For instance, in an earlier post (on a different topic, I think) I suggested a government position. MW’s response in this thread is …

“Apply for a government job? Good luck with that since I don’t have marketable skills. I’m always looking at the government job listings and wonder, how do people GET these esoteric jobs? (Just look at the job description and requirements sometime – some of them are real doozies. I suspect many of these job descriptions are written with specific people in mind they want to hire.)

First – if MW has NO marketable skills then how is he (she?) able to actually hold down any job?

Second – I just looked up entry level positions for persons without a degree and came up with over 1300 (not a lot, except some of these listings are for multiple positions – i.e. we will hire 10 people). Entry level position with either some experience in office work (but no typing speed requirement) or with a non-specified degree totaled over 17000. Now, agreed – that is nationwide with a few international options. Agreed that most of these positions are in more populous cities/states. It was the best I could do without knowing anything about MW although I did try to stay out of anything requiring enlistment into National Guard.

Third – these descriptions are not written with someone in mind; they can’t be – because they are generally written at some central point. Example – someone in Seattle wants a clerk and decides they must (1) type at 80 and (2) able to lift 25 lbs. Wash DC comes back and says something like “For typing at 80 wpm you want a GS 232-9 Stenographer – pay is XXX, announcement description is ‘blah, blah’, your office requirements of this position do not support the hiring of a GS-9, we suggest a GS-123-4/5/6 Clerk with typing of 45 or an GS-321-1/2/3 Office Assistant (OA); lifting cannot be a job requirement of a GS-410 clerk, but can of an OA” Ah, beauracracy! Yes, some of the announcements are doozies and sound pretty complicated. They usually aren’t after you have scrubbed out the extraneous material and gotten to the “qualifications requirement”. If you aren’t sure, apply anyway. You can always ask questions during the interview. When I was hired for a summer program when I was 16, I was merely called asking if I was still interested and then told where to show up and what to bring – a piece of photo ID. On the other hand – my current position took over a year from being told I was hired to actually starting the position.

I don’t want to say I enjoy MW’s enjoyment of complaining; I do want to say that I would be interested in learning more ABOUT MW and his position. For example, MW appears to have a college degree, but in what? MW has an illness/disability of some kind that requires going to a clinic 3x a week — the only two things that suggests to me is either dialysis or plasma donation (but I’m not in medicine). MW appears to have no friends or family? Why – orphaned or simply cantankerous? MW needs some assistance – but either won’t ask (certainly won’t ask here) or discounts any aid with the statement that the opponent is stronger (i.e. the bit about the CCC vs the collection lawyer) although this is merely MW’s opinion. I get the feeling that he hasn’t asked CCC. And the statement about the collection grunt saying it was out of his hands … shessh! That was a way of saying ‘I’m too lazy to work with you’. The proper response to that is “Then I’d like to speak with someone in control.”

I think people that are seriously working on bettering their personal finances/debt reduction/frugality don’t let the first “No” stop them cold. As a Marine who served in Iraq told me, “Obstacles. You go over them, under them, around them or through them”.

Print media don’t work nearly as well these days for jobseekers.

Um, I think you mean $1040 a month. $6.50 x 40 = $260. And $1040 a month gross would not come out to more than $900 net.

I think MW is more credible than you all think. I agree that emotional help may be needed. But my high-school-diploma daughter just went through an excruciating period of job-searching; she luckily finally landed a really well-paying job through doing really really well in a cattle-call interview. But the walking-up-to-stores thing was a total washout for her, despite the fact that she is very bright, presented herself with excellent politeness, good eye contact, bright and shiny attitude…. she is unusual-looking, in a way that she cannot help. All the good grooming and good dressing in the world doesn’t make someone hire you if they have a gut feeling that you look — different. Thank God she found something, it’s a fantastic job. She was getting seriously depressed too. That’s all behind her now!

If you have not read Barbara Ehrenreich’s book “Nickeled and Dimed to Death in America,” it’s very helpful in understanding the whole minimum-wage dilemma. Living at minimum wage is VERY hard and trying to do better is unexpectedly very hard too, even for a bright, well-educated middle-class woman trying her best. I suspect that many of the other commenters in this thread are angry at NW because his existence and persistence challenge their preconceptions. I used to think that it’s easy to get a job, and especially easy to get a low-paying job. As my daughter discovered, this is not always true. I know I’ve heard the advice before that one should take a job flipping burgers, or sacking groceries, or doing ANYTHING. Believe me — just because the HELP WANTED sign is up on the door, doesn’t mean you can get that job! Just because you come in, present yourself as a bright and shiny and willing and eager and SMART applicant — you still might not be hired for it. (I have not had trouble finding a job, I am fairly well-paid, and this fact was quite amazing to me.)

