Since the season started on January 5, Jake has been sending girls home—the ones he doesn’t want to f—k or make babies with, except for Rozyln Papa—the one ABC sent home for sleeping with one of the show’s producers. She’s coming back tonight. Perhaps she’ll spread her lips and let us in on all the hooha she had while the cameras weren’t rolling.

The camera’s however, were rolling when kitty-cute Ali Fedotowsky sent herself home. She made it sound like her employer gave her an ultimatum—Jake or your marketing job. She chose work over love. Wise move.

In the Women Tell All special, all of the lovely ladies will get a chance to confront Jake about their booted bootie before they disappear into obscurity.

If only rejected job candidates had a chance to confront prospective employers. I think we need to give job seekers that opportunity so they can improve on their deficits. After all, trial and error works for employment situations as it does for rocket science (and love).

Since rejected job seekers didn’t get The Job, it’d be great to watch them say what’s on their mind as if they were aiming their discontent at someone they had hoped to develop a relationship with.

If it were me, I’d say,

“I came here for the right reasons, and there are job candidates here that did not. I know that for a fact. You didn’t even give me a chance.”

“I’m disappointed because you’re a company that I definitely could see myself joining.”

“I’m pretty competitive. I don’t like to lose. We’re all after the same job, and that’s just a cat fight waiting to happen.”

However, in the end, getting feelings off our chest will only make us feel better. They won’t change a situation that wasn’t meant to be.

But that’s okay because sometimes we need to feel better on the inside to move on on the outside.

For Ann, one job is never enough. Yes, Ann is looking for extra work.

While she’s thrilled to be taken off the unemployment roll, she’s got one little problem. Ann is making $20,000 less than in her last full-time job. That’s a significant drop in wages, given that her cost of living keeps rising.

How to plug the income drain guides Ann to explore quick employment opportunities. You might say she’s in an “I-don’t-know-if-I’ll-go-through-with-it phase,” but she’s applied for [fill in the blank].

Let Ann fill in a couple of them for you because she’s actually applied for them through her favorite what-the-hell-I-can-do-this-job site—craigslist. Craigslist has all kinds of goodies under the events and gig links. On a fluke, Ann applied to become a nightclub dance partner for single guys in need of eye candy. The only problem is that Ann can’t dance but maybe that’s not that important.

As with women, looks are deceiving. The website, DanceDate USA, looks good, but Ann can’t believe this site isn’t a front for hooking up hookers with men willing to pay for the privilege. You do get paid to go out, but that’s the real killer—only $20 to $25 an hour.

That’s not enough for Ann. She’s supposed to show up at the trendy Current Sushi nightclub in D.C. on February 5th for an in-person interview. Not doing it.

The other gig seems much more promising, but she imagines stiffer competition. Ann has applied to become one of the Racing Presidents for the Washington Nationals baseball team. If she gets tapped for an audition, she won’t be running in heels. That headgear is anywhere from 45 lbs. to 60 lbs.

The Presidents’ Race features four former U.S. Presidents, namely those found on Mount Rushmore: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt. At every home game, they run against each other during the fourth inning.

Ann is vying for Teddy, the underdog. He’s never won a race.

She doesn’t think it pays anything, but think of the publicity. You become a local D.C. celebrity. Appearances at the White House, annual Easter Egg Roll, 4th of July fireworks.

Now that’s a home run she doesn’t have to take her pants off for.

All I can say to the employers who passed me up or never gave me the time of a phone call, here’s what you’re missing. That’s what I looked like when I celebrated my job offer. I look much more like a schoolmarm in the office.

In my new job, I’m an editor for an educational publishing company. Lots of instructional design stuff, with a dynamic international component. A small company (under 100 employees) but one that continues to grow. I commend its leadership for not laying off anyone since the start of this recession, unlike my former employer.

I’ve been temping here for the past seven months. I think I’ve been the longest temp-for-hire at this company.

