Would like the board's opinion on my current situation...

[Serial_Worrier]

The numbers are misleading here, depite 5% unemployment a lot of 'qualified' people are not finding work, especially those not prepared to leave a large city, or take on any nitty gritty work.

As long as they can collect welfare & Medicaid, they will not do any "nitty gritty work".

[Oneaboveall]

How bad is it for teaching jobs out there? Perhaps if you're willing to relocate you could find a teaching job in another state. I would think a teacher should be able to find a job somewhere in another state. Some states are doing better by the way, like North Dakota. Alaska seems to need people. Texas maybe. It may come down to that, being willing to radically relocate.

I asked for advice, but there are two things I have to address here.

There is absolutely no way I'm going back to teaching. It's a profession that seems to attract the most piety people to it like moths to a flame. I don't want to sound like a misogynist, but it's a profession dominated by women and I couldn't help notice that most of the problems I've had there were instigated by women (e.g. going back and telling an administrator about something minor thing wrong I did and then turning it into a big deal). I also am kind of reluctant to leave Newark just yet. Mom turns 68 in September and she just had eye surgery. She might have to have surgery on the other eye soon. We are kind of lucky in that we had three generations living within four blocks of each other. My aunt, and two uncles live near mom, but they're all older than she is. So it fell to me to take here to the hospital and take care of her until she was better.

If you have friends or relatives in other states, you could try couch surfing for a while to see if you can find work in a new area. About teaching, have you thought of private schools? Might be more laid back, less stress, respectful students. Also maybe something like a Sylvan Learning Center (tutoring)...

Ok. That's another thing. I used to be the guy who helped everyone out, when I needed something, no one was around. I've had a lot of people that I thought were friends, but weren't around when it really mattered.

Let me give you an example, just bear with me here:

Before I left Carlisle in 2007, I was subbing in four area districts: Mechanicsburg, Cumberland Valley, South Middleton, and Northern York. It was steady and I even got a job teaching Summer-school in South Middleton that July. Keep this in mind, as it plays a part later.

Back in December of 2009, I visited Carlisle after the semester ended at Clarion to see some friends and spend the evening with my friend's daughter (Some of you remember that I mentioned a rather unique mother and daughter that I'm friends with. Mom was working, so it was just the two of us). The daughter and I had just finished dinner and were about to hit a movie when she got a text. I drove her back home and it turned out that her great-grandmother had been rushed to the hospital. The mom shows up and everyone plans to head over to the hospital with her mother. The daughter froze after her mom asked if she wanted to come and kept looking at the ground. I figured the best thing at that point was for me to get out of the way and go back to the hotel. It was at this point that the mother stops me and says the following:

Mother: Could you stay with my daughter for a while?
Me: With all this going on, I don't want her to think she has to entertain me.
Mother: Well, it's best that someone stays with her instead of her sitting here by herself.

I agreed and wound up sitting up watching videos with the daughter until roughly two in the morning. I also stopped by the next afternoon to see how thing were going. I went back to NJ later that evening.

Flash-forward to the next March when I visited Carlisle again. I realised that I wasn't going to have a job after graduating Clarion and decided that subbing in the area again might be a good Plan-B. It was steady and would at least put money in my pocket. I explained my situation to the family I was friends with and asked if I could rent a room (or even a couch) from them. I wasn't asking for a handout and offered to pay them for a month. I also told them I would leave if subbing wasn't as steady as it was before. I was told they didn't have any room. I know it was a big favor to ask and it defeats the purpose of helping people out if you expect something from it, but it would be nice if a friend helped me out when I needed it.

[Sixstrings]

The numbers are misleading here, depite 5% unemployment a lot of 'qualified' people are not finding work, especially those not prepared to leave a large city, or take on any nitty gritty work.

Yeah but guess what CNA jobs pay where I live.. $10 an hour, I'm not joking. We have people actually going to school for jobs that don't pay any more than Burger King. According to Wikipedia, the minimum wage in Australia is $15 an hour. It's another world you're living in down there. Try to imagine former professionals desperate to find even $8 per hour jobs, 20 hours a week. Now try to imagine how a person can live on that.

Anyhow don't mean to argue with you, you have good points.. (1) it's critical he get some kind of employment because companies aren't hiring the jobless (they want to see that you're already employed, odd as that sounds). (2) if the issue is he just doesn't like teaching, well, he may need to figure out how to tolerate it.

