17. May 2012 by Dude wheres my job.

I’m convinced that’s what the problem is with many, if not most, hiring managers and interviewers.

This is why we are in the pickle that we are in.

How many times has this happened to you? You see a job ad; the job sounds perfect for you.

You fire off your resume; you get a call to come down and discuss the job.

And then you find out that what is in the ad does not reflect what the actual job duties are.

A very good example: the last interview I had.

The job that the company was filling: an admin assistant/customer service rep.

When I was at the interview, I asked what my job duties would be. “You will be doing the same thing as the other 2 people I have working in the office.”

This was a small company — maybe 8 or 10 guys in the warehouse, producing the product (wallpaper) and 2 individuals in the office. He had no other office staff; the owner did not have an assistant or admin.

What this was was an order taker/order processer job; that’s my guess. The “Admin assistant” part came in probably because there is paper work to be filed, the occasional email/letter to send a client, etc. That is not the same thing as being an admin assistant.

Meanwhile, this guy has been running the company for over 30 years. You think he would get it by now. NO?

A company that is 12 people tops, including the owner - and this would be the third admin. Nope.

He just wasted my time.

Here’s another example: During an interview, the hiring manager asked me “Was your admin assistant job sales or admin oriented?” I told her sales oriented.  “This job is heavily administrative…”

I have done BOTH. And besides, if it was heavily administrative, why was that fact not reflected in the job advertisement?

Any job ad you look at is automatically prefaced CONTAINS LIES AND OTHER MISLEADING INFORMATION.

What you are taking now when you reply to an ad is a chance.

When you get to the interview let your first question be “What are the duties of this job?” And then listen carefully. Also ask what you’d be doing on a daily basis and for the interviewer to give you an example of what a typical day on the job is.

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »

7. May 2012 by Dude wheres my job.

Last Tuesday I sent a resume and on Wednesday, I called the company to verify receipt. The email went directly to the company ceo.

He got on the line and told me the next step is an interview with the HR department, 7 time zones away.

I waited all day Thursday and half the day on Friday: no phone call here. And no email from HR, asking me when I am available and what time, for a phone interview.

Yesterday I sent that same gent an email, telling him I never heard from Hr and would he know when the interview by phone is scheduled for — these high end execs all have calendars, right? — it’s now after 2 pm and I never got a hollaback from the ceo.

I consider this a dropped ball. Common sense and courtesy has it, does it not, that you email first and ask when the candidate is avaiable for a phone interview?

I did some research and googled; this is a very “young” company with 2 offices: one here and one overseas — and their LinkedIn lists about 12 positions in the office stateside — but no names are attached to each position.

Wow. Are they looking to hire 12 people (including the job I applied for — that one has no name attached to it, either) or are these positions currently filled but the person’s name is just not filled in?

This company oddly reminds me of a start up I worked for briefly way back in 2000.  The company was fine — until it sort of exploded and the director of management hired many many new people (that’s a story in itself). That’s when everything imploded and went down.

There was nobody to supervise and monitor these new bodies (it was an unspoken “there’s your seat; welcome aboard. Get the hell to work”) and there was no routine for each person. IT’s hard to describe but this was sort of like a reverse lifeboat drill.

That company was sold to some other concern several months later and the parent company itself went out of business — securities fraud.

Anyway, I consider this a dropped ball.  If you can’t follow through on a phone interview, wow…. what can I tell ya?

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30. April 2012 by Dude wheres my job.

From this morning’s on-line funny papers (aka Craigslist):

 XYZ SCHOOL OF ALLIED HEALTH
IS VERY HAPPY TO ANNOUNCE THAT WE HAVE NEW PROGRAMS AVAIL
WE HAVE THE FOLLOWING
EKG
PHARMACY TECH
CNA
CPR
CHHA ( TENEMOS CLASSES EN ESPANOL)

WE HAVE MUCH MUCH MORE
WE HAVE AM/PM AND YES YES WEEKENDS CLASSES !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL XXXE AT XXXXXX
OR YOU CAN GO ONLINE AT XXXXX
CALL NOW SEAT ARE LIMITED

Pharmacy techs, CNAs and such used to be jobs where you trained on the job.

