The title says it all, really, but give me a moment to yap about it. If you are reading this, then there is a possible yet huge chance you are unemployed and constantly applying to jobs, which really turns into a job itself. Although you don’t get paid and your emails are constantly filled with rejection letters, and you’re depressed and wondering if you will ever get a job or may just be broke for the rest of your life. This part sounded very harsh, oops. But anyway, who knew getting a minimum-wage retail job would be so hard? I didn’t think so.

Ever since 2023, I’ve been on and off applying for jobs. Of course, life does its own thing alot of the time, which means it completely and utterly throws me off the path more times than I can count. But now it is 2025 and I still remain to apply to jobs. However, the excitement and thrill of applying to jobs has been lost and it’s now the dread of my day.

The thing is, I don’t fully know who to blame. Do I blame covid for changing alot of things, or the growth in AI changing things (just imagine the biggest eyeroll known to man). But job searching, from what I remember or at least hearing, was that it was easy. Well, not like super easy, but it wasn’t so difficult to get a job. Sometimes all you had to do was walk in, hand your resume in, and they would do an interview right on the spot, then boom, you got a job, or they would call you in for an interview and again you would most likely get the job.

Retail jobs, at least from what I remember back in high school, were the easy jobs. You did it during the summer between school to get some extra cash or when you left school and needed job while doing college, or just a job in general until your life progressed to how you wanted it. Retail jobs you didn’t need experience you didn’t need a degree, you at that point just needed to show up for work. Forgive me for thinking that’s how I would think it would still remain all these years, but I was wrong.

First off, alot of places no longer accept paper resumes, which is mildly annoying in its own way, especially when you have old generations in your ear telling you to do just that because that’s how they did it when they were younger (Oof, I wish), but now everything is online. Which you know, maybe it’s less messy for the hiring manager and overall better, but so far I and alot of people hate it.

You would think applying online is super easy. Click on whatever, upload your resume, maybe fill out some questions about what time you can work, etc, because you know, with all this technology and how everything works, it would be pretty up to date, right? For some reason, the answer is no. First off you have to make an account so if your applying to like 50 jobs youll end up with 50 account with 50 passwords and sometimes the passwords are different because they make you change them every few months which ends up having 50 different passwords you just don’t remember and they all can’t be the same so if one has 123 you cant use 123 again ever.

Moving along, you make an account and then you upload your resume, and you think ok, maybe I have to fill out my hours and some small things and send the application again because again all this technology and stuff, but no. You upload your resume, and the site takes it and goes through it, and you would think that would be the end. HOWEVER, you then have to manually retype EVERYTHING into boxes. What experience do you have, and when you graduated, EVEN THOUGH IT’S ON THE RESUME THAT I JUST UPLOADED. Then you have to fill out individual slots telling what times you can work, which is mildly annoying when there are 7 slots to fill. But then, finally, after all that you finally send in the entire application.

Now, of course, a lot of companies use programs and AI to go through resumes before it even gets to the hiring manager. Which you know can be good till you hear from hiring managers speaking out about said programs, telling that these programs dismiss half the resumes for no reason before they even see them.

Great.

Then, if you’re lucky you get an interview again, all this for a retail job that may possibly pay minimum wage. Turns out fast food restaurants pay a dollar less than minimum wage, which is odd. But getting an interview and then they say you don’t have alot of experience, and it’s like well yeah you know I just graduated high school and am looking for experience, but instead they say you should come back when you have more experience… The worst part about all of this is that people who go to interviews for grocery stores and fast food restaurants no longer just do interviews; it’s rounds of interviews before you get the job. Again, we are talking about a minimum wage job, a retail job.

Now of course, through all that the worst part is I’ve ended up talking and making friends at different stores and they complained how even when they aren’t hiring in the middle of May and won’t be hiring till October their company forces them to keep up the hiring page and accepting resumes just for the hiring manager to keep turning them down.

And when you finally go through that entire process and you’re still getting a rejection letter in your email. Thankfully, it’s all digital because at this point the amount of rejections I got would have taken an entire forest.

Maybe this blog post ended up being a rant about how bad finding a job is and how dehumanizing it feels at this rate. The dozen rejection letters that constantly end up in my inbox and having to spend hours applying for the jobs as soon as they open up sometimes having to write a short cover letter convincing them why I need this job a retail job. When talking to friends or family members who you told you’ve been job searching but it’s now been years and yet somehow you don’t have a job still. It’s rather embarrassing, really.

I guess I’m just completely blown away by how difficult companies have made things for people. How hard they make to get a job. Why does a retail job need more than one interview, or do I need all this experience even though I just graduated from high school

By no means do I mean retail jobs are bad or to be judged for having them, because they aren’t. They are jobs that are supposed to give you an income that can put a roof over your head and feed you. But these jobs should never be this truly hard to get into at all. We are at the brink of a recession or maybe already in one. We have certain people in government who are making this thing way worse and inflation is at an all-time high.

The only upside to all of this and that it seems everyone is going through it. Everyone is depressed about it, and everyone has the exact same thing happening to them.

So, to sum up this very lengthy blog post. It’s such a miracle that there are jobs that are hiring and they are understaffed and that they really, really need to hire people. Yet somehow it’s all one just big fib. Why, who knows.

If you’re still somehow here reading this, check out my last post about my top five books that I read while being very much unemployed https://shygirlvibes.comtop-5-romance-books-this-year-so-far/