I guess, to add, there is obviously bias in some people (e.g. Crafter_Man) but it’s not insurmountable. It’s rough out there for everyone right now, so if I were Mary, I’d be looking at jobs in industries that most people tend not to work in. Call centers tend to have a lot of overweight people anyway (due to the stress/hours/conditions) so it tends to be an environment that doesn’t discriminate, and where you can gain some decent skills and get promoted quickly if you’re not a fuck-up. After all, if you’re well-spoken, nobody can tell how much you weigh on the phone.
But, I don’t know how things are in California; I’m in Iowa, so conditions are going to be a lot different.
I’m still trying to figure out why your Dad doesn’t think someone who is morbidly obese wouldn’t stand out in Arkansas. I’ve lived my entire life in the South, and I don’t know, nor do I have regular contact with, anyone who is that fat.
A BA? Well, 98% of the people I know have done it, so… no, not especially. For what it’s worth, the vast majority of those people agree that absent significant financial issues, it wasn’t especially difficult.
It’s not like you hear many people saying that college was the hardest time of their lives, after all.
Maybe at Harvard or something, but I know plenty of morons who breezed right through community college. People who can’t even write a coherent sentence or do basic algebra. Good times.
That’s great, although I didn’t ask if you think it’s harder. I asked if you think it’s hard. I have no difficulty believing that losing 200+ pounds of weight is hard. Even harder than college, sure. But I still think attaining a 4 year degree is something worthy of recognition.
Are there a lot of four year community colleges? The ones I’m familiar with only offer 2 year degrees. In my mind, a two-year degree is a little less noteworthy than a BA. And I know plenty of otherwise healthy mature individuals who didn’t finish their college degrees. How should we resolve this battle of anecdotes?
A morbidlý obese person displays for all to see their willingness to let a little problem become a big problem (except for the very very tiny minority who somehow eat only celery and still gain wait due to magival forces beyond their control). That’s not the kind of person I woulkd want working for me.
And this has nothing to do with “discrimination” or “bias” in the pejorative senses of those terms. I’m makng my judgement based on what someone has done, not based on an uncontrollable aspect of who they are.
I’m going to take the unpopular road here and say she simply isn’t trying hard enough.
She got free room and board in California for two months. Does she have anybody counting on her income (besides her informal landlords)? It doesn’t sound like it.
Did she have a ton of job experience in Arkansas? We don’t know, but it wasn’t mentioned in the OP, so I’m going to say it doesn’t sound like it.
How many places was she applying for each week? How many places was she NOT even considering? So she has a BA. Like others have said, so to tons of people. That, and a BA in of itself means very little in getting a job depending on what she did with the BA. Did she take some obscure major that isn’t relevant to today’s job market? Then its not going to help her. Did she go to internships in college and build toward something specific? She wants a job in social services- like a Social Worker? You need Hours- volunteer work, internships at organizations, etc and secondary skills relevant to the job (ie knowing a second language) because sure as hell the people you are competing for that job will have them.
A problem many people develop is to shift blame away from themselves in job searching. Other people also make excuses for the unemployed as well- the economy is the easiest excuse because unemployment is so high. Your dad is taking the easy road here- because she is fat, that is the most obvious explanation. Other people here are throwing other excuses.
But my theory is its simply her. Not because she’s fat (though that may be a symptom of the real issue) but because ultimately I doubt she’s really motivated enough to make this happen. I think she probably passes up jobs she might get hired, either because she REALLY doesn’t want to do them deep down, or simply assumes they won’t hire her for the [obvious] possible reasons. She probably makes excuses/justifications for why she hasn’t gotten a job yet. Having a BA and being smart are vague things- unless they are marketable/relevant she could be dumb as a box of rocks with a GED and have just as good of a chance getting a job.
Most likely being obese is a convenient cover for other, more changeable faults- like a lack of motivation, immaturity, etc. She doesn’t have to approach these things because people are going to write her off for her appearance long before they get into her personality. Does she have an uphill battle? yes. But its ultimately what she chooses to make of it. I think your dad took the easy bait and said it is because she’s fat, but I think its something ultimately that has nothing to do with her appearance, and everything to do with the situation, i.e. getting to rent a room in a house with your internet friend in CA for two months. Which in of itself is kind of nuts :dubious:
Community college probably wasn’t the right term (see, I used it wrong because I went to a. . .nevermind :p). But in California, we have the famous UC schools (UCLA, UC Berkeley, etc.), then the far easier to get into CSU schools (while some are a lot nicer-- like Cal Poly, most are schools like Cal State Bakersfield, which rejects just about nobody). Then, of course, we also have junior/ community colleges.
The CSUs are a weird group- definitely universities, but definitely not as …prestigious, I guess. . . as the UCs (generally. Because again, there are some great CSUs).
