When I first came to America, I did not know where to look for work or how to look for it. Someone told me that any store with a “HELP WANTED” sign on the door was hiring. So every day I walked the streets, one street after another, one shop after another. Whenever I saw a hiring sign, I went in and asked.
Some places had me fill out an application. Some saw that I did not understand English and refused me immediately. In one or two months, I do not know how many forms I filled out. They all disappeared like clay oxen into the sea—no sound, no reply.
In Chinatown, I saw several businesses advertising for clerks. When I went inside, the manager would ask:
“Do you have local experience?”
Some asked where I came from. When I said mainland China, they did not welcome me. That was in the 1980s. The shadow of the Cultural Revolution made some people afraid of those coming from the mainland.
Every day, I was like a fly trapped under a glass cover, crashing blindly in every direction.
Later, someone suggested that I try a government employment office. I went. Inside, rows of unemployed people sat waiting for interviews: Mexicans, Black people, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Koreans, and Chinese-speaking immigrants.
I stared at a large wall covered densely with job notices, all written in English. I did not understand many of the names of the occupations. So I looked at the jobs with the lowest wages. I thought that low-paying work must be simple physical labor, and I did not care what kind of work it was.
I found one paying $3.25 an hour, copied down the number, and gave it to the government worker. Fortunately, the woman who interviewed me had an East Asian face and spoke Cantonese. She entered my name, age, nationality, and work history into the computer and told me that the job did not require much. I only needed to know how to read measurements.
I confidently said that reading measurements was no problem.
She gave me a referral letter, drew a small map showing the factory location, and wished me good luck.
I was very happy. After more than two months of running around, perhaps today I would finally find work.
I was full of confidence. I had worked in factories in China for more than twenty years. I could use a chemical balance with measurement error of only one ten-thousandth. At the cement factory, I had spent years calculating slurry proportions—how much calcium carbonate, how much aluminate, how much iron oxide. Even elementary-school arithmetic problems could not defeat me.
Compared with all that, reading a measurement seemed simple—ridiculously simple.
At the factory, they handed me an application. I filled it out and returned it. Soon a middle-aged white man came out to interview me. He rattled off a long stream of English. I understood only vaguely, but pretended I understood and nodded again and again.
A few words seemed clear enough. He wanted to test whether I could read measurements.
I said I could.
He handed me a ruler and asked me to point to three and five-eighths inches.
I took the ruler and looked.
My heavens! This was an imperial ruler—not the metric ruler I had used all my life in China.
I stared stupidly. My head suddenly began buzzing. Since primary school, we had learned the international metric system. Where did all these fractions come from?
My head swelled and sweat appeared on my forehead. I forced myself to look calm. I found the three-inch mark. But where was five-eighths?
I glanced sideways. The white man was staring at me strangely.
Pretending not to be nervous, I pointed to a place on the ruler.
He shook his head.
“NO!”
Then he asked me to show one foot and five-eighths of an inch.
Trying desperately to hide the embarrassment of my first failure, I found the one-foot mark. But where was five-eighths?
Inside, I prayed: I cannot get this one wrong. If I do, the chicken will fly and the egg will break—everything will be lost.
I hesitated, but I could not delay forever. Finally I pointed to the place I thought was correct.
The man shook his head again.
I panicked.
“I can learn,” I blurted out in my English. “You hire me. I can learn. I will learn…”
“NO!”
He cut off my defense firmly.
“Go to school and learn it, then come back and apply. This is not a school.”
With that, he turned and disappeared into the inner office.
Something so simple, something even an elementary-school child should understand, and I could not answer it.
Feeling as though I had received a big zero on an exam, I slipped shamefully into my old car. My eyes became a little blurred.
That embarrassing incident was twenty years ago. Thinking about it now, I can laugh.
Originally published in Our Stories, compiled by the Los Angeles Burmese Chinese Middle School Alumni Association, Macao, 2007.