This weekend my in laws had another couple over for dinner who they have been good friends with for years. They are in their 60s and your typical white upper middle class couple. To be polite, my husband and I joined them. Maybe I should stop being polite. I felt preached at pretty much the entire time. Being a 40 year old woman making minimum wage, seems to be an invitation to anyone to tell me what to do with my life because clearly, I am incapable of making good decisions. I can see why they might think this but I am getting really sick of people deciding they know everything about my situation within 2 minutes of the conversation. Actually, thats being generous, most people don't even give you that much time to explain yourself before jumping in with advice. Everyone knows best these days. I love this line, "Well have you tried this....(insert any manner of insulting phrase here). " The assumption that I haven't tried everything in my power to get a decent job is astounding. I understand that a lot of people have good intentions and they only see themselves as trying to be helpful, but for anyone who has been long term unemployed or under-unemployed, it is NOT helpful to offer advice. Trust us when we say we have tried everything. We have pored over every job-site endless times and for hours and days, we have applied to jobs we are over qualified for and under qualified for, we have networked on social media, we have updated and revamped our resume, we have 20 different versions of a cover letter, we have signed up for every alert possible and we have visited websites of companies we have want to work for. We have talked to friends and friends of friends and parents of friends and parents of friends of friends. We have exhausted ourselves to the point of over exhaustion. Our spirits are crushed and our confidence badly shaken. So, if you are looking to be helpful, please, I beg you refrain from the advice and just listen to our story. Sometimes all we want is for someone to listen without interrupting with a banal comment like, "It will get better," or "you have to keep trying." Trust me none of this helps and frankly its insulting. Just because I have had a run of rotten luck doesn't mean I'm lazy or uneducated or dumb or less than you. Try to step in our shoes for 2 minutes and see what it feels like to be us and then you can give advice.
The other thing I absolutely despise hearing is that I need to hustle. If one more person tells me I need to hustle, I may punch them in the throat. Let me talk to you about hustle. I got my first job cleaning streets in the summer at age 14 and by 16 I was working in a pharmacy after school and on the weekends to save up for college. I paid my own way through college by living at home instead of on campus and working 2 sometimes 3 jobs. By the way, I made deans list every semester and graduated cum laude. After college, I waited tables while I was trying to be a writer so I worked 12-14 hour shifts and then on a rare off day and in the mornings before my shift, I wrote. I pulled double shifts and 60 hour weeks often just to pay my rent and bills, I was the one who stayed late when another server wanted to go home and picked up shifts for people who wanted to go on vacation. I never called in sick and busted my ass every single shift I worked. By the time I was 26, I picked up a second job teaching for a non profit education program so I was working during the week in a school and the whole weekend in the restaurant. I did this for about 3 years until I became full time for the non profit. Once I became full time, I made my way through the ranks and was eventually promoted to director. This took a lot of extra hours, extra work and extra studying. I was working 10 hour days and many weekends. I went the extra mile for my staff and for the kids I was working with regularly. I took my staff on outings, the kids on weekend trips. When one of the kids didn't have a way to get home, I would take them on my off time. I called kids parents every night after I ate dinner and spent hours pouring over curriculum. I think you can see that I didn't half ass anything in my life or career. Except that by the age of 32, I hit a wall. I experienced some major burn out. I ended up parting ways with my job of 8 years never dreaming that the next 8 years would bear no fruit from all of the seeds I had sown in my life up to that point. I became unemployed in 2009 and you know the rest of the story or at least some of it. People have the assumption that if you are unemployed for a long period of time, you are lazy. This couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, being unemployed is a lot more work than going to a job. Its certainly more stressful. It really wears on you after a while and you start to make decisions you would never make if you were gainfully employed. At first, I only applied to jobs that I wanted to do but when that didn't get me any interviews, I switched to things I might want to do and then when that didn't work, I applied to jobs I definitely did not want to do but would do if I got desperate and then I did get desperate and went back to the one thing I said I would never do again: wait tables. Waiting tables is hard at 25 but its almost impossible at 35. My body almost broke down but I had no choice. I had no other prospects so I "hustled" At this point in my life, I have applied to so many jobs that I'm sure there are employers out there that know my name just by seeing my resume so many times. So for the last 8 years I have started a new career which meant I had to start from scratch in a brand new industry. I worked late nights, early morning, weekends, holidays. I folded towels and made cold calls. I answered calls from clients at 3 am and taught back to back classes when I was running on fumes. The whole time I have been looking for better jobs and better opportunities. I have run out of ideas and no one is willing to help. People turn the other cheek when you tell them what you have been through or they give you unwarranted advice. Neither is helpful. I'm not asking for someone to hand me a job or maybe I am. Maybe I'm at the point where I am just wishing so hard for a good job or enough money to not have to work. That is the only option I seem to have left - wishing and wishing really hard. Hell, maybe it will work. Nothing else has so why not hustle the hell out of wishing?
