She needs a job. She’s one of the 4.3 percent of people unemployed.

The economy’s in great shape. It should be easy, right?

The Lily News
Aug 9, 2017 · 4 min read
(Mark Gail for The Washington Post/Lily illustration)

Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Jessica Contrera.

On the morning she would try to change her circumstances, Donna Maria Osborne did everything she thought she was supposed to.

She woke up early, lifting herself off her sister’s couch.

She said her prayers, making sure to say “thank you” before asking, again, for what she wanted most.

She dressed in a black suit, paid $2 to ride the bus and arrived at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center at 8:30 a.m in Washington, D.C.

The job fair started at 10.

The 4.3 percent

“Same old, same old,” her friend Durward Jones said.

“You never know,” Osborne said.

“You never know,” Jones agreed. “Something good might happen.”

At the job fair

But at the moment, her finances amounted to a bus card loaded for the week and $2.50 in change. And that’s why she showed up too early, and accepted a secondhand suit from the associate pastor at Trinity AME Zion Church, and prepared a stack of 20 résumés touting her trustworthiness, initiative and all the volunteer work she’d been doing to remind herself that she still had something to offer.

She and Jones rode an escalator down into the large hall where 113 booths were set up, 113 potential somethings good.

At the booth for the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority, she introduced herself.

“Do you know if they have any open customer service positions?” she asked.

“They do,” the representative answered. “It’s a call center type of environment.”

“Right,” Osborne said, nodding to show her enthusiasm and picking up a flier.

“They are looking for a background in call centers,” the representative said. “Billing, and so forth. So if you worked in a doctor’s office or something like that, that’s customer service, but it wouldn’t be on the scale of this call center environment.”

“Oh,” Osborne said. “Okay, thank you.”

She stopped at a hotel management company, whose representatives told her she’d need to apply online. She thanked them and took a free pen with their logo branded on it. Next, the Library of Congress. Apply online, she was told. The same at Two Roads Hospitality.

How many hours had she already spent hunched over her laptop submitting applications? She had purchased it four years ago, when she was working full-time. She envisioned herself back at it the next morning, entering her information over and over again. Or maybe she would start tonight after she stopped at the assisted-living community on 14th Street to check on her 85-year-old mother.

The waiting game

After nearly two hours, she headed up the escalator with Jones. Her mouth was dry from smiling and asking questions and saying “Okay, thank you.” She dug in her bag for the water bottle, searching beneath the stack of résumés that was nearly as thick as when she arrived.

“This year was more positive,” Jones said.

“This year was good,” she said. She headed out to the bus, paid the fare, and made her way back to her sister’s couch.

The Lily

The Lily was the first U.S. newspaper for and by women. We’re bringing it back.

The Lily News

Written by

The Lily

The Lily

The Lily was the first U.S. newspaper for and by women. We’re bringing it back.

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