Perfect for allied health care students. When they graduated, there’d be more to take their place, which was fine; I liked to call these jobs “permanent temporary jobs.”

I wonder if the potential student knows that the job they’re paying to train for pays a whopping $12 an hour…or less???? Not livable wage and there is a very very high turnover in jobs like these.

Hospitals in my area and in my state are not hiring. They are closing or in limbo; quite a few of them are up for sale, or looking for buyers. One is in a “sanctuary town” — the town is filled with Mexicans. (and the state just gave another big monetary chunk to that hospital; they got 100 million a few years ago to keep the place open and alive)

So you throw money into the hat, as usual —- and no job guaranteed. There is “job placement service” — they promise you the world and in the end you’ve taken a handful of worthless courses and no job. AND no doubt a school loan to pay off.

And so it goes with the education cartel. You pays your money and you takes your chance, as somebody famous once said.

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29. April 2012 by new_wave_princess.

I mentioned this in another thread but I think it needs its own thread. I have noticed an interesting trend with women I know and that is how many of them have given up the rat race to become stay at home moms. Another trend I am seeing is the opposite and that is how many women I know who are not marrying at all.

Growing up I lived what can be best explained as a Brady Bunch lifestyle. This show which was on during my early life (and in syndication as I got older)is the way I often describe my childhood. My mom gave up a career she loved to stay at home with me and my brother.  The reason was that back when she was becoming a mother the woman’s movement was just starting. Oh there have always been women who worked and had kids but these women were often attacked. My mother being more traditional than many women she worked with felt it was best she raise kids full time. Luckily she had this choice as my dad made good money. As a result I think I had many advantages my friends with working moms didn’t. She was able to teach us how to read and write before kindergarten and both me and my brother always did well in school. Later on she became the perfect mom and she was a Brownie Leader, homeroom mom, school helper, and pretty much anything that could be done in the classroom she did. She became friends with my first grade teacher Mrs Silverstein whom I absolutely adored and was devastated when she moved to California. In between school she would shuttle me to all my activities such as dance (I was chosen to hold the flag in several parades and the teacher wanted me to study at a famous school like Joffrey), CCD (religious education), gymnastics (where the teacher advised me to quit because I was way too tall to ever be a gymnast and at 5′7 I never would have been successful) and all the various acting and music classes I took.

I mention all of this to kind of explain where I am coming from. Most of my friends lived the same life and as children we were taught that as girls we were mothers first and foremost. The friends who had mothers who worked were often ostracized by women like my mother who would often say they weren’t “real” mothers. Later on though my mom did go back to work and eventually became manager of a print shop for a friend of hers. Side note but this friend of hers had two salesman who went on to successful careers in acting and comedy. The one salesman is a famous comedian that my dad grew up with and he knows his family as do I.

I suppose this background could explain many of my female classmates but then the 80’s happened. What I find interesting about the 80’s is that while Reagan was far more conservative than either Ford or Carter this is the era when the superwoman/career woman exploded. Maybe it was because at this point many families needed two salaries to survive or many other things, like the divorce rate increasing but more women went to work. This was shown quite heavily in the sitcoms of the time such as the Cosby Show, Family Ties, Growing Pains and Who’s The Boss. The few shows that portrayed a stay at home mom were often shows set in the past like Happy Days or the Wonder Years. This is also when my mom went back to work. I was in high school during the 80’s (graduated 1989)and we were pushed to go to college and get education. I don’t even know if women were pushed to consider being a housewife anymore in school. Unlike during my mom’s era girls were not required to take home ec anymore and we had many sports to play which I enjoyed being as athletic as I am.

So then me and my female classmates got an education, a career and then something strange happened. Many of my classmates, the ones who wanted careers like lawyers, doctors, and CEOs had their first babies and quit to stay at home with them. These were not unskilled women, in fact one childhood friend was at one point a news anchor at a La Crosse television station and eventually became the pr director for the state of Wisconsin. Another person I knew was a radio personality. In fact many of the women I worked with in radio ended up becoming stay at home moms. Why? I don’t understand it but in a way I do and I wonder if it goes back to the way we were socialized or maybe the way it’s always going to be. Maybe they got tired of competiting with the big boys knowing being female they will never be equal in the corporate world. Maybe the idea to be a mom is a stronger feeling than having a career.

