Platinum Queens West  

Here's something I just vented, and I think that everyone in the country should read it.  If you have a few minutes, can you please give me feedback about this?  I'd really appreciate it.  Then I am going to post it.  I'll hire skywriters if necessary...

It is truly amazing the advances that the Internet has given us in convenience, information, and purchasing power.  We can jump on to our browsers and find out about the weather in Dallas, or find the current market price of gold, or read the latest conspiracy theory about UFOs, or purchase literally anything we can think of from a stable of more than a million vendors through more than a million websites.  There are some things the Internet cannot do, of course, and it appears to me the most important one of those is helping you get a job.

Don’t get me wrong, it is a powerful and important research tool to get you information about salaries, possibly best places to live, even certain companies within an industry.  But if you trust your job search to a computer, to the “monsters” “the ladders” “career builder” or any of the others, you are wasting your time at best, and wasting your money at worst.

I find it despicable that these firms are trying to extort money from you, the job seeker, to get your name up to the top of the list for a “nominal” fee, when you need to be watching every penny.   I have applied, over the last two months, to no less than two hundred companies through Monster, HotJobs, Career Builder, and I haven’t been granted even one interview.  Instead, I see ads for continuing education (University of Phoenix, DeVry, etc.) and screens urging me to upgrade my account to some shiny metal like Titanium, Gold, and Silver, in order to accelerate my resume to the front of the list.   If you think paying to move to the front of the list has anything to do with the quality of my resume, it does not.  Have you seen the ads that tell you your resume is inferior because you haven’t used that website’s resume-writing service?  I am proud of my resume and believe it is well written and effective.  What I believe is ineffective is the snarky way these “employment” websites send my applications into the great beyond without thugging me for money every time I do it.    

I owned a small business for more than a decade.  In March, I had to close the doors, forcing 19 people out of work.  A need which I saw and filled is now empty thanks not to the competition which I resoundingly beat, and not to the government imposing ridiculous rules upon the industry, and not to the media which said my service could harm the planet, but because business could not afford to improve their lives at this point in our collective economic history.    And now that I’m not working, I am at home doing my job search with these Cyber-leeches.  Everywhere I turn, my screen is telling me my resume is not enough, but $500 might make it better, that my applications are sent at the bottom of the electronic pile because I haven’t ponnied up to the shiniest metal membership available, regardless of my qualifications, or your qualifications.  You might not have a clue about running a restaurant, for example, but because you are a titanium member of some “elite” group, your resume is going to be viewed before my wife’s, who is a certified chef; this job-search engine is breaking the tenants of capitalism and violating the rules of our society.   There is no police to enforce this kind of law and no set of laws to stem their greed.  They know that and that’s why they do it.  Resume readers are overworked as it is, and just because someone pays more does not make them more qualified; all it does is waste the resume reader’s time, preventing someone truly qualified from making a difference.

Now that I am not working, I am seeing something…interesting.  I guess you could call it sad, but I see it as an opportunity.  Have you met anyone recently that quit their job because they couldn’t afford the gas to drive there?  Or someone who had to make a stand against harassment because they knew if they complained, they would lose their fount of income?  I noticed that my next-door neighbor doesn’t have a job either.  He was the CTO of an Internet company and now he’s not.  The man has business experience in five different countries; he was literally present at the creation of WiFi and now he’s spending his time trying to get his thankless job back because he knows the alternative is bleak.  And my neighbor across the street, two doors over, he sure is home a lot.   And at least three other houses on my block have people at home, at 11:00 in the morning, obviously not working.  Can you imagine what we could do if we all worked together?   Six people, working together toward a common goal…but just what goal could we be working toward?

