I'd Rather Watch Football...and I Don't Even Like Football

President Barack Obama is scheduled to give his hoorah let's go create some jobs speech next week, which also coincides with the NFL season opener. I'd rather watch football...and I don't even like football.
While Mr. Obama gave some great hoorah speeches while on the campaign trail, his sustenance has been disappointing to put it mildly. "Oh it's the Republicans fault!" they cry.

Oh bullshit.

Think about this: who embodies the furthest thing from a rich, mumbling not so bright white guy?
That's right! A "self made," articulate black guy!

He was put in office to pacify the people in the wake of all the shit Lil Bush stirred up.
Yes I said put in office, as in installed. Don't kid yourselves people, your votes don't matter as much as you would like to think they do. They really don't matter at all. The people who still believe that their single vote makes a difference are the same people that believe gas prices aren't fixed and that the president really IS there to represent the people.

But I digress. This entry is about jobs, and not fixed elections.

I have a friend who has been out of work for 2 years now. It's not that he hasn't been looking, but he keeps getting doors closed in his face because people say he's been out of the job market for too long.

What do you do?

You lose your job. You try to find another job during some of the worst economic times in modern American history along with thousands of others looking for work as well. So you continue looking and at some point you begin to get the "you've been out of the industry for too long" line.

Let me tell you about my job hunting experience during this New Economy.

I lost my job just before the summer in 2009.
I honestly wasn't too worried about the situation because after all, this is Seattle. We were a year or two behind the recession bubble, so even then, you could walk out of one job and have another before you reached the other side of the street.

Or so I thought.

Some friends had helped me get potential interviews for sales positions at a few companies, but I hate sales. Hate it. So I thought I'd hold out and look for something I wanted to do.

But as I began looking, I started getting emails and phone calls from friends in the same or similar industries as mine, similar job titles as mine...all getting downsized and laid off. It was like we were a bunch of dominoes falling one by one with no arms or legs to help ourselves up.

We all got together once a week or so to carpool to various job fairs. I think it was more of a social outing than anything because anyone who has ever been to a job fair will tell you that all the jobs at the job fair is like all the stuff at the swap meet. It's shit nobody else wants and shit you don't want.

It was when the lines at the job fairs began to stretch for entire city blocks that reality really hit that everyone was out of work from entry level kids to seasoned professionals.

You know somethings wrong when you have to RSVP for a job fair. That's fucked.

So we quit going to job fairs. We shared ideas over email and on Facebook. My friend and former co-worker got together once in awhile to run errands because we lived up street from each other. But really, after a few months of sitting in front of the computer hammering out resumes and cover letters day in and day out, you reach a point where you don't want anything to do with the outside world.

You don't want to hear about the fucked up economy because you're there living it. You don't want to hear the traffic report because you wish you were commuting to work. You don't want to hear about the world's problems because just dealing with your own shit is a full time job in and of itself. You go to bed every night hoping you'll wake up the next morning with that magic email in your inbox telling you that Company X would like to bring you on full time at a salary that was similar to the one you had before.

It never happens.

I sent out nearly 2000 emails in the course of a few months and only landed a handful of interviews. Of those interviews, two were willing to pay me half of what I made before....which was on par with what unemployment paid. One led me through a series of three interviews only to tell me that they wanted to hire me but couldn't afford me.
I thought to myself "well, if you pay more than unemployment, I'm willing to negotiate."
The last interview, which was for a position that I actually wanted and that actually paid me on par with what I had previously made, called me to extend a job offer only to rescind a few days later, stating that they were now on a hiring freeze due to lack of sales.

It was all very disconcerting.

I created a personalized website showcasing my accomplishments and some of my "talents," I tried to start a business with a couple of former colleagues which is hard when nobody in the group has a real source of income.

It's tough to get a bank loan when you're broke, which is ironic, because if I had money, I wouldn't have needed the loan. Motherfuckers.

After a few months of being unemployed, the "advice" from family members began to roll in.

Let me pause for this commercial break:

"Oh you should go back to school."
I'd like to, but I already have student loan debt and I'm not looking to add to that. Because if and when I do find another job, I'LL HAVE EVEN MORE LOANS TO PAY BACK!

"You should start your own business."
Please refer to previous rant about being broke and getting a bank loan.

"You should take a part time job or whatever comes along just to show you've been working."

This.

This is the biggest conundrum in the history of unemployment. You can't take the part time job because you can't afford to. I mean, you literally can't afford to. If you can afford to pay your bills on a $10 an hour part time job, then you don't have shit to worry about. You'll never be in this boat and maybe we should all take a lesson from you. But if you're like the other 99.9% of the people in this country, then you have bills to pay and $10 an hour at 20 hours a week just won't cut it. You're better off financially staying unemployed.

I know, because I made that mistake. Believe me, that's one mistake I'll never make again! After I realized that the unemployment checks were bigger than my employment checks, I scrambled to find another job....or to lose the current part time one I had.

The other side of the dish is this: if you take a part time job at the local supermarket or coffee shop or whatever happens to be in your neighborhood and it has nothing to do with what you did before in your professional life, you're better off staying home. Because the minute you put that on your resume or someone asks you "what have you been doing with your down time" and you tell them you've been making lattes, they're going to ask you "well, what the fuck does that have to with (insert previous profession here)?"

The obvious answer is nothing, and they know the answer is nothing. It's as if they ask you that just to hear some bullshit answer for their own amusement.

When I was asked that question I always wanted to answer with, "nothing motherfucker! And you know it has nothing to do with what I'd been doing  for the last five years before I lost my job. I just got sick and tired of sending out fucking resumes all day long and getting fucking nowhere!"

I still do.

"You need to target your cover letters and resumes better and you'll have more bites."
This may be bullshit. May not be. I've seen it work, and I've seen it become the biggest waste of time. I tried to tailor my documents for the first few months, but after awhile of getting nowhere, you just want to hit as many places as possible so you pull out the shotgun.

I eventually landed a job that paid enough to pay the bills. After a year of searching. It wasn't a job I wanted or a job that I ever thought I'd have.

Nope.

After spending half a decade trying to position myself for a decent career in IT procurement and product sourcing, I became an exterminator.

Yep. Bug man.

Well, actually I was a bug killing manager. But that's akin to being a fast food manager. Any way you slice the deli meat, you're still a peon at the end of the day. I still crawled under people's homes and got covered in rat shit.

So I spent a year killing bugs and rodents while I looked for another job to actually get back on track with my career when I stumbled onto a job opening that happened to be with a company a friend of mine and former co-worker worked for.

Sometimes it's not what you know.

Of course, when I interviewed for the position, they asked me what killing bugs and rats has to do with IT procurement.....

Now I have a job....for the next year. It's a 1 year contract and there is no guarantee that the contract will be renewed. They didn't renew the contract for the guy before me...or the guy before him... So now I think about what's going to happen next year. Will I be in that long unemployment line with my buddy?

It's very possible. Probably pretty likely.
But I'll enjoy what I have for now and try not to worry too much....

So I'll start looking again in the next month or so in hopes that I can line something else up.
If not, then it's back to government cheese and Ramen.

Maybe by then I'll finally be in a position to sell everything and go live on a beach in some country somewhere that you've never heard of.

But until then, I'll skip the President's bullshit speeches on how he's trying to create jobs and I'll watch football instead.