[Shaved Monkey]

The numbers are misleading here, depite 5% unemployment a lot of 'qualified' people are not finding work, especially those not prepared to leave a large city, or take on any nitty gritty work.

As long as they can collect welfare & Medicaid, they will not do any "nitty gritty work".

This isn't the 3rd world here,slave labour was never part of our history.
We import people from the 3rd world to do the stuff the rest of us don't want to do, just like every first world country does(did).The contract was you step up to the next level(very small steps) and new poor guy comes to fill your role.
Unfortunately in the new world with privatisation of government businesses, shipping manufacturing to China and automation of repetitive low skill work, the barely moving conveyor belt of social climbing has come to a stop.
PS
Americans would starve if illegal Mexicans didn't do the work the rest didn't want to do and you guys don't have half the safety nets most civilised western countries take for granted.

[Sixstrings]

There is absolutely no way I'm going back to teaching. It's a profession that seems to attract the most piety people to it like moths to a flame.

My brother in law is a teacher. I've been hearing him complain about being a teacher for 20 years now. So while I've never been a teacher I feel like I know something about it.

From what I can gather, he has no clue how brutal, tough, and abusive the private sector is. You may want to rethink things before it comes down to taking a working class job -- whatever abuse school administrators hand out may pale in comparison to what you could go through at something like a Walmart job. Plus corporations are utterly heartless, whatever level you are. It's very different from public sector.

Honestly man it seems to me teaching is a cushy job. You asked for advice, well you've been out of work for a while now. You will eventually have to take some kind of job, be aware there are rougher jobs than teaching.

I don't want to sound like a misogynist, but it's a profession dominated by women and I couldn't help notice that most of the problems I've had there were instigated by women (e.g. going back and telling an administrator about something minor thing wrong I did and then turning it into a big deal).

Well.. I dunno, you have to figure out how to get along with women not really any way around that.

I don't know what to tell you One, other than that the jobs / employment situation is brutal. If you want to survive you're going to have to re-adjust your expectations and realize most people don't like their boss and most people are miserable in their jobs. Pick your poison whatever it is, but get working.

If you just need some cash coming in but don't want to be seen working at a Walmart or something, here's an option:

http://www.alpineaccess.com

It's work-from-home call center work. Low pay, but it's more than zero pay. They hire you as a regular employee, health insurance, not a private contractor thing. You've got to do something so you can at least say you are currently employed as you apply for jobs.

Ok. That's another thing. I used to be the guy who helped everyone out, when I needed something, no one was around. I've had a lot of people that I thought were friends, but weren't around when it really

Yeah I guess that's true. On the bright side, you're not facing homelessness. You have several college degrees. So remember that, you have some advantages others don't.

Good luck man, try to get working at something even if it's "beneath" you, it's important just to get out there and get some pay and that can lead to something better. I've taken crappy jobs before and it actually motivated me to find something better.

(p.s. let us know if you're seriously depressed; getting advice on this forum isn't exactly good for depression, doomers are rough )

[americandream]

Bullying and being generally pushed around seems to feature quite prominently in your woes. Perhaps retraining in a skill/craft/profession/employment that enables you to enjoy more room in terms of self-direction...some form of self-employment perhaps.

Good luck.

Hmmm... That has actually happened a lot. Not sure what kind of cues (nonverbal or otherwise) that I'm giving off. Of course, if you look at cases around the country, there are lots of teachers getting "in trouble" or fired for the most trivial of reasons. Never mind that a substitute has even less options to protect themselves from a petty vindictive administrator.

It probably has less to do with you and is perhaps more of a reflection on the sorts of stresses/power dynamics those around you are also confronting/enabling; work colleagues, management as well as parents. Who knows. What you do want to do is distance yourself from this toxic mix if you can and by whatever means works for you. and the sooner the better.These sorts of issues are only going to get worse as wages, job opportunities and collapse in work conditions in general, pick up pace.

[Cog]

My advice to you is to manup, quit feeling sorry for yourself, get a real job, quit mooching off mommy, deal with your woman issues or simply ignore they exist and most of all grow a pair.

I hope this advice will send you on your way to being the productive citizen that I fully expect you are capable of being.

[ohanian]

My advice to you is to manup, quit feeling sorry for yourself, get a real job, quit mooching off mommy, deal with your woman issues or simply ignore they exist and most of all grow a pair.

