A Broken Cog Escapes the Machine.”
The System
Nobody believes that they will find themselves out of the System until they do.
We’re programmed from birth to go to school, go to college, get a “GOOD JOB,” get married, have kids, retire, die. Of course, there are bumps – maybe you can’t go to college, you don’t stay in the same job your whole life, divorce happens, retirement may not be an option if you’ve become accustomed to living inside and having food to eat. About the only certainty in the equation is death.
One day you will look around and think “WTF?” That’s when you start considering your options and will likely find them somewhat limited. Jobs that would be a cakewalk for you aren’t going to hire you – basically because you’re too old and “going to retire soon” – but they’ll hire an unqualified younger person who will leave after a year because they’re hoping that person will be too scared to leave-too far in debt-too “committed.” But a lot of the younger folks today don’t think that way – they’ve figured out the only way to get what they’re worth is to jump from job to job, incrementally increasing their salary with each new job. That’s not their fault, that’s just the way things are set up. It’s a short-sighted by-product of a business structure that can’t see past the next quarter.
And so it goes.
You Are Here
Let’s play a little mind game, shall we?
You are 64 years old and houseless. You’re warm, safe, and well-fed because your family is giving you a place to live. You sporadically spend a couple of days sending out resumes to job postings, 99.9% of which get no response at all. Over the last several years, you’ve managed to land a few jobs – all of which are ridiculously below your experience, education, and ability, but you took them just to survive. These companies either hired you because you bugged them until they did or were desperate for someone (anyone) to take the job and were basically dysfunctional hell holes that can’t keep decent personnel. You took a few of them thinking that you would be able to advance in the company. Be someone other than the “old guy” that was always there and could be counted on to fill in when the others decided to not come in to work. But you’re never going to advance. You can’t skip the rungs – and you’re too old to start climbing.
The “Almost a Job” Job
Let’s pretend that the median income where you live is $50,000 per year. Along comes a cubicle farm document review gig that pays $21.50/hour. If you worked full 40-hour weeks, 52 weeks per year, you’d gross $44,720.00 before taxes.
Not bad, you say? It beats minimum wage for sure, which is $7.25/hour about $15,000.00 a year before taxes and Social Security…the poverty line in is $12,880.00 so by the time you take that 7.65% out for Social Security you’re there.
But here’s the rub – you will be very fortunate to work ½ of that time. More than likely, it’ll be more like 1/3 of it.
But wait, there’s more (or less)!
This job is temp work – they call you when they need you. No health insurance, no guarantee of a certain number of hours per project. And this company has absolutely no qualms about having you drive an hour to the office for 4 hours of work. They also have no issue with telling you a project will start on Monday and then delaying it for several days.
And if the project wraps at 11:00 AM, while you’ve been on station for 3 hours? “Hey, we really appreciate your hard work – you can go ahead and take off for the day. We’ll call you if we need to do some cleanup work.” The fact that you’re not getting paid for any of the remaining hours in the day is so obvious that nobody questions it.
That gig was my main source of income from the fall of 2019 through 2020 – the Lockdown Year. I started at $21/hour and because of my stellar performance I got a raise after a year…to $21.50/hour. But, with the quarantine, traffic was light. That’s about the only good part of it. For some reason, we still had to commute for 1-2 hours a day to do work we could have easily done from home. While the rest of the world, including the project managers for these jobs, were at home working in sweatpants, we were driving downtown and sitting in cubicles. Doing the same work. Walking to lunch in a deserted urban hellscape…although I gotta admit, the post-apocalyptic fiction fan part of me kinda liked that part. But the extra hours I spent driving cut into the fun.
In 2020, I had also begun an online business with eBay and started dabbling in other potential income streams. Startup costs ate up any profits along with a chunk of what the document review gig made in 2020, but I got a decently solid system in place. I could see early on that it wasn’t going to be easily scalable.
It finally made it to a point in late 2021 where it paid for my cell phone, car insurance, and the requisite mini storage fees. When I hit a few lucky items, it even gives me a few extra bucks for eating out and miscellaneous expenses.
As shaky as it is, having a system in place at least has the benefit of not having to start from the ground floor should an opportunity present. For example: there are a lot of smaller companies that can’t justify having dedicated parts departments. They either change owners or locations often, or the parts systems are an afterthought. They’re seldom a profit center for the companies – the modest returns on replacement parts pale beside the incredible markup percentages on manufactured items. I also think back on an old Stihl dealership that I ran across that had thousands of dollars worth of old repair parts – I never did get a real shot at buying them, but old inventory like that can be a gold mine. Lots of folks won’t mess with it, because it’s so “fiddly” but I enjoy that sort of detailed work.
