Holy F**k! If you’ll excuse the not-quite expression. And even if you won’t, I’ll say it again.
About two seconds after I hit “send” to shoot four incredibly complicated documents off in application for a full-time job at the District, I went to close the short-form resumé I’d written to supplement the 12-page curriculum vitae, the 11-page application form, and the two-page (11-point Times New Roman, line spacing “exactly”) cover letter that I’ve spent the past three days laboring over.
The resumé was an afterthought. IMHO the endless CV is something that probably is never read and, if it is, probably is the target of much seething resentment on the part of the person who is forced to read it. So I thought it would be a good idea to send a two-page business-style resumé that, while it doesn’t detail every word I’ve ever published, every conference I’ve every attended, every class I’ve ever taught, and every thought I’ve ever had, is at least readable.
My fingers alight on Command-W just as my eyes come to rest on the screen, where what should I read as the file flickers away but
…a editorial office…
Oh, hell and damnation!
I spent hour after hour after HOUR trying to get this stuff right. Went over it and over it and over it and then went over it again. If I have to screw up, does it have to be, dear God, does it have to be right where I’m crowing about my brilliant editing career?
So, if I ever had a snowball’s chance (which of course I didn’t), it just melted away in the 110-degree heat.
I’m screwed.
And if the FARKING Republicans get their way and shut the government down, I (along with about half my fellow Americans) am double-screwed.
I do not know what I am going to do if I don’t get a Social Security check next month. And I’m quite sure I’m not the only person who does not know what she or he is going to do if we don’t get our Social Security checks last month.
So far, Social Security hasn’t deposited a payment this month, either. Yesterday I spent my last available cash-flow dime on food. To buy enough gas to get to work between now and the end of the credit-card cycle, I’ll have to pull more money out of savings.
My next paycheck, which will arrive on Thursday after I’ve been standing in front of classrooms for two weeks, will cover three days, thanks to PeopleSoft’s wacko “lagging” pay periods. It might, maybe, buy enough gas for another week of commutes to the campus.
Damn it. I’m ready to go to the barricades. Americans of good will need to riot in front of the offices of these crazy Republicans. We need to march on Washington. We need to stage sit-ins at every Republican senator and congressman’s office in the nation!
If those SOBs manage to cut off Social Security—which is exactly what they want to do—I will have to double my drawdown from savings, and that will just barely cover my living expenses. It will not cover the payments on the house that Zillow now says is worth $120,000 less than we’re paying for it. Doubling my drawdown will exceed the 4% recommended drawdown, by a long shot. My savings will not last the rest of my lifetime. Before I’m carted off to the nursing home, I will be flat broke and living on welfare—assuming the Republicans haven’t managed to get rid of that, too, as they wish they could. There will be nothing to leave to my son.
Most Americans have far less in retirement savings than I do. As retirees, they don’t have any extra money to draw down. Large numbers of formerly middle-class baby boomers will be left destitute long before it’s time for them to shuffle off this mortal coil. Because they will have no financial capital to pass to the next generation, their children will fall out of the middle class—assuming any of them are still there by the time their parents die.
We will not be left that way through any doing of our own—outside the coastal cities, most people simply do not earn enough to set aside upwards of a million dollars for retirement. And we will not be left that way through any misdoing of the average man and woman on the street, the ones who go to work and pay their bills and raise their kids in the time-honored American way. We will be left that way by a strategy to slash this country’s revenues by cutting taxes on the wealthy and on corporations that can easily afford to pay their share, by a decision to plunge our country into a ruinous war on the strength of a lie, by a bat-brained policy to deregulate the financial industry (and everything else that can be allowed to run loose across the land like so many wound-up mechanical rats), and by a nit-witted policy to resist raising taxes to fund the war built on a lie.
Something wicked this way comes, my friends. Matter of fact, it’s already here. It’s come for us, and it’s come for our kids.
Image: William Rimmer, Scene from Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I (witches conjuring an apparition). Public Domain.
Hopefully the reader’s eye will automatically insert “an” where the “a” is and no one will notice. I did that at first. Please, we can’t all be perfect all the time. Take a deep breath….
In my continuing quest for another K12 teaching job (being laid off 2 years ago), I received probably my 100th “thanks but no thanks” today. So I understand discouragement only too well. Last week I did accept the only offer I got and it was .38 FTE of a small, underpaid district. So I continue to seek full time. My earnings in the last 6 years have gone from $76K (corporate job) to about $14.5K. Big slide from the middle class wouldn’t you say? And I am going on 58 years old. Ok, lets talk about something cheerful shall we?
@ Barb: Welp, we have plenty of company. Every semester at least two or three of my students say they’re back in school for exactly this reason: they can’t find a job at a living wage. And that’s only the ones who are talking about it…you can be sure plenty of others just don’t care to discuss it. Many are people who are in their forties, fifties, and sixties.
I have to hand it to you: you’re a brave and persistent woman, to keep at the effort to get back into teaching. I guess I’d be looking at Walmart, which is one of the few companies that’s hiring these days. Costco, maybe: they say it’s not a bad place to work, and you never run into an employee who’s grumpy or rude there — which suggests they’re not unhappy in their jobs.
Good news/Bad news??? As you know, materials are read very carelessly. So just relax. The bad news is that jobs are often inside hires; there may be age discrimination, and on and on.
I hope they’ll be in a hurry. LOL! I deleted the word “unique” (the office I founded and directed was unique in North America and as far as we know in the world, but it seemed a bit much in the resume) but forgot to switch “a” to “an.”
