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Jan. 13th, 2017 02:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
savethelilinAlright, so my therapist (who I communicate with via online chatboxes and it's lovely) just set me off by wondering why I don't have a traditional job, and I like how I worded all of this, so I'm putting it here in case I need an easy reference to hand to an older person with good intentions in the future. Feel free to consider it an article for that purpose if you want.
So about not having a job. I'm going to be harsh here for a second: You are not my generation and you have no idea what it's like. I know because I can tell you're trying to be helpful. It's the same way my parents and everyone else older than me tried to be helpful for years and just made me feel like I had to be doing something wrong. The world is different from what you're used to, and it's crazy and stupid. I can say that because my dad gave me logical advice about hiring processes for years, until he saw how things were being handled in his own company, and then suddenly he was ranting about the same things I was when up until then he'd never really believed that it could work that way.
He finally saw the same stupid world I did where you can't get experience without a job and you can't get a job without experience, and where they want a specialization in using (my dad's silly example) three-headed left-handed monkey wrenches, and if you don't have that but already picked up how to use a seven-headed snake wrench but that's not what they're looking for, sorry, but they'll assume you can't learn, and if you go get a certification in the three-headed left-handed monkey wrench to prove you can use that tool too, they'll be looking for some other specialty by the time you get back. I live in a world where you can be rejected by a website and if you try to hand an application in in person the store manager will at you like you've grown a second head. I've had both of those experiences more than once. Getting a job is a full-time job with little to no reward. This is not the same climate that existed when you got a job. Please stop assuming it is.
Now for my background.
I graduated from college with a degree in East Asian Studies, having originally thought to be a professor, but having decided against it for reasons that half had to do with academic burnout and half had to do with my ex, in various ways. There's basically nothing else to do with that degree, so I looked for whatever I could get. I applied to every retail place I saw with a hiring sign and got called back by none of them. The only thing that got me an interview was an online posting I found for Chick-fil-A, and as far as I can tell, that interview went well. but I still didn't get the job. I eventually ended up with a job working as an intern for the National Education Foundation, which was a tiny nonpofit, and a good job for experience, but part time and paid not by normal pay rates but by a stipend that worked out to about $3/hr.
Since I wasn't desperate for money at the time and thought the experience would be valuable, I stuck with that until I moved to Colorado with my ex when he went to grad school. Once again, I applied to every retail opening or online listing that seemed potentially relevant to me, and once again I didn't even get interviews. I think in this bunch was my first instance of being rejected by a website. After about a year of that, I finally gave up and decided the only way to make myself marketable was to get a useful degree in something, so I went back to school for my associate's in computer information systems. I passed all those classes with flying colors, got a job as a student tech in the campus IT office, and then a position unexpectedly opened right as I was about to graduate, and I was hired as a temp to immediately fill in that position because my boss knew I could handle it, even though I'd have to learn new things for it. The problem with that was that a temp position can only last so long, and being a state institution, they were stringent about their hiring process. I worked for the nine month maximum for a temporary position. The position I was filling in for, as a full position, required two years of experience. By that point, between my partial time as a student tech and the full time nine months, I had one. My boss wanted to keep me. The woman in HR making the hiring decisions wanted to keep me. They couldn't find loopholes, though, so I was let go from that job because I didn't technically qualify for the position I had effectively been filling for the past nine months.
I went on unemployment after that, which required sending out at least five applications per week to prove that I was still trying to find another job. In the several months after I lost my job at the community college, I kept up with that required schedule, and at some point had to start applying to things that I had no hope of ever getting just to keep up the numbers, because I had actually run out of things near me in my field and level of experience to apply for. In all that time, I got one interview. I didn't get the job.
By the time unemployment ran out, I didn't have a way to keep up paying for rent, so I moved back with my parents. Once again, I applied to everything that seemed relevant and made the rounds to any store that had a hiring sign, and quite a few that didn't. Nothing. And after several months of applying to several things a week, I just couldn't do it anymore and I gave up looking unless someone I knew told me they'd heard about something of interest. Eventually, I got a job at a startup IT company doing troubleshooting work for local small businesses, which was good for a while, but very part time and ultimately a little bit of a toxic environment. I managed to get a job at PetSmart on top of it, which I could make the same statement about. I could have kept with those, but between the two of them, I wouldn't have been making enough to live alone in that area, so that still meant staying with my parents indefinitely and I really missed having my own apartment and also was less than happy with the jobs.
