The Rinse-and-Repeat Résumé

A woman comes up to the counter where my coworkers and I are.

Me: “Hi there! How can we help you today?”

Woman: “Are you hiring?”

Though I’m not a manager, I’ve been there the longest, so everyone else looks at me. I always spout the same thing, so:

Me: “Not at this time, but we’re always accepting resumes.”

She rummages in her purse and pulls out a piece of paper that has clearly been through the wash once or twice. There are creases and wrinkles, and while it’s been typed, there are more than one handwritten note on it.

She unfolds it and smooths it out onto the counter for us.

Woman: “Oh! Do you have a pen? That’s the wrong phone number; I just got a new number.”

We wordlessly hand her a pen, and she crosses out another of the phone numbers on the sheet; several others have been crossed out previously, and she scribbles numbers right by what we assume is her name on the top of the page.

Woman: “There! Thank you. You see, I used to work at [Department Store], but I had to leave, because I did not get along with management, I didn’t like the way they worked, I like doing my own version…”

She then spent a good ten minutes explaining her previous employments (which are all listed on the “resume”) and why she left each one. She finally nods and leaves us, with our frozen smiles and glassy eyes, with her “resume.”

The moment she’s out of the store, we all gather around to find that not only did she not lie with all her previous employments, but the longest she was at a job was also three months. Not that it was easy to read in the first place, as the descriptions of jobs and positions were poorly written.

The piece of paper was left on the manager’s desk and was never seen again. Nor was the woman hired.