I also think it’s important to note that I didn’t get my job networking, applying to a blind online ad or attending a job fair. I got it through an editorial temp agency I had registered with. [My relationship with the temp agency, however, ended a few months ago when I was allowed to directly contract with the company.]

Shortly after my position was eliminated in November 2008, I had my resume professionally redone. I can’t say it helped. Throughout my 15-month-unemployment streak, I applied to about 60 jobs and received responses from less than six. That job search only resulted in one in-person interview and two phone interviews. I think that’s a pretty sad commentary.

Some of my readers have asked me if I’ll continue Girl On the Brink. The answer is a resounding yes! Just because I got a job doesn’t mean that my troubles are over. I’ll be in the “Reconstructing Ann” phase for quite a while as I rebuild my life in dimensions that are not soley financial, though they’re a good part of it. Moreover, an online service is seeking to buy the rights to Girl On the Brink.

As I rebuild, I’m canceling my remaining government benefits—Medicaid and food stamps. Actually, I didn’t reapply for food stamps because my contract income exceeded the program’s income requirements.

My ex, however, remains unemployed since his contract was terminated right before Christmas. He’s applying for them now.

If I were truly Ann, she’d be planning her next escape to the islands. Believe me, that has been on my mind. I’d do just about anything for a plane ticket to St. Barts but will settle for an apartment with a few from the top!

Unless, of course, there are any confident men who would take me up on an escape to the islands.

This has recently become a pressing question for me.

However bad things are, I’m always on guard for signs that life will get worse.

Without succumbing to negativity, I find myself preparing to hit bottom, and then for the bottom to fall out and sink even further to some new and deeper bottom.

But thankfully, miraculously, the bottom has not hit, at least not for me. My contract has been extended yet again—providing me with monetary fulfillment to mid-February. I’m not sure what happens after that. I’ve learned not to take anything for granted, which is both a good and bad way of living.

While I feel economy-wise about life, I don’t like always being on my guard that something’s bad about to happen, and it’s shaken my trust in employer-employee relationships. Nothing is secure.

Living in Washington, D.C., I’ve been socked by snow this past weekend and suffered a minor setback. The office I’m under contract with closed down today, leaving me without a day’s pay. But I stayed productive, cleaning the house, making soup and bread, and wrapping gifts for Christmas.

One of my stupid cats meowed incessantly to go outside. What a fool. I let him out. He frolicked in the snow a bit, sinking to his neck, then scurried back in, only to start meowing again. He just doesn’t get it.

I also was the best ex wife today. I dug out my ex husband’s car. He bought one a few days before his contract was terminated. I guess he didn’t see it coming.

In the New Year, my principle objective is to get out of my basement apartment and away from the house I grudgingly share with him, which varies from intolerable to tolerable but doesn’t ever get any better than that.

So I hit control-alt-delete, rebooted, and am now seeing a wonderful man who adores me. I’ll leave it at that for now.

I also have my health, sort of. Mental anguish is wearing me down. I have my girlish figure, youthful appearance, my grace and élan. Men look at me, their eyes follow me, and they come up and hit on me.

My kids are more or less well, although in need of considerable attention these days. I tell them nothing, but they can sense my psychological pain and foreboding.

Thank God I have some money coming in, at least for now. But while I have hopes for the New Year, I also have strong premonitions that I will find a fulltime job. That would be the end of bottom, I hope.

Ann has just auditioned to become the on-air spokesperson for Living Proof, a line of no-frizz products that the company claims uses a revolutionary technology to fight the frizzies.

If chosen, Living Proof promises to pay her a real salary, bonus and offer her stock options should the Boston-based company go public. Its founders are all guys, and it has a team of scientists, which includes a few women.

Ann hopes she’s got what it takes. According to Living Proof, it is looking for “a smart, passionate, and enthusiastic customer” to represent the company on television, the web, live in store and in PR.

Here’s my entry:

I have two feet planted firmly in midair these days because everywhere I go I am a temp. Everything in my life is provisional and uncertain. Whatever comes next is unknown, and there is just so much chaos a girl can stand before her sanity deteriorates.

