Scott Thomas, now sixty-six years old, resides in the suburban expanse outside Tampa, Florida. Earlier in his professional journey, he worked in customer service operations for several major corporations, among them well-known entities such as Citigroup. Over time, his career path evolved from structured employment into entrepreneurship—he owned and managed multiple ventures, including fitness centers that once thrived under his direction. In recent years, however, Thomas has found himself striving to return to the corporate landscape. The following narrative, refined for clarity and conciseness, reveals the persistence and self-discipline behind his ongoing search.
Each day, Scott devotes approximately four to six hours to the intricate and often exhausting process of completing job applications. What began as a necessary task has, over time, turned into something resembling an unconventional treasure hunt—a quest filled with anticipation and elusive rewards. Whenever he contemplates stepping away from the process, an inner voice reminds him that pausing would mean relinquishing the very hope that fuels his days. This awareness perpetually drives him back to his computer, urging him to continue applying, almost ritualistically.
His digital inbox delivers a relentless stream of opportunities—between seventy-five and one hundred job postings appear daily, waiting to be assessed. Each morning, he sifts through this deluge with methodical precision, deleting, sorting, and applying. By the end of the session, not only is his inbox cleared, but he has typically completed applications for nearly one hundred positions. This has become part of his daily existence—a structured routine sustained by determination and the quiet companionship of his dog. Beyond these efforts, his days are relatively austere: he does not indulge in television or films and only operates his small, part-time pressure washing business two or three days a week, more as a means of staying active than as a primary income source.
Every day, digital platforms present a flood of job postings before him, a constant reminder of endless possibilities. This regular exposure produces an almost visceral sense of FOMO—a fear of missing out on what might be the golden opportunity, the single opening that could redefine his circumstances. Retirement, for Scott, is currently an unattainable luxury. The fitness centers he once owned shuttered just prior to the pandemic, taking with them not only his primary income but also most of his savings. He has already utilized much of his retirement fund, forcing him now to rejoin the workforce at a stage when many of his peers are leaving it. When friends announce their retirements with pride or relief, Scott responds with a wry sort of resolve: while they are stepping away, he is gearing up for another fifteen years of contribution.
Despite the challenges, he remains largely at peace with his reality. His entrepreneurial spirit still hums quietly beneath the surface, and he admits there is a certain restlessness that boredom amplifies. He wants to actively employ the valuable skills and insights he has honed through decades of work. If his fitness businesses had survived, he would likely have expanded them further and concluded his career managing a small network of successful centers. But since that path has closed, he is now recalibrating, seeking another route toward stability and fulfillment. With no remaining capital, launching a new business is no longer a viable option; thus, his focus is on securing a high-level corporate position—ideally one that pays eighty thousand dollars a year or more. His brother jokingly suggests that he could take a practical job at a hardware store like Home Depot, but Scott regards that as an unacceptable surrender, a step that would invalidate the professional capabilities and hard-earned expertise he has built over decades.
Throughout this process, Scott has encountered what he candidly identifies as a significant barrier: ageism. During one interview, a hiring manager bluntly asked how many years he expected to continue working. When Scott confidently answered, “At least ten more,” he sensed the interview’s tone shift instantly—a silent but palpable judgment indicating that his age had become an obstacle. Though he maintains a youthful appearance and believes he looks close to or slightly younger than his actual age, he knows that the timeline on his résumé inadvertently reveals his generation. He frequently contemplates shortening his work history, “chopping” his résumé to obscure his age, but he hesitates to do so, aware that cutting experience might also diminish perceived competence.
After countless interviews, Scott jokes that he has become something of a professional candidate—adept at responding to questions with precision, humor, and authority. Recruiters often praise his engagement and articulate answers, only to later retract interest, realizing that his experience originates from a period more than fifteen years past. That temporal gap often proves to be his Achilles’ heel. Out of self-preservation, he has stopped asking for formal feedback, knowing that responses tend to be polite but hollow—generic reassurances rather than actionable critique.
Interestingly, Scott is also something of a self-taught technology enthusiast. He proudly describes himself as an AI fanatic, integrating his passion for artificial intelligence into the interview process by emphasizing that he “jumped on the AI bandwagon before most people recognized its value.” Immersed in online research and professional resources, he has deepened his understanding of customer service operations more through recent study than through his years in traditional corporate roles. By reading white papers, attending webinars, and analyzing modern job descriptions, he has accumulated a depth of contextual knowledge that his earlier executive routines never allowed. Whereas management once kept him too busy to engage in deep analysis, his current focus on research allows him to refine his understanding of his field with unprecedented depth.
Scott treats every interview as both a challenge and a potential breakthrough. The possibility of finally “hooking one”—securing a position after all these months of effort—keeps his motivation alive. The alternative, he says, would be idleness, which he refuses to accept. As long as he has the ability to type and think critically, he intends to keep applying.
His journey toward reemployment began around 2019, approximately a year before he lost his fitness centers. Even then, he had begun to feel an internal pull back toward the structured environment of corporate life. Since that time, he has created well over a hundred distinct versions of his résumé, using AI-driven tools to enhance clarity and concision. The earlier iterations, he admits, resembled an unfocused list of achievements rather than a coherent professional narrative.
Today, he supplements his efforts with automation platforms such as LazyApply, which submit applications automatically, occasionally leading to rejection emails from companies he has never encountered. Alongside these, he relies heavily on mainstream job platforms like Glassdoor, Indeed, and LinkedIn. Networking—a traditional but time-consuming method—takes a back seat to this high-volume digital approach, which Scott refers to as his “shotgun strategy,” maximizing visibility through scale.
Despite the emotional toll of ongoing rejections, he finds solace in the very act of applying. For him, the process itself is therapeutic, a structured pursuit that counters the creeping effects of discouragement. Repeated rejection can easily lead to despair, he acknowledges, but persistence has become his shield against disillusionment. He sees his perseverance as an unusual blend of ambition and what he humorously calls “a hint of insanity.” It sustains his daily routine and provides a sense of purpose far beyond the acceptance or rejection of any single application. In his view, he may now be chasing a world record of endurance—few others, he believes, have managed to combine so many applications with such relentless optimism, achieving the rare dual distinction of not yet landing a job and refusing, unequivocally, to stop trying.
Sourse: https://www.businessinsider.com/boomer-corporate-worker-struggled-to-return-job-market-2025-10