I want to offer some kudos to MW for his lack of anger and defensiveness at some rather mean things that have been said about him here. He has responded in much more reasonable terms. Some of you wish he would go away and think he cannot be telling the truth. I think his story is sad and frightening and I think it’s probably true. I think MW represents a truth in our society that we all would like to ignore. I think many of you cannot imagine being in his position, but I can imagine it all too well. I watched my daughter go through it, and all the advice I could offer didn’t help. Again, thanks be to God for her new job.

MW, keep your chin up. Keep trying. I’ll pray for you. My daughter got her job off craigslist, go figure. And she had nothing much at all on her resume. I’m not really sure why they called her.

Go find that book and read it, and then tell me you don’t believe MW!

I will spend some time reading those ideas, I was in a hurry this morning when I posted and just blew through a lot of stuff without exactly digesting it.

I don’t think my student loans would be a problem here, but my college helps alumni for one year after graduation, after that, all they offer is making your resume available to employers looking for people with your major. If I were to join my college’s alumni association I’d have more options to network with fellow alums, but that’s $50 a year I can’t afford. Since my resume if virtually worthless and unimpressive, I think providing it to my college (and in turn to employers) could lead only to bad things (embarrassment, more shame, etc).

Tried that, I really lack the skills and experience they want. (I got tested…no fun when you flunk.) They won’t put me in an office and I don’t have the industrial skills where appearance wouldn’t be a big issue.

There’s a temp agency which does ONLY skilled trades but of course I don’t have skills. I just found one that specializes in grunt labor jobs, I went there yesterday, they said they do a group orientation M-F mornings at 7:30, they’re closed tomorrow of course, so the soonest I can get in there is next Tuesday. (frown, but I think this is my best shot)

Do other cities have temp agencies which specialize in skilled or unskilled labor? Where I came from, there were agencies which specialized in accounting, plus the usual office-type agencies, but I never saw one before for working class types.

One day your computer will break, and you won’t be able to afford another one. I can’t wait for that day.

I’ve never heard of a free dental clinic. Medicaid does provide free dental services here, but a childless adult has to earn less than %550 per month to qualify, and I earn more than that. Basically, you have to be a non-working bum to qualify, I guess.

I live in an area of net in-migration (Gen Y or whatever generation is in their 20s now) is moving here from all over the country and there is a glut of educated cheap labor. Three college graduates where I work, earning minimum wage.

Good idea, I will try them. But one of my debts is in the hands of a lawyer who specializes in collection, and I think CCC isn’t capable of doing much dealing with lawyers. (The creditor’s normal collection grunt workers said it was out of their hands.)

I could be wrong, but I don’t think there’s much fault to be found with my budgeting. I don’t have any toys (besides this USED slow bare-bones PC) or vices. (I don’t have a life either, but that’s another story.)

BINGO! I paid intermittently when I was able, and otherwise deferred payment (like when the inevitable rent increases kicked in) as long as possible. One day the bank (lender) told me I had used up all of my delay time and now it was time to pay up. They would not accept anything less than the scheduled payment on the scheduled date. So I defaulted, and now I am completely ineligible for any financial aid, plus I am also unable to consolidate my loans to reduce my interest rate. So the payments I am currently making are going almost fully to interest and I am reducing the principal about $30 a year.

I once lived in a state which had a “college graduate” applicant pool, you didn’t need specific skills or experience to get into the pool, just a degree and take a test and score high enough. (They used score bands (like 90s, 80s, 70s) instead of a continuous scale – so a score of 90 gave you a much greater chance of getting invited to apply for a job opening than someone with a score of 89, but an 89 afforded NO advantage over someone with a score of 80.) They also had an affirmative action component, so white males had the lowest chances of being able to even apply for a job opening. I scored in the 90s (they tell you only your score band, not the actual number) and got a handful of applications but the jobs all had oddball requirements that I couldn’t meet.

SCHEDULING problenms, bub. Can’t do 9-5 day job because of three-day-a-week medical appointments. (Not sure if an employer would have to accomodate such a schedule under ADA.) Can’t do swing shift at most places because the jobs get out too late to get home by bus. Graveyard shifts are often out because I have to be at the clinic early in the morning – travel time is the problem here. My job has funny shifts which don’t correspond to the “normal” shifts in most jobs, which works great for me but it makes normal shifts at another job hard to work into my schedule.

Also, my typing speed is 30 wpm, not to many employers consider that acceptable. (This speed IS good enough for many phone or call center jobs, and I’m looking, but don’t have any experience in those areas.

Not sure if I have any technical prowess, but I can try to fake it. (heh)

I didn’t realize until recently how just having a car improves your earning potential. There’s a radio talk show host who often cites some study showing a car gives you more earning potential than a high school diploma (!!!) but I was very skeptical.