Giving Tuesday costs nothing but time well spent

Assisting others helps us battle our own sense of despair, says Suzanne Westover.

It's Giving Tuesday, and this time last week I'd have told you my cup was empty. If you'd peeked at the dregs roiling around the bottom, you wouldn't have wanted what was on offer, anyway. I was feeling singularly depleted.

Though incredibly grateful that my husband has returned to sea to oversee an empty cruise ship — as the company stubbornly hangs on by the last chain of its anchor — the readjustment to life as a solo parent with a “virtual-schooler,” while juggling a demanding full-time job, has felt overwhelming at times. There have been too many nights of breakfasts for supper, too many evenings where my daughter and I look at each other with matching square eyes, exhausted by the ongoing adjustment to virtual everything.

Then a friend messaged.

After 13 years in a role as a movie theatre manager, her husband had been let go from a job he loved and excelled at. I felt my stomach clench in empathy. The shoe hasn't yet dropped for us, but it could.

I heard in her voice the fear and frustration that seeps in when the skill set on offer doesn't seem to match the job market. Before I could stop myself, I said, “Have you updated his resume?”

She said she had, that it was looking pretty good. “Do you want me to take a pass at it?” I asked.

For a fleeting moment, I wanted to bite back my words. It was after five. I was tired. Besides, no one likes revising resumes. It's why mine was last updated in 2015.

It's thankless and finicky. The templates are never quite right. The text boxes jump around. Don't even get me started on the bullets. Why do they disappear halfway down the list? Should education be first, or last? Getting the thing onto two pages is like wrestling an alligator. There is always one line you can't delete, but you can't finagle it up onto page 2. Can't references just be implied? What to cut?

Finessing skills is harder than it looks, and striking a likable, yet professional tone — somewhere between strictly competent and overconfident — is a fine balance. You want to appear friendly, yet able. Knowledgeable, yet eager and willing to learn. In many ways, it's an exercise in frustration, executed when you're steeped in desperation and least able to articulate why you should get that coveted job when you just lost your last one. That's why fresh eyes can help.

Seeing her face light up, my regret lasted less than a second.

I made pancakes, parked my daughter in front of Peter

Rabbit, and became absorbed in all the things I didn't know about what it takes to manage a movie theatre.

Of course, it shouldn't be a surprise that customer service and human resources are involved, but I'd never thought about the marketing, the metrics and analytics, the point-of-sale software, the facility management, the budget and inventory oversight, plus all kinds of other transferable skills that go well beyond dimming the lights and doling out popcorn. By the time I was finished, I felt like I'd done by far the most important work of my day.

“This,” she said to me the next morning, her voice filled with hope, “is incredible.”

It's amazing how doing something meaningful for someone else fills your cup right back up again. It doesn't have to cost you anything, except time well spent.