I hope this advice will send you on your way to being the productive citizen that I fully expect you are capable of being.

Cog, You are being mean. Not everyone is as psychologically tough as you. And in the current environment, I am sure a lot of people are having a (emotional) depression and suffers a terrible loss of self-esteem. Suicide rates are high.

It cost you NOTHING to give verbal advice is a gentle and kind way. I was mean to others in the past then one day I found myself on the other side. And so I regret and will regret to the day I die, how mean I was to others in the past. The knowledge that I was mean to others will live with me forever. It's a stain that I can never wash off.

[dsula]

Americans would starve if illegal Mexicans didn't do the work the rest didn't want to do and you guys don't have half the safety nets most civilised western countries take for granted.

Haha. That's a good one. I don;'t know about you, but I would for sure go and dig up them potatoes myself before I'd starve.

[ian807]

I'm not sure how good my advice is but here goes....

1) Take a crap job. I've done this at several low points in my employment life. My first year out of college, I made $385 a month proofreading for a non-profit. Even in 1981, this wasn't much. I was an economic vegetarian. Beans and grains are darned cheap at the bulk aisle bins.

2) Start some sort of business. You'll need transportation, most likely. I had a "maid" a few years back, who was about my age (50s) and a slightly overweight white guy. Not much education. He made, he claimed, about $50K a year cleaning houses. We paid him $70. I doubt he was ever here for more than 3 hours. I think he did 3 of those a day. It wasn't much, but it kept the wolf from the door. Cash business. Few if any taxes and he had all the work he could handle.

3) Private tutoring. Better paying gig. Fewer students. No politics AND you get to leverage your current skill set.

4) Exchange labor for housing. Craigslist is full of guys doing this. I don't know how well it works out, but I'm considering it for my next house rehab if my usual guy isn't available for some reason.

Good luck. Don't be scared of antidepressants (St. John's Worth has worked for me, on occasion) and perhaps most important, don't quit. A lot of things in life come from staying power and little else (like your former bad boss who got promoted). Keep at it.

[WildRose]

Hi, Oneaboveall. Hope your day is going well.

I'd like to put in a plug for private tutoring, as others have. Do you know how hard it is to find a good tutor? One who can really help a person understand a subject. My daughter had to do some math upgrading a couple of years ago in order to get into university, and I can tell you she had such a tough time landing a good tutor. She eventually found a young woman who was close to graduating university to tutor her, and this helped her get the marks she needed. I think math, chemistry and English are subjects that often require tutoring. Of course, there are a lot of new citizens to the US who need English as a second language instruction. If you think you may be able to help people more on a one-to-one basis, this may be for you. Hang in there, and keep busy with positive, constructive things. I wish you the best.

[Cog]

My advice to you is to manup, quit feeling sorry for yourself, get a real job, quit mooching off mommy, deal with your woman issues or simply ignore they exist and most of all grow a pair.

I hope this advice will send you on your way to being the productive citizen that I fully expect you are capable of being.

Cog, You are being mean. Not everyone is as psychologically tough as you. And in the current environment, I am sure a lot of people are having a (emotional) depression and suffers a terrible loss of self-esteem. Suicide rates are high.

It cost you NOTHING to give verbal advice is a gentle and kind way. I was mean to others in the past then one day I found myself on the other side. And so I regret and will regret to the day I die, how mean I was to others in the past. The knowledge that I was mean to others will live with me forever. It's a stain that I can never wash off.

I'm not being mean, I'm being blunt. He doesn't have a lot of time to get his affairs in order and he certainly doesn't have time to sit around a mope about it. Time for him to retire the comic books and toys and face the reality of a world that is getting more brutal by the second.

[Quinny]

What a knobbish remark

The numbers are misleading here, depite 5% unemployment a lot of 'qualified' people are not finding work, especially those not prepared to leave a large city, or take on any nitty gritty work.

As long as they can collect welfare & Medicaid, they will not do any "nitty gritty work".

[FairMaiden]

I don't know about the site either. Maybe ppl here are already deteriorating socially in prep or they've scared off most of the nice ones. I wrote that I was having a problem w/some rude Chinese ppl in my area and I was called a white supremist! I was concerned about being a community that doesn't accept me (peak prep related)...I didn't say and I don't think chinese ppl are rude in general. Nor did I say "Asian" bc there are plenty of polite Korean and Vietnamese ppl here. I also know lots of Chinese ppl who are nice...not sure WHY it's like this in this tiny area of a large city. Anyway, didn't want to make this about me - but I was about to leave the site for good after that. I did have a point here too. I rarely think twice about what's written on the internet. There are good ppl and bad ppl everywhere - even on the internet. No one is worth upsetting yourself over bc 99% of the time the issue is theirs. So when someone says something to you, or back stabs you, then you need to learn to just brush it off. People can't insult or upset you if you don't let them. Since I've learned to do this, I have been a much happier person in most situations.