Interestingly there is a certain demographic I have seen the opposite and this is my black classmates. Most of them did attend college like my white coworkers, and many have degrees. However not as many are stay at home moms and many are single moms. Contrary to popular belief while many are raising kids they had or adopted out of wedlock very few are on welfare. Most are career women who didn’t want to marry or never met mr right.

This all ties into me. I never had the desire to be a stay at home mom, though in the last couple of years it’s something I have considered.  While I may have considered being a mom, most of the guys I meet still expect their wife to do most of the childcare and housework, even men who want their wives to work. I find this hypocritical of men but at the same time being that men who have careers tend to go farther than women I understand this. While I know I would prefer to be married and have a career my choices might be limited to never finding work again and never marrying or never working again and being married and perhaps being a mom. I am striking out with jobs but am having a little better luck with men. Then again I may get a dream job and decide not to have kids but to be honest never having or adopting kids kind of saddens me. My biggest fear is being a crazy cat lady who yells at the kids to stay off my lawn while I am eating tuna fish out of the can. Being unemployed and single just seems the saddest thing. I have met women in their 50’s who concentrated on a career only to have it go away and that scares me because at that point being alone might also be without my family or elderly parents. Then again my parents are still healthy and until a few years ago so were my grandparents.

To sum all of this up I really don’t know what is the best thing for women in our culture. I am glad we have choices not available many years ago but is it good to have all these choices? does it affect our futures? will those women who never have kids regret it years later? will those women who gave up careers resent their kids and husband? why don’t men have these same issues is it because men are in control more than women? there’s so many questions to be asked about all of this.

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29. April 2012 by new_wave_princess.

Last night I dreamt of all things about the old show Head Of The Class. For those who don’t know this was a sitcom mid-late 80’s about this smart class. It has been rarely seen since it went off the air in 1991 I believe except briefly about 10 years ago on Nick At Nite. Why I would dream about it seems odd, considering I haven’t even seen it for about 10 years, except to say it got to me think about how smart kids become smart unemployable adults.

More than most of the shows I watched in that time this show related to my high school experience. That’s not to say it was my favorite show, I probably liked a few shows better, just that it dealt with an issue close to me: smart kids. See, in high school I was in honors courses myself and a few others I could have been in but chose not to. I had low self esteem back then and was convinced I was stupid and ugly though in reality this wasn’t the case. However it was discovered I had an extremely high IQ and needed to be with other smart kids. One of my classmates is now a plastic surgeon to the stars and another is a rocket scientist. However, for as many smart people in my classes and how many went on to be successful what I find interesting is how many didn’t. Many went on to menial jobs, others work in fields that don’t require degrees and quite a few women went on to become stay at home moms. I’ll discuss this topic in another thread.

Getting back though to the smart kid issue and what disturbs me is how as a society we do not value smart people, especially women. We make fun of smart women who aren’t attractive. Smart men are not picked on as much but in movies they are often the blunt of jokes. However when it comes to employers they often don’t want smart people. When I hear the word “overqualified” my first thought was “too smart”. There was a case where a cop wasn’t hired because he had a higher score than the police department wanted. I personally know far more unemployed lawyers, PH.Ds and people with Masters than I do high school dropouts. They use the excuse “they are too qualified” but it’s really they want people they can control. Smart people aren’t as easily controlled. This is also why they give psych tests to see those people they can control. Employers claim they can’t find skilled people but this is a ruse to bring in people from other countries.

I wonder if the these fictional students were real students would they be in the same situation as someone like me, competiting for the few skilled jobs with morons (who get the jobs)or the unskilled jobs, or would they be successful? I would place a bet that they would be like me or the majority of my smart classmates who are either working for themselves or unemployed/underemployed. Losing jobs to a stupid frat boy who happens to be the son of a rich guy. We had one of these for president and look how well things turned out (sarcasm)and currently have another one running for president and could win if the economy stays terrible.

