Unemployment

Dammit, turns out my ex-company is saying i was discharged, even after my ex-boss(who is on vacation til mid-Sept) told me to tell the UI people i was laid off. This sucks and sent me into another round of anxiety attacks today.

kingfish I'll take another shot. this email works.

you know the only reason you can't get an starter pos with yr aeronautical degree is because the fuckin boomers won't retire early

T-minus 19 (work) days for me. My looming unemployment is going to be coupled with a move back home, after nearly 7 years overseas. I'm actually really looking forward to it.

you know the only reason you can't get an starter pos with yr aeronautical degree is because the fuckin boomers won't retire early

not surprised. Thing is, i'm not even looking for (much) of a starter spot. Hell, I'd take a spot that just needed a project engineer type or tech with only a coupla years experience. Tho i have gotten more mileage out of my EE degree than my Aero one. Funny that.

instead of the résumé i intended to sent out today to a prospective employer, i attached a document entitled 'résumé_omissions_6-07.doc'

said document includes phrases like:

• Facilitated (add something here ... some bullshit about people skills)

• List of written works? Tailor for individ. résu -- omit BP / AICJ for leegit plcz

I sent an email immediately after I discovered my mistake and received the following as the only response:

>:(

What an odd response.

Still, at this point, it's the anxiety that's killing me. I'd even put up with two years of working for the TVA or moving to Chattanooga like my parents suggested if i was secured a spot with decent pay for once, where i could actually live in the black. Anything to make the stress/angst/miasma go away. A sixer of Hamm's, Coast to Coast(douche who wrote the swift boat book is on tonight talking about how the UN is going to invade us thanks to Dubya), and Dark Cloud 2 is keeping me sane tonight.

http://www.ntsc-uk.com/reviews/ps2/DarkCloud2/01.jpg

you can customize your own hoopty droid and run around smacking things with a wrench.

Fuck, i still have health insurance for another month. I wonder if i can get loaded up on Xanax for a while.

yeah but for reals DC2 robo ricing only lasts so long

RESUME SEND IT

I sent you an ilx-mail. I still need your real addr, since I can't attach things thru ilx-mail.

Mine is jdsalmon at that google mail place that's popular with the kids.

Also, drinking a lot of beer last night to fight off an anxiety attack did not help things, strangely enough.

I have no health insurance. I wonder how much a new asthma inhaler would cost me right now?

Have you called around to local low-cost clinics?

i'm getting a bit sick of this whole unemployment thing, as well. everyone laughed at me when i expressed nerves about packing up a good job i'd had for 6 years and moving country, saying i'd find something in no time. ha, i say.

i'm really getting into dawson's creek, though. too bad it only had like 6 seasons, who knows what i'll do when i get through it all.

you might kid yourself that the oc is a suitable substitute. you're better than that. don't.

can't really sympathise, never having been unemployed. I almost feel like I've missed out on something, there was a nasty period when 1 in 2 of my mates were working for the prime minister (Paul Keating at the time). I've often been overemployed, that sucks a bit too, but not as bad I'm sure.

kingfish, B3cht3l is hiring at H4nf0rd apparently. Have you done the EIT yet?

I'm employed again! I'm now working at a small company on the east side of portland, so i no longer have to cross that stupid river and commute to hillsboro anymore. Hooray!

Congrats!

That river isn't so stupid.

sometimes i imagine unemployment >>> my current job, but then i think better

...but maybe

fun bit: my unemployment claim finally went thru, just in time for me to finally get a check two days after i'd started the new job. Great.

Also, new job has an office cat!

That river isn't so stupid.

getting back home across it in the evening sure as fuck is

office cat can't be beat. fantastic.

It may not be stupid, but that river definitely smells weird.

JESUS CHRIST DID I GET THE GODDAMNED MONEY OR NOT YOU BASTARDS

at this point i don't even care if i got denied. or if i have to appeal and drag the fucking process out even more. i just want to know.

checking email 100x per day in hopes that job i applied for/really want/would be good for me responds...

interview tomorrow for part time work at beer and cheese store tho! so that would rule, even if i never heard back from the speciality mystery/crime bookstore.

do you know how many jobs there are for people who 'coach' executives to be more high-performing?

there are a lot

i need to figure out if there is a linkedin setting that makes it hide all the jobs you can't even understand

Being able to hide oil companies and defence contractors would be a start.

Here's to 2014, the year of '25 job-seeking steps a week' to get your JSA (in the UK)

I just finished printing out all the evidence that I'm going to need for my signing on appointment tomorrow. That no fucker will ever read.

Thing is, I was already applying to more or less that number of jobs in that timeframe anyway, give or take two or three. All this does for me is rack up the tension a bit more. But at least I've got the internet at home. Hoo boy, what happens to people who don't?

