Down But Not Out

‘Once I submit my birthday or graduation date, I’m invisible’

I left my job last fall to assist in the care of (and spend quality time with) my ill father, who lives out of state. I’ve been working in my field for 16 years, climbed the ladder and was at the top of my profession. I thought I would easily find new employment. Boy was I wrong! I’ve now been unemployed for 9 months. I send several resumes daily, responding to all jobs posted on any and all career sites, mail resumes to facilities, follow up calls, etc … I’ve even applied for minimum wage jobs with Target, Kohl’s, Macy’s, etc … I am always shocked to receive ‘thanks but no thanks’ for these minimum wage jobs, saying I am not qualified. WTF? What qualifications do the kids out of high school have?

For jobs in my field; I get to phase two of the interview process, but feel once I submit my birthday or graduation date, I’m invisible. I’m 51 and unmarketable. 
I don’t regret spending quality time with my Dad, just leaving my job to do it. It’s amazing how just a few years ago I could pick who I wanted to work for, and name my price … now I can’t even get a minimum wage job. What happened? 
Unemployment isn’t enough to keep your head above water. I’m renting a room … when unemployment is out, what next?

Donna, via comments

‘I applied at one place that literally handed out raffle tickets’

I was laid off 3 years ago when the processing plant I worked at shut down. In my area to apply for a decent (has benefits and pays a hair more than minimum wage) job one must stand in line sometimes as long as 8 hours, sometimes for more than one day. I applied at one place that literally handed out raffle tickets and the winning 100 tickets were the only ones that got to apply. Of course my number wasn’t one of them.

M.O., via comments

‘Stay up too late at night and sleep too long in the morning’

My story …

58, single, long term unemployed - two years. Formerly middle management  making over $100k / year.

My search …

·        Recruiters - they must be very busy pounding square pegs into round holes because they don’t return my emails or phone calls. 

·        Big search engines - useless. Better to put your resume into a bottle and toss it into the Pacific, someone will get back to you!

·        Networking - dried up. Besides your friends and former constituents are not hiring. 

·        No current prospects. 

My Life  …

·        Stay up too late at night and sleep too long in the morning

·        Drink way too much. Way, way too much.

·        Unemployment benefits exhausted. 

·        No health insurance - but three hospital visits in the past year.

·        Stare - stare at the computer screen, stare out the window, stare at your image in the mirror, stare at the ceiling fan. 

·        Skills eroding - that happens when there is no intellectual activity. 

·        Social life - none. I’m no fun.

·        Sex - none. Women would sooner hear you have Hepatitis then learn your unemployed. Besides  there is no T & E budget.  

·        Living off cashed out 401k’s. Mortgaged the future.  

·        Depressed - big time.

·        Think suicide every day. 

Peter K., via email

‘I am almost embarrassed when I go through the lists of jobs that I am NOT qualified for’

Although I will admit I have battled the “I’ll-never-find-a-freaking-job” blues, I am still looking. And still hopeful. I first became unemployed in December of 2008 as the economy, housing, and the State of California all started their final tailspins. I sold cars. However, in order to sell cars, people need to buy cars. In Sacramento, cars were the LAST things people were buying. I forget exactly when Sirius, then Chrysler’s sole owner, pulled the plug on some 700+ dealerships and mandated the remaining franchises either peddle all three brands (Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep) or hang up their horns. 16 other people were let go the same day as me. Upsetting as that was, I was somewhat relieved. Even after discontinuing my health benefits, my last 17-day paycheck was a mere $500, compared to a year prior at $1,850. On a side note, 3 months after my lay-off the owner of the car dealership I worked for over the previous four years committed suicide. Yep, 75 other folks bread & butter gone. Not to mention the bread & butter for both of his High School age sons & widow. My heart aches for the many dedicated people that worked all their lives, 43years in some cases, to keep that place going. 

