Learning LinkedIn (Patreon)

Moving from the bottomless district to live with her boyfriend in the upper district came with some challenges for the tigress. First was getting her residential status that would allow her to stay in the district permanently as a resident, a system the bottomless district didn’t really have, then there was getting her things over to the horse’s place, and finally, the most difficult of them all; the job search. There weren’t very many diners in the rich district, and most of them didn’t really want to hire someone who was from the bottomless district. Blame it on the misconceptions, stereotypes, and discrimination, if you will. All of that meant that Alex had to go to and from the diner in the bottomless district while she looked for a closer job.

Alex sat on the bed with her laptop in her lap, tippity-typing away and scrolling through page after page of job openings in various different industries. She mainly focused on food-service related openings as she had plenty of experience being a waitress and figured that would be the best type of job for her to look for. She was in her usual stay-home lounging clothes; a red tank top, some boy shorts, and her reading/computer glasses. 

‘Tick-tack, clickity-clack,’ Alex typed away on her keyboard, stopping every few seconds after she hit the ‘Enter’ key to scroll and scan through the job openings to see if any of them interested her. 

“Dishwasher, head chef, pastry chef…” she read some of the listings to herself as her green eyes scanned left to right down the seemingly endless listings that went on for maybe a thousand pages. She furrowed her brow and squinted at the glow of her laptop screen frustratingly; job searching was turning out to be a lot harder than Alex thought.

The tigress buried her face in her hands and let heavy sigh. It was getting a bit late and she still hadn’t found anything close to promising that she was qualified to do. Maybe she should have gone to college after all. 

She was frustrated and let out a considerably loud frustrated groan and huffed angrily at her laptop as if it was the computer’s fault. 

Her boyfriend Tashi, who she was living with, overheard Alex’s noises of frustration as he stood drying his hooves off in the bathroom. He peeked out from the bathroom and smiled in Alex’s direction before he stepped out of the bathroom with just his boxers on; his nighttime lounging boxers. Alex heard the bathroom door swinging open and looked up from her hands before quickly adjusting herself to not look so frustrated. She did not want the horse to worry about her. Although with the look on Tashi’s face showing concern for the feline, it was a little too late. 

“What’s wrong?” the horse asked as he stepped out from the bathroom, his heavy hooves thumped against the floor with each step he took. He continued to walk towards Alex until he stood right at the foot of the bed, put his hands on his hips, and tilted his head to the side curiously (a little thing he picked up from his feline companion) as he looked down at the cat with the laptop on her lap.

“I can’t seem to find any waitress jobs online,” Alex whined and angrily smushed her fingers into her laptop keyboard, causing her to search ‘sdhkasgfhjew;fkjwerghlifur’ into Google. She frowned at her computer and began to pout, with her arms folded across her chest and everything. “Why is it this harddddddddddddddd There are only jobs I don’t qualify for! I can’t be a head chef at this place called ‘The Terrace’! The name itself already makes me feel very unqualified to even say!” The tigress continued to pout and whine, she even kicked her feet on the bed a little. Her tail flickered and waved around harshly, indicating that she was not at all exaggerating her frustration. 

The horsey snorted and walked his way around the bed to climb onto it. He then scooted up behind his girlfriend and wrapped his big burly arms around her smaller frame. Alex still whined but leaned back into his embrace. Tashi snorted again and rested his chin on top of Alex’s head. “Want some help? I think I might know what to do,” he smiled sweetly, his green eyes landing on the Google search results for the random mishmash of letters that were still on Alex’s computer. “Hm?” Tashi raised his brow and pulled his chin off Alex’s head to look at the glasses-clad kitty cat. 

Alex nodded without a drop of hesitation in her, she really needed the help, having spent all day with nothing to show for was really getting her down. “Yes, please,” she tilted her head back slightly and looked up at the horse that towered her from behind. The tigress did her best puppy-dog eyes at her boyfriend, pleading him to help. 

Tashi chuckled and nodded slowly before he used the arms that he had wrapped around his girl to lift her up slightly and place her in his lap, right over those nighttime lounging boxers of his. Alex let out a small purr and smiled as he lifted her up and put her there. She held onto her laptop tight to ensure it wouldn’t slip from her lap and fall off the bed. Once Tashi had Alex in his lap, he had a better view of the laptop screen and was now able to help Alex with her job search. He rested his snoot gently on the top of her head and spoke, “Go to LinkedIn.com and make a profile.” He let the arms that hugged around Alex fall to his sides to allow her to type easier. He leaned back on his arms slightly and smiled as he watched her fingers move to the keyboard. 

Alex furrowed her brow but began to type in the website name he told her to. “Linked in? As in like, connection, link? And in like inside?” The tigress’ fingers went tickity-tack on the keyboard as she typed in the URL, “Like that?” She turned her head to look at Tashi and gestured to the address bar of her browser with one hand. Tashi nodded, “Mhmm. Now hit enter and sign up.” 

Alex hit the enter key quite hard. 

‘Clack!’

The website loaded in an instant, the internet speeds in the rich district were leagues ahead of what Alex was used to in the bottomless district, better infrastructure and all. Once the white and blue site loaded, Alex had a confused look spread all over her face. “Why do you want me to make an account? Isn’t this the thingy you use for your work? Corporate portfolio and stuff?” 

Her horsey nodded, “It is, but you can build your profile and make connections, add your experience, it’ll make you look really good to people who are hiring, maybe you might be qualified for jobs you don’t even think you are.” Tashi smirked. 

Alex nodded slowly, “So I just put like, my school? And like, the jobs I’ve done in the past?” 

Tashi nodded again, “Yes, then it can suggest possible job matches for you, it’s a lot easier than searching for them yourself,” His nostrils flared as he sniffed Alex’s hair and watched her fill in her details for her account, he looked away like a good horse would when she began typing in her desired password. Alex was incredibly focused as she created her account, and when she was done adding in her basic details including her name, DoB, city of residence, and a nice picture of herself, she turned to look at Tashi again, “What now?”

“Now you need to add work experience and some skills,” he continued to sniff her hair. Alex’s hair smelled nice, like strawberries since she had just showered before Tashi. 

“Waitressing? Is that a skill?” she asked as she typed it into the skill adding page. “Foodservice!” She came up with a better word for her skill and filled that in instead. Alex began to smile as she keyed in different skills that she knew she could do, like Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, and things she was good enough at. 

Her horsey watched over her typing and waited for her to finish filling in the skills she could think of off the top of her head. When the sound of her typing stopped, Tashi took a look at the list of skills she added and pressed his nose into the top of the tiger’s head to nudge her a little. 

“Why don’t you add ‘singing’ and ‘songwriting’?” he asked with his brow raised up and his eyes looking down at her. 

“Wh- How?” Alex turned from her screen to look at her horsey again, she opened her mouth and was just about to say something but closed her mouth and turned back to her computer screen as her lips curled into a grin. Her fingers flew and began typing again. 

‘Singing’ she wrote, then hit the enter key to add another one. 

‘Songwriter’.

Tashi watched her type with a proud smile spread across his broad muzzle.

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Art by Jailbird 

Tashi by TashiGibson