Re: Web Site for Job Seekers Is Sold.
$10 million for the Mediabistro classified ad I responded to in 2003, which led to renting half of a three-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side for $650. After seeing many horrible apartments for much higher rents, I met with the leaseholder, ran out and bought a bottle of wine, then returned and used said wine to convince said leaseholder that I was the right guy for the room. Several longtime New Yorkers nearly strangled me in jealous rage after they saw this place and heard what I was paying. It wasn't glitzy, but it was big and clean and comfortable, and my roommate was great and did not axe-murder me, nor I her.
$7 million for the first Mediabistro mixer I went to, hoping to scare up some work and contacts. Became depressed at the revelation that I was the one people were hitting up for work, despite the fact that I worked for a small publisher based in Alabama.
$4 million for the second and final Mediabistro mixer I went to, where I scared away the few people I spoke with after I mocked the proceedings as a crush of sweaty desperation. Ran into my roommate, and we got drunk.
$1.5 million for charging me $350 for their Resume Revamp service, which probably did serve as an improvement on a resume template I'd been using from whatever version of Microsoft Word was popular in 1994. At the university press job I landed soon after, the publisher complimented me on my resume. He was also about 9,000 years old.
$499,999 for then-editor Elizabeth Spiers running my egomaniacal story of getting my first job at Gridskipper. She said she couldn't pay me but promised to give me a year of free AvantGuild membership. She quit Mediabistro soon after, and I never got my free year of AvantGuild. Burn!
$1 for having to go through four different Mediabistro functionaries to completely remove my embarrassing and outdated Freelance Marketplace listing.
Congratulations! Feather boas for everyone!
