Unemployment Stories, Vol. Five: ‘I Go to Bed Every Night Hoping I Won’t Wake Up’

[DeSwiss]

Gawker
Hamilton Nolan
August 13, 2012



Every week, we're bringing you true stories from those caught in the unemployment crisis. The official U.S. unemployment rate is 8.3 percent; the true rate of hopelessness is much higher. This week: cops, businessmen, lawyers, students, academics, and other fellow Americans. This is what's happening out there.

The former cop

I quit my job in August of 2011. I was a cop and after ten years I had decided I had enough. I worked with corrupt, racist officers and for even more racist and corrupt bosses. I tried to stick it out best I could. I went to IAD. I got promoted so I could maybe make changes myself when my request for assistance with IAD went ignored. The harassment only got worse. It's bad enough being a woman in a man's world, but try being one who won't go help steal personal property or let you beat up that black man. Every day was emotional warfare. It was tough, but I was tough. For a while. There comes a point when you just can't stomach it anymore. So, for the sake of my sanity and to keep me from actually driving off the bridge on the way to work like I had envisioned myself doing many times over the past decade, I quit and decided to finish my Master's degree. I thought I would have no problem finding another job, after all I have a BS and a BA, not to mention I'm a decorated veteran and have a diverse resume. Boy, was I wrong.

I've been looking for work for almost a year now. I've been surviving on my GI Bill, I have been denied unemployment and I've watched my credit sink as the credit card bills pile up. Just last month my car was repo'd. Inside was everything I owned since I was partly living out of it. I have no f family to turn to, and I don't want to burden the few close friends I have, but I've been doing my best to keep a positive outlook. but it's hard. The few people I've talked to about this seem to not understand how soul crushing it can be to not be able to contribute to society. The GI Bill is alright, but it's not enough to live off of. In a few weeks, I will be homeless. I've been working since I was 14. I'm 32 now. I'm 32 and go to bed every night hoping I won't wake up in the morning. I thought I was depressed before, well I hadn't seen anything yet. I've researched on the internet, looking for ways to kill myself painlessly, but so far I've come up with nothing. So here I am.

I've been applying to anything and everything. From McDonald's to places I'm not even qualified for. I get told I'm either overqualified or unqualified. No one is willing to give me a chance. I try not to come off desperate in interviews (the half dozen I have been able to snag in these long 12 months), but I'm sure they can smell it on me. I'm willing to do anything forever if I need to. I won't bail at the next best thing because mainly, I'm serious about finishing my Masters and then getting my law degree. I've moved four times in the past year in search of work, and so far nothing. I can't go back into law enforcement because my credit is shit. I may have a job prospect in Ithaca, NY, but I need to finish out the semester here in Los Angeles before I can move. And then I need to figure out how to get out there.

And you know what doesn't help? Being told it will get better. For a while, I believed it. Then I lost everything. I don't even know if it will get better. I don't know how I can make it back from here. All my life I wanted to be a lawyer helping out the poorest in my native Detroit. I want to make this happen, but how can I when I don't even know if I can make it through tomorrow? Coming back from an interview a few weeks ago (when I still had my car), while driving past some construction, I thought about how easy it would be to just jerk the wheel and careen into a Jersey barrier. I thought about how quick my death would be with that sudden impact at 85MPH. I even took off my seatbelt in anticipation, but in the end, I was too fucking scared to do it. I was scared it would hurt. Sitting here tonight, writing this, I wish I would have done it.

Thanks for listening to my story.

MORE

- Now one can more easily see why cops are beating people protesting against the 1%ers so hard and with such vigor and diligence. It's because they're more afraid of them than we are.......



''You're not cop, then you're little people!'' - Captain Bryant/Blade Runner, 1982

[independentpiney]

1. That person needs help

taking off the seat belt while you're thinking of driving into a concrete barrier is getting too close to real.

[DeSwiss]

2. Agreed.

She appears to be suffering from severe depression and shock. She was once a part of the establishment that makes the treachery of this society and the acts of the 1%ers possible, and then she woke up one day during the nightmare and saw it for what it is. And then she realized she couldn't remain a part of it and quit -- not realizing at the time that she had unwittingly cast herself among the ''little people'' only to become one herself.