It says a lot about our society when we have highly qualified people being rejected for people who barely graduated high school or college.

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20. April 2012 by Dude wheres my job.

NWP’s last thread inspires this thread.

About a year and a half ago, in the op-ed section of the New York Times was a piece from a fella who tried out for a copywriter’s job, took the company’s copywriter exam and then sent the entire schmengie and megillah and kit and kaboodle to the company, as required.

The gent did not hear back from the company.

He took the bull(shit) by the horns and fired off a letter to the head of HR that went something like “I ACCEPT the copywriter’s position. The benefits and salary are delightful. I will see you Monday” signed his name and hit SEND.

Within virtual moments, he got a reply back from the head of HR…and you are right if you guessed the head of HR had her Hahne’s in a knot over his acceptance letter.  He let them hang for awhile and then he finally fessed up to what he did…and WHY he did it.

I tried this myself, a few times.  This is all on principle — one guy replied to me and CC:ed a member of the company’s board of directors. Ha…. he went on and on to tell me “oh by no means was that an offer” and I replied back to him — and the board of director he cc’ed — why I did what I did. I got no reply back after that.

Guy #2 wanted to know What Job and I never offered you a job…you seemed like nice lady, though. Ha.

 The other 2 people? One called me and wanted to know what was what…and I got no reply back from the other 2. They duly ignored what I sent.

I wish I had the link to the article; when we were still on the BE board, I posted about my little experiment and included the link to the op-ed page.

I don’t know if NWP wants to try it, or if any of you do, just to see what happens… and just to prove a point.  THese people think nothing of just playing OUt of Sight Out Of Mind — come ON — how tough is it to send a 20 word email telling us “thanks but no”?????

To keep somebody hanging — particularly after they have completed a skill set test or have spent the entire day at the second interview — is just plain vulgar, crude and small minded. Get a GRIP, people — time is money and maybe we are only schmucks you rejected but do the right thing and send a rejection.

Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments »

20. April 2012 by new_wave_princess.

Ok in February I got an interview for a company named one of the best in Chicago. The benefits were amazing and the job sounded wonderful. I was surprised to get a second interview and it was a serious of interviews lasting all day.

Today I get a rejection letter after once again getting me severely depressed. I know better than to get excited but this time I was sure.

Honestly I think it’s because of my former employer and I will out the crooks they are: Metra. The Metra’s HR department is run by James Meeks and his cronies at Salem Baptist. Meeks is in cahoots with Jesse Jackson Jr.

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments »

15. April 2012 by Dude wheres my job.

“What are you in for?”

I know of all of you but I don’t know how it came to be that you are jobless.

What happened to you and how did you wind up losing your job? What happened?

My story:

5 years ago, I was hired by a company that imports goods from overseas. 

About 3 months into the hire, there was an assignment that the boss needed to be done; she asked me to inquire and find outside contractors that could do the job that sne needed.

I looked on the interwebs and found about 15 companies that were willing; the 15 companies tricked down into 3.

One company decided the job was not his cup of tea, Company#2 wanted too much money to perform the task and Company #3 decided that he didn’t have the time.

In the meanwhile, throughout this endeavor, I kept a paper trail of everything: who I sent emails to, what happened when I called the contractors, what their response was, how much they’d charge her for the job, etc.

The boss knew this — she knew where she stood with each and every single one of these companies throughout the entire paper chase/phone call blitz/email contact that I made with them.

She told me she didn’t like the way I handled the assignment and she sniped at me for a good half hour. I told her over and over again I had a paper trail and she knew what was what…nope, she still insisted I did otherwise.

I showed her the paper trail. Still not proof for her.

The morning after the last contact that I made with Company #3, my intercom buzzed — it was Boss. She requested that I stop into her office and meet with her and Office Manager.

I got to her office; Boss asked me to have a seat. She started talking about the contracting job and who i contacted, etc — at first, I couldn’t figure out why in ‘ell she was bringing this up again, since it was more or less a closed case and now she was back at Square One: nobody to do the job she needed the outside contractor to do — but wow and God Almighty, she sure got to the point FAST.