Still, I didn't quit them randomly. I spent months sticking with it and calling it good enough. Then my cat died and I chose to work from home for a day (which was something I had done before on very rare occasion, like... I think twice, for good reasons; it was allowed) because my emotional state was not good and I didn't trust myself to directly interact with customers well and my boss sent an email that sounded like I might not have a job the next day, which I didn't take well on top of just losing my cat. I was calm when I talked to him the next day and he was nicer about it in person, but that solidified the idea that I'd really rather find something else that didn't upset me on a regular basis. Around this same time is when I had started talking to my friend about the idea of eventually opening a cafe together, and she suggested Cincinnati as an eventual place for that, so I started looking here so I could maybe get something to build up some savings in a place where the cost of living wasn't so high, and see whether I liked this area enough to put down roots as big as owning a shop here. I found some jobs that looked promising if I could be in town for them, and a recruiting agency that had a lot of IT work. I schedule a trip out for a week and had several interviews that I didn't get because people needed someone to start right away and I hadn't moved yet, but that otherwise went well. I also found this super cheap apartment in a place I liked and it all seemed promising enough to go for it. So I moved.
I continued to have a lot of interviews through that recruiting company for a while. A lot were less than ideal for me, factoring in commutes or whatever, but I still would have happily taken them and I never heard any negative feedback on my interviews.. I always asked when the recruiter called to follow up about what happened with the job and they never had any solid feedback aside from one instance where I already knew I had done something wrong. It was always just "No, the interview went well, they liked you, but they decided to go with another candidate." You would think that eventually this would work out in my favor, but it was that response every time for over a year, and the only things I got were very occasional temp jobs lasting three weeks at most, because they were hiring anyone who was willing and had some very minimal skillset (after all, it doesn't take much IT background to plug in laptops and stick stickers on things). I am still signed up with this company, but I don't hear from them much anymore; I've checked the job listings on their website and it seems that I don't hear from them because recently they actually don't have much work period. One of the temp jobs I took was a recurring thing about every six months, and when it was time for that to possibly happen again, I tried to contact the person who had coordinated it before to see if they were hiring for it, but I never heard anything. Given the turnover in that company, I wouldn't be surprised if she just doesn't work there anymore and the job went to some other hiring company.
I of course applied to things outside of that company, as well. Other IT things, and local stuff like shops in my neighborhood. I looked specifically for coffee shop type things at one point, thinking about the idea of an eventual cafe, but it's still the same story; no callbacks. I did manage to get a few interviews on my own for various things here and there, but I didn't get jobs. There was one job with HP that looked very promising and I think I was on the edge of getting it, but then HP decided not to hire anyone new into that department at all. That was the second time in all of this that I was almost hired and then the position itself disappeared.
What I did get calls back for was when I went out of my way to go contact places with art classes asking whether they needed nude models, because I'm not shy, I studied art myself, and it seemed like a good source of pocket change at least. That was the most part-time of anything I've done, initially getting maybe three hours once every couple of months, but at this point I've worked my way up to being on with a university here for two classes on most Tuesdays and Thursdays in the upcoming semester, and that's the steadiest thing I've had since I moved here. I'm working on this voice acting thing, and that seems more promising than IT turned out to be. I've finally pulled myself out of the mire of being upset about endless job applications enough to be able to put some effort toward selling independent craft projects again, and start working on a podcast. These are infant projects, but maybe now they can have room to grow.
What you see is me not looking for traditional work, and at this point, that's true. What you don't see is how I've been looking for a full time job since the beginning of 2009 and only succeeded once with a nine month time limit. I could hunt for jobs, and certainly having a steady income would be nice, but I have no reason to believe it would go any better than it has in the past. I would rather spend my time and energy on something that seems like it might actually be productive.
In other news, it's been an interesting couple days. I tried to make a web account for my health care stuff yesterday, which involved calling a credit company to verify my identity, at which point I was informed that I was deceased. Today, I called the Social Security Administration to ask them why they think I'm dead and what I should do about it. Turns out I'm not dead in their system, and it's all on Experian's side. So... that's good, at least, that the SSA correctly thinks I'm alive. Now I just have to figure out how to correct it with Experian and I should be good to go. Interesting times.
If I'm alive according to the SSA and dead according to Experian, does that make me Schrodinger's cat?
