The Bread Line

Sweating on the 18

noreply@blogger.com (Nicole) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:31:00 +0000

It's evening after a surprisingly hot day in the bay area, and Jack and I have just boarded a bus on our way home from a grocery run. The bus is nearly three quarters full, and, though it is hot, the windows are open and to me it's bearable. That opinion is not shared by the woman sitting across the two seats behind me, who is muttering to herself about the insufferably of the heat. The bus stops in front of the Downtown Berkeley BART, and on climbs a small mob of people. I don't hear the man ask the woman sitting behind me for the seat next to her, but I certainly hear her answer him.

"Hell, no! Look, man, too hot in here. You not gonna sit down. Hell, I'm 'bout to faint."

The man was slightly older, wearing a baseball cap, and having none of this, despite the reasonable tone in his voice on reply.

"Well, I'm about to faint too, and I wanna sit down."

The woman lets lose a string of profanities, to which the man replies with his own, and Jack, in what is probably an attempt to keep some sort of peace, stands up and offers the man his seat, leaving the man sitting directly in front of the woman and me between him and the window.

Jack's gesture diffuses the immediate conflict, but does nothing to halt the underlying tension, with both parties muttering insults under their breaths, mixed with occasional bursts of yelling and threats of stabbings. Apparently it really was too hot, as neither looks ready to make good on the threat. It doesn't stop the small boy near the front from crying, and, though I'm not nearly as dismayed as he, I spend the ride leaning into the window, trying to look inconspicuous. It's obvious that both of these people are slightly deranged, and though I'm not scared of the situation, I have no desire to be brought into the conversation.

After a few stops, the woman gets off, still ranting, and sometime later, so does the man. After some shuffling around of other passengers, Jack again sits down next to me. He leans in and whispers, "I have a story to tell you when we get home".

"I was sitting right here for all of that." I respond, wondering what he could mean.

"You didn't see it from my angle."

Curious, I press for more details, only to be told to wait. I wait only until the doors of the bus close after we disembark before making like Paul Harvey and demanding the rest of the story.

"Did you see him pull out his knife?" Jack asks.

I hadn't and am surprised to hear about this development. "But she was the one who was threatening to stab him."

"Well, once he sat down, he pulled out a knife, unfolded the blade, and put it under his leg."

"Wow, I totally missed that."

So I sat on a bus next to a man who pulled a knife, and I had no idea. This does not bode well for my urban survival skills.

Idle Hands

noreply@blogger.com (Nicole) — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 09:03:00 +0000

When I lost my job, I thought it a foregone conclusion that my life was about to change drastically. The news stories I read about people losing jobs seemed to fall into one of two categories: solid, stable middle class girl becomes unemployed, can't find work, sells all possessions, is saved from homelessness by the benevolence of friends until the friend also loses job, and ends up working part time cleaning cages in a kennel to pay off her recently incurred debt, which will compound beyond all reason and understanding, leaving her buried, suffocating under her own hopelessness, or solid, office dwelling girl becomes unemployed, and, while on a walk one day, discovers the actual secret to life, the universe and everything, an answer so complete that it makes 42 look like the silly, flippant placeholder that it is, creates a real Road Map to Peace, one that doesn't just lead the world in a big fuck-all circle, revolutionizes human interaction, and changes the course of history. I wasn't sure which path I was on, but either way, I figured it was going to be interesting, and I was going to document it.

But, so far, unemployment is not interesting. It's boring and frustrating. I'm fortunate enough to have a bit of savings to live off of, so the mad spiral into poverty hasn't happened, and I'm too busy trying to find a damn job to change the world. Mostly, I feel that I'm stuck in a holding pattern, waiting for permission to enter back into my life. I feel removed from myself, and because of that, it's hard to keep on any particular path. I'm working on home improvement projects a bit, volunteering occasionally, keeping up with my professional certification courses, but those all end up seeming like day trips to somewhere I used to be. My real life now is staying up too late, napping during the day, obsessively checking job postings so I can respond the second they are up, re-writing my cover letter so many times I'm sick of hearing how professional and competent I am. I'm restless and jittery, but weeks of waiting to hear back from recruiters and interviewers has sapped my energy, and I'm losing focus.

But even through the apprehension and excitement, my days are quiet and dull. I check email, end out resumes, watch TV, and don't get off of the couch as often as I should. Without co-workers, I spend much of my time alone. My friends and family are wonderfully supportive, and I'm trying to enjoy my unexpected time off. Mostly, though, I'm just ready to be back at work.

