How to Avoid Getting a Job in Today's Job Market

[hunter]

39. Ah yes. blame the victims of our collapsing economy...

My grandma was insane. In today's world she'd have lived and died in some kind of group home. The only thing my grandma ever understood in this world was horses, cattle, dogs, and hammering hot bits of metal together.

She was a small town girl, got pregnant at fifteen, shotgun wedding, fled to California with my grandpa.

During World War II they both got jobs as welders in the shipyards. I doubt my grandma's job application was anything more than Name, Address, here's your time card, punch in.

For daycare they left their kid with the hookers upstairs who entertained sailors in the evening.

Had Facebook existed then my grandma's pages would have been among the worst. As a kid I saw both her and her mom topless. Nudity was no big deal in our family. My guess: a Northern European history of one room family housing. My little sister remembers sharing a bath with our great grandma. Hot water heated on a wood stove, you don't waste it. It left a pretty big impression on her.

Do your boobs hang low, can you swing them to and fro...

Nevertheless my grandma's employer kept her on after the war because she was reliable and very tolerant of monotonous work. She was intelligent but ordinary human social interactions were always a bit beyond her.

She retired with a good pension and her own home, fully paid for. My grandma's crazy got much worse after she retired, she probably could have welded boring little widgets together until she fell over dead, nevertheless she was paid well and retired with a good pension and enjoyed a lifetime of a good working class job.

I also remember some of the guys I worked with in the moving and storage business. Some of them were dim but they could carry a sofa into the correct room without damaging it or the drywall. And they were paid as much as I was, a "living wage." They got these jobs in the same uncomplicated way I did, one sheet of paper, nothing complicated, and we'll see you here tomorrow morning at five. If you're late, don't bother coming back. We always came back.

The military can be a means of improvement. Both my dad and my wife's dad are beneficiaries of the GI Bill. My wife's dad was a Mexican-American farmworker when he joined the Navy. They made him a medic and when he left the Navy they paid for college. He became a medical professional and teacher, both well paying union jobs.

My dad went to college and got a good union job too.

This world is largely gone.