I have been unemployed since I quit my job at Sears on April 14.

I was hired as a salesperson at the Briarwood store in 2011. It was my first job since being forced into medical retirement when I underwent cancer treatment from 2003-2005. I was forty-eight years old when I started and never expected to job hunt again. I thought I would stay with the company, get promoted, and be able to afford a decent retirement.

I should have speed-read the small print in the new-employee packet (they took it back as soon as I signed it). There are no raises or promotions at Sears. If you want better pay or a different job, you have to apply for an open position, just like anyone who’s not already in the company.

I stayed as long as I did because my bills told me I needed a paycheck. But instead of the twenty hours a week I’d signed up for, I was scheduled for almost twice that and often had to work through breaks and lunches. You can’t do that when you’re diabetic. My blood sugar levels got so high my doctor told me I had two choices: leave or die.

So, at fifty-two, I went looking for a half-time office job–my doctor says to stay away from retail. I knew it would be difficult, but I had no idea that I’d have to learn an entirely new way to job hunt.

I knew I wouldn’t be looking at help-wanted ads in the newspaper. What I didn’t realize was how much of my applying, interviewing, and follow-up communication would be online. Not to mention digging around the web trying to figure out when a posted “job” was really something like selling vacuums on commission.

I’m not new to the computer. In tenth grade, I hacked into the EMU mainframe, and I was the first student in my school at Ypsi High to write a program–a very simple game of Hangman. The Internet age is moving very fast, though. One of the most maddening parts of my twenty-first-century job hunt has been the way job sites such as monster.com and indeed.com have blown up my email with listings–many of them duplicates–and posted even more in ads around my Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo accounts. I check every account several times a day and end up deleting more than 100 postings for jobs I can’t do, am not qualified to try, or have no interest in.

When I do find a job I can realistically apply for, I have to visit the company’s website and fill out an online application. I am now signed up with about twenty employers, including the University of Michigan, Washtenaw Community College, Key Bank, and McKinley Properties. The problem is that each site requires me to provide a username and password. If I hadn’t had a pad and paper to write these down as I applied or can’t find the notes I did make, I can’t log back on–so I have to click on that dumb box that asks “Forgot your password?” I thought computers were supposed to eliminate the need for written notes and would help people with poor memories. Hah!

After I’ve searched the listings, I spend two to four hours a day applying for about ten to twenty jobs–and, yes, some companies are hearing from me two or three times a day. Well, I do need a job, and that proves it, right? But because I feel lazy relying solely on the computer, I also practice some old-school search methods: cold calling and actually going out into the market. I am fine with doing that–right up until the phone rings with a call from a screener from some company I never applied to who has found my resume on one of the online job sites. Do I have time for an interview? Of course I do, and after about fifteen minutes of answering the typical interview questions it is my turn to ask the most important one: what company is this and where is the job? So far, out of about a dozen of these calls, only two of them were Ann Arbor jobs–and, rather than follow up with a face-to-face interview, both sent me back to their websites to file an application and this time take a thirty-minute test. Yarghh!

Then there are the calls from the jobs I actually did apply for. If I do well in those phone interviews, I may be invited to interview in person. Unfortunately, many of these have been for jobs that seem to be posted permanently–and as the interviewers start to bite their lips when I ask about the pay and hours, I’ve learned why they’re so hard to fill. For instance, some part-time jobs would be better described as part-part-time. One office position at Sears pays minimum wage–for eleven hours a week.

I have another big obstacle in my hunt for a decent job; it must be on a bus line, because I don’t own a car or have a driver’s license. This means learning, the hard way, where the AAATA lines end. For my interview at Guaranteed Rate on Avis Dr., I got off the bus on S. State at the Speedway gas station, just past that screwy, pedestrian-unfriendly roundabout at Ellsworth Rd. First that meant waiting for some kind drivers to stop long enough for me to run across the road in heels. Then came a twenty-four-minute walk on the side of the road on gravel. Did I mention that I have a bad back and pins in both knees?

I thought the interview went great, so all the pain and suffering was worth it. When I got back home I dug out my paperwork and applied for the AAATA handicap services bus, so that I wouldn’t have to repeat that ridiculous walk past the airport twice a day if I were actually hired.

I heard back from AAATA before I heard from the company. I didn’t get the job. Oh well, back to the computer and phone interviews.

