You know what's more frustrating than job-hunting? Frauds.
After having written in response to a job posting, my name and all, I get this:
Dear Applicant,
Thanks for your response for our Admin Receptionist/Personal Assistant opening, we really do appreciate your willingness to work for MARTINS YELLOW FOUNDATION.
I am Mrs. Shannon Hunt, SALES/LOCATION MANAGER for MARTINS YELLOW FOUNDATION. We are seeking an individual who is motivated, a team player, energetic and reliable to work with good understanding in setting up our new locations in different locations in the United States. You will be needed to assist in setting up the new office location in your area and keep me updated with activities on needed supplies and office items.
We are establishing a new location in specific areas in the United States which you will be a part of the team upon office completion. I'll need your services 30-40 hours weekly in helping out with running errands for the orphanage home prior to our arrival for start up. We will set up a formal interview as soon as possible to sign all necessary documentations including a W2-W4 Forms.
Duties and Requirements:
*Scheduling programmer's, flights and keeping me up-to-date with them.
*Handling and monitoring some of my financial activities.
*Filing, Faxing, Creating and sending out letters, scanning documents.
*Purchases of office supplies for the new location
*Meeting and picking up clients from airports upon arrival to the states
Weekly Salary: $500
Please note that this position is not office based for now until the office is officially open in your area and the flexibility means that there will be busier weeks than others. I would like to give you an immediate trial, so if you are interested kindly get back to me with the following information.
Full Names:
Mailing Address(apt):
City, State, Zip Code:
Cell Phone Number:
Home Number:
Personal email for correspondence:
Thanks in anticipation of your prompt response.
Yours Sincerely.
Mrs. Shannon Hunt
shan.hunt11@outlook.com
admin@martinsyellowfoundation.com
http://www.martinsyellowfoundation.com/
Now, this already looked weird, because why in the world would this be so generic after my having replied? Still, just to give it complete fairness, I started by doing an Internet search for "Martins Yellow Foundation", which gave nothing, of course.
So, I'd gone to the provided website. It was already looking dicey:
Generic-looking handsome guy at the top, marginal-at-best web designing, pixellated pictures that only result when copying it so many times... Woman wearing a tee-shirt from a completely different organization... It's just... wow!
Then one ventures to the "About Us" page, where i don't even think I'm going to go into a full-on analysis of its contents.
The first entry is the president/executive director, who has a completely weird name for an Italian, "Martins Yellow", is perhaps a hermaphrodite.
One would think with credentials linking [s]himself to Oxford, [s]he'd take a little more pride in English grammar.
Then you have a media specialist whose birthdate is on the website:
A person on the website who doesn't even seem to be part of the foundation at all (and strangely, she kind of looks like someone I'd gone to high school with):
And the writer of the generic e-mail, pictured with her ghost dog:
The establishment date of the website is 2000, which means effectively that in 13 years and four people in the "About Us" section who are, apparently, Metro-Atlanta-based and have been for a while, they've not been able to establish an office here at all?
I go to the trouble of this because it's these types of probably-scams that completely disenchant people like me. These types of scams, where people who want to believe so badly they'll fall for even the most glaringly obvious of non-sequiturs, are baneful parts of human existence I wish were gone.
It's not fair for those of us who want to have hope that his/her dream job is out there and that we'll actually achieve those dreams in our lifetimes.
I want my dreams to come true, but this just sliced a little bit away.