It's really great!
High summer 2003, I received a call from a single-person recruiting business. She was looking for a technician at a wire and cable manufacturer in a somewhat tony suburb of Philadelphia, one that is something on the order of 1/3 or so more expensive than the location I was in at the time.
Recruiter calls and we have a short conversation about this manufacturer. The position itself is mostly doing test and other work on fresh assemblies, and isn't really anything more than an entry level job. It doesn't sound good, but the recruiter is really pumped about this place. It's a great place to work, they really treat their employees great, they have a great summer picnic every year for their employees, it's great. I honestly think she used up about a 10 year supply of the word "great!" during our conversation. I asked for the pay rate, it wasn't great, it was just that side of 1/2 of what I was making at the time. I know I told the person that this wouldn't do, but she insisted the place was great, she was going to send me the job description, at least take a look.
Well, there's no way I'm going to be able to take a 55% pay cut and move to an area that's 33% more, and I told her this, but she didn't hear me and sent the job description anyway. It wasn't exactly what I expected. It was a job where they were looking for some real hard skills. You certainly could have walked into this place with a year of vocational electronics under your belt, but even at that minimal level of skills the pay was terrible, and for the area doubly so. It certainly isn't anything a person with a few years of experience is going to be interested in.
I get ready to hit reply, and:
The reply-to address is strange, it's something along the lines of "MX23XZZ12@AOL.COM" - yep, AOL. Not the recruiter's business name, not her personal name, not anything other than a jumble of letters at an AOL address. This has to be a scam. AOL? Even in 2003 that was a joke. I delete it and and don't bother.
Next day, recruiter calls me back and asks if I received the email, and what did I think. I say "Yes, but the return address was a mess, MX...something at AOL..." Oh yes, she says brightly, that's my husband's email address. I ask why she's using that, since her original email came from businessname.com. No real answer, I suspect that the email service she used was set up using that AOL account, and no one understood what they were clicking. It probably auto-filled.
She asks me what I thought of the position. I'm pretty frank - it's an entry level position, and it doesn't pay anywhere near enough for me to move there, let alone live there. I make double that now. I couldn't afford an apartment on what you're offering, let alone living expenses. It would be good for a high school summer job where the person was going into a related field later, but you'd need at least a real income because this one wasn't enough. It was everything I told you in the phone conversation.
This doesn't phase her. She immediately starts in with the great speech again, and keeps coming back to how wonderful this summer picnic the company offers is. She apparently was invited to it one year, they had food and games and softball, it was just that great. I stopped her and said "A once-a-year picnic isn't going to make up for the fact that you're offering a wage that won't let me live there. I'm not interested, I can't be interested. That's all there is."
I don't know if she was just trying to stay optimistic, or was trying to keep the despair from creeping in, but she said that it really was a great company and that if I changed my mind I should contact her. The picnic really was great.
I thanked her, re-iterated that I would not be interested, and said goodbye. I never heard from this person again. I seem to remember looking this company (not the recruiter) up a few years later only to find they were purchased by a larger rival that's eaten a lot of the smaller players in this market. I don't see any trace of them now.
I hope that whomever took this position saved enough food from the picnic to last through the year, because not being able to buy food isn't great.