Sure it is. They recognize it with a degree. I’ve seen lots of them, since, as mentioned, 98% of the people I know have one.
Seriously, I’m not denigrating the BA. I’m just not buying that it’s a particularly notable achievement, since I believe the definition of ‘notable achievement’ is ‘something not everyone you know has done’.
It’s probably just the economy. I have plenty of really on-the-ball friends who have been looking for months. Added to that is the fact that employers can practically smell depression.
That said, that level of obesity would set off some alarm bells for me. You don’t get that way without some serious ability to suspend disbelief and avoid confronting your problems. When someone gets behind and work starts piling up, I want someone who can tackle that, not someone who can push stuff to the back burner until it gets critical. That level of obesity also indicates some pretty big personal issues. If your personal issues are affecting your health to the point that it is life-threatening, why would i believe they are not also going to affect your job?
I think that this is likely a confusion of correlation and causation. The current unemployment rate of 9.6%, and worse in California, probably has at least as much to do with her not getting a job as anything else. That said, she’s certainly not helping herself by being morbidly obese. Like it or not, true or not, many people will see someone who is noticeably fat, muchless morbidly obese, as being lazy, lacking discipline, being careless, lacking energy, having poor health, and any number of other characteristics that don’t look good to a potential employer. Combine that with depression, and it’s easy to see why she might lose out to someone who is roughly equally qualified.
It’s one thing to be within the realms of average, up to around mid 250s or so depending on her height, but they don’t really register as fat because they’re not that far outside the norm. Perhaps it would behoove her to consider focusing on loosing weight as part of her job search, even getting down to just “really fat” rather than morbidly obese could make a difference.
I don’t know what my daughter-in-law weighs, but it’s enough to warrant rude stares when we’re out and about. She got a great job right out of college, before she put on the weight. By the time she was down-sized, she was significantly up-sized. She gets tons of interviews based on an excellent resume, but in four or five years, she’s had nothing but temp work. She has a bubbly personality and is well-groomed, and obviously intelligent and well-adjusted. I’m pretty sure her size is the issue.
Obviously “everyone you know” is not a representative sample of the population, since only about 25% of adults in the US have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
Let’s put it this way: I am 15 pounds overweight. I carry it very well, with an athletic build. Only my SO and my close friends even know that I’m overweight.
In an internship interview last year (which I got), the two ladies interviewing me were about 60 pounds and about 80 pounds overweight, respectively. They both made separate disparaging comments about how I should “eat more” (when offered candy) and questioned “well, what do you drink?” when I politely declined a Coke. One of them was a manager, the other was an assistant manager in another department.
So it certainly cuts both ways. People judge and remark on weight regularly. But yes, it’s no doubt affecting her. Perhaps she could try and do more interviews by phone first?
It also depends on the industry, some are more depressed/difficult to get into than others. Companies will do without a full complement of creative services long before they’d consider doing without a full complement of people who keep track of the money, for example. And if she’s looking for retail, well, so is everyone else, these days, and most of them are way overqualified. If she doesn’t have something that makes her really stand out, she’s going to get lost in the shuffle of the other 300 resumes that are submitted for every one job opening. A lot of it’s going to be luck – does her resume end up near the top or the bottom of the stack? Because that poor overworked HR person isn’t going to read farther than it takes to get her 5 or so potential interview candidates.
Very true. People are often just judgemental assholes in general, or make unrealistic assumptions about people. It really amazes me how otherwise intelligent people can paint with such a broad brush; a fat person has to be a procrastinator or unable to control themselves at all, or a thin woman is a high-maintenance Barbie type. It’s just so much bullshit, all in all.
That said, you can’t change human nature. Mary has to find a job one way or the other. Ultimately with nearly 10% unemployment, you have to be willing to take what comes along, and go out and beat the bushes. There’s no easy solution but there are people hiring for jobs, and the more you apply and interview, the better you get at them.
Sooner or later, Mary will find a job where she can choose to prove herself – or not. And standing on the strength of great references and stellar performance on the job, most (though not all) hiring managers are a lot more open to even those of us who are quite overweight. After all, it’s a lot harder to make asinine assumptions if you have lots of evidence to the contrary. And, of course, networking helps too.
The fat and skinny cases are completely different. There is evidcence that a fat person is probably a lazy procrastinator, but there’s no evidence that a skinny person is high maintenance.
Of course. Your biases are based in fact, others’ are not. I consider myself so advised.
In any case, it’s immaterial for the purposes of this thread what your specific feelings about fat people are. Clearly, Mary can’t lose hundreds of pounds before she finds a job, so as finding a job from someone who feels as you do is not possible, it’s not worth consideration.