I still haven’t figured out why no one wants to hire me for a retail job. Maybe I come off as pushy, maybe the managers think I’d scare off customers or maybe I scare the managers themselves.
Maybe the supreme forces of the universe don’t want me to get the 30-percent employee discount, but all I know is that Baskin Robbins, The Container Store, Godiva, Barnes and Noble, Bath and Body Works, Marvelous Market and at least half a dozen restaurants passed up on this bodacious, ethnic, under-employed college student. Scratch that – I myself fled Baskin Robbins after the balding manager overzealously veered into personal territory during our interview. (“On a scale of one to ten, how honest are you?/Ten./Have you ever lied to your parents?/Duh./Then the answer is not ten!!”). Jeez, I thought he meant whether I’d ‘fess up to eating sherbet on the sly, not whether I’d told the folks I was after curfew because of a surprise moose attack on the Beltway.
Those heartless retailers – they say they’ll call back, but they never do. They say they’re hiring soon and they’ll keep me in mind, yet they spurn my follow-ups. Meanwhile, my application languishes in a ruddy box behind the counter, along with my social security number, birth date and everything. That’s all a shifty employee (or any sneaky crook, for that matter) needs to cleanly perform an identity theft.
If you’ve been raised right, you know that your social security number must be kept under stricter watch than your middle-school diary. You give it out only when you absolutely have to, because stuff happens where you least expect it. For example, there’s a rise in the past few years of child identity theft. That is, ID thieves figure (correctly) that parents won’t be checking up on their 5-year-old’s retirement cash flow. Hundreds of thousands of Americans also end up getting none of their social security benefits because illegal immigrants make up fake social security numbers that belong to real people. When this kind of dispute happens, no one gets the money. The Social Security Administration puts the cash into the Earnings Suspense File, and $500 billion sits in purgatory, just like my job application. Ever applied to work at Chili’s and got told that you’d get a call when something opens up? Be worried. A study shows that these cases are much higher in the restaurant industry.
Most stores let you leave your social security slot blank. But why does Bath and Body Works tell me I won’t be considered for a position unless I write it down? (Sorry I haven’t a more manly example of a workplace.) In fact, you are asked to type it in again as part of a phone assessment. You give this company your most valuable information at least twice, and you haven’t even been hired yet!
I make a quick call to the Social Security Administration, and they tell me it’s illegal to require a SSN number on a job application, but you risk your chances of getting hired at an organization that wants it. In other words, you don’t have to put your information out there, but nobody has to give you a job either. It boggles the mind! Sure, a company wants to check that you’re a legal resident before they offer you a position. But the more sensible policy would be to first figure out who would be a good hire, then ask for the sensitive information if they want to hire you. If everyone required you to give out your SSN number, and you applied everywhere in a frenzy, imagine the number of people with prime access to your identity.
You’d be daft to think this to be sensationalistic paranoia. I did a double-take when I followed up on my application at a store and the teenage cashier turned to a flimsy box in plain view behind the counter and pulled it out. No lock, no key. Human beings run that store, and plenty of human beings have a lot to gain from my digits. Be careful, kids. Think twice. I’m going to be walking into Bath and Body Works this week and demanding my application back. I might scare them.
Nandini Jammi is a sophomore English major. She can be reached at jammin@umd.edu.