Now, a word about the economy.  The government is not going to bail us out.  Industry, corporations, businesses are not going to bail us, those who need work, out.   The sooner we realize that we’re on our own, the better off we will be.  We, America, built our success through the hard effort of small businesses and that’s exactly what has to happen to get our country, our towns, our homes and our families out of this economic morass in which we have been so unceremoniously mired.   The government helps those which have helped (read: lobbied, bribed, created PACs, lined the pockets of, take your pick) them, not those who voted them in office.  And guess what?  Those who *lobbied, bribed, created PACs, lined the pockets of, etc.* got their money back in the bailout.  Isn’t that a sweet system?!?  Forgive the sarcasm, it probably is a sweet system if you’re part of it; if you’re not, it seems treasonous.  If you think your congressman, who you voted for to get the last corrupt bum out of office, cares that you can’t put meat on the table because you can’t find work, you’re in for a sad revelation.   Do you know how much AIG contributed to their election campaigns?  Do you know how much lobbying Bank of America had to do to get their 20 billion dollar bailout?   Banks are the enemy of the population; I have been saying it for years.  And now we, as a people, are powerless to stop this foe because our own government, those who we trusted to right for us, have betrayed us.

Let’s be clear, we cannot revolt, we cannot go back and change the past.  And, voting these corrupt bums out of office will just bring in a new class of the same guys.  So what I am advocating is that instead of spending $30 + a month on Career Builder, the Ladders, or any other job search, and instead of letting the government and banks suck us dry, we, as individuals, need to act.  We need to bring America back on track, away from the Roman-style corruption, greed, and debauchery that has plagued our society for almost twenty years (regardless of which puppet is in charge).  If we don’t act, our country and our society will go the way of Nero’s Rome. 

Consider, although the idea of orgies in the streets sounds like fun, it would make it really hard to drive your children to school.

So here’s the first thing we have to do.  We have to communicate with each other.  Everyone is different but every approach has its merits.  I want to know what is happening with you.  How/Why did you lose your job?  What are you doing about it?  Did you find work?  How?  Did you create work?  What need did you see and fill?   What kind of team can we create together, bringing our neighbors into the fold, to do “good” for us around us and put food on all our tables?  Let’s go back to what worked, to making a difference in our communities by good ol’ fashioned division of labor.

As I said before, the government is not going to bail you out of this because you didn’t line their pockets with billions.   How does it make you feel knowing that you didn’t commit treason and you’re being ignored by those you selected to manage your government?  The banks aren’t going to give you a loan; you don’t have the immaculate credit they demand or they don’t have the program available to help a nascent small business because they will not believe in your cause.

Imagine what a recent immigrant thinks of our country.  Please, I don’t want to get into the immigration debate, I want you to move out of your own shoes (or bare feet, depending on when you’re reading this) and take a step back and evaluate our country.   What are you NOT willing to do to put food on your family’s table?  Wash Dishes?   Serve Orange Chicken at a local fast-food joint?  Cut grass?  What about a Mexican who owns her own business?  Would you, could you, work for an immigrant, say a woman from Thailand?  Or Guatemala?    Or, would you feel that because you are an American you have some innate rights over her?  Someone who scratched and saved and is trying to make her life better and needs your help, with your specific experience, without the patriotic b-s.   How would you feel different is HE were from Canada?  Michael J. Fox, take note…

Look, it’s time to stop with this feeling of superiority because we are not.  We are all in this together; therefore, we all need to work together.  Most importantly, we need to make a difference.  Let’s all focus on our communities, assuming no more responsibility than our own ZIP code.  To what goal?  I don’t know.  How is this going to put food on our table?  I don’t know.  But someone in your ZIP code knows how to cook, and someone in your ZIP code knows plumbing and home improvement.  And someone in your ZIP code knows how to take care of the kids while you’re at work.  And someone in your ZIP code can fix your computer…if you can watch his kids, or cook her dinner.

We are all together in this.  Don’t trust the government.  And for the love of our country, don’t put faith in the banks that charge $39 for a bounced check when you have no money. 

I want to hear from you.  Together, we can make this work.  Let’s make our country powerful again.