The shock of this discovery and the subsequent separation from a life that contained all she knew is what is causing her difficulties now. The rules we all learned to play this game by no longer apply. Even now she still seeks a college degree to work within a system that reviles her and all of the other 99%ers. We have yet to awaken sufficiently, but we all must do so at some point. And when we do, we'll realize that the system we ''live under'' is unsustainable and must be allowed to collapse in the same manner that the TBTF banks should have been allowed to collapse.

- The longer she (and we) put off admitting the truth, the harder the fall will be.

[center][/center]

[magical thyme]

3. this one is too close to home....

"How did you become unemployed? A coworker stalked me until I left my job in disgrace and fear. "

10 years ago I was driven out of my condo of 17 years by a registered sex offender and his gang of thugs. The police told me they had a file an inch thick and a mile long on him, and that they couldn't protect me so I should get out of town.

My career was already crashing/crashed post hi-tech collapse and 9/11. So I sold my condo, packed my fur and featherbabies and ran.

I was defrauded when I bought my next home, and spent most of the next 7 years out of work, blowing through my retirement fund. Then I went back to school for allied health care and finally started back to work last summer.

4 months into my new job, just as I turned 58, I started being stalked by a janitor, with encouragement from several co-workers who fed him info about me.

He stalked me at the hospital for 5 months, finally bringing it into the lab one night when I was there alone. He shoved me into the computer 4 times within 30 minutes while I was trying to result tests on 3 critically ill patients. The next time I came to work, he physically blocked me from entering the lab. At that point I told him to "fuck off."

I now am nauseous before going to work. I had complained at the beginning...it wasn't handled seriously at all. In fact, I feel I was punished for complaining. If anybody thinks I wanted to be filing a harassment complaint 4 months into a new job after 3 years in school and taking on 10s of thousands in student loans, well. Not exactly.

[Macoy51]

4. I see a future filled with a permanent unemployed under class

In my mind, the worst aspect of the employment situation is that it probably won’t get better. In the times I was unemployed in the past I knew I would get a good job eventually. It was just a matter of putting in the time, sending out resumes and picking the best job offer. It may take me a few months, but I knew I would get a job paying the same, if not more than the one I lost.

Now, if I ever lose my current job, chances are, I will NEVER find a job that pays even close to what I am making. And I am not alone. Millions of Americans have been unemployed for a year or more, and when/if they go land a job, it will be at a fraction of what they used to make.

Sadly, I see a future filled with a permanent unemployed under class.


Macoy

[magical thyme]

5. I am now making a fraction of what I once made...about 33%

and to make matters worse, before I started the training program I researched government statistics on salaries in the field and I called the local hospital where I would most likely end up working and asked the HR rep about the salary range.

2 years after I called her, a classmate called her and she told him $1/hour higher than she'd told me.

She lied to both of us, boosting the hourly rate by 25%. We both made student loan/career decisions based on a blatant lie. The *only* reason I didn't default on my student loans last December was because of the income-based repayment program. Instead of paying off my student loan in 10 years *and* continue on to the next degree, as I planned, I will be in debt until I win the lottery or the housing market recovers enough to sell my home above bankruptcy price or I die.

[tilsammans]

6. So true, sad to say . . .

The good jobs we had are gone forever, I'm afraid. They'll never be back.

And we'll soon have the most highly educated underclass in US history.

I know only a handful of people who've gotten decent-paying full-time jobs with benefits in the past few years. Everyone else is SOL, or close to it.

I too, was unemployed a few times over the years, and I took a number of interim "shit" jobs to keep going. But I was always hopeful I'd land somewhere good, and eventually I did. Several times.

No more. Now even the shit jobs aren't open to a large segment of jobseekers. I haven't had a full-time job in three years, just part-time gigs where I've had to beg and plead to get the hours.

Crumbs.

Meanwhile, I'm networking my fool head off, meeting as many people as I can in hopes of making the right connection. I haven't given up, but I can't blame people who do.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. I've been reading the stories at the link..it is terribly frightening.

When I graduated from college, it was during the 1980 severe recession, and I did not get work in my field until 1986, had to move across the country to find a job. That period of time was a piece of cake compared to the current economy.
And I had NO debt.
The social service programs were still intact and hiring for my skill set.
That pretty much ended by 2000, I noticed.
There seems to be a deliberate effort to deny jobs to workers over 50. And to keep a pool of wage slaves available to compete with each other for the smallest possible wage.
And the choices of work is pitifully small since so many jobs have been exported.
It is as if the whole nation has become Detroit.