Age-related irony: I’ve applied at all the known employment agencies. These “modern” days everything has to be done on the internet and they tell you that you can’t call or come in until they call you! A resume has to be attached which obviously shows immediately the issue of my being somewhere north of age 60. I haven’t received a call yet, and I did this a good two months ago.
They also use resume “finder” software which grabs keywords from an applicant’s and then it will spit that out if they have a job request. Mine was awful because of my teaching career responsibilities. Apparently being a Country & Western dance team director doesn’t translate well in the job world. So Craig (Mr. HR at Frito-Lay) helped me rework to make mine better and I resubmitted. You see the actual keywords it picks during the submission.
No shock that I haven’t heard a word. Craig had tried to break it to me nicely that I wasn’t going to. (I mentioned earlier how smart he was.)
So much for that avenue. I have practically attacked everyone I know for the networking/word of mouth method, which is how my friend gave me this lead on the tutoring job. I even posted on Fb that I needed someone to hire me. Almost got a job from that, but last minute they claimed they were not going to fill it after all. Heck, I even changed my FB picture to one that’s about five plus years ago when I wasn’t so darn gray!
While chasing everything, but it became obvious I was really just chasing my tail. I decided to be fingerprinted again after all.
If you’ve ever wondered why they don’t show people being “booked” after an arrest like they did in the good ole’ Dragnet days, it is because there isn’t anything cool to show when fingerprinting the suspect. No longer do you roll your fingers in black ink and have someone press them hard against a card while you wear a big number around your neck. Now you hold your hand on a camera box lens and the little light reads all the whorls and arches to automatically register them somewhere far, far away. If you have an iPhone 6 you probably have experienced this on a smaller scale.
What an education I got to discover that fingerprints wear out with age! Mine were worn completely. Here I had actually had a job opportunity available as a bank robber and didn’t have a clue. It was a shock. After many attempts, the lovely young lady trying to take mine informed me that mine were so unreadable that they probably wouldn’t be accepted on the first submission. What another huge age-related slap that was. It almost was starting to be funny.
End of this story is pretty boring. Since mine were on file already, they had a comparison set in their Big Brother vault of knowledge and decided that I really am me. So, my prints were approved.
Writes of Passage 
I had the EXACT same experience with the finger-printing (supposedly indecipherable) comments: “You must wash your hands a lot! Try using some cream for a couple of months and then come back.” No kidding! Hilarious– well, years later the whole event will be — hopefully!
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This young girl had a big jar of “cream” in her drawer that she literally dripping from my hands while she was trying to do this. I kept wondering why all this on the machine wasn’t making it blurry but I decided it was time to shut up and let her do her job. It was only fair that they accepted mine in the end. After all, I had just had them done twice in the past three years so clearly I wasn’t trying to hide something!
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I still have the letter I received from the FBI notifying me that I failed the fingerprint test and needed to return ASAP to resubmit my prints. A life of crime did cross my mind . . .
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