It’s the grinding wear of fear and uncertainty. I hate being dependant, and I hate the constant gnawing worry while I search and search. I’d take anything - even janitorial. If I could actually find a way to advertise, I’d start a night janitorial service, even. Blah.
Yes, it does suck, sorry to hear you’re having to deal with it. Even employed though, in today’s world - the gnawing worry is still there.
Ah yes, and if anything sucks more than just being unemployed, it’s being unemployed at Christmas.
I think this year we’re gonna teach the kids to sing “Hard Candy Christmas” to their grandparents. 
Same here. At this moment, I am awaiting anxiously a phone call that will tell me whether I’ve got a job that lasts two months. Two freakin’ months, yet I’m on pins and needles waiting and hoping.
Sucks indeed.
Here ya go.
http://knoxville.craigslist.org/lab/2748799136.html
Do I get a finder’s fee for this?
Another unemployed Doper chiming in to agree that unemployment sucks.
On a somewhat lighter note, I just now checked my local Craigslist job section and came across this - OPEN HOUSE TUESDAY 11/30/2010 - NOW HIRING FRONTIER REPS! (Salem)
Formerly unemployed doper here, and oh yes indeedy it sucks. Hang in there, Bandit,
(stoopid edit window!)
it’ll get better. But in the meantime, as a friend of mine told me when I got laid off, ‘you’ve been paying into the system for years. Now it’s time for the system to pay you for a while.’
He was right.
Buy a brightly coloured mop perhaps.
I’m currently underemployed, but have been long term unemployed (8 months and 11 months respectively) for 2 bouts over the last 5 years. I think I have long term mental problems from those bouts. In fact when I did end my 11 month bout and found a job, the lingering psych problems were so severe I was worried I wouldn’t be able to hold onto my job. Therapists I’ve seen haven’t been very good. Luckily I found some things that did help get the mood issues under control, and I am doing ok now. I still have lingering stress related illnesses though.
I wish there was something nice to say to take the atlantean burden off, but there isn’t. But you aren’t alone. Lots of people in this economy think of the recession as a theoretical thing and aren’t affected by it. Some people are still employed but are seeing their wages cut while their workloads increase. And some face long bouts of unemployment and underemployment.
I guess, if it means anything (probably doesn’t, it didn’t when I heard it) is to remember that you aren’t going through this alone. Not everyone is affected, but 20%+ of the public are being affected negatively by this economy. These are the kinds of stressors that bring down governments, or at the least result in radical change. All that energy has to go somewhere.
Aaand I just got the call, and once again it’s “Thanks but no thanks.” And I just got a notice that my unemployment insurance ended in the middle of November last month instead of next June which is what my last notice assured me. So, I have to arrange a nice little interview with those folks to make an appeal.
Double plus ungood.
Sorry to hear that Cats but … you did get a call! I was out of work all this and last summer, I’m in my third month of employment now. Phew. Like you **Wesley Clark ** I was really losing my self esteem. You need to have a few unemployment buddies to call so you can keep each other going, try to make a few jokes out of it.
**smiling bandit ** man it is tough. I’m still going over by a friend on Saturday afternoons and helping her clean her house for twenty bucks. I pretty much forced friends to let me do odd jobs for them, but things are tight all round. Now is the time to convince someone they need their garage cleaned out, but it’s also difficult to get the energy up to get going on small projects like that. I nearly didn’t get the job I’m doing now because I’m totally overqualified for it and that’s one of the issues with janitorial work, they’ll think it’s not worth training you because you’ll leave as soon as you get something better.
I just finished dumbing down a friend of mines CV - he’s an big time engineer who’d be elated for a few bar tending shifts. Hang in there.
No advice, just commiseration. I graduated in May with an M.S.W. from one of the finest schools in my field. I’ve been unemployed for too long. I hate it, I feel ashamed, and looking just brings up all those miserable feelings of self-doubt. Being unemployed sucks, being unemployed and chronically depressed sucks worse. I’m trying to sell my laptop for some extra cash but someone almost scammed me out of it last week. Scammers are all over the fucking place, including the job search sites.
There aren’t even that many jobs to apply to. I’d gladly put in hundreds of aps a week but there aren’t hundreds of jobs to apply to. I hit the mother lode yesterday when I found 12 potential jobs in Philadelphia… more than the 7 social work jobs I found in the entire state of New Jersey.
unemployment is a killer.
Just about everywhere I look, people are unemployed. And it doesn’t matter if you are college educated or not. It seems as if there are people across the board that are not only unemployed, but have been for a long time.
I have a good friend with an MBA from a good Big 10 school. He’s been out of work for over 2 years now.
My brother (no college degree) was unemployed for close to 22 months before landing a job with the help of a family friend.
I feel your pain. This is not like any other time in our lives… where people that really wanted to work couldn’t find work.
