“I bring several years worth of coffee experience…”
This is the line that stunned me. I sat on the couch, after a long day of talking to people about jobs, applying for jobs, working on resumes and cover letters, and then printing some off at the local library, going through that whole debacle…
I had checked, I had double checked, it was all good. Everying looked fine, everything was ready. Except, IT WASN’T.
My fresh cover letter for the local cafe laid out in front of me on the table, I was feeling satisfied, a hard’s work finished, and I picked it up, to look over my fine work one more time—and then I read the start of that second paragraph, and had a crisis.
It read that I had “several years worth of coffee experience”.
Well, that was a straight up lie.
I debated on what to do about this. If the hiring manager read my resume, they would know that that was a lie—or they would think that for some reason I had coffee experience that I did not list on my resume, which would be strange. I had in truth seven months of professional coffee experience. That’s not several years, not even close. I thought about how I could reframe it, (“Well, I’ve been drinking coffee enthusiastically since I was 20, haha!”) no, that wasn’t going to work.
But I really, really did not want to go back to the library.
It was horrible, at the library. All to print out several pieces of paper. I had to log-in to Google, which required two-step verification, which require logging in to wifi, and using my old smartphone that I almost forgot to bring, but I remembered this time, having walked all the way to the library just to be stymied once before. It took about five minutes before my crappy smartphone’s processor could run fast enough to handle a notification from Google, and before even trying this, I had attempted to print remotely from my laptop, and I went through that entire process only to not have it work for some mysterious, unknowable reason in the end. You see that I did not want to go back to library and relive all of that. It took an hour of work to print a few pieces of paper. And to fix one sentence? Please, no. Not like this.
Parker’s suggestion was whiteout. Use whiteout on the letter, he had it. Just write over it. I couldn’t accept that. Handing in a cover letter with whiteout on it?
Come on. It’s just not to my standards.
So, this morning I had the great idea. A handwritten note. That’s what I would do! Cover letter was a little over-the-top anyway, although I’m sure would still be well-received and would be better to turn one in than not. But a handwritten note, with a funny picture, which I had several of—that would be perfect. And I didn’t have to go back to the library. Yes!!!! So that’s what I did.
Now, you may be wondering, why did I write “several years of coffee experience” on my cover letter in the first place?
The reason why I had written “several years of experience” on that cover letter is because I didn’t actually write that cover letter.
I had written my own cover letter, heartfelt and authentic, and then I gave it to ChatGPT, who kept most of what I had written, but made it sound professional and polished. And, truthfully, it sounded much better, even though it said basically the same things. But look—I was lazy, and I didn’t catch the mistake. That’s how this happened.
I used ChatGPT to help me write a cover letter, not write a cover letter. I think there’s a big difference. I also did not end up even using that cover letter anyway. But I thought a lot about using ChatGPT to help me get a job. Is it wrong? But, if I had a friend who suggested to me that I frame things in this way, that way, and improved it, would I accept that? I would. There is one major difference between these two scenarios, however, which is that I would probably learn more from talking it through with my friend, than by just giving it to ChatGPT to mockup. I still learn from ChatGPT though, and this is where ChatGPT can be really useful. I see what I wrote, and I think it’s not bad, but then I see how ChatGPT writes a cover letter, with the same content, and I think—now this is better. And why? It can be a great learning tool.
But in the end I was so impressed by ChatGPT’s cover letter writing prowess that I completely missed the “several years” of coffee experience line. And that killed the whole thing.
I walked in this morning, ready to hand in my resume and handwritten note, folded up in an envelope with some stickers attached, and would you believe it, but I see the manager walking over to the front of the store, passing me in line. It was my perfect chance, to make a direct connection, to hand him my letter in person, and remind him of my face. I couldn’t believe my luck, and I stopped him as he passed, and said that I was interested in working for them, he said great, do you have a resume, I handed it over, boom, shook hands, incredible. Couldn’t have been more natural, or gone more smoothly.
Now, that’s a good sign, is it not? That has to be a good sign.
I am fully immersed in the real world now, as it is required of me. I need a job, I need money. I must engage with the world to get what I need. But I have enjoyed reengaging with the world in general.
I feel like I’ve come out of a deep slumber. (Context: Have been doing a lot of fiction writing.) And waking up, I find that somehow I’m now friends with everybody at the gym, and have made a personal connection with almost all of the baristas at the coffee shop. I’m having more serendipitous interactions with the other customers and other climbers than ever before. But, nothing has really changed except me—they’ve all been here. It’s just that I’m tapped in and engaging, in the real world again. My energy is directed outwards.
My candle has not been cutting it for reading at night. It’s too much of a pain. I could do it for Harry Potter, and that’s a testament to how good the Harry Potter series is. I would say after a month has passed, that reading the Harry Potter series has expanded my literary consciousness. It was something different, something fresh more me, not as simplistic as some children’s literature, nor as whimsical, it was more advanced, something massive and epic in scope but not overly intellectual or literary, emotional and funny, but with depth and darkness as well. It could be all of those things, like The Lord of the Rings, but more accessible.
