself grabbing a man by the necktie and emptying a glass of wine over him while he crouched in front of her on all fours, like a dog. Suffice to say she had a hard time wrapping her mind around the idea.
So much for the glamour.
Nooo! I’m still a virgin!
She quit the job the same day she got it.
What should come around next but a brainy-looking pharmacy gig? A STEM job! That was the play these days!
Things seemed pretty good at first. It was a clean place, regular hours. She fell in love with the straitlaced atmosphere. Everything was peachy for the first six months…and then the company’s dark side reared its ugly head. A whistleblower revealed that the place had been marketing one of their products as a highly effective medicine when it was hardly more than a nutritional supplement. A placebo, in other words. The company imploded.
For the ordinary woman, a series of jobs followed after that. Librarian, hotel receptionist, then a construction place, followed by a boutique, nursing, and a factory job. She’d do anything. She could hardly remember how many jobs she’d been through, but each time she swore to herself that she was done starting over, that this was the one, only to have her hopes dashed when she wound up jobless again.
She’d been going on this way for three years now.
“I can’t take it anymore!”
Perhaps now you can understand why she would be sitting in front of the cathedral, eating bread and crying.
It was her tradition: When she was looking for a job, she always got her bread from a local shop where she knew the stuff was awful. It helped her taste her struggle, and helped her believe that tomorrow she would eat something far tastier.
Though time flew by, it wasn’t easy spending so long trying to find a job. The more résumés she had to write, the more people were suspicious of her and rejected her applications. She was munching her bread, trying to let it carry her through this awful day, but she’d chewed it too much, and there was no flavor left.
The hunt was especially difficult at the moment. Springtime meant every company had done their annual intake and was bursting with new hires. No one was looking for new blood. She searched and she searched, but she came up dry, and it almost broke her. To have a couple of guys try to pick her up at that exact moment probably struck a nerve, so if you would be so kind, please forgive her the somewhat hostile response. She would have been thrilled to have them talk to her if they were bringing her a job opportunity.
You might be wondering, Why have I spent all this time telling you about this ordinary woman’s heart-wrenching history? That would be because that woman is me… That’s right, yours truly.
My tragic, lamentable self.
I want a job!
“No! Don’t leave! Give me a joooooob!”
Slight change of subject, but in Cururunelvia, the small island known as the “land of prayer,” where I was born, it’s said that if you toss a coin to the cathedral and offer up your prayer, it’ll be answered.
I’m not sure I’d count these instances as having one’s prayers answered, but they say sometimes—only sometimes—when you pray, it bestows a special power on an object in your vicinity, and that object will somehow grant you the ability to answer your own prayer.
You might notice a lot of hedging here. That’s because I’d been going to the cathedral every single day, and I sure as hell hadn’t had my prayers answered.
Ever since I went out into the world, every time I lost a job, I would trek out to the grand building, which was covered with vines and leaves, and beg: “Let the next time be the last time! Please!” I would fling my money at the Cururunelvia statue, but as you can tell from my current situation, my prayers haven’t exactly been answered yet. If I had time to petition a statue at the cathedral, maybe I should have struck out and actually looked for a job instead. I couldn’t keep giving what little money I had left to the statue!
Fast forward to shortly after my shout.
“You’ve got a good pair of lungs. Why don’t you come work for me?”
A beastkin with the poofy hair only a member of genus Panthera, family Felidae—in other words, a lion—could possess put his paw on my shoulder and held out his business card. It had the name of a well-known real estate company on it.
“Huh? For real?”
“Yes, join up with my company.”
“Seriously?!”
So I gained a connection at what might as well have been my zillionth company. (I’d lost count.) Who needs some dusty old cathedral, anyway? I should’ve known I had to make my own luck!
Wish I could get back all the money I tossed at that statue.
Anyway, that was three days ago.
“My goodness, MacMillia. It’s the strangest thing. I feel like we’ve known each other for ages!”