[edit] Schrodinger's cat typoed their SSN and amazingly going back and doing the form all over again without a typo fixed the whole thing. This could all have been solved if the person on the phone the first time had double checked that with me rather than sending me on a wild goose chase through phone trees. Amazing.
So about not having a job. I'm going to be harsh here for a second: You are not my generation and you have no idea what it's like. I know because I can tell you're trying to be helpful. It's the same way my parents and everyone else older than me tried to be helpful for years and just made me feel like I had to be doing something wrong. The world is different from what you're used to, and it's crazy and stupid. I can say that because my dad gave me logical advice about hiring processes for years, until he saw how things were being handled in his own company, and then suddenly he was ranting about the same things I was when up until then he'd never really believed that it could work that way.
He finally saw the same stupid world I did where you can't get experience without a job and you can't get a job without experience, and where they want a specialization in using (my dad's silly example) three-headed left-handed monkey wrenches, and if you don't have that but already picked up how to use a seven-headed snake wrench but that's not what they're looking for, sorry, but they'll assume you can't learn, and if you go get a certification in the three-headed left-handed monkey wrench to prove you can use that tool too, they'll be looking for some other specialty by the time you get back. I live in a world where you can be rejected by a website and if you try to hand an application in in person the store manager will at you like you've grown a second head. I've had both of those experiences more than once. Getting a job is a full-time job with little to no reward. This is not the same climate that existed when you got a job. Please stop assuming it is.
Now for my background.
I graduated from college with a degree in East Asian Studies, having originally thought to be a professor, but having decided against it for reasons that half had to do with academic burnout and half had to do with my ex, in various ways. There's basically nothing else to do with that degree, so I looked for whatever I could get. I applied to every retail place I saw with a hiring sign and got called back by none of them. The only thing that got me an interview was an online posting I found for Chick-fil-A, and as far as I can tell, that interview went well. but I still didn't get the job. I eventually ended up with a job working as an intern for the National Education Foundation, which was a tiny nonpofit, and a good job for experience, but part time and paid not by normal pay rates but by a stipend that worked out to about $3/hr.
Since I wasn't desperate for money at the time and thought the experience would be valuable, I stuck with that until I moved to Colorado with my ex when he went to grad school. Once again, I applied to every retail opening or online listing that seemed potentially relevant to me, and once again I didn't even get interviews. I think in this bunch was my first instance of being rejected by a website. After about a year of that, I finally gave up and decided the only way to make myself marketable was to get a useful degree in something, so I went back to school for my associate's in computer information systems. I passed all those classes with flying colors, got a job as a student tech in the campus IT office, and then a position unexpectedly opened right as I was about to graduate, and I was hired as a temp to immediately fill in that position because my boss knew I could handle it, even though I'd have to learn new things for it. The problem with that was that a temp position can only last so long, and being a state institution, they were stringent about their hiring process. I worked for the nine month maximum for a temporary position. The position I was filling in for, as a full position, required two years of experience. By that point, between my partial time as a student tech and the full time nine months, I had one. My boss wanted to keep me. The woman in HR making the hiring decisions wanted to keep me. They couldn't find loopholes, though, so I was let go from that job because I didn't technically qualify for the position I had effectively been filling for the past nine months.
I went on unemployment after that, which required sending out at least five applications per week to prove that I was still trying to find another job. In the several months after I lost my job at the community college, I kept up with that required schedule, and at some point had to start applying to things that I had no hope of ever getting just to keep up the numbers, because I had actually run out of things near me in my field and level of experience to apply for. In all that time, I got one interview. I didn't get the job.
By the time unemployment ran out, I didn't have a way to keep up paying for rent, so I moved back with my parents. Once again, I applied to everything that seemed relevant and made the rounds to any store that had a hiring sign, and quite a few that didn't. Nothing. And after several months of applying to several things a week, I just couldn't do it anymore and I gave up looking unless someone I knew told me they'd heard about something of interest. Eventually, I got a job at a startup IT company doing troubleshooting work for local small businesses, which was good for a while, but very part time and ultimately a little bit of a toxic environment. I managed to get a job at PetSmart on top of it, which I could make the same statement about. I could have kept with those, but between the two of them, I wouldn't have been making enough to live alone in that area, so that still meant staying with my parents indefinitely and I really missed having my own apartment and also was less than happy with the jobs.