The unemployment stats are a joke. I think unemployment is somewhere between 18-23%. There are so many people I know that have simply stopped looking. It just ***wears ***on you. My MBA friend went through 99 weeks of unemployment insurance, still nothing, and now has no benefits, no prospects, and no idea what he’s going to do next.
I know college educated people looking for anything… and getting nothing. Applying for a P/T job at Home Depot, or Subway… and coming up cold. It’s a brutal job market, and I think the government is not telling us all what the true story is because we are much closer to a depression than anyone wants to imagine.
My thoughts and prayers are with all of you that are currently unemployed want to work, and are looking for a job. IMHO, it is the most stressful job one can ever have (looking for a job).
My thoughts and prayers are also with those of you who have a job and are afraid of losing it, either through downsizing, relocation, or going out of business. It’s no fun going to work everyday feeling like a piano is hanging over your head.
Isn’t it time that The US gets itself a fairer unemployment benefit system. Just been scrolling down reading the comments/threads and I must say your system lets many many genuine job seekers down.
What’s the go about having to back down to beg for welfare, living in desperation?
How does that help people build up their confidence and get back on their feet to help them feed their families. Governments are there to look after you The People or so the document goes.
It seems to me most respondents to this thread, especially those personally affected deserve better. America from this perspective seems very Third World.
I just got a 4 to 6 week temp job. First gig since the census last summer.
As an H/R manager I feel for you, but you the worst thing you can do is feel down. You must keep going. You need to spend 6 to 8 hours a day five days a week looking for work.
Unfortunately you will have a lot of BS ads, if you go to Craigslist, but some are OK. Keep on and don’t forget part time and temp work. It always looks better to be working, even a few hours than on unemployment.
So apply for these part time jobs and take a cut in unemployment. When you go for a PT job at Starbucks, tell them you’re only interested in picking up a few hours. Nothing is worse than when someone wants to hire you but thinks you will quit when you get a full time job. But if the “crummy” job you need only thinks you want 8 or 16 hours a week and plan and are going to school, your chances are better.
Did you go through your resumes? Are they good? Ask friends, often you overlook things. Check your references, this is vital. You don’t want to find out, like a poster on here did, that she was getting a bad or less than flattering reference. Often I’ve tried to get a reference and the person never gets back to me. I move on. You can’t afford to make mistakes in this bad economy.
And here’s the best piece of advice I’ll give you. With so many people out of work, chances are you won’t be the only candidate. You won’t even be one of the the top two. It’ll be more like the last round will come to the top five candidates.
So you want to make the interviewer or your potential boss say, “Gee, I’d like to work with this guy every day.” It’s not about skills or knowledge, if you get past the first interview, you have that. It will come down to making the interviewer or potential boss WANT to hire you, WANT to work with you. And you have to make it clear, you WANT to be there.
Keep going on, take whatever job you can, there’s dignity in any work so long as it’s done correctly
I was the hiring manager for 2 positions last summer. For the people who made it to the in-person interview, I was amazed at those so many acted totally blase about the whole thing. No questions for us, no statement why they were a great fit, no “big finish” with “I want to work here and this is why.”
If you make it to the in-person interview, I would recommend taking notes during the interview for a summary. Come prepared with 1-2 questions (personally I like, “tell me what my typical day would be like” or “what do you envision as the greatest challenge of this role.”) Use the answers to close with a powerful statement like “based on your description of this job, I am a great candidate because I bring X , Y, Z skills. Thanks to X, I can easily tackle the greatest challenge and I look forward to the opportunity. I want this job.”
I hear you. I had work-related problems years ago that led to my being diagnosed with depression and cognitive disorders. There was no help for me even with years of counseling - I even ran my own business for awhile until the same old problems came to get me. Inability to manage details and schedules. Paralyzing stress and resentment of all the meaningless “essentials” of pleasing and keeping clients. Even as my own boss, I was just as toxic as I had felt my old bosses had been to me. It was what I expected.
I no longer work regularly, and consider myself fortunate indeed that my circumstances don’t compel it. It’s also a source of unending guilt for me, even though I am pretty well set for the next few decades. I’ve even taken to self-inflicting stress to balance out the psychic debt I feel for not working.
Much of it is going toward resentment - not of people who are better off (they’ve usually “earned it”) but of people who are mouthing off about how inhumane today’s working world can be. Gen Xers and Occupiers are taking most of the heat from people who are fully bought in. To their way of thinking, soul-sucking stress and uncertainty is the work ethic today, and anyone who wants to buck that system had better earn their way out of it first. The Occupy crowd made the mistake of learning from other people’s experiences, which gains them no credibility or respect.
What part of the country are you in? If you’re in NYC, Boston, San Francisco, or a handful of other large cities you can sign up with task rabbit to make a little money. That’s what my husband did when he was unemployed and it really helped us cover a few bills and made him feel better about things because he was actively working instead of just sending out resumes all day.