The other thing I absolutely despise hearing is that I need to hustle. If one more person tells me I need to hustle, I may punch them in the throat. Let me talk to you about hustle. I got my first job cleaning streets in the summer at age 14 and by 16 I was working in a pharmacy after school and on the weekends to save up for college. I paid my own way through college by living at home instead of on campus and working 2 sometimes 3 jobs. By the way, I made deans list every semester and graduated cum laude. After college, I waited tables while I was trying to be a writer so I worked 12-14 hour shifts and then on a rare off day and in the mornings before my shift, I wrote. I pulled double shifts and 60 hour weeks often just to pay my rent and bills, I was the one who stayed late when another server wanted to go home and picked up shifts for people who wanted to go on vacation. I never called in sick and busted my ass every single shift I worked. By the time I was 26, I picked up a second job teaching for a non profit education program so I was working during the week in a school and the whole weekend in the restaurant. I did this for about 3 years until I became full time for the non profit. Once I became full time, I made my way through the ranks and was eventually promoted to director. This took a lot of extra hours, extra work and extra studying. I was working 10 hour days and many weekends. I went the extra mile for my staff and for the kids I was working with regularly. I took my staff on outings, the kids on weekend trips. When one of the kids didn't have a way to get home, I would take them on my off time. I called kids parents every night after I ate dinner and spent hours pouring over curriculum. I think you can see that I didn't half ass anything in my life or career. Except that by the age of 32, I hit a wall. I experienced some major burn out. I ended up parting ways with my job of 8 years never dreaming that the next 8 years would bear no fruit from all of the seeds I had sown in my life up to that point. I became unemployed in 2009 and you know the rest of the story or at least some of it. People have the assumption that if you are unemployed for a long period of time, you are lazy. This couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, being unemployed is a lot more work than going to a job. Its certainly more stressful. It really wears on you after a while and you start to make decisions you would never make if you were gainfully employed. At first, I only applied to jobs that I wanted to do but when that didn't get me any interviews, I switched to things I might want to do and then when that didn't work, I applied to jobs I definitely did not want to do but would do if I got desperate and then I did get desperate and went back to the one thing I said I would never do again: wait tables. Waiting tables is hard at 25 but its almost impossible at 35. My body almost broke down but I had no choice. I had no other prospects so I "hustled" At this point in my life, I have applied to so many jobs that I'm sure there are employers out there that know my name just by seeing my resume so many times. So for the last 8 years I have started a new career which meant I had to start from scratch in a brand new industry. I worked late nights, early morning, weekends, holidays. I folded towels and made cold calls. I answered calls from clients at 3 am and taught back to back classes when I was running on fumes. The whole time I have been looking for better jobs and better opportunities. I have run out of ideas and no one is willing to help. People turn the other cheek when you tell them what you have been through or they give you unwarranted advice. Neither is helpful. I'm not asking for someone to hand me a job or maybe I am. Maybe I'm at the point where I am just wishing so hard for a good job or enough money to not have to work. That is the only option I seem to have left - wishing and wishing really hard. Hell, maybe it will work. Nothing else has so why not hustle the hell out of wishing?
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