She started in again on where we ah — left off — as far as that same assignment went.

I was told in no short terms that I had no responsibility, blah blah etcetera — and that I did NOT follow up with any of the companies I contacted for the job!!!

I had a plain as day paper trail — I stated this at the start of this post — but she insisted that I did NOTHING she asked me to do and that I blew the assignment!!!

I told her “I have a paper trail; you knew full well what was what each step of the way! I have names, telephone numbers and who i spoke to — you saw it” and she still insisted NO.

So you’re gonna tell me it was NO when you knew bleeping well it is YES?! Gee, welcome to the Third Reich Redux! 

I got screamed at; she melted down — she railed on and carried on and told me how disappointed she was in me — I in general got holy hell — and after that, Boss did anything she could to micromanage me and harass me and pick a fight with me.

I got the idea real quick after that conversation that I was a fifth wheel and taking up space there.

I got hell for a year — I would go up to her with proposals, information she needed — and 2 more times she turned it into a donnybrook.

We had a very small staff: her, her partner, Office Manager, me, a clerk, a part timer who came in one or 2 days a week and 3 sales gents.  Whenever she chewed me out, she did it in plain hearing of everybody else. Imagine how this hot mess made me look or feel —I was made to look like I could do NOTHING — in short, she turned me into the village idiot.

To this day, I can’t figure out what set her off with that first nonincident. As far as I am concerned, you made it clear, Boss, what you wanted — and I followed your directions to a T — and it was “wrong” in your estimation.

There were 2 more incidents after that that were bigger blowouts and hellfire than the first one I just cited.

And she’d also say horrible things about the guys and the clerk who worked there. (she eventually shitcanned the clerk; I don’t know what happened there; all I know is she railed away at him all day in their language, he was sticking around after 5; I said goodnight, he said goodnight to me and I left…. and when I came in the next day, OM told me that he was gone. “He was supposed to resign in a few months but the boss felt it better he leave now.” Excuse me??? No, he was shitcanned and who knows what happened that provoked the shitcanning?) Again, all of this within earshot of the scapegoat she was directing her retarded divisiveness at.

I got hell for a year and then I was let go. That’s a whole other story in itself. (I personally say she set me up just to have an excuse to get me out of there…)My work in general started to drop off in the late spring.  The work stagnated for sure about the start of July — I got the idea that Boss or OM would only talk to me if they wanted some kind of peon assignment performed.

And you know that when your gut tells you something is wrong, it usually is. Call me paranoid or somebody who needs a damn tin foil hat but I got the idea I was very closely being monitored by Boss and OM and every move I made was under a microscope.

The deal was that I was being laid off due to bad business — we had a canned clerk and a salesguy that eventually moved out of the area; he resigned — so you have 2 less bodies taking up seats here.  You never hired out for either person. Their positions remained unfilled.

SO why is it “necessary” to remove me, as  cost containing effort???

I was making the least amount of money out of the staff that was left. So what’s the deal here?

I got the usual “I didn’t want to do this” speech — the hell you didn’t — and I was sent out the door with the checks.

I got severance pay — big deal — and that lasted me about 3 months. After that, I filed for unemployment. That was start of November 2008.

And here I still sit, trying to find something. If I had known what kind of mess I’d be in now, I’d have fought her tooth and nail on this “layoff.”

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15. April 2012 by Dude wheres my job.

I feel nothing but lost.

The last interview I had was a month ago. This was no small company; it’s a world wide known skincare company.

I don’t think the interviewer knew what she was looking for — either that, or she simply decided I was not her cup of tea. I didn’t even get a second interview out of the bargain.

What exactly do you say now that will ensure you get at least called back for a second interview? She asked me where I wanted to be in 5 years — this always strikes me as a question you ask somebody fresh out of college or with mimimal experience. I’m somebody her age or a tad older. (this is why I don’t think she knew what she was looking for)

I told her I wanted to be working with the division with products that were geared to the baby boomers; that is one of the growing demographics. It’s also the demographic that has the most money.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe my answer just sucked. Or maybe I did.

