As janetmiles observed last week, I’ve been posting light stuff (or not posting at all) because the heavy stuff’s so heavy I couldn’t find a way to write about it. The short of it is that my last extended-benefits unemployment check, little bit that it is, comes in two weeks. I still have no permanent job, two and a half years after I lost my last one, or even a temporary one. I’m registered with three temp agencies for IT and for secretarial work (at which I’m still bloody good), and none of them can find me anything to do. (Next week I’m going out to register with yet more agencies, if any will have me. Some won’t even take on new people because they haven’t enough work for the temps they already have registered.) I have no idea how I’m going to pay the stack of bills on my desk. I’m already at the point of “do I pay a couple of bills or do I save it and try to make the September mortgage payment.” The only work I’ve had at all since the first of July is three and a half days last week and at least one this week (Tuesday) running the copier for somebody at ten dollars an hour. That won’t do to cover for a $1,350 mortgage payment and several hundred dollars monthly of other household expenses.
I met for an hour last week with the guy at the local workforce center who specialized in “resume polishing”—i.e., taking out the stupid amateur stuff that makes HR people pitch your resume into the slush pile instead of sending it on for review” and he couldn’t find anything to polish. He said I was doing everything right and in accordance with current best practices, and told me, “With your resume, your qualifications, and your skill-evaluation scores (yes, I had to go through a bunch of aptitude tests as part of all this hoo-ha) you should be able to write your own ticket.” Which remark wasn’t any help, because obviously I’m not able to write any ticket at all. If I were, I wouldn’t be in this hole. Finally, for lack of anything better, he suggested that I use bullets in the “summary of relevant experience” section of the resume, which I’d previously taken out on the advice of a headhunter who told me that bullets choke the OCR scanners that HR departments use these days for skimming the hundreds of resumes they get for every job they advertise. (There’s no exaggeration in that. Current resume-to-job ratios in fields for which I have skills and experience run between 125-to-1 and 350-to-1.)
The workforce center is trying to help me get grant money for dislocated-worker retraining through the Workforce Investment Act (for which it looks like I’ll qualify), but even if I do qualify, it’ll be several months before I can hope to see any of it . . . and even if I did get the training money, it doesn’t cover living expenses. I have a fistful of other papers from TWC to fill out to apply for a living-expense stipend while the training’s going on, but again it’ll be weeks before I have a hope of seeing any money, even if I should happen to qualify (and there’s no guarantee I will). I don’t have months. I don’t even have weeks any more. The crash is here, and this is now. 1
1 And while I’m sure they’re well-meant, virtual hugs are not any help to me right this minute. What I need is far more concrete and immediate. So save them for another place and time, yes? If you want to get hold of me otherwise, email me.