In the Spring of 2021 I swore a mighty oath that the document review place had seen the last of me. I was going to go full speed ahead into my online life…then:
May 24, 2021
“Every once in a while, the Universe sends an ex back into your life – just to see if you’re still stupid.”
The same evidently holds true for crappy jobs.
I was chugging along, listing more and buying smarter. A larger percentage of my listings started selling quicker. I was shooting for a good profit, not home runs every time. I figure a quick $10 net on a $3 investment was better than a potential $20 net that never materialized. I had put an ad in Craigslist, advertising handyman services like I’d had some success with in Oregon. I’d purposely narrowed it to rural areas – definitely wasn’t going to be heading into Nashville for that sort of work. I got a few gigs and met some cool people, but jobs were few and far in between. I was pretty much treading water, financially.
I had bought my 2008 Buell Ulysses on May 4, 2021, and it had been a financial stretch. My new old motorcycle was sitting in the garage, looking forlorn. Summer was kicking in and I needed tires/title/tag/license. Those little details were going to cost me nearly a thousand bucks. I also figured a helmet might also be a good investment, since mine was literally 30 years old. Chuck in another $300 or so for that.
During a days-long dry spell with no eBay sales and no Craigslist gigs, I got the fateful email:
“…starting a new project expected to last 2-3 weeks. Wanted to reach out and see if you were available.”
A “2-3 week” project is realistically 7-10 days. This is the aforementioned $21.50/hour (maybe $24/hour if I get on the Quality Control Team?) cubicle rat job.
“I can do ANYTHING for two weeks…and I’ve worked if for months at a time, before. Just a couple weeks and that’s my scooter money. YEP! I’LL DO IT!”
I shot off an affirmative and the agency girl got back with me telling me I’d start on the following Tuesday. Ok, well it was supposed to start on the following Monday when I got the first offer, but that’s fine. This was on a Wednesday, so that was unusually far in the future for them anyway.
On Sunday evening, I got another email – “Hey, the project for Tuesday was cancelled – can you work on a different project tomorrow starting at 9:00 AM?” Of course, this is the type of stuff I’ve come to expect from this agency/employer.
“Sure, I can do that – send me the conflicts when you can, and I’ll get them signed and sent back.”
Got that all straightened out and show up Monday – and slog through training for 4 hours and get in 4-1/2 hours of coding. Then Tuesday, get on station at 8:30 (hours are 8-6, flexible…as long as you’re there 10-4 and they want 40 hours per week if you can…but no overtime, heaven forbid!) I finished up that week at 40 hours and netted almost $800. The next week was a 4-day because of Memorial Day and I only got in 30. I was really expecting the project to wrap several times because of the number of review batches, but they keep on coming.
On Friday of the first week, I was put on the Quality Control team – I was pretty sure that paid another $2.50/hour, but it really didn’t matter. When I got the deposit for the first full week of QC, I wasn’t shocked to see it was $21.50/hour. I’d been working at this place for about a year and a half – through the middle of the Pandemic, wearing a mask anytime I got out of my cubicle, and plugging away. Doing QC was an eye-opener. It seemed that at least half of the people that were coding had absolutely no idea what they were doing. It was funny to see how many of them were playing on their phones and listening to headphones when I’d get up to get a cup of coffee. It was less funny when I realized that some of them had likely passed the bar exam and were getting paid more than me…the guy that was fixing their screwups.
Anyhow, it was a few checks. It paid for my tags and a new GPS for the bike.
A few weeks later, I was FINALLY offered remote work. They’d screwed up by sending me the unedited job description – it offered $25/hour. I accepted and oddly enough, that project was full – BUT there was one starting the next day they could pay me $22/hour to do. I wanted to see how the remote work was going to be, so I accepted. They sent me a laptop and two monitors. It was a pretty easy setup despite me being more of a “Mac Guy” and the equipment worked very well. It was nice and responsive – all in all a good experience. And I added about $800 to the war chest for a week’s work.
That gig wrapped in a week and I boxed up the equipment and shipped it back. After that there were no more remote jobs forthcoming, although I was offered a couple of on-site gigs. I told them thanks for “keeping me in the loop” and reiterated that I’d be interested in more remote work. I probably shouldn’t have sent the photo I took at a Buc-ee’s offering a better hourly rate with benefits that what they were offering…but someone needs to clue them in that it’s a new world out there.
For now, I’m plugging away at the online sales and have started an online Data Analyst Certificate program that Google is sponsoring through Coursera. I’ve also relisted my handyman ad on Craigslist and catch an odd job now and again. Still sending in resumes, and still mostly getting ignored.
It’s hard to decide what to try next when you think you can do anything at all…but don’t get the opportunity.
