er,,,YAY... I guess I'm technically underemployed, now.

before I was laid off, I was making 35 dollars an hour as an award-winning graphic designer. I was involved in winning a pulitzer.

after being out of work since December of '08, I just today got a job paying 8 dollars an hour, from 11 pm to 7 am shift in a donut shop.
I get no holidays off, no health insurance, no vacation.

On the one hand, I'm happy and grateful. On the other hand, I realize this barely covers my rent. I'm going to have to try to find a second job of some kind to make up the difference.

sigh....


but YAY! I'm no longer useless.

of course, the job might go away if my 50 year old constitution can't hack the messed up circadian rhythm changes.

Anyways, thanks everyone for your well-wishes.

at least?

so...I shouldn't.

Hope you figure out the day/night thing ... and don't eat the donuts, which will only add to the physical depredations. (Well, have one a week!)

the day night thing is the only part that really worries me at this point. The rest of the job seems doable.

Of course I know it sucks going from $35 to $8.

I once considered working in a donut shop. The hours weren't appealing.

Maybe you can talk to your boss (after a bit of time has gone by) about designed flyers or doing some advertising for the shop. Maybe they'll bump your pay.

BTW, curse you for bringing up donuts when I've been craving them lately....

Never offer to do graphic work for a small business that you work for, doing something unrelated. The boss will be glad you're doing it "for free" and you'll be his personal graphic artist working for nothing. You'll get into that, "You need to make this flyer for my church garage sale or I'll fire you." type mentality.

I see where you're coming from though.

Sometimes I don't do a lot of things at my job because I feel like they don't pay me enough to go out of my way for them and it seems like they take most of my "suggestions" as "criticisms."

But mainly a good news thing. It's not as awesome as the job you used to have (which sounds pretty damn awesome--a hard act to follow) but it will feel good to have a job again. (And surrounded by donuts!!!) Congratulations! :hug:

On edit: Double darn about the diabetes. :( Oh, well. My sister used to work in a fast-food restaurant (and we were NEVER allowed fast food as kids so it was a huge treat) and before long she couldn't stand to even think about eating a French fry. So it wouldn't have been that great about the donuts anyway after a while.

Not that I'm not wishing you well, but jeez, going from $35 per hour to $8???? OUCH!!!!!
I know the feeling; I went from around $40,000 per year (salaried) to an $8.50 per hour job myself. I was shocked to find out that there were no paid sick days, and as a double whammy, if you DID need to call in sick, YOU ACTUALLY GOT "POINTS" (demerits???) FOR CALLING OFF!!!! Of course, if you accumulated too many of these "points", there was 3 DAYS UNPAID SUSPENSION to look forward to.....

BTW, you are DEFINITELY NOT USELESS!!!! Don't let your battered self-esteem tell you otherwise!

Good luck to you, and may your dream job be just ahead of the horizon.

T.

:hi:

And I hope things get better for you and that your days of bear claws and maple sticks are eventually just fodder for amusement.

What's iroinic is you will now be included among the ranks of the employed. I wonder how many other jobs like yours will be part of a new job creaction.

Good things are ahead!...

Then again, I'm still "useless" myself...

I've been technically underemployed for most of my working life.

House ignores the problem as long as it fails to report useful statistics.

"Is there a measure of underemployment?
Because of the difficulty of developing an objective set of criteria which could be readily used in a monthly household survey, no official government statistics are available on the total number of persons who might be viewed as underemployed. Even if many or most could be identified, it would still be difficult to quantify the loss to the economy of such underemployment."

for reasons I won't go into here, I couldn't take the job for logistical reasons, so I'm not employed now.....yet.

.... just my best wishes.