tired of the job search? try this!

Seeing as a lot of people are looking for work right now, I thought I would share a little tip I came across in my research today:

All right. There's a thing call the wishing bean - you've heard of them, yessir. Well, I have some at home. I wish I had brung some. Well, anyhow, there's a wishing bean that most of the places has them. It's a little bean that looks like - looks something like a peanut, the inside of the peanut, but it's yellow. It's got a straw-colored shell on it, it's soft, and inside the shell is a lotta little bit of seeds like guinea pepper. You know guinea pepper seeds. It's got little seeds in there like that. You take one of these wishing beans and put it in your purse, anywhere about you.

Then before you get to this - before you go to this place to seek this job, you sweeten you a little glass of water - very, very sweet. Pour it in a little bottle and before you leave your home you take a drink from this bottle. Let it be big enough so that you can take about two drinks of it. Take a good drink of this water and you spit it and go across it to go out.

Then when you get to the office or place of work where you want to work, you take another drink and you spit it before you go to see the man, and you put one these wishing beans in your mouth, and take a match stick or toothpick or something that you can keep in your mouth, and while you talking to him you bite the bean. Be just talking and bite it with your teeth, and you do like this [demonstrates] - like that. You'll get that job. Yessir. You'll get the job all right.

~ excerpted from "Hoodoo, Conjuration, Witchcraft, and Rootwork," an oral history by Harry Middleton Hyatt

Now, of course this does require you to have a prospective employer who doesn't mind you spitting in his office and chewing a toothpick and a bean while you're talking to him. It might work better with a telephone interview.