If you hadn't already noticed, the job market is horrible. I graduated from college 3 years ago and was not able to get a permanent, salaried position with full benefits anywhere until today, when I signed an offer sheet to work at a certain company, the name which I won't disclose because I am that paranoid and would like to keep my job!
Let me tell you, it's been an agonizing past 3 years. I worked low-wage jobs with horrible hours, doing everything from pushing people's coffee in the morning, to scraping high-rise fire escapes in blistering heat, to busboying. I worked late nights in clubs doing coat checks in the basement, and did just about anything for money that didn't involve prostituting myself or dealing drugs. I even worked in a financial broker position with almost no base salary, with a boss who openly bragged about committing voter fraud against 'the blacks' on election day for the GOP, and was fired and jipped out of thousands of dollars of unemployment because I started asking questions. It did get to the point where I tried to OD on old medication, and later throw myself off of a bridge because things were looking that bleak. I had suffered some injuries and illnesses that I thought I would never be able to treat, or find a job to find the insurance to treat, in my current state. I was a miserable wreck, to the point I couldn't write or blog about anything. Emigration became a serious consideration.
The position I applied for I had previously applied for 2 years earlier, but was rejected the first time because a prior boss, from a cafe, had lied to the people performing the background check, saying that I had misstated my job duties on my resume and during my interview. There was nothing I could do about this, and really thought my prospects of being respectably employed or having health benefits were screwed forever because some shady companies were able to harvest all of my information from my 'unsavory prior doings' or from past bosses who were looking to get retribution. I later found a newspaper article where my boss completely refuted everything that was said to the investigators, and sent them a copy of the letter two years later. Too little too late, but a new position had opened up so I decided to apply again.
One more soul-crushing aspect of the job search is its endless bureaucracy. After you actually get called in for an interview, provided that you can beat the unknown number - perhaps hundreds - of other applicants, is the internal bureaucracy of the background checks, the paperwork that you have to get together, and other unknown factors. If I call them too much, will they get mad or is it a sign that I am eager to work for them? Do I really want to go through with this process again? The anxiety of the whole process is crushing, and it's a big reason I imagine a lot of people get discouraged in the job seeking process. Many would much rather start their own business and be independent, as I tried to do for a while with a clothing venture, but it is still a daunting venture considering most people won't be able to do so because it is hard to find the backing to pursue a business in the first place.
While I will no longer need the public option, I still realize how important it is that we actually have such an option so people won't have to languish in despair because they can't get the treatment they need to be a productive member of our economy! The double whammy of being uninsured and unemployed makes the misery snowball, and I find it so unfreakingbelieavbly appalling how sociopathically detached the GOP and Blue Dogs are from the problems of their constituents.
I'm one of the lucky ones now. But I wouldn't wish this misery upon any human, and as bad as my plight was, there are those out there literally sleeping in the street because they still can't work or have affordable health insurance - even those who enable or choose to ignore the very real human toll the economy is having on them.