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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 2531073" data-attributes="member: 14159">Not to mention the people who typically need unskilled entry level positions can't afford to go long without work.In trying to just get entry-level jobs, I find it utterly amazing the amount of background checks some places want to do, for simple retail/drone work.  A complete work history of every job you've ever held, ever, with up-to-date contact info for whoever was your supervisor at the time of your employement, every residence you've ever lived at since the age of 18, half a dozen references, detailed personality-test questionaaires, just to be a retail clerk or resturaunt server.  It seems overkill to have to take a 30 minute personality test/psychological questionaaire, spend hours tracking down places you worked a decade or more ago during the summer to see if they're still in business and get a current address for someone who may be a long-separated employee, then have to recall the street address of every place you've lived in your life, all so I can stand behind a register or take your sandwich order.Then again, sometimes you get a very bad feeling about a place when you're going to apply at a place based on their HR/Office environment.  One time I was applying for a retail clerk position at big chain department store, and the place looked dead when I stepped in the office.  It was already a bad sign when employees at the store couldn't direct me to the office, but when I finally found it, the entire place had the yellowish stain of frequently smoked tobacco, with the stink lingering in the air, old dot-matrix continuous-form banners lined the wall that were frayed and obviously quite old.  The calendar was from several years ago, and the computers were literally a decade old.  When I explain to the little old lady behind the desk that I'm here to apply for the job they advertised, she directs me to a computer in the corner for applications.  I'm now quite certain that the trend to use computers for job applications is just a fancy way for HR to completely ignore/dispose of unwanted applications with no fuss, you fill out your application, and it's quietly discarded while you sit around hoping for a call.  In any case, I sit down at a decade-old Packard Bell computer running the original version of Netscape Navigator (this was in Fall 2003) for a crude set of web forms for my job application.  I don't know if it's actually networked or dialling somewhere, only that it's asking for application-type information like SSN.  I give it all the required info (reluctantly since security looked spotty at best, but I really needed the job), and the thing seems to take forever just to process each page.  I get through personal information, then on to listing 5 contacts, then on to every place I've lived in the last 20 years (which requires a cell phone call to my parents, since I don't know where exactly I lived when I was 4), then on to every place I've ever worked, and then on to a seemingly endless series of personality/psychological questions that seem painfully transparent (like a hack-job version of the MMPI), for example (all to be answered with Strongly Agree/Agree/Indifferent/Disagree/Strongly Disagree):"It is always wrong to steal, no matter the reason" "It is more important to be satisfied for a job well done than to be paid well at your job""I take pride in my work, no matter how seemingly unimportant the task"These questions seem to take forever, and frankly are pretty demeaning.  I get through pages of them, when Windows 3.1 this Packard Bell (in Fall 2003 remember) has a Blue Screen of Death and goes down, and the computer fails to reboot, giving an error message during the POST.  The little old lady says things like this happen all the time (looking over, she's also using an identical computer also with Win 3.1), and she has to call a technician from the corporate office, who should be in next week, and I can come back late next week to reapply.  I smile and walk away, never to return, as I realize not only am I unlikely to get hired, the place is a nightmare if I actually worked there.</blockquote>

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