if its been, like, over a year at this point, and youve still got nothing, it might be the point to stop defining yourself by the concept that you have this uniquely marketable skill that isnt subject to market forces as long as youve got grit, determination and guile. your salaried job exempt from overtime protections that was paid for on essentially credit while we had interest rates at roughly zero that probably never should have existed in the first place may not be coming back long term
you know, at one point i was one of you too. i had a job where i worked from home and the concerns of the working class were these vaguely abstract worries. i wanted whats best for other people while making a comfortable salary with benefits. on some level, i accepted that i was "up here" and that's where id stay, while the "others", the unlucky ones, are "down there". I had accepted the logic that, ya know, first you go to college and then you go to grad school and that gets you some sort of respectable office job. and for a little bit, by the skin of my teeth, i got in.
well, the fun had to end at some point didnt it. and in march 2020, my entire team got eliminated. the only one who survived was my boss. That sucked but, hey, no biggie right. i just go right back into the hunt. we all know this hunt well. where you send a resume out to a million people, debase yourself in just the right way, to get someone to throw you 75k a year + benefits. I had generous covid unemployment, and there were all these jobs seemingly hiring trainers like me. so i had interviews. a lot of them, many of which went multiple rounds and a couple that went into final rounds. this went on, what, almost two years?
and then the unemployment ended, the generous covid unemployment. i had to get a job, like, any job, just to get by. so i did. the dead end ones are always hiring. got one quick. and yeah, dead end jobs suck! I dont like that i spend 45% of my take home on rent. i dont like the shitty way management treats people they control. i dont like the way that customers talk with who they view as being as below them. but i needed a job, so i did it.
ive moved to a better paying service job, a union one. in this job through being on the bargaining committee and through being a steward ive had more actual effect on company culture and policy than any middle manager i worked for did. im seeing steady pay raises every six months from our contract. i actually have things to be proud of here that have helped other workers. i still get to use my brain, but rather than for my company bottom line i use it to help us all out, as workers, via democratic representation. also your coworkers at service jobs are SO MUCH better than your coworkers at random tech jobs where everyone suffers from terminal IT Normie syndrome.
so its not all bad. on the balance, honestly, im happier than my super disconnected life where i barely left the house and only talked to coworkers who are the sort to willingly hang american flags in their house. but it required that little leap of, no, you HAVE to expand your search. you canNOT take some white collar office job that means you "won college" or whatever as your god given right. some people get lucky but there are fewer and fewer of them with each generation, and the rest of us either already were functionally workers or have been proletarianized in recent years through the utter lack of social support structure in the country. and that means you might have to debase yourself to one of the jobs We do. dont worry. you get used to it eventually