Probably too stupid to be employed anyway.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I just realized I have a mother lode of stories about people getting resumes printed at Kinko's that were so blindingly, breathtakingly stupid that they could probably file for, and get, disability and not HAVE to go job hunting.

Here's one of my favorites. Woman comes in and wants her resume on the highest quality paper we have. That would be the 100% cotton. Hammermill, I think. Very nice stuff, top notch.

So she gets it back and goes batshit. Why?

"There's a BRAND NAME visible on every single one of these sheets! This looks CHEAP!!! I SPECIFICALLY said I wanted my resume on GOOD PAPER!!!!"

Yes, folks, she was pissed because our top notch paper had a watermark. Like most good quality paper. When you held it up to the light, a faint watermark is visible. Very, very nice.

"Well, do you have any 100 percent rag that doesn't have that cheap looking crap on it? No? Harrumph! I guess I'll have to go somewhere and BUY some decent paper since you all don't stock anything but crap!"

Yeah, suit yourself. I wish I could be a fly on the wall when you are down there embarassing yourself at If It's Paper.

You know, some people really just don't know. And they are nice and they say "Um...that watermark... is that okay?" and I just nicely would say "Yes, it's very good quality paper. The better papers often have one. It's supposed to look like that, it's a mark of quality." Not this screeching harpy. She clearly knew more than I did.

[digilight]

Holy jebus that makes me brain hurt. And yeah, that is some very nice, very expensive paper right there. Allthough you probably could have sold her on a simple 70# offset at that point for 5X markup. And for the record, the Strathmore (my paperstore doesn't stock a hammermill like that) would be about 35 bucks retail for that ream of 500 sheets while the 60 or 70# offset would run her 5-7 bucks, hell even a nice classic linen or crest won't break more then 25 bucks. So when you mark it up she's looking at damn near 50 cents a copy for her resume that is probably so full of mistakes and lyke i am the greatest !!11!! that she couldn't even get a job working for beavis and butthead at Burger World.

[Broomjockey]

Yep, in my classes, I've learned that not only is Hammermill WAY up there on the quality scale, watermarks are both a prestige thing, and legally binding, meaning that if you try and print a document on something with a watermark, and try to date it before that watermark exists, it's legal proof of forgery. Teacher told us about a case that even used it, but I can't remember it anymore.

[GolfCart34]

Part of one of my classes involved writing resumes for the professional world. You got marked off big points if you didn't use decent resume paper. That woman obviously had no clue what quality resume paper was. What a moron.

[blas]

Her resume probably says:

"I went to a Ivy Lege skool and I got a 4.0 gpa and I can type reel fast and Im good at englush!"

[Calud]

Her resume probably says:

"I went to a Ivy Lege skool and I got a 4.0 gpa and I can type reel fast and Im good at englush!"

Ah, I can't even begin to write like that, even though I'm forced to read this crap day in day out. I work in a company with native German/French speaking people, forced to write stuff in English. It's horrible, I tell ya.

The worst thing I remember is this:

You were supposed to loot a dragon's head, after you defeated it, but somehow it didn't end up in the loot. The Gamemaster wrote this in his notes:

Dragon did not give head.

I'm not even sure if he wrote it grammatically correct... it may have been did not gave head... or something like that.

But then again, those peoplez native tongue iz the Germanz and thatz a prettyz goodz exzcuze, ja?

[burzikak]

Do employers really put much stock in what the resume is printed on?

I mean as long as it is legible and neat who cares? (well maybe if you were apping to a conservation group, go for 100% recycled)

[Broomjockey]

Do employers really put much stock in what the resume is printed on?

It's just part of the overall presentation. Flimsy, cheap paper that tears when you try to pull it out of a stack isn't going to be bothered with, also, the bleached blinding white paper may stand out, but only long enough to be tossed to save the reader's eyes. It's about the image you're trying to convey with your resumé, and hopefully making it easier to read (as some papers can really affect readability).

Edited to add: That's a really horrible pun, and I hope it wasn't intentional

[Sliceanddice]

you only use the really good stuff if you apply at a job you will make 100K a month not 100k a year, most of the time you want to use something good. i would say the stuff you spend 35 dollars for a pack of 500 is good enough for most situations. I would only to the good stuff if i was making invitations or something (much cheaper to do your self on the good stuff than to buy it.)