What they really need to do, and what I doubt they will do for some time under the condems, is allow you to be on JSA and be doing some kind of work experience/volunteering, and as long as you do enough hours of that per week, you count as having done all your requirements, because in all honesty, people without much work experience applying to jobs isn't going to get anywhere but if doing unpaid work experience cancels yr fortnightly income you're never going to look into it

go america!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/unemployment-benefits-wont-be-extended-until-at-least-late-january-as-senate-deadlocks/2014/01/14/42b239a2-7d68-11e3-9556-4a4bf7bcbd84_story.html

Good luck to Cardamon and Snoball, don't let these worthless arseholes grind you down.

Yes, so I should really do something about this!

But my shrink keeps telling me not to pressure myself, and I should not go back to work until I'm ready, or I will end up right back in the same place.

And yet, I feel so *guilty* about my idle state, and the current political environment doesn't help this. (Why do I get this luxury, when people in much worse states than me are being cast back into the hell of JSA?) And the guilt and the feeling of "oh god I mustn't pressure myself to do something I'm not ready to do" coalesce into this vast ball of inability to do much of anything except argue on the internet and read long Victorian novels.

But, basically, shout out to the other unemployed people. What a weird, empty, fraught place to be.

You shd probably rely on shrink's advice, I mean as an unemployed person on JSA I rarely feel irritated with people on ESA. Mind you when I work I don't feel irritated by people on JSA either.

Didn't phrase that very well - what I mean is, if you're on one of the less intrusive benefits I for one wdnt hold that against you

Cut from long-term federal unemployment here! No income whatsoever! Working on my last check now, interviewing for two jobs today....

I believe in a safety net, though, and I haven't felt guilty for a second. I had that job for 10 years to earn this right to be protected when joblessness happens, and the fact that ppl are worse off than me is a reason for me to look for ways to help and advance their rights, not spend that energy wringing my hands and feeling worse about myself. I took the time I needed, it must have looked like indolence (and much of it was, let's be honest--I didn't know what it felt like to sit in my own house in daylight hours 8 months out of the year), but my time not working a full-time job has delivered MASSIVELY in letting me reorganize my head, embed myself into my community, try new pursuits with an eye to my next career, develop skills, make contacts. Now I know what kind of life to choose, when before it was a dead-end of sameness.

God it feels so much better.

I had that job for 10 years to earn this right to be protected when joblessness happens

To be clear, I don't think this protection is something ppl should have to "earn," but even under the current crappy system, ppl getting UI have fulfilled the necessary conditions to have support and there is no shame attached to that.

you shouldn't feel guilty. we should have a basic income

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

and stop living like savages

Yeah, agreed.

it's totally medieval that the son of a congressman (rand paul) would go off about how unemployed people are disincentivized to look for work by unemployment insurance and lots of people (are paid to?) agree. do tax cuts disincentivize rich fucks from working? say we survive climate change, people will look back 500 years from now on the feudalism of the USA the way we do the middle ages . . . hopefully not caught up in their own neo-feudalism

Basic income looks to me (open to disagreement of course) like a really good way of giving power back to workers (relative to the power employers have to pick and discard potential employees). Which would surely function as an incentive to work.

Also, it looks as though it would let people stay on in education. Think of all the people who could train in, say, fork-lift truck operating, engineering, mechanics, etc, and the broadening opportunities for employment that would give them.

I'm deliberately choosing vocational studies for that example, of course, but at a guess that's what the majority of workers would use the new educational opportunities for, once they were opened up by BI.

pre-emptively shitting myself thinking of what i'll do when my phd funding runs done with the phd unfinished. don't think i'll even be able to claim any benefits, i'll have to survive by eating my least useful books.

Would the remaining PhD work allow you to take up part time shifts somewhere? Is that viable?

I wrote out a longer post explaining my current economic situation and precarities. But then deleted it, as I don't think I can expect sympathy or understanding, and it just comes off as moaning.

Hope that you guys can affect changes both in your individual circumstances, and your wider spheres.

xp yeah it should be, I just need to get myself in a decent enough position with the thesis (e.g. not having to work eight hours a day on it) by September or so. Looking around it seems that the PhD writing-up period remains an odd loophole in terms of claiming benefits, it's not strictly the same as being a full-time student and I don't think the Job Centre or many councils have specific regulations on it, so it seems to often be a matter of persuading whichever employee you find yourself talking to.

Yeah that's the picture I'm getting too - like internships, it's a pre-recession model for getting into an industry which people have been pushing, but now in the recession it's just going to be exploited and not actually get you anywhere

You there, in your cubicle, the company is pleased to inform you that you are now an Operational Cost that the company intends to save. Be out of here by the end of the week.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/A_Marriage_Made_Elsewhere_Than_In_Heaven

xp There's a whole school of 'Ya gotta be smart – ring the guy! Work for free! Get networking!' job-seeking advice which basically assumes a lot of things about the jobseeker in terms of how much money they have, what their options are, how they were brought up, etc, etc

Like I was thinking about how much I've raised the game of this local newsletter that I volunteer to do, and that is by a VERY LARGE AMOUNT. It could go a lot further and we need to increase our reach and get people STUCK IN as readers and members, and this is my organizational mission for 2014...but even if I work miracles, if for inst it ever became a paying position (which it won't but), they would be pretty justified in thinking, well we got her for FREE, imagine what we can get with an actual salary! (This is also complicated by the fact that I'm kind of a placeholder until there's a non-white person who wants the job, I mean I'm appointed for this calendar year but I wouldn't blame them for wanting to appoint a young aspiring Black journalist possibly who's from the neighborhood, in fact I think they should do that in fact--but if this were the job world, it would suck for me.)

