Seminary Girl in Search of a Job

Recap: Sari is no longer working as a teacher. She finds a temporary job at a jewelry store. Once that’s over, she needs another job.

Sari hit the papers with her job search. There wasn’t much to look at.

A doctor’s office, but at odd hours. She went for the interview, but never heard from them again, until she needed to see a doctor. More on that later.

Writing product descriptions for a gift shop, but that was before its time. The gift shop closed down before they managed to hire someone. Online shopping hadn’t started in earnest just yet.

There wasn’t much to do during the day at her grandparents’ house, where she was staying. Sari’s grandmother had bought a new peeler that needed to be toiveled. Sari lived in fear of the day that she would toivel it. That was the last thing on her to-do list, and once it was all finished, she would have nothing productive to do with her time. Every day that she managed to pull through without resorting to peeler toiveling, Sari counted as a success. She pulled through a good few weeks avoiding the peeler, but eventually the day came.

There was nothing that she needed to do. No library book returning, no cookie tasting, not even babysitting for her cousins that lived nearby. Besides, her grandmother needed that peeler toiveled! She walked all the way to the keilim mikva and took the long route back, and with that, she had completed her life’s mission. Just kidding. She did complete her to-do list, and she did wonder what in the world she would do with her time, but thankfully, more adventures were waiting for her.

Later that night, her sister called with instructions:

"Come to the red building on the corner of Main Street and 23rd Ave at nine am tomorrow?” Sari said okay. No questions asked.

She got there at nine the next day. It was a red building. The attic of it. Up a decrepit flight of stairs and into a wall of paperwork. That was Sari’s new job.

It was a gigantic (and I mean truly gigantic) mess of data that had to be sifted through and entered, bit by painful bit, into their computer system. It was a newly taken-over, government-funded preschool, in which the previous owners had made such an enormous mess of the paperwork that they had lost their license to operate, hence the takeover.

The new owners were given a few months to clean up the mess before their first official audit was coming up. Sari was to spend her days with those evil papers, getting all the data crammed into the computer and not really stopping to breathe. She did all that faithfully, and everyone was happy.

Once the audit was finally behind them, the boss realized that Sari needed to be properly brought on as an employee, which meant she needed an up-to-date physical exam (government workers are required to do that) by her regular doctor.

Problem: She didn’t have a doctor. Boss sent her to his own doctor. The very same she had interviewed earlier in the story. Why didn’t she just ask the boss if he had any recommendations for a different doctor? She didn’t think of it.

The receptionist actually had a look of terror on her face when Sari walked in. Like an “oh no! why’s the girl we didn’t hire walking in here?!” kind of face, which Sari ignored. The next part we will skip over due to its extreme awkwardness. 

The next thing that Sari needed for her job was a high school diploma.

Problem: She didn’t have one because she never graduated high school. She was able to rustle up a seminary diploma. Problem solved. Next, she was given an official position within the company (assistant healthcare coordinator) and, for the next four months, spent her time doing absolutely nothing.

Apparently, they didn’t actually need an assistant healthcare coordinator. Eventually, they realized that there wasn’t any work for Sari to do there, and once again, it was time to move on…