So began my journey. I applied for UI benefits online. I began receiving $1,100 a month. Thankful that I had some money saved, and using my resources as a salesperson, I was able to retain the $900 apartment that was home to my 17 year old daughter and myself for the 10 months it took me to find work. The ONLY reason I even got a job was because I had taken the Sheet Metal Workers Union Pre-Apprentice Exam in the November before I was laid-off. It STILL took 10 months of soliciting the union contractors, union shops, and schmoozing the admin people at the Union Hall to even get an interview. 

Luck was a Lady for me the day I interviewed with Justin @ ACCO Engineered Systems Fabrication Shop. Because his wife had been in the Trade for 14 years, he had no qualms about hiring a girl. I beat out 3 other candidates for the job; and went at it with all I had. Tough, tough occupation. Even the journeymen at the shop complained regularly about how hard the work was. Well, I made it about 8 months before I was called into Justin’s office to receive my last paycheck & a referral to EDD. The large job at the airport was nearly complete, and there was not enough work for everybody. This was a Reduction In Force (RIF). The economy strikes again.

This time I was worried. Savings Account depleted, no prospects for work, & if I was going to be job-hunting for another 10 months, I was doomed! I scoured all the usual spots: craigslist, calijobs.gov, and the rest. During the first couple of months, what played out in my life was like an unseen force that understood what needed to happen. My daughter, now almost 19, informed me she was moving out to get a place with her BFF. Wow. That was a huge weight off my shoulders. Next, a friend of mine said, “I have an extra room in the City. $300 rent & some help with my business.” 

So, in July of 2010, I packed up whatever I couldn’t live without, gave away the rest, & moved to the City by the Bay; Energized, excited, & hopeful. After almost a year, as a last resort, I went back to work selling cars. The economy is better in San Fran than in Sacramento, but folks are not throwing their money around without a fight. The “Seasoned Crew” at the dealership proved to be too much competition for me and I was cut from the team after 2 & ½ months. Back to the Drawing Board…and on May 1^st, 2011, back to the Unemployment Line. 

I am almost embarrassed when I go through the lists of jobs that I am NOT qualified for. Because I have no Degree, no Program Certificates, & no Skilled Trade, I still have no job. Couple that with my recent work history, and see how fast my phone DOESN’T ring. Clearly, I need some type of re-education. But how? I am looking at a maximum of 5 months before my UI claim is exhausted. I can barely make rent (which is now $600), let alone pay for school. 

Between auctioning items I find at Thrift Stores, a day here and there as a movie extra, and the bi-weekly checks from UI, I am making it for now. I’m as tough as nails and very resourceful. I intend on keeping myself above water, and I will find work.

E.A., via email

‘It’s peanuts and ham sandwiches for me!’

I am a 39 year old recent college graduate (2010).  I have a degree in English with an Education minor. I’m not officially unemployed, because I have two part-time jobs: occasional substitute teaching and delivering pizza for Domino’s.  I have to say, I sort of kicked butt at the whole college thing: I graduated summa cum laude with a 4.0 GPA, while juggling work and single (read: completely alone) parenthood of two teenagers. One summer, I studied at Oxford on scholarship. I have letters of recommendation that make me sound like Mother Theresa, and dozens of adoring notes from my student-teaching students. I am a certified English teacher who is willing to work anywhere in the country, except the southeast and the extreme southwest, because I just can’t handle heat. To that end, since February of 2010, I have applied for literally hundreds of teaching jobs around the country. I lost count somewhere around 350, because I started using a different notebook for documenting my applications. I have attended about ten job fairs, sometimes driving hundreds of miles to do so. I have had something like seven interviews, and no job offers.

