Since I graduated college in December, I’ve been looking for work in the Portland area while living on the island. A lot of interviewers, on seeing the header in my resume where my island address is listed, seemed to suspect that I would not be able to commit to the schedule they’re hiring for because of the Casco Bay Lines ferry schedule.
I’ve gotten pre-interview phone calls or emails asking about my living situation. Once in a while, the potential interviewers will ask specifically about the ferry schedule, wondering if the first boat will make it to the mainland early enough for me to be on time. More often, however, they just ask if I’m really still living on the island, seeming to assume that if that’s the case, I will be an unreliable hire because I’m separated by a body of water.
It’s funny, because I feel like my lifetime of island living has taught me the value of being timely and prompt. What’s worse than watching the last boat leave you behind? There’s surely no glory in running down the dock after the horn blows, making the deckhands put the plank back out after they’ve already pulled it. I’ve lived both of those scenarios, and it’s not fun.
Though I still occasionally push my luck with making the boat, I’m painfully aware of that fact every time, because making the boat becomes instinctual when you’re trying to get to school or work. Usually I’m so hyper-aware of being on time, especially to interviews, that I make sure to build in time flexibility (by taking the boat three hours earlier) just so I don’t have to worry about the boat breaking down or, you know, just being a bit late because of the amount of freight that pushed them off schedule.
Still, in these interviews or pre-interview phone calls, it seems like I get the more positive response when I say that “I’m looking for a place in Portland” over the “Yes, I’m on the island, but the ferry schedule would work with this schedule.”
I get the feeling from these experiences of interviewer skepticism of the ferry boat schedule that for some, it’s hard to understand how people live on an island, like the sort of mechanics of it, unless you actually do live on-isalnd. I’m hoping I’ve gotten it across to my interviewers that I won’t be late to work because of the boats, but I might just have to consider taking the island address off my resume so they won’t discriminate against me for that.
Melanie Floyd, a recent graduate of the University of Maine at Farmington, lives on Long Island in Casco Bay.