I Need a Job, Not to Be Job

Even Job, the Rodney Dangerfield of the Bible, eventually got a break. So it's only natural for one in my ongoing predicament to wonder, When will this Mr. Bill shit finally end?

I've been in the work force for a third of a century. Over the last 33 1/2 years, I've done just about anything and everything for which you don't need a college degree. The problem is, something sinister happened during the next-to-last administration, a sinisterness that has only increased its dexterity in the current. Now, many of the jobs into which I got either promoted or for which I was hired without qualification now demand a college degree and/or some ridiculous equivalency of on-the-job experience.

Quality control is one of the prime examples. QC was a profession into I was promoted when I worked for an automotive/aeronautical/aerospace/medical device company and there was no silly talk of my needing a college degree to use Vernier calipers to check the wall thickness of a hose or to fill out a CoC template. I was promoted on the initiative of a senior engineer at Boeing and my company did a full court press to get me in their QC lab.

Nowadays, it's a whole new ball game and the game is rigged. Now, temp agencies have co-opted all the QC jobs as well as all the manufacturing positions because companies even in a right-to-work state such as Massachusetts have been fooled into thinking they have to sign contracts with temp agencies for the standard 90 day probationary period. And they wind up paying the temp agency 50% over what they'd spend on payroll by hiring directly.

Now, temp agencies, rebranded "staffing" agencies, don't send out people, they send out electronified resumes, giving their reluctant and picky-choosy "clients" first refusal rights for someone they have no intention of hiring, ever, despite the laughable come-on of "temp to perm."

I'd never gone for longer than 15 months without a job and usually the downtime could be counted in terms of days or weeks, not months and especially years. Between outsourcing and the Obama administration's inability to unlock the job market with programs that would incentivise companies to hire, we've become a nation of shopkeepers, to quote Napoleon, and even the retail positions are getting scarce. It's only a matter of time before all stores in the US completely buy from China and making all their checkout lines fully automated.

Make no mistake about it: We're in a deep recession if not an outright depression. There was never any recovery and despite what the government, pundits and MSM tell you, there's no way anybody or anything can endanger a recovery that never happened.

I've been out of job for 2 1/2 years now. My last job interview was going on 2 weeks ago and even then I had to drive about 40-45 miles out of my way and spend about $10 on $3.50 a gallon gas to get there and back for a 4 minute pre-interview for a QC job. This wasn't the first time I was brushed aside and brusquely told by some arrogant employee to wait in line, don't call us, we'll call you. Sometimes I've driven that far just to hand off a few sheets of paper and didn't even get the pre-interview.

It's Us vs Them. That's the mentality. And the longer a person's unemployment stretches, the less desirable you are because someone sitting behind a desk will eventually ask themselves if not you, "What's wrong with you? Why can't you get a job?" What are you going to say? "Because of hemming and hawing morons like you"?

And it's not just me. Mrs. JP, despite racking up nearly two decades in the graphic design business making some of the snazziest and most professional signs you'll see anywhere, has herself been out of work for nearly a year and a half despite sending out no less than three resumes a week to sign shops all over Massachusetts. If we're still unemployed, it's not through lack of trying or lack of qualifications and experience.

Bottom line, we're looking at the very real possibility of living in our car after this month. I've tried holding off asking for help both publicly and privately since late last summer. But we have zero chance of making the rent let alone meeting our smaller but no less important bills such as utilities and insurance. I'm not asking you to fund our Christmas. This is bare bones survival I'm talking about and we just need a push to get us into next year.

Hopefully, something will break for either or both of us. But now we're really in a bind and anyone who's known me for any length of time knows how much I hate doing this. I never set up that Paypal button with the intention of it being a primary source of income let alone a secondary one. So anything you could do for us would be immensely appreciated.