The waiting game has gone way too long. It has been almost a year since I quit my second job. When the Yuletide season started last September, I was already unemployed. It?s already the fourth week after Easter Sunday or Pasko ng Pagkabuhay and I?m still agonizing over the outcome of the initial interviews and the responses from forwarded resumes that wouldn?t come. The effects of El Niño have brought my spirits down to a critical level. My last salary lasted until Christmas. I got no severance package for my three-year servitude. I faced the New Year with an empty pocket but with a happy heart.

I am not one who would praise joblessness. However, if a job will turn an individual into a cold one or a vampire then resignation is the only resort.

All right, I was a call boy for three years, or a call center agent to the conservatives who might have strong objections to that job description. I rarely saw the sun get up from its bed of clouds for I worked the night shift for almost all of the time I worked in the company. For three years, I only witnessed the moon waltzing in the sky under a disco ball of stars.

I even braved wild weather just to report for duty during ?Milenyo?s? onslaught and went back to my apartment the next morning in a state of shock because I had to go through a maze of tumbled billboards and displaced trees that blocked Edsa. Hazard pay was never part of my compensation; I just had to pray harder for my safety in times of disaster.

I can submit my application to other outsourcing firms, but I don?t want to end up underemployed again.

Most of us in our department were degree holders. Some were nurses, and a few were engineers. We worked there because we were well compensated. We could send our siblings to school. We could pay our overcharged bills, fill our empty stomachs and get immediate medical attention. If we used what we studied in college, we would have denied ourselves the benefits we were receiving unless we worked overseas. But I think it is still better to be underemployed than underpaid.

After graduation, I landed a job in a labor camp or, to be more precise, I applied for the position of guidance counselor but ended up as a staff member of three different departments. I don?t know if the company was tightening its belt or they couldn?t find the perfect fit for the positions I handled for over a period of 14 months as a contractual employee. I felt like I developed a multiple personality disorder. I couldn?t stay focused on a particular task because my immediate superior would ask me to stay in one department one day and move me to another office the next day. Delegating tasks was not an option since I was the lone staff in those departments. I could only rely on myself.

I abandoned my post and declared myself depressed for two years. Thank God I got out of that hell hole, called ?quarter-life crisis,? alive.

I don?t want to put the blame on graduates who gave up their dreams and became disillusioned. One must go through the eye of a needle to end up with a job. One must gather the necessary documents like transcript of records, certificate of live birth, individual community tax certificate, barangay clearance, police clearance, NBI clearance and health clearance. One must prepare a 1x1, passport size, or 2x2 photographs. And a resume should be at hand. It is not only exhausting but also expensive to land a job.

After sending all these credentials to a firm, one has to submit to a series of tests and interviews. While one tries to control his nerves while wearing a corporate noose (a necktie in ordinary English), some other applicants use their contacts to get through the course. And at the end of the day, one has to answer a wild-card question, like ?If you were a cereal, what would you be?? on which your chance of getting the job might well depend.

Because of the turbulent economic climate, employers are not only picky. They also try to find ways to hire staff on a contractual basis as well as to reduce the perks and privileges given to employees.

I am aware of the delicate situation our country is in right now. I don?t want to be picky but I promise myself that I will never go into a career where job security is defined as the renewal of one?s employment contract. I can?t afford to be choosy but I am determined not to accept a job that will require me to spend long hours in the office. Unless I love the job, of course.

So I am going to wait.

But time is not on my side. The payment for my unsettled postpaid phone bill is long overdue. It looks like I will have to accept whatever work is available out there.

(Andrew Van Ryan Serios, 29, worked in an outsourcing firm for three years before he resigned.)