I have no idea when my job might come to an end. Maddeningly, my contract is extended a month at a time. As a lowly temp, I have no health care or benefits, of course, but I am excluded even from the company email list.

This seems just cruel to me. We don’t want her to know about the Christmas Party? Ugh, just another reminder that I am hanging on there by my fingernails, just as marginal as can be.

And what they call a contract is just the thin veneer of respectability painted onto arbitrariness. In reality, the company’s execs can surprise me at any moment of any day and tell me to pack up and go. I think it relates more to the company’s financial position than to their evaluation of the quality of my work, but I don’t really know.

At what used to be my family home, my ex is trying to move me out by quietly but steadily packing up my things, one small section of the house at a time. He’s respectful with my stuff but that’s not the point.

He wants to reduce my presence in the house and push me out the door, which at one point long ago I agreed to leave willingly. Admittedly, I’ve had many schemes and dreams over the past two years to find another place to live.

All of those ideas fell through, so here I am. I left him, but I didn’t actually leave. My departure from the house is always coming soon: It just never arrives.

If I got a good job, I would find an apartment, but I don’t know when that happens.

And my refuge is my boyfriend’s house, where peace prevails. No kids and no noise. I haven’t moved any of my stuff in, to mark my territory. I’d really like to find my own place.

I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend. I expected to flit from flower to flower like a bird, sampling their sweet nectar.

But the available flowers were disappointing, so I ended up hanging out at this one flower way longer than I’d have thought. It has turned out to be the right decision and rewards me with love and stability.

Since I’m here, I’ve decided to go big. Big hair, big eyes and big attitude.

Although I didn’t get a chance to become a 30-second girl (a sponsor at last Saturday’s EnduroCross supplied them), I did get to hold up the 30-second sign before the wave of the green flag to start the off-road races.

A 30-second girl holds up the 30-second board to let the bikers know that the race is about to begin.

What a chill thrill!

But only for a few seconds.

It seems that life is increasingly being calculated in seconds.

When seconds count, I find that I really need to get my ass in gear in so many ways, from making split second decisions in a crucial sports play to accepting a date from someone I’ve met on the fly to applying for a job.

I’ve also learned that seconds, not minutes and certainly not days, count when deciding to respond to an online job posting.

I have a real recent example that proves my point.

Last week, I applied for a communications position. By the time the recruiters received my resume, more than 500 other job seekers had already lined up ahead of me with their online submissions.

The job had been posted about two weeks before I discovered it, and then I waited a few more days before applying.

That experience taught me a lesson that I should have learned months earlier. The reason I didn’t was recruiters who are uninterested in you almost never send you a personal email saying you didn’t make the cut, or if they do it’s an automated message that says the same thing.

They rarely disclose the actual number of resumes received but choose other words, such as “overwhelming.” Now I know what that means.

The lesson: Set up job alerts when you can, and email the recruiter if the job’s been posted for a while. If you simply ask whether the position has been filled, they’ll generally get back to you with an answer. No need going through the time and effort if a decision has already been made to fill a job.

Bottom line: Timing is everything.

Oh, the minor inconveniences of a girl on the brink.

Traveling to Vegas has inspired new marketing ideas in Ann. All the better to nab that marketing dream job that’s going to strike her like a boxer’s left punch.

You’ll love this first one. It’s so Las Vegas. Tracker trailer truck with glass walls. Inside girls in thongs (according to the cab driver who told me) and I’m guessing some sort of top were pole dancing.

Can you guess the company’s advertising message? Oh, come now. It’s selling girls 24/7. Can you imagine? Open for as long as the Internet.

The cabbie said the promotion didn’t last long. Outlawed by the police—too many rear enders.

Even though I’m heterosexual, I would have looked, too. It’s so novel. Who needs a DVD player in their SUV when you can get live entertainment?

The other marketing idea? Hmmm. I forgot, but it probably involved something that plays off the reality of the Las Vegas strip. Feather your imagination with a show girl, and you’ll get the idea.

