The Cell Phone (Part 2)

Anyone remember my pink cell phone?

I used to be so in love with it. It's pink, so no one will steal it. It's German, so Germans can call me and text me. It's cheap, so I can afford it. It all sounded so wonderful and simple.

Then it turned out it's an instrument of torture that I'm sure goes against several rules set up in the Geneva convention.

You see, I'm still applying for jobs, apprenticeships, basically anything and everything that vaguely looks like it'll have me without breaking my fragile little body or mind. Preferably with a pay of 400,01 euros or higher, so they pay part of my insurance, which is about double the price of the insurance for alternate universe me, who is in exactly the same situation, but he's a dude. I wonder if people who have no ovaries, breasts or uterus anymore get manly rates. Nah, probably not. Insurance companies are cruel beasts.

But back to the cell phone.

I put its number proudly on my CV, and I fill it out wherever I need to. I still don't know it by heart, but shush.

The downside of this is that companies can call me, and they do.

The first time, it was to arrange a job interview, so I thought 'yay, they think I'm qualified'. The person on the interview had not read very far past my cell phone number, though. I wasn't qualified. They didn't have any job for me.

Yesterday, I applied for two apprenticeships. Both seemed interesting, the company was reputable, I was surprisingly answering to almost everything in their list of requirements, since I had everything except references. I applied while praying the deadline for apprenticeship applicants had not been met yet. Today found out, all on my own, it had.

Then I looked at my phone and saw a missed call. A missed call with most numbers answering to most numbers in the company's phone numbers. I mentally prepared for the thanks-but-no-thanks conversation and called back. I got a colleague. The calling woman was in a meeting, but she'd be back in twenty minutes. Twenty-three minutes later, I called back. I got a woman. Oh, no, her colleague had left for the day. I was ready to strangle the phone at this point, but it wasn't done with me yet.

Was I the girl who'd applied for two apprenticeships? Yes, yes I was. I was expecting to get politely chewed out for wasting bandwith twice, but I wasn't. The woman processing me had apparently mentioned me enough that the woman on the phone knew what I'd applied for. Golly gee whiz. She said her colleague probably wanted to know which one I preferred. I said I was more interested in IT than economics when I was being completely honest with her, so she put me down for that.

Oh, and I might get a call back tomorrow.

To be honest, the problem's not the phone. The problem is too much Disney movies and wonderful parents raising me to never give up hope and remain optimistic. I'm currently sitting here, hoping against all common sense, cultural knowledge and warnings of those more knowledgeable than me, that this major German company will make an exception. That they're thrilled to have a girl wanting to go into IT. That it's only shortly after the deadline, and anyway she's foreign and couldn't know and we don't have enough people who want to get 'trained by solid name in German economy' on their CV.

Anyway, you little disaster tourists you, keep checking back to watch that hope being crushed, bouncing back and getting crushed all over again. It's a resilient little thing. It might take a while to stay crushed.

Edit: Yeah, turns out I applied for next year's apprenticeships. I'm an idiot.