My heart goes out to anyone who's looking for work right now. Despite the Republicans' complaint of "NoBoDy WaNtS tO wOrK aNyMoRe", which I've always found disgustingly dismissive of so much, people are actually looking for work, maybe more than ever.
25 years ago, my dad kept telling me to print resumes and pound pavement. Even back then, nobody wanted that. At Toys R Us, my managers actively tossed resumes because "if they're this organized, they're overqualified".
Once I applied to McDonald's and they told me I was overqualified because I had worked at Best Buy in high school. I don't dispute that but I also just needed to pay rent.
When I finished nursing school, I applied to the local hospital network in Milwaukee. I was able to pound out 300 plus applications in one week. I would get the rejection within 5 minutes of submitting the application. Once I got into the system I learned it's because they were usually hiring from within or weren't actually hiring because of budget issues. But legally they needed to make those jobs known so that they could get whatever funding they needed.
I think it worked the same after covid, where all the businesses were claiming no one was wanting to work again but it was really because if they couldn't find employees they were actually making more money off the government subsidies.
Anyway. I have a 18-year gap with my baby brother, and he graduated a couple years ago. Computer science. Same deal, can't find a job. My parents told him print resumes and pound pavement in the year of our Lord 2024.
He ended up turning his love of baking into a side hustle, and now he's a full-on private chef for a couple rich people.
This is not good enough for my parents because he has to get his own health insurance and isn't backed by Best Buy. My baby sister which I have a 16-year gap with, finished journalism school and could never get a job in journalism. Picked up bartending like I used to. Again, there are those in my family who judge that that's not good enough, and why can't she get a job in journalism.
Because no one's f****** hiring in journalism. I was class of 2000 in high school and I routinely think about how if I had finished journalism instead of joining the Army, it would have been right on the cusp of Gawker and all of that up-ending how journalism worked. I grew up thinking I was going to be PJ ORourke at Rolling Stone, but that world stopped existing around 2005 and it definitely doesn't exist now.
People want to work. Most people want to work at things they like. People want to work at things they are passionate about and enjoy. Some people want to make some sort of difference even if it's just flipping a burger that makes my day, I know that can be enough for some people. I felt that way when I was a bartender.
However, capitalism and all the politicians and systems have beaten that out of us. Now you get idiots who praise living to work and berate you for working to live because you have ambition and talent.
I'm actually going through my own thing back at school. Mental health s***. I decided last week I'm going to drop the semester and regroup. I feel for everyone going through everything right now. It sucks so hard when you actually do want to accomplish things, and you do want to work, and you do want to put yourself out there and help the community, but every system is aiming barbed wire wrapped rifle in your face and ridiculing you for it while gaslighting you about it being your fault.
I truly believe it's not that nobody wants to work. It's that the people in power and the older generations have an idea of how the economy and your 40 hours a week is supposed to look, and anything that threatens that image makes them openly hostile.
