Unemployed Watercooler Fridge Buzz Commiseration, Alienation and Mental Anti-Stagnation Society (DNRIYHM)

god dammit. god dammit. god dammit.

sup clouds

might not be able to pay rent this month; not a single potential employer has responded. i've been looking for two months.

my partner has been carrying most of the burden since my last job ended and i'm scared that it'll ruin our relationship unless i find something soon.

i'm just so so sick of this. i can't do it.

fuck it, i'm using part of my last $20 to buy another bottle of booze.

best wishes, clouds, that is a horrible place to be and i hope you find something soon

I know how stressful it is when you get made redundant and have to whore yourself out again. It is unendurable shit sometimes. Best of luck Clouds.

clouds, didn't you intentionally not return to a job that would have taken you back and now you're avoiding applying where you might have to endure the indignity of "a tucked in polo shirt"? a shitty job is still a job, and it's hard to have tons of sympathy re a relationship-ruining financial crisis that could easily be avoided.....

it is hard to have sympathy, isn't it

anyway

got a call from temp agency, asked me abt availability and stuff. hoping for something but hope it doesn't fall during my family visit.

good luck clouds

"Most people are inherently good"

strongly agree
mostly agree
not sure
slightly disagree
strongly disagree

most ppl are chaotic neutral

clouds bro every one of your last few posts has resonated with me in the worst ways.

but most especially

not a single potential employer has responded. i've been looking for two months.

and

fuck it, i'm using part of my last $20 to buy another bottle of booze.

on the plus side, i finally did find something a couple weeks back. so keep hope alive etc etc.

:\

i have a feeling even shitty places like target won't hire me because they do these disgusting and invasive credit checks and i have no credit — if i had good credit i wouldn't have to apply to fucking target would i??!!!

and yeah jesse i have resorted to applying to soul crushing retail, are you happy?

Best of luck clouds, you'll find something.

yr good enough, smart enough and goddammit people like u

imo

Quite happy that you've deigned to consider gainful employment after voluntarily leaving the same without a fall-back plan, not for the first time, yes.

do music/record stores still exist? they can usually use someone who knows classical music, although it's not a good time of year for it

ime retail often had a trenches bonhomie that comfortable office jobs lack, and ppl sometimes at least felt sorry for you, nobody feels sorry for the office guy, so tbh the real soukcrusher is the desk effort

there are a few record stores around here at which i'd love to work, but ppl tend to hang onto those jobs for dear life afaik

darragh otm — ppl think that b/c office jobs pay higher than min wage then the ppl suffering in them don't deserve sympathy. it's impossible gauge someone else's pain against yr own.

honestly i've never minded retail. there's just no way to make anything like a decent living at it.

i also got no calls from any of the retail jobs i applied to during my unemployment desperation.

it was the hours that got me, or i'd have done the mgmt courses and be earning half again what i do now

hey are we allowed mansplain in this thread now btw

(stifled lol)

my last retail gig was selling high-end men's clothing which for anyone who knows me is an endless lol.

i've only got a low-end, i had to get that shit tailored

anyway hope s/thing comes up clouds, getting cash in has to take precedence over the fulfilling lifedream stuff most of the time ime, but i hope yr e works out at a balance you can live with in the longer term

"by your affirmative keystroke you authorize an investigative report concerning past employment, mode-of-living and general reputation"

fucking hell

you have a lovely reputation, screw them: PUSH THE BUTTON AND LOOK THEM DEAD IN THE EYE

'them'

'eye'

my last retail gig was selling high-end men's clothing which for anyone who knows me is an endless lol.

― packt like phoebe cates's dad in a chimney (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Thursday, December 27, 2012 6:39 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my job of 8 years is with a company that makes cooking tools, which for anyone who knows me is too lol to even be funny.

crossing my fingers for u clouds. want u to be able to buy albums and talk to me about them.

i don't know if there's a 2013 unemployed thread so i'm just gonna bump this one to propose the following:

so say you have a guy who's pushing 60 and has many years of experience as a computer programmer under his belt. and say his current company is letting him go because they're moving the office to another state and the guy doesn't want to move (and even if he did want to, he'd have to quit and then re-apply for the job he currently has). and say this guy doesn't really have enough to live off of for retirement to support both himself and his wife (who doesn't work), and that he has a whole host of health issues and a mortgage and other debts and bills to pay off on top of that.

in the year of our lord 2013, is this guy pretty much screwed?

sounds like

computer programming isn't the most age-friendly career, it's true, but it may also depend on what technologies he's familiar with. does sound like a bad situation though, good luck to him