Anyway, I bring up the candle for this reason…
The last few nights, I haven’t been reading at all. For even the last week. All I do, when the sun goes down, is lay in my bed and think. That’s it.
I have lit the candle a few times to do some things, tidy up the room, attempt to read once more before giving up because it is such a struggle, and then I end up laying down in the bed again. And when I lay in that bed, for hours, in the darkness, it’s just me and my thoughts.
Last night, I was thinking about all of the people that have been in my life recently. All of these people, that are out here in the world, that are part of my world, that are here on this Earth with me. Lots of names, lots of faces. All of us here together, doing our thing, living our lives. And I ended up coming back to a core idea, which is really hippy-dippy, but I kept thinking—I should continue to expand my heart and mind. I kept landing back on that central idea.
I should keep my heart and mind open. I should keep connecting to people, reaching out to people, accepting people. Having pity for people, helping people, having mercy and empathy for them, and caring about them, and supporting them.
It’s hard to explain concisely some deep, lengthy thoughts and complex feelings, but there is a real lesson here that I am consistently reminded of, and am reflecting on once again, these days, which is this: I wish that my brain did not make so many assumptions and judgments about people. My brain, my intuitive and subconscious brain, likes to make assumptions about people. It likes to attempt to infer things based on how they look, how they sound, context, labels and titles. What they are wearing, who they are with, what their job is, X Y Z. Could be good, could be neutral, could be bad, and that doesn’t matter as much as the fact that my brain does this in the first place.
I guess it’s natural that we do it, but I wish it wasn’t so, because I have to tell you—my brain is so often wrong.
Most of these impressions, coming from stereotypes, assumptions, guesses and profiling, almost all of it goes out the window as soon as I start to talk to someone. I don’t like that I have all of this baggage before I even do start to talk to someone. I wish I could take every interaction with every person as a neutral, blank slate, and then learn about them through interacting with them. I wish I could always form my impressions and opinions of them after I start to see who they really are—because my perceptions are so often wrong.
I realized to what extent my perceptions were flawed on a flight to LA. I was on the end of the row, the aisle to my right, and a couple sat to my left. The guy was next to me, and the girl at the window. And I have to confess that I felt that we were unlikely to be friends. They didn’t strike me as such, and especially, I think the guy’s hat did it for me. It had some slogan that I thought was a dumb, and there you go. Whatever it was exactly that did it, my brain made some assumptions.
Well, you can see where this is going… We ended up talking, and then we became best friends. We talked for the rest of the flight, the girl was an actor, the guy had been studying web development, as I had been, we talked about music and coding, life in LA, TV shows, etc., many things. We had so much in common, and we had a great conversation, much bonding. And the guy’s hat?
It was the name of his brother’s band. He was wearing it in support of his brother.
I was so affected by this event, and felt so stupid for my brain having some negative assessment of these people who turned out to be so great, that I wrote something down on a piece of paper and carried it on my wallet, to remind me of this. And I actually still have it, I just checked—this is what I wrote, all those years ago now:
“I’ve noticed on these flights and conversations how judgmental I tend to be from the start, and how every person I talked to was completely different from whatever expectations I projected onto them. This is something you need to be aware of. Every stranger I’ve talked to has brought me a lot of joy, and I’m sure to them as well. So let’s keep that going.”
There you go. It’s still true, and it still happens and I have to catch myself and say, “You don’t know. Until you talk to them, until you get to know them, you have no idea what they’re really about.”
I am corrected and reminded of this lesson all the time.
For example, even at Ugly Mugs—I thought one guy might be the manager. He’s always working, he’s older, and he was on the website, modeling with the merch. Well, when I talked to another Ugly Mugs employee and asked if he was the manager, they laughed, and said no, it was another guy, that I would not have expected at all—and when the other employee came over (this is the girl I befriended who also works at the climbing gym, I should just give them code names), he was laughing and told her, “He thought Caleb was the manager,” and she cracked up.
Apparently it was funny to think about Caleb as the manager. And I thought, you know, that’s it. My brain thought I might have had it figured out, that I could somehow tell, who was doing what, and it turns out I was so wrong that Izzy is laughing about it. I didn’t have a read on anything at all. And I thought, imagine that someone asked, when I was at Starbucks, “Is Jason the manager?” (Jason being the annoying barista who is always complaining and praising Elon Musk and generally driving me insane.) Wouldn’t that be hilarious? I would say the exact same thing to my co-worker, Jessica. “Jessica, this guy thought Jason was the manager. Hahaha!!!” And we would crack up, because we would know Jason, and know how absurd it was to think that Jason could ever possibly be the manager.
HAKUMUSU 