50 and Looking for Work
I recently turned 50 and am looking for work in Ottawa. I have work, don't get me wrong, I'm looking for work that doesn't give me chest pains at the thought of going to the office for 8 hours/day in an office with no window (the government is still rather a Dickensian hierarchy on certain matters - since there is plenty of empty office space available where there ARE windows) and a 1/2 lunch break which cannot, under any circumstances, be combined with the fifteen minute coffee breaks to form an hour lunch break. Oh, and I should say there's not no window - there's a window between my office and my supervisor's office, so that neither of us has any privacy and she can conveniently pass work through the open space between our offices, even though it would be relief to get up and walk it around to my door (not really, I don't have a door - I'm in administration).
Anyway, the people are fine, although the work environment is so French it's a little alienating for this technically bilingual communicator-at-large. In fact, the first language of everyone I've met so far is French, which is not their problem - it's mine. I'm clearly in the wrong workplace. Conversation, communication, these things matter to me so I'm on the lookout for a job more in line with my personality and sense of humour - which is all in English in spite of my efforts to obtain an intermediate level of French reading, writing and oral communication skills.
Also, the fact that my job, which is all about having excellent written English communication skills, was previously done by someone whose first language was French and who left on her own accord to go to another job because she wasn't comfortable working in English, is somewhat less than inspiring.
So, I apply to lots of jobs (not from work where we can't access anything strictly not workplace related, another needlessly soul-crushing aspect to government employment) and recently went to an interview in which I was very clearly the token 50-year-old. The panel interviewing me was made up of two young men in suits and one young woman in casual wear - much like my own except that I didn't wear mine sprawled all over my chair and I didn't interrupt her mid-question like she interrupted me mid-answer, every answer (yes, you guessed it - she was the human resources person sitting in on the interview). The one young guy, clearly a young New Conservative, was so chuffed at the idea that he was interviewing a middle-aged woman who had worked for the NDP, that he found it difficult to keep the giddiness from showing. He also prompted me to use the word "product" (when the word "service" would have been more appropriate) but I appreciated the friendly gesture just the same and kept the screaming in my head, "You are public servants! Not private profiteers!" down to a dull, and I hope, barely audible mutter.
The other young man stared intently at me every time I said something of note (which was often enough for anyone of sense to hire me on the spot) and then didn't write any of it down, lest he have any record by which to remember me by when it came to assessing the no doubt zillions of applicants for the gawddamned stupid and pointless (say goodbye to another forest) government job.
The awful part of it all was that I knew what they needed - but they didn't. They need someone who can write well (sigh... okay... communicate effectively) and think strategically (sigh... okay... and politically - so that the Minister doesn't have to - since the key to good policy is writing it up such that the Minister thinks it's the best darn idea he's ever had). But since they had no idea that's what they needed, there wasn't much point in me sitting there for an hour being interviewed by them, with me telling them that around irrelevant questions that didn't pertain in any way to the work I knew I'd actually be doing.
But that's the way it works in Ottawa these days. Heck, I had one young manager (the government hires them right out of university) snort and roll his eyes at an answer to a question the panel shouldn't even have been asking of applicants, if they knew anything about the Public Service Act - which they don't. When I got my assessment back, it said I lacked effective communication skills (among other things). To say the panel consisted of the three most inappropriate people I've ever met (one was so abrasive the only word for it was rude, the other made no eye contact, and the third, the young manager just described above was barely a half-step up from idiot) would be an understatement.
Words like "client" and "stakeholder" and "product" are key words that must populate every other sentence in government job interviews these days. And gawd forbid you don't mention what a team player you are, even if your job is archiving ancient government documents alone in a basement somewhere out in a long forgotten bunker - you wouldn't be there if you hadn't had the foresight to mention during the interview what a team player you are. I even had my current boss do me the courtesy of telling me i was a team player when we'd reached the end of the interview to everyone's satisfaction and he realized I hadn't used the magic words, "So, what I heard from you during this interview is that you're a real team player". Which is true enough since I have no idea how anyone could derive satisfaction from doing the work of government these days unless they enjoyed working with others - at the very least.
Thank gawd he couldn't see through to the real me, who was sitting there my chest tightening, my stomach all knotted-up, as I knowingly sought work that was so beneath me I deserve to be struck dead for jumping through the million and one hoops I did to get it, the screaming gettng louder and louder in my head, "I don't want to be doing any of this!"
Alas, the people are nice, the job and pay decent - so it's clearly me who isn't fitting in.
Acceptance is the first step.