Yeah, we usually knew who we wanted to hire when we jumped through the “advertise this job” hoops. It was quite a chore to get around Affirmative Action and HR, but one learned how to do it.
If they have no specific person in mind (they probably do), sometimes the community colleges here consider adjuncts to be “insiders.” But the age issue is the problem. No one is going to hire a 66-year-old woman into a job where they’d like the incumbent to hang around at least 20 years.
Still…that aside, I’m damned impressive on paper. Sometimes I look at all those pieces of paper summarizing my life and think, “I just can’t believe I did all that!”
I didn’t catch the error at first, either. If it’s any consolation, when I’ve looked at resumes for potential hires I wasn’t focusing on such nit-picky errors. We’re all human and that’s an easy mistake.
Social Security checks will come through. Congress knows they can’t risk pissing off all the retirees because they vote! I just heard yesterday afternoon about Congress’ newest crazy scheme to not have to directly deal with the issue. Essentially it boils down to them dodging the responsibility and putting the power with the president. Cowards.
And as for your son’s legacy…well, is that really essential? I’m a GenXer, so my parents are already in their “retirement years.” I’ll be happy if they have enough funds to take care of themselves for the rest of their lives.
I know this may sound a bit self-centered, but if I have to start paying for their living expenses then I’m in trouble. I don’t expect a legacy, and would be more than satisified if they pass on with a $0 balance. I expect to do the same myself and that’s how I’m planning my retirement.
Perhaps your son feels the same way. Maybe he is more than satisfied with all that you’ve done to raise him and help him be a successful adult and doesn’t want you to compromise your own life just to leave him a legacy.
I feel exactly the same way with one exception – substitute democrap for republican!
@ Sarah: LOL! Each to his/her own. 😀 But notice I didn’t call the crazies on the right the “Repugnants.”
Herein lies the problem. This sort of discourse isn’t discourse. It’s just name-calling: ad hominem attacks that never get to the point and that distract us from discussing the real issues calmly and rationally.
Our national conversation has been polluted with this kind of bullying, hectoring, and name-calling by the “commentators,” most of them on the right, who, recruited and funded by right-wing interests, took over radio and television talk shows. Are we really such dummies that we have to follow their model like a herd of mindless sheep? Can’t we speak to each other politely, hear each other out, and respond to the issues, not to caricatures of people we don’t even know?
The name-calling and the mean-mindedness fostered by this kind of “leadership” are exactly the reason we’re about to fall into the pickling solution.
I agree with Linda. My parents were on the bottom end of middle class. They have enough to support themselves, paid-off house, no major health issues. My expectations of support ended when I left home. I want them to enjoy what they have, they’ve earned it. Besides, I think they’re going to need it.
My grandfather had a saying: “Whatever you do, don’t get old!” Best advice I’ve ever received, but the hardest to follow.
Linda has got a great point. We have to pay Social Security taxes on our income, but even self-employed people who are paying double are paying a LOT less than it would cost to help support parents without Social Security. My dad gets around $1200 or $1300 a month, and if my Mom were still alive, they’d be getting almost twice that. If my wife and I had to come up with $2400 a month to keep parents in their home and eating, we’d be in a world of hurt. We couldn’t even do it for my widowed Dad. He’d have to move in with us. Which would mean we’d have to buy a bigger house, with a bigger mortgage payment that would dwarf our FICA tax.
People who think we ought to do away with Social Security and Medicare, or somehow privatize them have got bats in their belfries.
What I forgot to add and what another poster said: they will not stop SS checks. I just can’t see that happening. No one would want to be held responsible for that fiasco. For lots of folks that is their only subsistance. It will not happen. Hang in there!
Persistence, yes, what is my choice? I still have my teacher aide position for next year if need be. But it was so boring, any teaching job is better. I never even considered a retail job. My plan B would be to go back to corporate, even as an admin if I have to (I had a professional job but have been out of it for 6+ years). But I resolved to go through another hiring cycle for the fall first. Fortunately, I am in a position where I am not desperate. I have an employed spouse to fall back on. No more school for me, I am already over educated (MBA, MA-TESL, and lots of extra undergrad credits).
I think your blame on the Republicans is misplaced, as they are looking to leave your son a better “legacy” than you ever could…. a country that is viable and honorable. At the very least, allow the other party to share the blame.
@ j: Thank you–very polite.
And it’s true, we could conjure a pox on both their houses. So far, the outcome of the Obama presidency has had its disappointing moments, too, although it’s hard to see how any one leader’s administration could undo the mess we’re in…or even whether it can be undone at all.
However it’s happened and whoever is responsible for it, the American Way that we knew in the generation born shortly after World War II is fading away. Which is not to say everything about the era was good — certainly disparity of opportunity for people of color and for women was less than desirable, as were bomb shelters, cars that were unsafe at any speed, environmental waste, culturally enforced conformity, parochialism, and xenophobia. But privacy, freedom, commitment to civil rights under the U.S. Constitution, a decently educated electorate, good and low-cost public education, an effective Third Estate, wages high enough to support an entire family on one worker’s income…those are things we are losing or have already lost. And I don’t think we’re losing them as a trade-off; we’re losing them because we have lacked vigilance.
The ongoing squabble that passes for our national discourse is symptomatic. Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad.
Agreed. I claim no party affiliation (none!), but only a desire for a better nation.
Term limits would clean up many ills in Congress.