Some wore ties. Some wore their pants too low. Some were balding. Some owed two months of mortgage payments. Some spoke openly of suicide. Some asked this reporter for a job. Some asked the manager at the hotel hosting the event for a job.
Ahead of a new In-N-Out restaurant opening in Las Vegas, close to 1,000 applied for a $10-an-hour job flipping or serving burgers. There are 50 available jobs, at most.
Sharell Hewlett, who will be one of the managers of the new restaurant and had the frontline job of handing out applications, said she found the range of applicants, from teens to retirement age, "incredible."
There was 42-year-old Freda Beckwith, who Wednesday observes three months of joblessness. Her resume ends at the Bellagio, where she was a cashier until Sept. 17, when she and 14 others in her department were stripped of their jobs.
Her husband is disabled and brings in only $700 a month in Social Security disability payments. They are now two months behind on payments on their house, she said.
Her curriculum vitae also includes nine years of cooking at New York-New York, a certificate that shows she was once employee of the month and another that shows she was never late or absent.
She has applied for jobs at every hotel and casino on the Strip; she has filled out dozens of applications. She thinks younger people are getting the jobs.
"Sometimes I want to sit down and cry," she allowed. "But what good would that do?"
Beckwith said she never imagined herself applying for a job at a burger joint.
Hewlett, who the applicants didn't know was their potential future boss, made a trenchant observation after a series of grunts from applicants as they received or handed back the forms. Few matched Hewlett's friendly banter.
"You know," she said, "the experience is important, but we also train people in the system we use. What we look for is smiling people. We want their personalities to shine through, since they're going to be dealing with customers every day."
At the application fair, smiles were as scarce as jobs.
Among the applicants for the type of work that in the past largely belonged to teenagers was 22-year-old Javaris Pickard, who had sat on a bus for three hours to be number 283 in line.
He has been seeking work for four months. During that time, he said, he has passed written and physical exams for Metro Police, a job he said he would like so he could give back to the community where he grew up.
But he's applying to work at In-N-Out, he said, "because any income is better than none."
Grace Robinson, manager at the Holiday Inn Express, where the event was held, said she had never seen such an event draw so many applicants. She had to scramble to find extra rooms and chairs to allow the throng to come in out of the rain.
She said her hotel is not immune to the same conditions drawing those hundreds, however; with fewer guests, her staff works fewer hours now than in the past.
"Maybe this (event) will allow them to see how thankful they should be having the hours that they do," Robinson said.
A few enterprising would-be grill-tenders also approached Robinson. More than one had what she called "amazing resumes," including a union carpenter who, at In-N-Out, would earn less than a third of his former salary.
"People want to work," Robinson said. "There's just no jobs."
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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