I really don’t understand it. When I am delivering pizza at midnight just to keep my utilities from being cut off, it’s hard not to be bitter.  I find myself thinking things like, “I should be at home grading papers or making lesson plans!  Or better yet, sleeping at this hour!” I always heard that education was a recession-proof career choice, because “we’ll always need teachers.”  That is evidently not the case now. None of my three geographically closest districts appear to be hiring a single teacher this year. It looks like the state of New York, which I took a chance on getting an additional teaching license for, is hiring only about 100 teachers, according to the state website I regularly check.  One hundred teachers in a state with a population of over ten million, I would guess? I can’t say how many times I have gotten a letter or email from a district where I have applied, saying “we have received HUNDREDS of applications for this one job opening. We’ll get back with you if we want to interview you.”  I believe I am a very attractive applicant, but obviously I can’t compete against hundreds of others, or I’d have a job by now.

This year I have expanded my job search to legal secretary-type jobs, as this is my original training, and what I had been doing for about eight years before deciding to get a Bachelor’s. I really do not want to do this, as I found the work to be singularly unsatisfying, and most lawyers as a whole to be unsavory people. However, I have got to have regular income and insurance, and so on.  I do not have the benefit of unemployment insurance, as I quit my last full-time job (as a teacher’s aide at an alternative high school) so I could be free to student teach. That position no longer exists, so I couldn’t go back to it.  This has been the most emotionally draining 18 months I have ever experienced. I tend to job-hop a lot because I get bored, and I have occasionally lost jobs, but I have never, in twenty years of working, been out of work for more than about a week before.  I have always been able to bounce right into another position, before.  The hundreds of rejections and just lack-of-responses to my applications is depressing and makes me want to give up.  I have gotten feedback from a couple of schools as to why they hired someone else, and they say they went with an experienced candidate.

On a bright note, I have an interview on Thursday for an administrative assistant job in Albany, NY.  Albany is my first choice for a place to live, because I love cold weather, and it seems like a fun place to live: not too big, not too small. This is with a title company, which is an industry I have some experience in.  I hope it will lead to an underwriting job someday.  I am making an intrepid 9-hour drive up there on Wednesday in my 140,000-mile piecer, praying the whole way my car doesn’t blow up because if it does, I am sunk.  I’m taking snack food in the car in a cooler, because I can’t afford restaurant food.  It’s peanuts and ham sandwiches for me!

It makes me sad to give up on my dream of teaching (at least for now).  I really think I’d make a great teacher: I am intelligent, passionate and caring.  Maybe I’ll get my Master’s degree and try again in a few years. Who knows, maybe then I’ll have a snowball’s chance in hell. 

K.R., via email

‘I don’t feel like I matter anymore’

I believe my story will be quite different than most. I became unemployed in June of 2009 from the University of South Florida. I was employed at WUSF TV-16 as their staff lightning grip. I had started there in April of 2006 and had never had a bad day while working there. A month before being laid off, we were told that the state was going to be unable to pay us so 10 of us would be laid off. I worked in my job capacity up until the afternoon I was let go. The hardest thing about being out of work is that I don’t feel like I matter anymore. I don’t have any family anymore besides my dog and I’m not sure he really gets the fact that I matter to him.

I think I should mention before I say if I think employers are wary of me not having worked in awhile. I am a male to female pre-op transsexual and unfortunately I live in the state of Florida which has no anti-discrimination laws concerning gender identity. So I have already been turned down by many jobs because of this fact alone. I’ve even been told straight out that that was the reason why I wasn’t being hired.

The jobless benefits that I’ve been receiving have helped to keep a roof over my head and food on my table but unfortunately is hasn’t been enough and I’ve had to turn to other means of making money. Nothing truly bad just selling myself and getting paid for what I do best. I am still looking for work and have noticed that there really is a lot of competition out there for even the lower paid jobs that I’ve been applying for. In the past, I was paid pretty well for my field but unfortunately in today’s job climate beggars can’t be choosers and I’ll take any job at this point. 

I think that the only way for people like me to find a job is to make more laws concerning discrimination for us. I am moving out of this state at the end of my lease and back to NYC because they have laws concerning discrimination against transsexuals.

Ashley C., via email