Jobless ‘elf’ seeks gig on Freedom Parkway

No, that wasn’t one of Santa’s helpers standing in the middle of Freedom Parkway at Ralph McGill Boulevard, waving at commuters during Thursday’s morning rush hour.

The man decked out in a red and green elf hat, blue hospital scrubs and carrying a “resume bucket” was Jeffery Roof, an unemployed medical assistant with a novel idea to advance his job search.

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MIKE MORRIS / mmorris@ajc.com

Unemployed medical assistant Jeffery Roof decked out in a red and green elf hat, blue hospital scrubs and carrying a ‘resume bucket’ on Freedom Parkway in Atlanta.

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Roof, 39, said he decided to take his plight to the streets, wearing a homemade sandwich board bearing his name and phone number.

“I thought, ‘what do I have to lose?’” Roof said. “”Make a scene of yourself, draw some attention, and you don’t know who might drive up.”

His appearance came as the state reported Georgia’s jobless rate rose to 7.5 percent in November — a 25-year high.

Roof said tough economic times have dealt him a double-whammy. He left the real estate business when the housing market took a dive and went back to school to earn a degree in medical assisting. After seven months working in a doctor’s office, Roof was laid off in late October.

“Things may change and they may call me back after the first of the year, but I can’t count on that,” Roof said.

“Everywhere you go, they tell you to apply online, so I sit at the computer a couple of hours every day applying online, and nobody’s replying back,” he said.

“Sitting around every day at a computer waiting to get an e-mail is driving me crazy, so I had to go do something,” he said. “So I decided to look like a fool and go up to an intersection with a bunch of resumes and see what kind of response I get.”

Roof said that during the three hours he stood in the grassy median along Freedom Parkway Thursday morning, he had several people request resumes from his bucket.

“People have been waving, rolling down their windows and yelling ‘good luck,’” said Roof, who lives in a nearby apartment condo complex. “It’s a desperate act, but these are desperate times that call for desperate acts.”