Each week, I eat at the same local restaurant mostly for lunch and it usually involves a meeting. I have noticed more frequently during lunch time, individuals coming in requesting an application for a job. What I have found most interesting is that if you look like a bum, they are suddenly out of applications. However, if you are dressed half way decently and your appearance is even somewhat presentable, they have an ample supply of applications.
In today's economy, jobs are tight and it is interesting that there are job seekers who enter this particular restaurant usually in a tee shirt, jeans or shorts (each garment soiled and / or torn), unkempt in their appearance and looking like a shower is more the exception than the rule. They are then surprised that the owner or manager isn't thrilled to bring them on board.
Last week, I was leaving the restaurant when a young man came in to ask for an application. He fell into the category of "we are out of applications right now." He left the restaurant behind me and his mother was waiting in the parking lot in a mini-van. As he got into the mini-van, he told his mother that they were out of applications. Her response should have been son, why don't you go home, shower and put on some decent clothes then return and ask when they might have an application available. Instead, she said with the expletives deleted for this blog that it was the restaurant's loss and that he deserved to work in a better place anyway. So much for her teachable moment.
Let me take the opportunity to use this as a teachable moment. Whenever, you are going into any place of business to ask for anything remotely related to a job, look presentable; it's not that difficult. No one was ever turned away from a job because they were overdressed or too clean.
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