-- Christmas lights not only up, but functional, before Thanksgiving.
-- Being completely ineligible for social services because I am not a 20-year-old hood rat with 9 kids under age 10. Or, for that matter, because I not only graduated from high school, but got TWO college degrees. Or, for that matter, because I have generally managed to work through my mental health "bad times" and fooled everyone into thinking I'm functional. Can't catch a break from a shrink now to save my life when I try to insist I'm *really* not doing well, and there have been multiple times over the years I haven't been doing well and just plodded through it because I had to.
I bought in bad to the "more education is better" myth, and now I'm out both a job and an industry and meanwhile, two sales guys I know who got canned along with me both already have jobs. Sales doesn't take training, it takes extroversion. Hell, electricians don't require too much training, and they permanently have jobs and make a helluva lot more than I was. "Blue collar" turns out not to be so horrible. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for raising me in Johnson County, where those words were not to be spoken, thus completely skewing my worldview at a critical developmental point!
-- People thinking that $10/hr is a living wage. All the people who tend to think that also tend to have spouses providing another income. I had someone today tell me $10-11/hr was "pretty good." I refrained from asking, "in what universe?" Probably in someplace like Sri Lanka you can live like a king on that. But this is America, 2008, and it ain't happenin'.
-- U.S.-based job sites that require you to input the country you live in, then make the list alphabetical. Do you know how many countries there are in the world? Did you pass 1st grade, where we all learned how to alphabetize? Then you know what a PITA it is to scroll alllll the friggin' way down to get to "United States." Put it at the top and be done with it. I'm seriously doubting someone from Azerbaijan is looking for a job in Wyoming, knowwhutimean?
No doubt there will be more to come, but probably not tonight. So, /rant.
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1 comment:
The rules have to be applied with a broad brush. So, for example, HERE there is something called, oh forget what it's called but it ups your welfare to a higher level if you meet certain criteria. One criterion is that you do not own a car. Now say you live out in the sticks and bus service sucks and the only way you can even BUY FOOD is to have something that rent-a-wreck would reject. But you're jobless. So you can't get this extra money. Our system in so many ways encourages people to NOT work, and creates more of "working poor" who are honest and productive but can't make ends meet because of the cost of so many basics, especially if they have large families.
The rules just CANNOT be applied on an individual basis - too many individuals. That's why welfare is BAAAAAAD and instead creating jobs is GOOOOOOOD. That's why giving people incentives to work is more positive than rewarding people to stay home.
There is a trend here to get divorced because single moms get some nice benefits - get divorced but continue to live together.
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