Jobs I’ve Had: Being Unemployed
After I worked the summer at Kohl’s, I worked a little there for holidays and evenings, but they were not . . . understanding . . . about the fact that my priority was school, so I quit. I felt badly about it, because I liked working there, but it was just not going to work out. I didn’t have a job the next summer because I went abroad, and then I did not work my senior year of college (yes, I am aware I had it superaweseomegreat). I worked holidays at the outlet mall with my old manager – most memorably a fill-in one-day gig at Charlotte Russe on Black Friday that was basically my single most hellish day of retail ever.
After graduation, Amber and I (my roommate/best friend, not Amber Rhea) decided to move to Athens. I don’t really know why, now. I think we were looking for somewhere that we could rent a place cheaply and look for jobs. In retrospect, even though it was a stupid idea, I’m glad we did it. It wasn’t a lot different from living together the entire time at Davidson, we just had to manage bills. I by and large managed the joint ones.
The thing about Athens that we didn’t think all the way through is that there is, naturally, an endless supply of people willing to work for peanuts there, so we were not exactly hot commodities since we had real bills to pay and had worked, both of us, in jobs long enough/had enough experience to command fairly decent wages. In short, finding work was a bitch. There was literally a point where she and I rolled coins to make a deposit so that we could pay bills, and we got SO SICK of looking for jobs that we went to dollar movies. “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron” will always say “hot parking lot plus a plastic bag full of quarters equals picking up coins in the hot sun.”
During this time I looked at a LOT of ads for jobs online, including some weird ass government job that I basically stopped following up on at some point, because I am pretty sure Amber made the point that it’s almost impossible to find someone worse than me (other than perhaps an anarchist or something) to work for The Man. What can I say, I have problems with arbitrary authority. I also looked into what was basically a MLM job; I went so far as to interview, and I went on a ride-along with this one guy – it was basically hell on earth. He was on about how you could make so much money and the woman who ran it lived in the pent house of the Five Seasons and on and on and whatever and all I could see was wear and tear on his car and a lot of psycho babble meant to encourage people who don’t have anything else left to believe in. After doing this for like, four days, I quit. I called the dude I’d been riding with and I told him, this isn’t for me; you can keep whatever my commission was supposed to be. I was so exhausted by all the driving and the attempting to sell to people who are as happy to see you as I am happy to see Jehovah’s Witnesses that there was no way it was worth it.
I think that “job” was probably the lowest point for me while I was looking for work in 2002. I was just like, holy shit, are you serious? Is this all there is? There was a recession on at that time, as well, and it was just horrifying out there looking for work. I can’t imagine how much worse it is now.
May 31st, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Ah yes, I graduated from college in 2002. Fun times looking for a job then.
May 31st, 2009 at 4:36 pm
I had a non-paying job the summer of ‘02 between college and law school, so count me in on this Summer of 2002 lovin’.
June 1st, 2009 at 7:44 am
[...] This is one of a series of posts about jobs I’ve had during my time on this planet. You can read more posts by clicking the “jobs i’ve had” tag, and read a lengthier intro to the series in the first post.Of all the jobs I’ve had, Best Buy had by the far the most intensive interview process. I applied online, and eventually was called to come into the store for an in-person interview. [...]
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:42 pm
[...] a comment » I’ve seen this meme on a couple of blogs, so I thought I’d jump in. I haven’t had many amusingly bad jobs, so I thought [...]
June 5th, 2009 at 8:18 am
I graduated from law school in 2000 but got laid off in summer of 2002, so I was unemployed and destitute that same summer as well!
November 29th, 2009 at 10:56 am
I had also worked at Charlotte Russe. Talk about a living nightmare.They claimed at our group interview they’d start us out at 8-15 hours a week. What a total lie that was!
They told us that once we learned our jobs we’d get more hours than that, but that is ALSO a lie, cuz ony the asst manager, manager & key holder got more than 15 hours a week! Most people only got 10-20 hours, but they only gave me FOUR, even though I had a college degree and had done retail in the past several times.
They only gave me for more than 4 months, then wow, suddenly they gave me 4 hours each WEEK, but by then I was so far in debt, I ended having to move out of my house, and was so far in debt, my credit was ruined!
Oh, btw, they really have NO right to ask you to fill out a credit check when they, on most occasions refused to let you run the cash registars.
What for would they need my credit history for? When the only thing they’d let me do is put back clothes and get the correct shoe size for customers??