Perhaps I should have told her “working in your company’s R&D division and getting my masters’ in bio or higher” — what DO you say to somebody when they ask you a question like this? And why are you asking a 54 year old a question like that, anyway???

And how do you guarantee your answer will be what they need to hear?

That interview was a month ago. I never even got a hollaback from her that said Thanks But No. Dead air as usual.

Then there was the “interview” for the bartending job; that was a no go also. The person who was in charge of the apps told me “I will show this app to my partners and they will decide by these apps who will get the job. That will be at the end of the week.” This “interview” took place at the end of February.

As far as I am concerned, she rejected ME — whether this was rejection of my appearance or what, I don’t know — the owners of the bar are older; the woman who spoke to me is no spring chicken herself. So what happened here?

I tend to think she rejected ME and how I looked. What else could it have been?

(My looks are hardly the kind that frightens horses, other animals and young children. So what’s her point here? She wasn’t much to look at herself so yes, what’s the deal?)

The bar and restaurant itself is a small establishment. I don’t know what they are shooting for; the patrons who eat there and drink there are town residents. If the new proprietors are looking to attract as patrons a mostly younger crowd or an or an upscale crowd, I don’t know — if that’s what they want and expect, they’re in for a surprise.

About 3 weeks after I went down to the bar, I popped in again. She was nowhere in sight but the 2 owners were. They told me nobody was hired since they hadn’t gotten full ownership of the bar yet and that the paperwork for ownership was still hung up.   At that point I concluded that this bunch didn’t know what THEY were doing and I decided that the bar wasn’t for me, after all. Disorganized? Perhaps.

And the bar is open now. And no, I never heard from them.

I am at the end of my rope. I’ve had close to 90 interviews and easily 600 or more resumes/cold calls that I submitted. And I spent many an afternoon going from one commerical office building to the next, armed with resumes, asking if the companies within are hiring on.

I also rang back quite a few companies I interviewed with, to see if they were hiring again. No dice.

2 weeks ago I took a week off from looking for a job. I purposely skipped looking at the job ads, both in hard copy and on line. 

I decided I needed a break from the madding crowd; it was all getting to be too much for me. 

At the end of the week, I had a look at the ads that I “missed.” Nothing much was available; there were 5 companies and all of them turned out to be very small mom and pop establishments. One of the women at one of those companies who got the phone — I applied for her job last week — told me that “all we want is just an admin; it sounds like you have a lot of corporate experience. We are only a small family owned company.” Yet their ad “read” like one that was a corporate company. You’ve just wasted our time. Maybe we don’t want to apply for a job that’s a small mom and pop company.

I am guessing they nicked the ad from some other Craigslist job ad and fine tuned it a bit so it met their requirements.  Nothing wrong with that per se but for love of the deities, how about being more concise??? “Office assistant needed for small family owned landscape company” and then describe the skill set you need — that would have been a more accurate job description to place in an ad.

The people who don’t “get it” don’t help. “Go to WalMart! Go to Kohl’s! Try the new bagel place downtown. There is a big sign in their window….” Jam MalMart, Kohl’s I never heard from and I spoke to the bagel place already.

As per the bagel place guy from a month ago, he told me they’d be opening at the end of April. Yeah, well, he still doesn’t get the phone — my guess is that they may be waiting on contractors or wow, who knows what else, and they aren’t ready to open at all.

What do you do when you need a job? when you direly need the money? (I have a plateful of woes that I won’t dare go into here — all I’ll say is that my situation is desparate) Where do you go? What do you do? How do you get money to come into your pocket so that you can pay bills the way you should, and do so without any trouble or delay? How?

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6. April 2012 by new_wave_princess.

As I get older I realize one strange oddity and that is how my much younger self would hate my older self. Things that seemed so dead set are on opposite ends now.

I look back to my early 20’s and how I would protest (yes protest)things I thought were wrong. I started an anti censorship group when I was 20 and fought for many things besides censorship like abortion, religious groups, welfare, affirmative action, and so many more. I was very far left, definitely close to communism and yes I called myself a socialist. I worked with the Democratic Party hoping they would become as far left as me. After all the Republicans were the enemy and they hated far lefties like me.

