Fact or Fiction

I'm running out of options.

There's a logic rule about how unemployment works. It's something along the lines of "the longer you're unemployed, the harder it is to get a job." It's ironic but it is true. You lose your job, and then you send out resume after resume in the vain hopes of getting a callback. You go through unemployment and underemployment until finally you score an interview, five months after your last permanent job. You come into the office dressed in recently dry-cleaned attire and the first question to come out of your employer's mouth is "Well, why have you been out of work for so long?"

This is the most humiliating question any human being can ask another human being, especially when it comes to entry-level. What do you say? Can you respond bitterly? Can you quote statistics? Can you tell a joke, a lie, the truth? What's the point of that question? There's a bad economy, you're living off spaghetti and Ritz crackers because your college degree that was supposed to set you ahead of the pack now places you squarely in the middle. You compete with snide late 20-somethings possessing Master's degrees, trust funds, and parents with summer homes. Hell, you compete with bratty 18 year olds who have mapped out their life to the age of 57, where they'll die of a jogging-induced heart attack.

How dare they? - you think in the lack of privacy of your apartment that you share with four people, a dog and a cat. Think about that: 7 living animals and only one bathroom. You are living with seven things excreting all sorts of gases, liquids, and solids and you think "How dare these people cut ahead of me in line for this position." Who are these 20-somethings with no heart and even less mettle, who probably won't stay the year at company X? And then you flash-forward to the interview, to this employer who asks you "Why have you been out of work for so long?" You look at the floor, at your resume, at the potted plant in the corner, leaves brown at the edges. There isn't an answer. You're out of options.