(suspect someone more US-based would be better placed to provide specific advice, sorry)

my dad was recently in this situation and he wound up getting a contract job with a cemetery. there are jobs out there, it's just a question of looking in perhaps unconventional places.

yeah, the guy is my dad, also

there's at least some time before all this happens (his current job ends next year and he'll have a pretty decent severance package). and today he underwent some significant surgery that i'm optimistic will do wonders for him, so he'll be in better shape by the time he has to seriously start dealing with this

still, hell of a spot to be in :/

It's rough, but having computer skills is one of the few ways "make money from home, ask me how" can work out for people.

ugh, i just had one of my worst interviews ever.

pro (novice) tip: if you are doing a phone interview with a group in a conference room on the other end, they will not talk on the other end.

they will just sit there and let you yak until someone says 'we have to go on to the next question' and 'we're almost out of time'.

WCC painfully OTM upthread.

Latest WTF experience while trying to apply for work: I am told that the employer is only looking for people who live in certified HUBZone neighborhoods. Excuse me for not being a gentrifying opportunist.

I was once turned down for a 9-to-5 office job on the basis that I didn't own a car and the nearest bus stop was *gasp* a mile away. Like they really thought it impossible that someone could walk that far. I pointed out that as a child I'd walked a mile to school every day, but they were set in their views.

Well, I guess I'm back here is where I'm at.

I can talk to myself without feeling like my presence is stopping other people from talking to themselves. I can bitch about headhunters and their dumb ways to my heart's content. I can post pictures of dirty dronerock boys without feeling like I'm imposing on other people.

I have a limit on how much headhuntry I can deal with in a day. There comes a point where I don't want to be bright! and chirpy! and personable! and employable! any more. I am sick of explaining how an overinflated salary is not a compensation for treating your employees like they aren't human beings, or for having to deal with cnuts. I am sick of explaining that no, really, *insert random town in Hampshire* is not a reasonable commute from South London. I am really sick of having to take SQL tests administered by people who know zip about SQL.

Here is a hott boy, though he is neither dirty, nor particularly dronerock, either, but he has some pretty christmas tree lights.

https://31.media.tumblr.com/77e9416010e71a4aded50b65d3111b39/tumblr_n3er0xWF8Q1qgze9ho3_1280.png

Is working from home an option for you (both personally, and is an option in your line of work)? Just curious - and feel free to tell me to STFU.

I've been working from home for 3.5 now and so I am curious about other people's opinions about it. I thought maybe the solitude would do my head in but in fact this hasn't been the case at all. I think going back to sharing an office *would* do my head in tho. Think I'd need my own office if I did.

*3.5 years*

No, it's not a bad question to ask at all!

i did discuss working from home at my last job (my boss and the other programmer both worked from home, and it worked really well for them) - but, in discussion, one of the things they both agreed was that working from home works really well *when* you have a partner/family life. If you work in your study for 8 hours, and then your partner and/or kids come home, and you have reasonable social interactions with them (and especially if you have a regular social life outside the home) then it's apparently fine! Also, you have to be really comfortable with being on the phone a lot, which I really am not. I have an upper limit for the amount of phone time I can face. (This was a big problem, with having an off-site boss at the last job.)

I live by myself, and I know from (6 months of unemployment or whatever at this point) that being by myself for prolonged periods of time like this, is very, very bad for my mental health. One of the things I most need from going back to work, is a regular social interaction environment, where I'm expected to turn up regularly, and perform basic small talk or whatever. I have an incredible ability to survive prolonged periods of aloneness (I currently can go 4 or 5 days at a stretch without speaking to another human being face to face) but I am also aware that it is very, very *not good for me*.

(Sometimes things like ILX can help with this. But whatever gives also takes away. There are stretches where ILX is super not-good for me.)

But, it seems there are lot of people, especially IT folk, for whom working from home is a great option! I'm just not one of them.

The thing about recruiters is something to which there is no easy solution - there will be always be those who put their commission before any satisfaction of doing a job properly and enhancing people's lives by matching the right employee to the employer. I was fortunate enough to find the diamond in the rough, but I did so via LinkedIn, which I know a lot of people don't like. It did mean, however, that I was able to observe his posts on there, see that he knew and cared about the industry (as he didn't only post job stuff) and so *probably* was a decent guy before I approached him about the job I was interested in. My instincts were, fortunately, correct and he ended up being one of the very few people I endorsed publicly via the LinkedIn site.