I have a master's degree. I have tried the job market in a variety of different fields to find some position, any position that would take me. I've tried to break into sales, human resources, management, computing, translator, really anything that a company might need. I don't have experience which is killing me. Yes, you might say my degree is "useless," but to be honest a lot of history majors and polisci majors can get into big companies like Google or Microsoft (I know some) and make it with majors that have nothing to do with science and math. I tried to major in business when I was in undergrad and realized that I absolutely abhorred finance and accounting. I liked speaking foreign languages (I speak 5) and wanted to focus on that, thinking maybe I could transform that into a job. Well, it hasn't panned out thus far. I can usually impress people with my intelligence. I almost landed a job by wow-ing the recruiter, but my lack of experience came to bite me in the ass. I've so far lived off the royalties from the three books I've written (See Republicans? Not lazy!), which isn't a lot, but it's something. I cannot go back to school because I'm tapped out for federal student loans, so I cannot switch gears and become a teacher or something, although I have applied to parochial schools and assistant professorships which you can supposedly get with a master's. I don't have someone on the inside helping me either. So, what to do? I'm trying to get my own little online business started, but it's going to require money to pay for the website and to produce the instructional videos I want to sell. My credit is awful from hospital bills and my family is not in any financial shape to be lending me money (I come from a single parent home, but am entrepreneurial and not a criminal, see Republicans?!). Going to a loan shark with 1000% interest rate online somewhere is suicide, so that's a no go. So, what does an unemployed, hard working, intelligent graduate do in this economy? Well I took Ben Stein's advice.
I work at McDonald's.
First off, McDonald's jobs are not aplenty. It took two months to get into the McDonald's I'm at now. I went to another McDonald's, but the interviewer just plain didn't show up (without telling me!) because he didn't care. There are so many people applying that there is no pressure on managers to hire people; they are at their leisure. Republicans love to go on and on about the value of work. It really makes the Puritans smile from beyond the grave. I can say unequivocally that there is nothing that society gains from having me work at McDonald's, and there is little I gain outside of my weekly pittance. Sure, eventually I will save up enough money to get my business going and hopefully make it successful to act as a revenue stream in lieu of a job worthy of my abilities. It doesn't cultivate anything within me. I'm already a go getter with or without the McDonald's, or really any of the other such jobs I've worked at since I was 14. I'm not any more moral for flipping burgers while my mind is turned off. I literally don't think while I'm on the job; it's unnecessary. My going to McDonald's is an amoral transaction between two willing parties where one party clearly is at a power disadvantage. If I had better credit to get a loan to start my business or had family members in better financial positions, I'd never waste my time dunking fries in carcinogens. I exchange hour upon hour for a pittance. I'm not a better person for it. You could say a different type of job might cultivate and grow me. That's true, but McDonald's is not it, so we cannot say that the act of work in and of itself is sufficient or has an automatic moral dimension to it. And it's not just me. You could make the argument that I'm just a hard worker. That's true, but that's just a natural proclivity. Putting me in a job didn't make me that way. Starving me of resources has nothing to do with me being hardworking. At. All. There are plenty of my fellow coworkers who have been at the same McDonald's for weeks, and they aren't any harder worker when they went in than they are one, two, or three months in. Minimum wage is a hope killer.
This ridiculous notion that accepting lesser circumstances without complaint is somehow holy, that somehow it cultivates within a person a sense of pride or accomplishment is an idea out of a fantasy book. You shouldn't complain about why it is that you cannot find a better spot in the economy, you should just shut up and flip burgers for a living. This sort of "shut up and don't look at the man behind the curtain" idea that conservatives seem to love is so unreal to me, so absolutely preposterous that it must portend to the fact many of them are sheltered or are influenced by some authoritarian figure to make them believe in a magical world that doesn't exist.
By the way, if anyone knows a job where they might want someone who is fabulously multilingual, is good with the written word, and will basically learn whatever you need with zeal, let me know. I have no idea how my business venture will go, and it would actually be funded a lot faster with a real job! Things are picking up!
11:02 AM PT: So this has been a great debate and I didn't expect this diary to get this type of response! To those people who say I am condescending, entitled, or whatever. First, do not assume you know the suffering of someone else, how much effort they've had to put in their life, and how they should relate to their job. The promise of a bright future is not guaranteed through hard work, another one of the "truths" of the school of hard knocks. Even people who dutifully do things they'd rather not do pay a price and it manifests itself in a variety of negative ways, whether you want to accept that or not. I went back and read through the comments and there were so many assumptions as to what kind of person I had to be to say the things I said that I erased my original update and wrote this instead. Think about it this way, there were two kinds of commenters: Ones who said I was an entitled brat, and those that gave me websites and links to new jobs, good-natured advice, and offered to help me with my website without scolding me. Which do you think is more helpful to me in finding a place in life?
To those on the other side of the fence, I share your vision of a better future. Humans relate to each other however they want to, and we can build a society the way we see fit, based on any philosophy we want. It's just that free form. Just saying life is hard doesn't mean that together we can't build a more fair system, where we can look at what we've built and feel proud.