Today we start with various scenes of Dudd moving around the city with his portfolio, generally annoying the public. ["Ooh! This is the episode featuring Dave 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius' Eggers, when he was editing Might! Incidentally, that book contains a good chunk of material about Judd generally (Eggers also tried out to be in the cast that year and figures that Judd took the 'middle-class white guy with curly hair' slot that would have otherwise gone to Eggers himself), and about The Real World generally (including an anecdote about meeting Puck and being very afraid of him)." -- Wing Chun] At lunch with an unidentified man, Judd says that he needs some help to get his foot in the door. "Persistence," replies his companion. I would just like to say that persistence is not always the best tactic. For instance, I had a run-in with an applicant the other day who took the concept of persistence a little too far.
Sep: Good afternoon, Sep's company's name.
Applicant: Yeah. Hi. My name is Joe Blow and I got a letter from you stating that my 'skills did not match [your] current personnel needs,' and I just don't see how that's possible. I am a college graduate.
He neglects to mention that he has his A.A. in Applied Sciences (whatever that is. Shop?) and not in a field relating in any way to graphic design.
Sep: [looking at the worst-designed résumé to land on her desk all year] Unfortunately, you don't have the two years of day-to-day graphic design or production experience that we require.
Applicant: [yelling] How can you say I don't have experience? I have been working in the field for five years.[at a rate of one freelance project per year]. Are you even qualified to make that judgment? What's your background? How can you come to a decision about me without even seeing my portfolio? How late are you open? I'm going to come down there and make you look at my portfolio.
Sep: Sir, I'm sure you're really strong in the Force or whatever, but I'm looking at your résumé right now and I see four typos. One of them is the name of the software package in which you profess to have "expert level knowledge."
Then he threatened to kick my ass, which pretty much guarantees that I won't hire him now. So think twice about how persistent you want to be.
Apparently Dudd didn't threaten to rearrange any faces at the Examiner, because he has an interview there for a position as a weekly cartoonist.