(The way I got into Data Analysis was: get caught hacking the database you've been doing data entry in. For real. n.b. this was like 20 years ago now.)

Brushing up on a few stats texts and a language like R would be a good start imo gukbe (just started a new role in data analysis and these are the things i'll be spending my evenings/weekends at for the next few months)

And previous qualifications?

I'm sort of drifting into it every so often after having 'dabbled' with it, by which I mean understanding how to use Excel when no-one else did, and learning some basics every now and then. I've always had jobs that are data/programming-adjacent and I am often the person going between the user who doesn't know how to articulate what they want and the coding ppl who can't get out of the 'user' what the real issues are.

If yr asking me for mine gukbe, not much more than confidence with excel, tho im currently studying comp science in the evenings- nb i moved internally in a big org so sorry for non-helpful comparison maybe

xp otm

ha I've always felt a bit of a fraud that 90% of what I know about coding is from trying to use Excel as a shortcut, or my ZX Spectrum, but then one of our coder guys explained it as 'basically excel formulae' to a bunch of colleagues who wanted to know what coding was so I don't feel too bad now. I have learned basics of various languages in the past and a fair amount of SQL and still agree with him (and twice today taught one of our senior coders some Excel 'tricks')

I did some actual coding/programming stuff about 12 years ago (C++ mostly) for about 5 years but have since drifted through life as a student and then odd jobs like retail and restaurants with the occasional stint in data entry and aforementioned document scanning. I was hoping there'd be a few classes I could take or something to bolster the old CV.

someone just sent me a message that was word-for-word the bottom scam on this page (with a different name):

http://jobsearch.about.com/u/ua/jobsearchscams/jobscams.03.htm

republicans are starting to (pretend?) to feel the heat about extended unemployment compensation?

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/jobless-benefits-unemployment-insurance-gop-republicans-103651.html?hp=t1

job title:

'scrum master'

Scrum Master J, the DJ of hip-hop group Run-XML.

are you the schedule-keeper, i am the scrum master

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnJvsBbELvk

i am now part of the interviewing process at work, and man it is depressing as fuc. because of both the desperation of the applicants and my own nitpicky responses to them.

the position is part-time/involves weekends and late nights, but the employer has a certain cachet that makes ppl think 'if i can just get my foot in the door . . .' and the supply of ppl who think that is endless and cheap. one dude kind of slumped and said 'i've interned everywhere' and it was more or less true.

and any of them could probably do the job just fine -- it's not terribly demanding and several applicants are technically way overqualified -- but now i'm supposed to judge them like i'm some fucking frat dude interviewing pledges. am i really factoring in the fact that one person wore jeans and another wore a three-piece suit + homburg? i mean, yeah, the latter is pretty wack but he's not some hipster -- he's been out of work for six months. ugh

who says you have to judge them like that?

btw among the other jobs i have applied for in the past year i keep throwing in applications for low-level library jobs that do NOT require library degrees (hs diplomas is all), and every single time i get rejected with something like 'we chose from the people who had relevant experience'. now probably they know some people and are hiring from within, but if not then that shit is intolerable for a duly executed duly applied-for job search. like there is relevant experience for these jobs that couldn't be picked up in a week or two. if you've got way overqualified people willing to do your job just cut one of them a break and don't bullshit the unfortunate ones!

this could be hella 'basic' as they say but despite receiving unemployment benefits more than once (and researching it anxiously etc as one does) this is the best thing i've ever read about how it works

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1466

Huh that's helpful. My parents absolutely INSIST that rather than being a mandatory tax per employee, that when my dad laid someone off 15-20 years ago he had to pay the guy's UI, like, DIRECTLY. Which he's still bitter about bc apparently dude was going on vacation, not looking for work, etc (as one is entitled to do because fuck it).

Maybe there's some kind of different thing for very small corporations? Or maybe my dad is a batshit conservative, that's always an option too.

(inspired by the onion 'finally i have achieved pay equity with men while on unemployment' gag, which is funny but i think probably not true anyway, even then, since benefits depend on prior pay, work history, etc. though the capping of taxable contribution levels might have an equalizing effect?)

apparently dude was going on vacation, not looking for work, etc (as one is entitled to do because fuck it)

as soon as the sev sum comes in, i will be fucking it