Job Hunting (Again)

I’ve been looking for jobs on Monster.com this morning, and I’m going to be going through the Sunday St. Pete Times, configuring a ground game for a full frontal assault on potential employers tomorrow. I’m trying to be positive here, but I’ve put in what seems like a thousand applications so far, and have gotten only a couple of nibbles out of it. The job situation is bad everywhere, I guess, but down here it seems like no one wants an old former truck driver. Well, except maybe for trucking companies, but I’m determined that I’m not going back out over the road.
Oddly enough, one of the places that’s advertising a delivery driver position is a furniture store chain that’s already rejected my application twice. This is the place where the manager told me “quite frankly, we’re looking for someone a little younger”. But this is the third time this job has been available since I first put in an application. If they’d hired the old dawg to begin with, they wouldn’t be looking for yet another person to fill this position, would they?
Frankly, I’m scratching my head a bit. I was kind of hoping to get back into warehouses, but it seems like every time I do anything remotely physical I have problems with my shoulder. So maybe the kid at the furniture store has a point. Unfortunately, I don’t have to skills to do anything else but drive a truck, and that’s just not on the table right now. I thought about driving a cab, but Victoria has basically stamped a big “NO” on that one (the money’s not that great, and people have a habit of shooting cab drivers around here). So I’m looking at other options. Warehouses are still a possibility, but what I’m really looking for is some kind of delivery job.
I’ve begun to wonder if the reason I haven’t been able to find anything is because my last employer trashes me when someone calls. I don’t have any evidence or other reason to believe that they’re doing this, but my relationship with my last dispatcher had become so toxic by the time I quit that I have no doubt in my mind that if someone called Epes and wound up talking the Fuck-tard that he’d tell them all sorts of conjured up horror stories. I imagine that’s just paranoia, though. I’m realistic enough to conceded that for the jobs I’ve been applying for, I might not have been the ideal candidate.
We need something fast, though. I’m very close to dropping by the local McDonalds. I’d thought we had a solution, but it hasn’t worked out so well. So I’m still looking. Only now the situation is ever more desperate.
Anyone out there want to employ a beat up old man who might not have the greatest of abilities in regard to physical work, but whose last tested IQ came in at 148? Sure, I might not be able to step in there and sling boxes around like the 18 year olds, but I could probably come up with a better, more efficient way to get the job done.