In the Family Way

noreply@blogger.com (Nicole) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 20:49:00 +0000

I included "food" in the blog description because I figured that during my unemployment, one of two things would happen: I would be destitute and looking for creative ways to prepare small rodents, or I would use my sudden wealth of free time to bake elaborate, indulgent confections. In reality, neither has really happened. My unemployment has not been as barren nor productive as I had anticipated it would be.

This past weekend I began to rectify my laziness. My little sister is expecting her first child, and a little soiree was in order. A good, old fashioned baby shower, with party games involving diaper pins, and cupcakes topped with tinted coconut,

and mounds of frosting.

When buying supplies for the party, my mom picked up a Wilton sprinkle assortment because it contained blue sprinkles without noticing that it was for Hanukkah. My sister, who, at nearly nine months pregnant was directing activities from a recliner near the kitchen, decided that she liked the Star of David and wanted it used anyway. It was with some trepidation that I added them to the rice crispies,

but in the end, the shape didn't really stand out, and the rice crispie treats were nicely, though slightly inappropriately, festive.

Most of the games were won by a co-worker of my sister's who herself gave birth only a few months ago. Apparently, the secret to properly estimating the circumference of a pregnant woman is to take into consideration the arch of the back. In case you ever need to know.

My very pregnant sister, who was remarkably good natured despite the fact that my mom and I referred to her throughout the weekend as "the fat one".

Many Qualified Candidates, Including You

noreply@blogger.com (Nicole) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:12:00 +0000

I got my first "You made it to the final round and we went with someone else" job rejection today. I had been excited when I first responded to the firm's ad, and all of the interviews went well enough that I was surprised by this news. Surprise quickly turned to annoyance. Really, you're not going to hire me? You realize that's a bad idea? Well, good luck with that. I mean, I was perfect for this job. See all these different aspects of my education and work history? See how they all combine to align perfectly with the fairly specialized mission statement of your organization?

And that's when annoyance turned to panic. I was perfect for this job, and I didn't get it. If I can't get a job for which I am perfect, what hope is there? I had been excited about the possibility of getting this job, not just because I need a job, but also because it would have been a good job, with good opportunities in the future. Looking through job postings, I started getting scared. I read through ads for which I was qualified, but which were for jobs that I don't want to do. Jobs that would take me so far off my chosen career path that I worry I might never get back to it.

As I have applied for jobs, I have felt lucky because almost every resume I send off is for a position that sounds exciting to me. As crushed as I was after reading my "thanks, but no thanks" email, and began to wonder if all that excitement was not such a good thing after all. Could I just have gotten myself on an unpredictable and terrifying roller coaster, where I can't see beyond the next turn, and am unable to tell how high or how low it will get?

Hoping the beautiful sunny weather outside would lift my spirits, I went for a walk. I have a hard time feeling feeling frightened in spring, and began thinking of my enthusiasm, not as a height of excitement from which I might fall, but as a reservoir. Each job that I apply to that makes me think that getting laid off might end up being a good thing adds to it, and helps keep me focused as a rejection draws a little back.

This afternoon I applied for two jobs, and for both, the enthusiasm in my cover letter was genuine. I'm still playing back in my head the failed final interview for the job I didn't get, but don't feel, like I did this morning, that my working life is over. There are still great jobs out there, and I'll catch the next one that comes along.

Can Heroin Cure Strep?

noreply@blogger.com (Nicole) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 03:06:00 +0000

I lost my health insurance when I lost my job. I qualified for COBRA, but, like many people, found it to be too expensive. As a healthy person with no on-going medical concerns or medications, the cost was too much to justify. Unfortunately, since I've been unemployed, I've been sick more than in the last three years of my insurance-covered life combined. It started with some sort of flu the weekend after I was laid off, then sniffles and a foggy head a few weeks after that, and for the last week has been a cold that, while generally abated, is still lingering in the form of a sore throat. As tends to happen, The Beau has also been fighting various bugs and ailments. After a particularly rough night last week, during which coughing kept both of us up, a scary word was whispered around the breakfast table; strep. The Beau got a call from his sister saying both she and their mother were going in for strep tests. Could our sore throats and exhaustion be, not just bad colds as we had assumed, but strep? We jumped on webmd.com and found out that, left untreated, strep can lead quickly to scarlet and rheumatic fever or acute nephritis, all of which can be fatal. However, it also says that strep is not accompanied by a runny nose (my big symptom) or coughing (his killer). So we tried to do some difficult arithmetic. Do we take a chance with dangerous, but unlikely, illnesses and ignore our symptoms, or do we play safe and head to the doctors for strep tests? Without insurance, how much would a doctor visit cost? And, if we did have strep and needed antibiotics, could we afford them? Should we just try to get our hands on some antibiotics and take them without the tests, thereby certainly keeping ourselves from death by rheumatic fever, but potentially furthering the evil missions of bacteria to become the dominant creatures on the planet? And how exactly can one get antibiotics without a prescription?