[Gravekeeper]

To be honest I perk up in glee whenever I hear the fax machine whirl up in the office here due to the possibility of it being someone's resume. Which I can peruse, still with glee, and usually get a good laugh out of. <cough>

Yeah, I'm a jerk. ^^

As for resumes....honestly I've always faxed or emailed mine in to every place I've applied to.....and it seems to have worked thus far. ;9

[Rapscallion]

The worst thing I remember is this:

You were supposed to loot a dragon's head, after you defeated it, but somehow it didn't end up in the loot. The Gamemaster wrote this in his notes:

Dragon did not give head.

I'm not even sure if he wrote it grammatically correct... it may have been did not gave head... or something like that.

This reminds me of when I used to moderate on a text-based MUD. Someone had a problem where the game hadn't given a reward - beat off a pirate attack, hand the head of the leader to the leader of the defence, get a reward.

Player: I gave head to the captain but I got nothing in response.

Still chuckle when I think of that.

Rapscallion

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Yes, the Hammermill was the most expensive paper in the house. I can't remember the exact cost, but yeah, it was between 30 and 40 bucks a ream. She was only buying a few sheets, so it's not like we are talking major coin outlay, but still. Sheesh. I know that paper caused a lot of sticker shock faces on folks coming out of graduate school. They had to buy A LOT of it.

Okay, here's another "Too Stupid To Work Anyways Story". Young woman comes in and has me run a proof before I run her order of something like 10 or 20 copies of her resume. She scrutinizes it like she's expecting the last clue to the Mystery of Life, hands it back, and says, "Okay, go ahead and run it." So I do. She leaves with it. Life for most of the rest of us moves on.

Couple hours later, she comes back in a state of extreme distress. "Look what I discovered! This is AWFUL!" She...God, I have a hard time even typing this it's so nuts...takes two sheets, jogs them both together neatly, then holds them up to the light. "Look. LOOK! They aren't perfectly aligned!"

Okay, let me explain something at this point. Copy machines are belt driven. They are never absolutely dead on. The jitter of copy from page to page is not usually discernable to the human eye. Unless your machine needs a tune up, the margin off dead center should not be more than a millimeter or so. In this case, it was less than a millimeter. I kid you not.

It took me a while to even figure out what her problem was, because my brain kept rejecting her explanation as being too way out. I was like "Clearly, I'm missing something." I wasn't.

I wanted to say, "Honey, your biggest problem is not even that you have no marketable skills. It's that you have the most raging case of OCD I've ever seen. " Yeah, that potential boss will be sitting there going, "Well, I was going to hire this chick, but look at this shit, willya? This resume is half a millimeter off from what the other ones I haven't seen are."

We went back and forth a bit. I refused to have the job re-run. I'm only willing to humor so much nonsense. She would not be happier with a re-run. If I did that, we would have spent all afternoon on a order that would net us less than a dollar. No. This job was going to be a major, major headache for us if I didn't nip it in the bud.

She ended up getting this devastated look on her face, shaking her head, and going "I ...I just can't accept this. I'll have to go somewhere else." So I refunded her on her job, tossed the order, and watched her leave shaking my head.

Wow.

[digilight]

Ahhh, the "what the hell do you mean that copy machines have a variance" people. Thats just priceless, expecially since there should be nothing for any potential employer's to compare it too, unless in her retarded brilliance she was going to give each interview multiple copies of her resume. Most copiers actually run an acceptable variance of between a 32nd of an inch and an 16th of an inch, so you could potentially see a difference of up to an 1/8th of an inch when comparing them to a backlight (1/16 to the right and 1/16 to the left = 1/8 inch)

And to answer the reason for paper selection for resume, its actually quite simple. You want a paper that will stand out in memory to the person selecting it. If you are applying to a job, and have the actual skills required, assume for a moment that there may be at least 1 other person just as qualified as you. If they use a standard Classic Linen Baronial Ivory (which is generally a very common paper used for resumes) and you were to use a Classic Columns (which has the texture as columns running the length of the sheet) on a Avon Brilliant White, or a color other then Ivory which resume do you think will stand out in their mind at the end. It will be the one thats a little more unique, but in a professional way. Don't think that running the gambit and using a bright color paper will work, but a slightly different profesional stock can mean the difference between getting the job, or at least a call back to the next round or not.

[MystyGlyttyr]

There was some crazy lady applying for the secondary clerk job up here the other day who brought us her resume. It was well-typed, well-spelled, generally good (except for the hideously bad work history and the fact that it was filled with insane).

But she printed it on neon yellow construction paper. Whoo, that was interesting.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

We used to get that on occasion, too.

The funniest one was the guy who had his resume printed on the dainty rose-pink speckled paper.

For a mechanic's position.

I reckon that was one of them real "progressive" garages.