Yes, yes. I’m sure the outer burbs cater to the working folk—the gardeners, maids, construction workers, sales clerks and the like.

I’ll be here a couple of more days to let the experience gel like Oobleck into something I can adapt to the corporate world on my next job interview, which has got to be like 2012.

In the meantime, I’ll sit back and watch the movie, 2012, maybe even breaking one of my rules and munching popcorn.

As for my luggage, it arrived the next morning. Don’t you just love it!

One job folds into the next. Nothing stands out.

Career counselors say that would never do when submitting a resume. You need to inject action words, stress accomplishments over responsibilities and develop keyword-attractive phrases.

Yeah, yeah, I’ve done all that.

Now, let me offer some advice to employers. You need to stop using words and phrases, such as “multi-tasker,” “effective communication skills,” “strong interpersonal skills” and the like.

To attract top talent, I suggest you take a cue from perfumers and clothiers, such as the J Peterman Co. and Lucky Scent.

When Lucky Scent describes a perfume, the company seduces and tantalizes potential customers with a life beyond “the box” of their humdrum daily routine.

Human resource directors can, too, by writing job descriptions with worldy, rich and distinct high notes.

Here’s what I mean.

Communications Manager
When you call your employer “aphrodisiac,” you’d better be fairly sure you’re not overreaching yourself. This newcomer to the IT world is from Microsoft—the sixth composed for the monopolist house by Bill Gates—is a head-turning position as you’re ever likely to get.

That is, if you enjoy working on PCs, filling in for the receptionist to answer phone calls, or sipping a fine amaretto in your Starbucks. Who doesn’t?

Communications Manager is a somatosensory trip to Seattle—or perhaps to the keyboard-pounding 1920s, when James Fields Smathers of Kansas City, Missouri, handed over his power-driven machine to the Northeast Electric Co. for mass production.

The job is slyly evocative of the high-kicking Rockettes and requires a faintly animalic scent of chamomile laced with honey. Throughout your career, you’ll run through a palette of “I can’t wait to get out of the office” to “I can’t wait to get out of the house:” to hip-hop, to funk, to flirt with the boss. It’s exhausting.

Your boss will barely lift a finger. He’ll just look relaxed and pour the Moët.

Some days, you’ll stretch out languorously in your cubicle, displaying mean grins, leaving you hungry for more sleepless nights in Seattle.

But who makes the boss look good? The brownnoser.

To Ann, that’s too dull and has a pejorative ring to it. Nobody wants to be called a brownnoser.

With so much free time on her hands from being unemployed for almost a year, Ann has spent a good deal of it reinventing the brownnoser.

First, she’d change the name and associate it with a whole new persona.

That would be the pit-tootsie—sexy, contemporary and dedicated to the job of making the boss (racer)  look good. She’d drive her boss to P&L victory and be behind his desire to be one of Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For.”

There’d also be no more Laura-Ashley look. Forget below the knee, high collars and flats. You wouldn’t need to hide your body—or status—as a pit-tootsie like brownnosers do. Think mini-wear for maximum fun!

But wait. There’s more.

On hot-hot days, a pit-tootsie has the option of cooling her boss off by becoming an umbrella girl. Umbrella girls shade racers while waiting on the start grid. In the office, why couldn’t a pit-tootsie pull the blinds to keep the sun from slicing through the blades. Bosses can get really hot under the collar.

If a pit-tootsie decides to take her boss for a ride, such as picking up bagels and cream cheese for a morning meeting (wink, wink), she can then become a scooter babe.

Of course, that would require her to know how to ride (wink, wink).

Yes, professional motorcycle riders know how to live!

Why hasn’t Ann had this revelation before and why now (Girl on the Brink Psalm: 35—new international version)?

It’s because she keeps an open mind to the possibilities. Like you should.

When you open your mind to new opportunities, you’ll find pleasing the boss as pleasurable as pleasing yourself.