Scratch Beginnings_ Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream - Adam W. Shepard [20]
I wasn’t sure where to begin in my job search, so I began walking down Meeting Street toward the heart of downtown. I filled out applications at the neighborhood grocery store and Kentucky Fried Chicken, but neither had a need for extra baggers or chicken fryers. Management was cordial but noticeably removed from the idea of hiring yet another body to take up space behind the counter.
A longer walk down Meeting (past the Charleston Museum, the oldest museum in the United States) brought on an entirely different atmosphere crammed with chic hotels and elegant restaurants. A man at lunch had mentioned that Hyman’s Seafood was always hiring cooks and dishwashers. “My boy Garcie works there, and he don’t even got no legs,” he had told me. I didn’t have any cooking experience, but I could wash dishes with the best of them, so I filled out an application.
No interest.
Maybe Sticky Fingers was short on wait staff. “Uh, come back in about a month. Maybe we’ll have something.”
Moe’s Southwest Grille? Nothing.
My faith was fading, but I remained fearless. I filled out applications at a few hotels. Forget the stereotypes that said that females were usually the ones doing the housecleaning. I didn’t mind vacuuming floors and cleaning toilets.
Embassy Suites? Nada.
Charleston Place? “We just hired two new workers, but check back soon.”
I even tried the famed Francis Marion Hotel at the corner of Calhoun and King, and they told me I didn’t even need to bother filling out an application. They weren’t hiring. “We got a waiting list,” the front desk attendant explained. “And that list is long.”
It was summer, the tourist season! Wasn’t anybody hiring?
Just before 6:00 P.M., I decided to postpone my job search until the weekend. It was Thursday, and I still hadn’t contacted anyone to let them know I was safe. Penniless, e-mailing from the Charleston County Public Library was my only option for communication.
Hidden among the adjacent banks and federal buildings, the architecture of the main branch of the Charleston County Public Library shows downtown’s blending of the old with the new. In contrast to other parts of historical downtown Charleston, where many homes and other buildings have remained standing since before the Great Earthquake of 1886, the Main Library—built in 1998—matches a new era of construction also evident in the surrounding buildings.
But none of that was important to me at the time. I needed a computer. The librarian instructed me to fill out the Internet user agreement form before he led me upstairs to the reference section, which housed one of the library’s two main computer areas.
And I recognized half of the people there! The library was filled with guys I had seen at the shelter who were spending their free time on the computers looking up sports scores or surfing the Internet for the latest news. One guy, Larry, was even searching for jobs online through the Post and Courier’s Web site (http://www.charleston.net). I was embarrassed. I had been trudging through downtown Charleston for hours, filling out applications, when what I really needed to be doing was searching online or, at the very least, making phone calls. Welcome to the modern era, Shep. Pounding the pavement was perhaps one way to go, but there was a far more efficient system out there that I could use to weed out the employers that were not interested in hiring me. (Looking back, I realize that I should have followed Sergeant Mendoza’s initial advice and headed over to Lockwood Boulevard to the employment agency. There, at the government’s One-Stop center, I could have filled out a profile on the