My First Job Ever!

Well, after graduating college, at least. I’d had my fair share of employment ever since I turned 15, but that wasn’t the “real world.” This was my first job ever after 16 years of education and a fancy piece of paper with my name on it in nice calligraphy. My first job as an “adult” in the “labor force,” this mythical entity that gets things done.

Bright and early at 8:45 in the morning, I arrived to the front door. It was locked. I waited. And waited. By 9:15, someone finally arrived, looking tired and groggy.

“Oh, you must be Danila,” she said, she being an attractive middle-aged woman with deep creases on a once perky face. “Well, here’s your desk. Oh, and let me show you where our kitchen is.”

Aware of the kitchen, coffee in hand, and now back at my desk, I received further instruction. “Okay, well, your duty is to answer the phone… but, we’re installing a new system now, and I don’t think that thing’s working… So, um, I’m just going to take the calls at my desk… and.. you know… you ummm… greet people as they come in the front door.” She walked off.

Yes, I was now at a desk, in the reception area of a fancy glass office, with a television cranking some business channel, and a broken phone. With the blessed duty of staring at the door and saying hi to the people that walked in, who all worked there already and knew quite well where they were going. Thankfully, I had a computer.

As had countless assistants, receptionists, secretaries and other administrative staff before me, I proceeded to pass the time. An hour on the internet. Then an hour on the internet. Another cup of coffee. Then lunch! An hour of blessed reading away from air conditioning so cold that I was soon wearing long johns and sweaters into the office in mid-August. Then an hour writing a stupid poem about the air conditioning, and of jumping out of window of the eleventh floor, which happened to be where I was. An hour on the internet. Oh yeah, and running to the bathroom every 15 minutes because that’s what four cups of coffee, then a tea or two will do to your bladder.

I was not a happy camper, but such is the life of an office temp. As I later understood, one of the administrative assistants had taken a week of vacation, and to validate her job and show that she was a necessary employee, she paid a temp agency $22 an hour to send me to sit at her desk. Of course I made half that, but what the hell. She probably made half that too.

By the end of my eight days in the office, I had broken through my initial wall of zen. In the first few days I was productive, writing a 1500-word story, applying to other jobs, and stealing pens. By the last day, I was writing letters on company letterhead to a few close friends, and acting surly to the fellows who came in and out of the office, who all seemed unequivocally stodgy. The only work-related thing I did was make one cup of coffee for a stodgy visiting business-person coming for a meeting.

This was not the happy start to a rich professional life that I deserved! I should be out in the sun, running around! I had a college degree, damn it, and I shouldn’t be forced to sit in some frigid 11th story office listening to the same commentators rehashing the same bland stories for dramatic effect!

And neither should anyone. The labor force gets things done, after all, and we’re not just monkeys.

Freelance Jobs You Don’t Need (part 1)

The internet and all the fancy modern technology that comes with it have created perfect conditions for someone to work from home. Or even better, in a café, or on a train, or even sitting outside in the sunshine. Having a paid gig that lets you fart around in whatever clothes you wish, make your own hours and avoid sitting brain-dead in a cubicle for endless hours is a very beautiful and tempting thing.

Pretty obviously, a lot of people are drawn to these kinds of jobs. And unfortunately, there are quite a few assholes out there that want to take advantage of us, use us for free work, or worse, make us pay to apply for a job. Before you sign up for that awesome and “easy” writing job, it’s good to think a little bit about what you’re getting into. Let’s start with one terrible situation I’ve encountered.

“No Pay Jobs”

I think this is how it happens: Some schmuck gets it in their head that they want to run a magazine/website/blog/whatever. But they don’t actually have money to pay people to make their content, so they try to hook in some young aspiring writers/graphic designers/whatever to their project by promising them “no pay,” but “great experience.”

First of all, if I’m writing for free, I’m going to write whatever the fuck I want, and not articles for your specialized niche that I don’t give a shit about. If I choose to write for you, it’s going to be on my own terms, and not for a thousand hours a week like you want me to.

Second, a line on my resume that I worked for some completely unknown publication with no history, proven circulation or success really doesn’t mean anything to anyone. Oh yeah, and future jobs will likely base my compensation on past earnings, and a 100% raise on zero is still zero. I wouldn’t work full-time in a restaurant kitchen or a factory to get “experience,” so why should I work for you for free?

Third, there are plenty of legitimate ways to get published or get professional experience that pay, even if it’s a token amount. Even tiny local community newspapers will give you cash for articles and photos (in my experience, at least $50 per story). And the editor there is more likely to value your work, give you advice, and otherwise try to help you out. Go ahead and pick up a copy of the Writer’s Market or its equivalent for your field at your local library.

In short, try and remember that you have valuable skills, and that people will pay you money for those skills. My personal motto is to only work for free at what I’m really passionate about, or at something which will teach me things I want to know.

Otherwise I’d starve

Tight Job Market You Say?

I hear a lot of crap in the news about how terribly the economy is doing, and about the recession that’s coming in the near future. I don’t really watch television, but I can only imagine the scary graphics that the networks have come up with for the evening news. (I’m envisioning squiggly down-ward stock ticker lines, heading into a crack in the ground, with flames and explosions).

The New York Times tells me that there was a net loss of 17,000 jobs in January. Usually the number of jobs goes up. OOPS. It also says that a bunch of people dropped out of the labor market. Now, I’ve always thought that this was a sneaky way of miscounting the actual numbers of unemployed people. I mean, 4.9 percent sounds like a nice low rate of unemployment, until you realize that it isn’t including people who “aren’t looking for work” (who decides that?). Personally, I think that homeless people, for instance, should be counted as unemployed. They currently are not.

But anyway, these numbers and figures usually seem purely abstract to me. Hard to imagine what 17,000 jobs actually looks like, what those jobs are, who would have been hired.

But in practical terms, it means that the job market has become tighter and more competitive. Especially for people who are not established in a steady career, who don’t have the best education, and who don’t have a rich uncle with “room to grow” in his company. For me in Philadelphia, this means that all the jobs are gobbled up as soon as they’re posted on Craigslist or wherever.

Here’s a personal example from Philadelphia, where I live. I’ve been working at a non-profit in town for about 6 months, but I hated the job and eventually couldn’t take it. I lasted long enough to put a good amount away in savings, which will also help me move to New York in the near future. But realistically, this thing killed my brain and was starting to make me cynical, angry and approaching despondent.

I gave my two weeks notice on Wednesday. The same afternoon, my boss put up an ad. By Monday morning, the organization had hired someone. And this for a job that requires 1-2 years experience, and pays under 25 thousand a year. But the fun doesn’t end there. The person they hired had the same position I had several years ago. She left to get a master’s in creative writing. And now she’s back. With a master’s in creative writing. To the same shitty job. Whoa.

Will New York be better? I sure hope so.