What happened? I slowly did a turn more right. I started to see things that bothered me. I lost a job due to affirmative action and realized that while people are discriminated against, that sometimes with affirmative action other people are discriminated as well. I started seeing people I know abuse the welfare system and my old belief that it’s fine to have kids out of wedlock and on welfare disappeared. I saw people abuse the abortion choice and while I support it I realize the pro life movement isn’t completely wrong either and that for me personally I would not do it. Not to mention taxes. In my early 20’s I was in college and didn’t pay a lot in taxes or it didn’t appear I did. However once I started going into the real world I saw I often paid taxes the more I worked.

While all of this started me turning right, the event that really switched my views on a lot was my long term unemployment. When I started unemployment I was so sure I would be employed eventually. 4 years and counting I am still unemployed and while I still apply for jobs and still get the random interview I know I am pretty much useless to a lot of employers. Anyway you would think this would turn me left but instead it opened my eyes and I saw that neither main party cared about us and in fact were in cahoots to kill the middle class. While I voted for Obama I woke up to the fact that he lied about his intentions. At least as awful that Bush was we knew he would be for the rich. Obama claimed to be for us and has proven he is not.

Finally another interesting twist to all of this and that is I went back to church. Yes remember in my early 20’s I hated religion? now I wish some religious aspects could come into play in politics. Now I am not saying I want a religious society but many aspects are ones that would help us, such as cut down on teen pregnancies, executions, and more family time and less work time. I came to a powerful realization a few years ago and that is I regret spending all this time being work obsessed when I could have had a family. Now at 41 I find myself unemployed with no end in sight and single and childless. The idea of me being a crazy cat lady living in my parents house when I get old scares me. What if it’s too late for me to have kids or find a husband? Scary and I blame the radical feminists for brainwashing me that to have a great career I needed to repress other needs. However I am not giving up on having a career again along with a husband and a family.

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6. April 2012 by new_wave_princess.

This is something that is so unreal it feels like bizarro world. So Sallie Mae screwed up my loan account and they called me. Sallie Mae for those who don’t know is a FEDERAL loan program and this part is important to remember. Anyway the person I spoke to was from India I believe and she said yes it was overseas. I asked to speak to a supervisor and he too was overseas and there were NO Americans I could speak to. Yep so not only do they get tax money but people overseas get the job. Did I mention Sallie Mae used to be in Kansas or somewhere like that until recently?

So then I called the Democratic Party to complain about this since they are supposed to be the party of the average person (ha!). The guy LAUGHED at me and said they didn’t care that more jobs are going overseas and Obama will be re elected anyway even if I don’t vote for him which I won’t (I am voting third party).

I am so disgusted about this. He claimed he would bring back jobs and instead more jobs go overseas. Meanwhile I haven’t worked in 4 years, and I have two worthless degrees.

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28. March 2012 by itsallmadness.

Someone named “chemietoiletten” responded to my post with a post in German, but with an English lead-in.  The name means roughly “chemical toilets”.  Call me racist, but if you can’t post in English, your post goes down the memory hole.

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23. March 2012 by collegeguy.

Sadly it may be a lost cause. People in the US do not want to hear the facts. Taxes must go up on everyone. Services must be cut as well.

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21. November 2011 by admin.

Last week, the Occupy Wall Street protesters were kicked out of Zuccotti Park, after an ‘occupation’ of two months.  They were allowed to return, but not to set up camp, a judge having determined that the First Amendment right to free speech does not include tents, sleeping bags, and generators.

On Thursday, they staged further protests, including a march into lower Manhattan and across the Brooklyn Bridge.  I actually had a meeting in lower Manhattan that day, and passed right under the protest on the subway, totally oblivious to what was happening.  The protest march unfolded on the evening news, with people making their way slowly towards the bridge.

Beyond that, I don’t know what happened.  I suspect the movement had realized it was reaching the point of diminishing returns, but didn’t know how to deal with it.

For my part, the biggest problem with the Occupy movement was that it didn’t have any solutions.  They’re right: the richest 1% are sucking the wealth from the remaining 99%.  OK: what do we >>do<< about it?

