Sometimes the job search pushes you to the edge. Take, for instance, the situation of Taylor Grey Meyer, a 31-year-old resident of Coronado, Calif., who is a published writer, a licensed pilot, and has completed a master's degree in sports commerce as well as coursework at the California Western School of Law. So after being rejected for 31 positions with the San Diego Padres baseball team, including a minimum-wage job selling tickets, she lost it when she received an invite to meet a group of hiring managers at the team's Petco Park -- at an admission price of $495. She dashed off a response.
"After careful review I must decline. I realize I may be burning a bridge here, but in the spirit of reciprocity, I would like to extend you a counter-offer to suck my d***," she replied in a faux-serious letter to the Padres obtained by Deadspin.com.
Her graphic suggestion was followed by more venting. "Let's talk about why I wasn't a good fit with your organization.... Was it my past experience overseeing the execution of national and international events? Wait, I know, maybe it was my previous internship with Major League Soccer."
In an interview with AOL Jobs, Meyer said that the decision to write the letter came after years of "bad luck" in the job market. She dropped out of law school, she says, because of finances and has defaulted on some of her loans.
"I've been looking for a job for years," she said by telephone. "I was supposed to go into the Air Force. But I was turned down because of arthroscopic surgery from a gymnastic injury from when I was in high school. And that started a trend of bad luck for me."
So when she was contacted by the Padres four days ago, and realized it wasn't about a job offer, but rather an invitation to spend money to search for a job, she took 15 minutes to write her response.
"I've gotten all these terrible form-rejections. I've had to default on loans, and no one wanted to hire me because i've been in school. It's just too much. I just had it. That's all it is," she says, adding it would be "flattering" to be a spokesperson for "people in the same position."
For now, she says she spends her days at the local Starbucks searching for jobs online. She is also working on a memoir, and is applying for a visa to teach English abroad, possibly in South Korea.
Her letter to the Padres is already going viral (though she says she hasn't gotten any job offers as a result). According to Deadspin, her letter has been forwarded to the sales divisions at the following professional sports teams: the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Lake Erie Monsters, the Arizona Diamondbacks, the New York Yankees, the Houston Astros, the Houston Dynamo, the Miami Marlins, the Miami Dolphins, the Boston Red Sox, the Chicago Cubs, the New York Mets, FC Dallas, the Washington Nationals, the Baltimore Orioles, the Minnesota Vikings, the Cincinnati Bengals, the Cleveland Gladiators, the Dayton Dragons and the Kansas City Chiefs.
This piece of writing is a marked change in Meyer's career. Just two years ago she published a children's book, "A Wig for Ally," which according to a webpage of her alma mater, the Univesity of Southern Florida, "teaches positive visualization to children undergoing chemotherapy." The book grew from her experience volunteering at a children's cancer research hospital in Florida. She says she hopes any attention she gets from her letter to the Padres letter will lead to a publishing house picking up her book, which they passed on the first time, because, in her words, it wasn't "lucrative enough."
But her note to the Padres might make Meyer the Howard Beale of unemployed America. (The character from the movie "Network" goes on a famous rant after losing his job, urging his TV audience to join him in shouting "I'm as mad as Hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore.")
For her part, Meyer probably had little to lose in telling off the Padres. She'd initially hoped to work in the team's sales office, but when that didn't pan out, she applied in March to work for minimum wage, selling tickets. But she was rejected again. "We have filled the position with someone whose background and credentials we feel best meet our needs at this time," the team wrote her.
In other words, she was probably overqualified, the most frustrating of possible reasons when you don't get a job that you've chosen to apply for. But of course, her contact information was on file with the team, so she was included on an email blast sent Aug. 5 inviting recipients to attend the upcoming Sports Sales Combine. It said attendees could "have the opportunity to spend quality time with the hiring managers for multiple teams from different leagues across the country." But it wasn't a "job fair," the letter noted, before going on to ask for the admission price.
Meyer's rejection is being appreciated by some members of the Padres organization. In speaking to Deadspin, one Padres employee found Meyer's response downright amusing.
"Taylor's letter was too incredible for anyone to get offended," said the Padres worker, who didn't want to be named. "I'm more impressed than angry."
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