Still, I didn't quit them randomly. I spent months sticking with it and calling it good enough. Then my cat died and I chose to work from home for a day (which was something I had done before on very rare occasion, like... I think twice, for good reasons; it was allowed) because my emotional state was not good and I didn't trust myself to directly interact with customers well and my boss sent an email that sounded like I might not have a job the next day, which I didn't take well on top of just losing my cat. I was calm when I talked to him the next day and he was nicer about it in person, but that solidified the idea that I'd really rather find something else that didn't upset me on a regular basis. Around this same time is when I had started talking to my friend about the idea of eventually opening a cafe together, and she suggested Cincinnati as an eventual place for that, so I started looking here so I could maybe get something to build up some savings in a place where the cost of living wasn't so high, and see whether I liked this area enough to put down roots as big as owning a shop here. I found some jobs that looked promising if I could be in town for them, and a recruiting agency that had a lot of IT work. I schedule a trip out for a week and had several interviews that I didn't get because people needed someone to start right away and I hadn't moved yet, but that otherwise went well. I also found this super cheap apartment in a place I liked and it all seemed promising enough to go for it. So I moved.
I continued to have a lot of interviews through that recruiting company for a while. A lot were less than ideal for me, factoring in commutes or whatever, but I still would have happily taken them and I never heard any negative feedback on my interviews.. I always asked when the recruiter called to follow up about what happened with the job and they never had any solid feedback aside from one instance where I already knew I had done something wrong. It was always just "No, the interview went well, they liked you, but they decided to go with another candidate." You would think that eventually this would work out in my favor, but it was that response every time for over a year, and the only things I got were very occasional temp jobs lasting three weeks at most, because they were hiring anyone who was willing and had some very minimal skillset (after all, it doesn't take much IT background to plug in laptops and stick stickers on things). I am still signed up with this company, but I don't hear from them much anymore; I've checked the job listings on their website and it seems that I don't hear from them because recently they actually don't have much work period. One of the temp jobs I took was a recurring thing about every six months, and when it was time for that to possibly happen again, I tried to contact the person who had coordinated it before to see if they were hiring for it, but I never heard anything. Given the turnover in that company, I wouldn't be surprised if she just doesn't work there anymore and the job went to some other hiring company.
I of course applied to things outside of that company, as well. Other IT things, and local stuff like shops in my neighborhood. I looked specifically for coffee shop type things at one point, thinking about the idea of an eventual cafe, but it's still the same story; no callbacks. I did manage to get a few interviews on my own for various things here and there, but I didn't get jobs. There was one job with HP that looked very promising and I think I was on the edge of getting it, but then HP decided not to hire anyone new into that department at all. That was the second time in all of this that I was almost hired and then the position itself disappeared.
What I did get calls back for was when I went out of my way to go contact places with art classes asking whether they needed nude models, because I'm not shy, I studied art myself, and it seemed like a good source of pocket change at least. That was the most part-time of anything I've done, initially getting maybe three hours once every couple of months, but at this point I've worked my way up to being on with a university here for two classes on most Tuesdays and Thursdays in the upcoming semester, and that's the steadiest thing I've had since I moved here. I'm working on this voice acting thing, and that seems more promising than IT turned out to be. I've finally pulled myself out of the mire of being upset about endless job applications enough to be able to put some effort toward selling independent craft projects again, and start working on a podcast. These are infant projects, but maybe now they can have room to grow.
What you see is me not looking for traditional work, and at this point, that's true. What you don't see is how I've been looking for a full time job since the beginning of 2009 and only succeeded once with a nine month time limit. I could hunt for jobs, and certainly having a steady income would be nice, but I have no reason to believe it would go any better than it has in the past. I would rather spend my time and energy on something that seems like it might actually be productive.
In other news, it's been an interesting couple days. I tried to make a web account for my health care stuff yesterday, which involved calling a credit company to verify my identity, at which point I was informed that I was deceased. Today, I called the Social Security Administration to ask them why they think I'm dead and what I should do about it. Turns out I'm not dead in their system, and it's all on Experian's side. So... that's good, at least, that the SSA correctly thinks I'm alive. Now I just have to figure out how to correct it with Experian and I should be good to go. Interesting times.
If I'm alive according to the SSA and dead according to Experian, does that make me Schrodinger's cat?
[edit] Schrodinger's cat typoed their SSN and amazingly going back and doing the form all over again without a typo fixed the whole thing. This could all have been solved if the person on the phone the first time had double checked that with me rather than sending me on a wild goose chase through phone trees. Amazing.