The unions attempted to latch onto the Occupy movement for their own ends, but it never really took, from what I could tell.  Alas, the traditional left-wing approach (tax the rich and share the goodies with the rest of us) has its own issues: merely tweaking the tax rates would not raise enough revenue to make a dent in our problems.

Until someone can suggest a compelling alternative to the yowling from our elected officials, we’re stuck.

Meanwhile…

This morning brought word that the super committee formed after August’s budget brouhaha failed to come up with a plan to cut $1.2T over the next ten years.  The cut in question is hardly Draconian: it’s about 3% of overall Federal spending, and represents merely a dent in our enormous continuing deficits.

Alas, the yowling continues….

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20. July 2011 by admin.

Last week, our President remarked that we have to “pull off the Band-Aid… eat our peas….” and address the issue of the debt ceiling.  Oddly, I can imagine House Speaker Boehner or someone on the Republican side saying the same thing, except that they have a better sense of playground rhetoric, and realize how it might be mocked by the other side.

Sean Hannity worries that if there is no deal to cut spending, America will become an oppressive socialist hellhole.  Meanwhile, the left wing worries that if there is no deal to preserve government funding, America will become an oppressive corporatist hellhole.

And finally, from the ‘Who Said This?’ department:

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America ’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government can not pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America ’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

No, it isn’t Boehner, nor House Majority Leader Eric Cantor: it’s Barack Obama, back in 2006, facing the same issue of raising the debt ceiling.

But Obama and the Democrats wimped out back then.

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14. November 2010 by admin.

An item in today’s Daily News caught my attention.  The author, in an effort to slam former Governor Sarah Palin, notes that Alaska receives $1.84 in spending for every dollar paid in Federal taxes, while New York gets 79 cents and New Jersey comes in dead last with 61 cents.

You might believe that the states that most often vote Democratic, and favor government intervention to help the people, are the states that receive the most benefits for every dollar that they pay in taxes.  But in fact, the correlation is the other way around: in general, the states that get the biggest return are the ‘red states’ most likely to vote Republican and stand up for ‘rugged individualism.’

So I guess government spending is bad, unless they spend it on my state….

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3. September 2009 by admin.

As of this month, it is now illegal in the European Community to import or manufacture frosted or 100-watt incandescent light bulbs.  Stores that carry them can sell out their stock, and that’s what they’ve been doing: across the continent, people are running to purchase the last of the old-school light bulbs.

The incandescent bulbs are supposed to be replaced with compact fluorescent bulbs that, according to legend, last ten times longer and use one-quarter of the electricity.

I wish I could like the new bulbs.  Newer versions do a decent job of matching the color of an incandescent light bulb, and they do use less power.  But we need light bulbs in our house, and last night I went out and bought… incandescent.

My big problem with them is that besides allegedly lasting ten times as long, they also cost ten times as much.  It would be a fair deal if it were true.  But the compact fluorescent bulbs that I’ve tried actually last 6-8 months, about the same as incandescent bulbs.  So the amount of money that I save on electricity, which is supposed to more than cover the increased cost of the bulb, doesn’t break even.

And my experience in my home is not unique.  A couple of years ago, the management in our apartment building replaced all the light bulbs in the hallways with compact fluorescents.  More than half of them have since been replaced by traditional bulbs.

And there are other issues:

• Incandescent bulbs are light and simple to produce, and there could be an economic case for continuing to manufacture them in this country.  Compact fluorescent bulbs are electronic devices, almost universally imported from China.
• I don’t have the figures, but I believe that it takes less in terms of energy, raw materials, and industrial toxins to make and transport an incandescent bulb as compared to fluorescent.  It’s probably still favorable even if one compares ten incandescent bulbs against one fluorescent bulb.
• Fluorescent bulbs contain mercury, which is toxic.  In New York City, households can still throw them in the trash, but businesses must recycle them.  In the future, households may be required to recycle them as well.
• When an incandescent bulb fails, it goes out, and doesn’t draw any more power.  A failed compact fluorescent may still draw power: it just doesn’t out out any light.

So I’m off the fluorescent bulbs for now, or at least until the Light Bulb Police come after me.

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