Unemployment

I've been unemployed for nearly a year.  Of course I know that it's harder to land a job when you've been out . Personally, I think this is a stupid system. Then again, I don't think you need years of experience to answer phones. Basically, our employment system is horribly inefficient, full of hoops to jump over and is a ridiculous parody of life. I've got nothing useful to say. Just saying.

Bullshit

In today's employment environment, there's a lot of what I call bullshit. For example, computer applicant screening.  We'll have people who can be qualified to say "this is Staples. How may I help you?" or sort through boxes of stuff, but can't get hired because the computer says they live too far away or they can't figure out the right combination of answers- good but not too good, to fool the system. So people are frozen out.


On interns, fuck you, pay me. Why? Because if they can work someone 12 hours per day for free, they won't hire anyone on for a job. So the economy is stifled since you can't buy anything nice on $0/hr, so no jobs are created in other industries, so it's a horrible cycle.

What connects these two? Barriers for otherwise qualified people. It used to be that it wasn't considered 'entitled' to expect to be paid for working like a dog or at least something more to show for it than student loans and credit card bills. It used to be that you could stock shelves without a complicated test on what you'd do if you knew that some other employee was smoking weed. And to be honest, the low level employee shouldn't worry about whether their store makes a profit. They should be concerned about customer service, about making sure everything is done properly, not about the stock options of the guy in the corner office.

The Jobs Project

Oddly enough, when I lost my job, I stopped blogging. Or maybe it was before. It's difficult for me to remember now but I had so much to say that I had three blogs. Right now, I am obsessed with jobs and work. What others are doing for work, how do they get jobs, how the economy works. I read Hidden America full of the sort of hard working Americans  (Ok, and some undocumented workers, but anyway, Americans) who are my opposites. I feel them scoffing at me, saying 'You afraid of a little hard work?" I admit I am. I'm scared of the bright white cubicles. I'm scared of being on my feet twelve hours a day. I'm afraid of doing my best and becoming beaten down and exhausted and thrown out like last week's trash. I'm scared of breaking my health, sacrificing myself for someone else's god who I am not sure I believe in. I would like someday to have my own desk.