If you have been reading here since 2009, then you knew the 2008 recession wasn't getting any better. Yet you decided to give up your job anyway. Not a very good decision. I'm not writing that to be mean. But you have to be honest about mistakes to learn from them and not repeat them. If you were still in your job, my advice would have been to get a girlfriend. Having a sounding board who understand the female HS head games could have been a valuable resource for you. It's also therapeutic to have someont to vent to that is sympathetic.

You've had a lot of great advice on here about the job situation. Good luck and don't give up!!

[Oneaboveall]

If you have been reading here since 2009, then you knew the 2008 recession wasn't getting any better. Yet you decided to give up your job anyway. Not a very good decision...

I quit in August of 2008, the stock market crash did happen until I was already at Clarion in October of 2008. By the time I found this board, I was already half-way to my second master's. Never mind that the bullying supervisor basically told me that he would make look so incompetent that the district would have no choice but to fire me. I also had people from the Human Resources department show up at my room twice. I can infer from that that he was trashing me to them. Staying there wasn't really an option

[Oneaboveall]

My advice to you is to manup, quit feeling sorry for yourself, get a real job, quit mooching off mommy, deal with your woman issues or simply ignore they exist and most of all grow a pair.

I hope this advice will send you on your way to being the productive citizen that I fully expect you are capable of being.

Cog, You are being mean. Not everyone is as psychologically tough as you. And in the current environment, I am sure a lot of people are having a (emotional) depression and suffers a terrible loss of self-esteem. Suicide rates are high.

It cost you NOTHING to give verbal advice is a gentle and kind way. I was mean to others in the past then one day I found myself on the other side. And so I regret and will regret to the day I die, how mean I was to others in the past. The knowledge that I was mean to others will live with me forever. It's a stain that I can never wash off.

I would ask everyone to please not quote Cog as I put him on my ignore list, but he shows up if you quote him.

As for you Cog, let me say this: You are the biggest piece of shit walking the face of god's green Earth. You think you're hot shit just cause you run your own business? A business that depends on government contracts? And you want to call other people moochers? Like I said before, for all you've accomplished, you count for absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. Yet you think you can talk to everyone like they're garbage. Insulting everyone on the board doesn't make you look tough; it makes you look like a pussy who talks tough from behind a keyboard. Why don't you do the world a favor and go walk in front of a fucking bus, asshole.

[peeker01]

Oneaboveall - The world is full of cogs (sorry cog). Job One in your return to the workforce
is to learn how deal successfully with people you don't like or don't agree with. Not trying
to be mean, just trying to help.

[pstarr]

Oneaboveall, there is no shame in sharing a life with your extended family. That is how the world has always worked. The fully-functional isolated single-family home is a very recent development. Folks didn't used to have their own kitchen, shop, entertainment center, garage. They shared (how un-American). Prehistoric humans lived in tribes, pre-industrial man lived in tight communities and towns. Kibbutz children live in group houses. Native Americans lived in long houses. Cheap petroleum and industrial automation have done us little favor. We live isolated in our splendor and dependent on more cheap petroleum to fill our empty lives with consumer products.

The United States of America is rife with Cogs. Folks who were born on 3rd base and seriously believe they've hit home runs and are God's Gift to The World. American delusion.

It does sound like you are depressed though. You should not carry the world and it's screwups on your shoulders. It is not you fault. Get help.

[EnergyUnlimited]

[some very sad life story - EU]....Given that I feel like I'm at the end of my rope, what do you all think is a reasonable course of action?

You need well off girlfriend.
Be nice to her and hope for the best.

[SeaGypsy]

Yeah plenty of 'well off g/f's' out there when you're unemployed living with the olds aged near 30? Don't think so.

Reacting so badly to Cog is not a great sign, as others have stated, his opinion is far from unique.

Disengagement is probably your worst enemy, reacting negatively to critical people feeds into disengagement. Better to be doing something, even for nothing financially.