We spend close to an hour weighing options, a conversation made all the more difficult by sleep deprivation and the general spaciness of illness. Eventually we come to an uneasy conclusion- we would wait for his mother's and sister's strep tests to come back. If they have strep, we'd go see a doctor, get the tests and antibiotics, and figure out how to afford it later, while we enjoyed not dying of kidney failure brought on by acute nephritis. As I headed to the kitchen to make more tea (these would be about our sixth cups of the morning), Beau pointed out that it would be easier for us to get our hands on heroin than antibiotics. My fever-addled brain misunderstood his intent.

"Really? Do you think that'll help? Can heroin kill bacteria? "

He stared at me for a minute. "I was making a comment on our heath care system, not a suggestion."

"Oh."

The tests came back- no strep. It looked like there would be no need for antibiotics. Or heroin, for that matter. Over the next few days, our symptoms seemed to subside mostly, and, while neither of us is perfectly healthy, I'm no longer worried that I will make like Beth in Little Women. Which is nice.

Sometimes Brains are Overrated

noreply@blogger.com (Nicole) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 04:09:00 +0000

I have spent the last week in the grip of a particularly nasty cold. It hit in the middle of the night, a few hours before I was scheduled to have a phone interview. Normally, I follow all of the usual advice for phone interviews; I get dressed in professional clothes, sit at a table with my resume and notebook in front of me, and generally conduct myself as if I'm on an in-person interview. I realized that was going to be a difficult feat to pull off when I got out of bed and the room began to spin. My throat was scratchy, and my chest was congested. I didn't want to put off an interview, even a phone interview, but I knew that sitting upright for the entire time would be impossible. I made some Earl Grey and began reading the New York Times out loud to try to break up the stuff clogging my lungs. By the time the interviewer called, my voice sounded almost normal, and I made it through the interview without coughing, sneezing, blowing my nose or running out of breath. I was also still in my pajamas, un-showered and sitting on the couch with a blanket wrapped around me. I got off the phone, and then stared out the window for an hour. It was then I realized that my brain wasn't actually functioning, and that I could hardly remember a word that was said during the conversation. I began to worry.

The next day, I was called to schedule an in-person interview for that job.

My Generation

noreply@blogger.com (Nicole) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:57:00 +0000

Last night I read The Young and the Jobless, from The Big Money. It was articles like this that made me want to start a blog about being unemployed in the first place. In it, Katherine Ryder attempts to examine the "schizophrenic" reaction of "Gen Y" to receiving unemployment checks. She asks anonymous sources (her friends, it seems) how they are spending their government issued checks, and is shocked, shocked to find out that most seem to be buying something other than old tire scraps to patch the holes in their worn out shoes. She says that the stories she collected "fulfilled every negative stereotype associated with Generation Y, the so-called entitlement generation", as exemplified by one young man in his 20s who has the audacity to be "very selective" about which job he accepts after being unemployed. I suppose instead, one should simply take a job at the first place that has an opening, and spend the next forty years toiling diligently away, until that day we receive our gold watches and pensions.

Except that, of course, is not how the world works anymore. It's something that I've heard my whole life, and as a group, my generation's getting a good demonstration of it now. Okay, lets back up a few years and see how we got here. Remember the phenomenon of the overworked child? Studies and articles constantly worried that we were taking on too much work, responsibility and worry. That was me. During high school, I rarely slept more than five or six hours a night, and was generally better rested than my peers. Sleep deprivation was to be expected with a schedule like mine; a nearly full load of AP classes, cross-country and track, dance team, mock trial, weekends volunteering at church. The scary part of my high school calendar is that this did not make me a good student; it made me an average student. The exhaustion, stress and physical injuries were endurable because it was all done in pursuit of a goal- a good college, a challenging, fulfilling job, and the ability to Change the World.

