Grocery List Resume

You ever apply for a job so confidently—so professionally—that you strut away from your laptop like you just closed a multimillion-dollar deal…

Only to realize 10 minutes later…

You uploaded your grocery list instead of your résumé?

Because I have. And I need to speak about it publicly, so my soul can rest.

It was 1:47 a.m. I was emotionally dehydrated and running on spite, caffeine, and broken dreams.

I’d already applied to 26 jobs that day—24 ghosted me, 1 auto-rejected me in 47 seconds, and 1 just said “Kayla will be in touch,” which we all know is code for “we will never speak again.”

So when Job #27 came around, I was like, this is the one.

Customized cover letter? Check.

Résumé freshly updated with big words like “cross-functional” and “synergy”? Check.

Confidence? Delusional, but still check.

I hit upload. I hit submit. I exhaled like I just launched a spacecraft.

And then…

I saw it.

Target_Emergency_List_FINAL_FINAL_REALLY_THIS_ONE.docx

Not my résumé.

Not even a to-do list.

A full-blown breakdown in bullet point format:

• Tortilla chips

• Cheese, but the fancy kind, not that sad shredded bag that clumps

• Emotional support ice cream

• Trash bags (because life)

• Dry shampoo

• “DON’T FORGET COFFEE OR WE RIOT” (all caps, bolded, italicized, underlined)

Oh—and my personal favorite line, dead center, no context:

“We are not doing adulthood like this anymore.”

I stared at the screen in horror.

I considered moving. Not just cities—identities.

Because somewhere out there, a recruiter had just opened what they thought was a résumé and found a dairy-fueled cry for help.

And you know what?

They never responded.

Which is fair.

Because if someone applied to your company and submitted a Word doc detailing their cheese priorities and adulting fatigue, you’d probably be concerned too.

But here’s what I learned:

If I can survive sending an itemized breakdown of my grocery-based emotional spiral to a Fortune 500 company, I can survive anything.

The job hunt is chaos.

Some days you’re qualified.

Some days you’re crying into a PDF.

And some days… you’re uploading cheddar as your career highlight.

Still, we rise. Still, we apply. And next time?

We check the file name.

Twice.