One company called me on a rainy Friday afternoon. First, the screener gave me the spiel then sent an email telling me that the next step was a Skype interview. Yikes! Yes, my computer is xADaudio-video capable, but I’d never used those features, and I had only two hours to figure it out. I hope that wasn’t the job of a lifetime, because I missed it.

I did get to some interviews, and, boy, could anyone tell that it has been a long time since I had a professional interview? I was dressed properly and was on time (actually about fifteen minutes early). I was interviewed by two people, the woman who had interviewed me on the phone and her husband, the owner of the insurance company. I thought I was doing great, and then it happened–my desperation leaked out. What I said would have been funny if it wasn’t stupidly serious: “I could work for a month free.” I blurted this out after telling them I was disabled and on SSDI. It was just so wrong, and there was no way to explain what I meant since I didn’t know what I meant.

No need to say I didn’t get that job.

The next interview I didn’t say anything stupid, but I handed them a resume that was two pages long. I had worked for over twenty years before getting cancer, and I put down every job. I had no idea where to stop, what to cut out, or what style to use.

This was when I decided to get help and signed up for the services of the nonprofit Work Skills Corporation, which helps people with disabilities find jobs. A jovial woman drew up the perfect resume, and I started getting more interviews. With her help I was also able to do a few more things that I didn’t know were blocking me but were easy to fix: with the help of Michigan Rehabilitation Services, I was able to buy clothes that were interview ready. I had been wearing the clothes I wore to work at Sears, a white shirt and black pants. Now, I have dresses.

One day after the woman from Work Skills had driven me around Ann Arbor to leave resumes with hotels, I got home around 2:30 to a ringing phone. It was a young woman asking me if I could make it to an interview on Ellsworth Rd. by 3:00. That was a two-bus trip, so I got her to push it to 3:30. But I missed my first bus, which meant I couldn’t even make that. I called the company back to reschedule for the next day, and this time I spoke to the man who would be interviewing me. When I told him my dilemma he told me to come anyway and he would “squeeze” me in that afternoon with the others he was interviewing. So, on I went.

I took two buses and again had to struggle with that same roundabout at State and Ellsworth. I hadn’t had time to research the company, so I was going in blind. I hoped to pick up some clues from the building, the office, or the cars outside, but there was nothing. It looked like a doctor’s office, and the waiting room had no brochures or company literature.

The interview went so fast that, if the man said what the company did, I missed it. When I got home I turned on the computer and learned that they sell very expensive vacuums door-to-door and salespeople are paid solely on commission. I also found complaints from people who’d responded to ads for customer service representatives and receptionists only to learn that to make the promised salaries, they’d need to sell forty-two vacuums a week–or work seventy-two hours at a much lower rate.

Later, my friend at Work Skills told me that she’d had a few clients go through the whole hiring process with the company, then wind up quitting a few weeks into their jobs. But the couple never called me back, so I didn’t have to struggle with whether to turn down the “job.”

I am still looking for work, and that’s become a full-time job in itself. I have a better resume, business cards, and pen and paper next to my computer for those passwords. And I’m patient. Now I just have to persuade all my bill collectors to be patient, too, when I promise them that I am still looking for work.

“That story has gotten SO MUCH ATTENTION and recognition,” Kim Elsifor emailed when we let her know that this month’s I Spy contest winner Tim Reade was giving her his gift certificate (Back Page, p. 87). “Tell Mr. Reade that the story got me 2 or 3 job offers but two of them were off the bus line so I couldn’t take them but someone at Kroger’s read it and I will be starting there (until I find a desk job) with orientation at the Maple Road store. And also pass on the latest job scam came from someone using as a cover PURE MICHIGAN TALENT BANK and a very real company in the UK claiming to be looking for Administrative Executives that would be working from home doing data entry and analysis for $16 an hour after a 2 week training at $14 an hour. I contacted the real company to confirm the job and it doesn’t exist and they never heard of MRS. WIGGINS who was the woman who interviewed me for 40 minutes by Yahoo Messenger, then I heard from PURE MICHIGAN who told me authentic postings are identified by a PM ID number and they are now investigating these people falsely claiming to work with HEALTH INTELLIGENCE.

“That was my third job fraud, it’s like I was a magnet.”