My roommate and best friend, the wise and witty Hamish, works at Multimags, one of the panoply of wonderful new unsecured service jobs created by our new economy. Anyway, he works until ridiculous hours of the night after going to school. His boss is an asshole, his co-workers incompetent, and the customers complete sons and daughters of bitches.
He comes home every day exhausted and emotionally drained. He has no time to eat, sleep, or relax. He can’t cope. He has to do everyone else’s job (see “incompetent co-workers”). And if he quits or makes the slightest mistake (see “asshole boss”) he starves, and so do the other two of us, who cannot possibly make his part of the rent.
He’s losing it.
I’m watching my best friend wither and die before my eyes. I’m sad and scared for him. I feel so lonely and helpless.
You money-grubbing, dictatorial swine, I want my friend back.
I gather he is one of these “lower” paying service jobs? Would it be too big of a stretch on my part that something like being a busboy, or waiter, or I dunno, Zellers be something comperable in wage? Or would that be too much of a step down for him? I don’t know where you live (I gather back east) but from my experience places like resteraunts and department stores are pretty much always hiring. Might give him a better enviroment and predictable hours.
Sorry to hear your friend’s stuck in a truely sucky job. I’m assuming from your later posts that there’s really no opportunity to find something in the same pay range with a better working environment?
I would recommend to both of you that Hamish start looking and alerting his network of friends to keep an eye out. That way, if good fortune smiles, life improves sooner than april.
Why don’t you send away for one of those new clone robots that are all the rage? You could send the thing off to work for him while he studies and works on a social life? Oh wait… you humans don’t have clone robots yet. Hmmm…
Oh I know, you could file an application for a request to demand a review of his hours-per-day allocation. Oh wait… you haven’t discovered time travel yet either…
I’m confused. You live in Canada right? Since when would a progressive state such as Canada allow one of its valued citizens to starve or die from exposure?
The thing about truly crappy jobs is that you can just chuck them when they start being a problem.
Does Hamish get paid megabucks for this job? I’m guessing he’s paid crappy wages like all these crappy jobs pay. Which means he should quit on their ass, and get a job at McDonalds or something. Maybe he’ll go from $8.50 an hour to $7.00 an hour, but at least he won’t have to deal with the crap.
Look, if Hamish is a hard worker (as he sounds to be) he’ll have absolutely no trouble getting another crappy job. And there are plenty of crappy jobs that, although they pay crappy wages, don’t have intolerable working conditions.
Explain the part where if he slacks off like the other incompetent workers, he gets fired. Why doesn’t his asshole boss fire them?.
It sounds like Hamish might have a little “Stockholm Syndrome” action going on, where he’s all caught up in making the company work. Fuck that shit. Yeah, for a salaried position with benefits and a vacation plan you care about the company. But why should he care about his asshole boss? If he’s the only one who actually works at that festering hell-hole, he should at least demand a raise. Or a doubling of salary. Or demand the right to set his own hours. If they won’t give it, find another job.
His boss is an asshole because he can be. He’s got your friend all brainwashed and scared. Ah, but if he fires Hamish the asshole boss would actually have to WORK. He’s not going to want to do that! Show some backbone and the asshole is going to BEG for him to stay. Probably better not to listen, just laugh at the begging and walk away.
Seriously, walk away. No one needs that kind of crap for $8.50 an hour. You can get a much better flavor of crap across the street.
Sheesh. I think some people are being a little harsh. It’s not easy to walk away from even a crappy job when the wolf (they still have wolves in Canada right?) is at the door. When you can’t even miss a weeks work without noticing it. And you don’t have the time to go looking.
But…matt, maybe you and your still sane roommates could track something down for him, set up interveiws, rewite his resume (or polish his application) and help him slide into a new, better crappy job.
I jumped from a really bad job without another to go to last year. I held on as long as I could, but panic attacks every night and vomiting every morning convinced me that there were worse things than poverty. Fortunately my parents and my wife’s parents were supportive and understanding, and were able to help somewhat with the rent during the gap, but it was not an easy time for us.
I did some temp work to fill in, although I don’t know what his schedule will allow. But if he quits and gives, say, a month’s notice, he’ll start feeling better immediately and has some time to start job hunting before the income gives out. Just a thought.
Actually, we’re already living quite substantially beneath the national definitions of “poverty”, if you want to know. The next step down from here is panhandling and despair.
sigh Bernse, every one of us in this house is one cheque away from the razor’s edge, if you want to know. (As I said in another thread: “If I were living within my means, I’d be dead.”) Quitting is not an option right now. As has been explained.
Gotcha Matt. Here is what I would do (not that I would expect you to want to follow my advice of all people…
If your roommate is working pretty much all hours, and if you and your others roommates can spare some time, run around and gather some applications for him. Get him to type out a resume. Drop them of for him at various stores, shops, resteraunts, etc. Hopefully if he gets a call for an interview it can be arranged when he is not working. Otherwise, there should be no need for him to skip work and miss a few hours pay. Likewise with you and your other roomies. I guess thats a bit of a bonus living with more people someone surely must get an evening or sunday off sometime. I just get the feeling that if he is in such a shitty job, I think that you other guys and he would probably bust your asses looking for another job to help him out ???
I don’t know about where you live, but even McDonalds here advertises they start at $8.25 an hour. Not to shabby for the big clown, IMHO.
That doesn’t say much about the people of Canada. I mean they apparantly support a government that would let their own citizens starve. Now I have no state to look up to.
You know, there are sometimes when a person just wants to vent, and let it out, and the best thing their friends can do is sit back and listen and make sympathetic noises, and not try and help/solve the thing they are venting about.
Sorry if this was one of those times and I just had to try and help solve stuff.
Support? Who’s to support? The current government got 70% percent of the seats with 40% of the vote and 25% of the eligible voters. Who’s supporting anyone?
Or find richer roomates. 