We applied to, and were rejected from, Ivy League schools in record numbers, meaning that, unlike the statistics cited in Ms. Ryder's article, we didn't all go to Harvard and take jobs in finance. I went to UC Berkeley, paying in-state tuition at a public school. I was not granted admission to the "Masters of the Universe" club. I never bought a $500.00 clothing accessory, and the art work hanging in my home came from second-hand shops and thrift sales. What I do have in common with those who are enduring what Ms. Ryder calls "privileged unemployment" is that, after all of the effort and energy and hours of missed sleep that got me through school and prepared to enter the work force, I find myself looking for work in an economy with the highest unemployment rate of my lifetime. The New York Times is predicting a "Vast Remaking of the Economy" and the shape it will take is still uncertain. The rewards we (I) expected aren't even available. Taking a job that will simply perpetuate a dying system would likely mean I'd be looking for work again in a few months or years.

In high school, I had an eccentric, possibly mad, government teacher, Mr. C. Mr. C was fond of telling us that, eventually, whether or not they like it, his generation will have to get out of the way and let us take over. But, that means that, whether we like it or not, our generation will have to assume the responsibility of running businesses, government, and families. Right now, we're seeing the folly of the previous generations, and, in our individual ways, deciding how we're about to correct it. That's why, despite the problems I have with her characterization of my cohorts and the analysis she uses to get there, I agree with Ms. Ryder's conclusion: "Generation Y's values are going to define the future labor market, the way the economy is rebuilt, our new way of life". For my part, while I figure it out, I'm spending my unemployment checks on food and bills and, yes, cocktails. Because, damn it, Changing the World is hard, and a girl's gotta do something to keep warm.

Freaking Out and Indulgences

noreply@blogger.com (Nicole) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 11:17:00 +0000

I didn't really freak out when I lost my job. I didn't cry or panic in the office. On the BART ride home, I saw a woman with a bankers box with a plant in it on her lap and a tissue clutched in her hand, and wondered when it would hit me. I fully expected to become a sobbing, pathetic mess at some point. Apparently denial lasted a full seven days before my new financial constraints burst through my subconscious. I had a nightmare about not having enough money. However, in my strangely neurotic mind, the scary thing about not having enough money wasn't the possibility of starvation or homelessness. Instead, I dreamed that, while reading my morning email, I opened my favorite band's Listserv to some distressing news. Not only were The Duhks about to make a last minute appearance in San Francisco, but their (baffling) obscurity had transformed overnight into international prominence, and the tickets now cost something close to a month's rent. The dream ended with the band, instruments in hand, parading past me as I begged on the street for money for tickets, disappearing behind a soundproof door to play a show I couldn't afford to see.

I woke up a little amused at myself. The amusement only lasted until I checked the band's website and found out that, in two weeks, they were actually to play in San Francisco. I didn't really know what to do. A careful look at my finances the day I was fired made me realize that I would be okay for a little while, but I knew I still had to cut back on luxuries and indulgences. Certainly concert tickets are a luxury. But, but... The Duhks! I imagined being stuck at home, pacing in my living room, while The Greatest Band Currently Making Music played only a few miles away. I had started to prepare myself for what could turn out to be an extended time of bare-bones living, but facing the reality of it was another matter.

The story has a bit of a happy ending. A very lovely and indulgent boy bought me tickets. I went to the show and had a blast (Leonard thanked me for coming!). I have to face, though, that while I remain generally upbeat and optimistic, this thing could get really hard. I'm not looking forward to the day when I really cannot afford something that, like show tickets, I took for granted when I had a job. While I am sure that my frugal side will best my music loving side in the end, it will be a bloody fight. So my new goal is to have a job before The Devil Makes Three is in San Francisco in May. Fingers crossed.

We've Had to Make Cuts

noreply@blogger.com (Nicole) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 08:44:00 +0000

I am just over three weeks into unemployment. I lost my job quite suddenly and unexpectedly. Like most people, I had been following the news of the financial downturn, but had felt secure in my job and my financial situation. I don't yet feel my optimism dampened, but I certainly read the news a little differently now. Losing my job has changed the way I look at most things in life, from my plan for the future to the new tapas bar opening up in my neighborhood. I started this blog as a way to commiserate with others who are out of work, and to provide an insight to life without a job to those still employed.

I have never kept a blog, or even a livejournal, before, since I have been wary about putting my thoughts and feelings in such a public forum. However, my job loss feels different. It is intensely personal, but it also makes me part of a very public group. I was one of nearly 650,000 people who lost jobs in February. Everyone, employed or not, is wondering how long this will last, and how deep it will cut. My personal is universal, and I'm gonna share!