A lot of people know what it is like to sneakily apply for new jobs while at their current place of work. Most people can hide their interviews and job fair appearances with sick days or "doctor's visits," but one employee secretly questing for a new job got busted in a surprising turn of events.
Ja'Naea Modest of Champaign, Illinois, went to a job fair during her lunch break. She got a bite from a school, which asked her to apply then and there. Unbeknownst to her, as she was filling out the application, her local news station, WCIA, captured her. It later broadcast the footage as part of its package on the fair.
"I love my job, but I'm trying to move, so I need some money," the 33-year-old nonprofit employee told BuzzFeed News. Modest also works as a DJ on the side.
Modest had no idea the fair would attract the media and had no idea she'd drawn the camera.
"I was focused on the application — I did not know [the local news] was there. I had no idea what was going on — I came back, changed my clothes, and did the rest of my shift," Modest continued.
A friend of Modest's father told her he saw her on the news.
"He jokes a lot … and said, 'They have a nice picture of you on TV right now!' And I said, 'What are you talking about?' and he said, 'No, I'm dead serious,' and he pushes play, and there I am."
Figuring many people in the city of roughly 87,000 people had already seen her, Modest posted a pic of her evening debut on Facebook. It quickly went viral:
"So I didn't want my current job to know I was looking for another job. Why the damn news filmed me at the job fair. Smh," Modest captioned the Facebook post, which has about 44,000 shares at the time of this article's posting.
lmfaoooo Facebook been having me dying lately pic.twitter.com/YY3mPAzUqz
— immigrant (@KariukiMachine) August 6, 2018
hey @WCIA3 least y’all can do is hire @dj_silkee after blowing up her spot!
— immigrant (@KariukiMachine) August 7, 2018
Modest said some of her fellow employees have approached her and joked about it. We're hoping her managers can laugh it off, too!
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