Ah. Have to apply to jobs once more. What a soul-sucking exercise in futility at this age.

Sure, I am interested in the job. Oh. You have an application form to fill out? Sure! Love to.

Name. Address. Phone Number. Email.

Please list all educational institutions you attended. The dates, Addresses, GPA and when you graduated.

Umm. I’ve attended a dozen different schools. Sometimes at different times, and I haven’t the foggiest idea what my GPA from the University of Alaska was in 1977.

Sometimes they even ask for a transcript. From all the schools. Gah.

Please list all the jobs you have held, in reverse order. Give the name of the employer, the address, the name, title, and phone number of your immediate supervisor, your beginning salary, your ending salary, and why you left that position.

Umm. I’ve had dozens of jobs. Many of the companies no longer exist. Many of the supervisors are dead. I don’t remember my salary for the carpentry job I held in Anchorage, Alaska in 1977. It wasn’t enough to live on, which is why I left. I don’t remember my supervisor’s names, I don’t remember their phone numbers. I remember building a house when the temperature was ten degrees below zero, it was pitch black because Alaska does that in the winter, the wind was blowing 40 miles an hour and the snow was coming down so hard we couldn’t see from one end of the house to the other and we had to lay in a 45 foot ridge beam three stories up across the A-frame to tie the house together before the wind blew the walls down.

And for the last several jobs, their HR offices specifically restrict me from giving out my supervisor’s name or phone number, and have contracted with a third party “Employment Information” firm that removes them from confirming or denying anything about my employment at the company. So I am caught between the HR requirements of any new employer, and the HR requirements of my old employer.

Welcome to the brave new world of looking for work at 62.