by Byron100 » Tue 30 Dec 2008, 11:45:46
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cbxer55', '
')Here-Here! Not me. A friend of mine. His daughter has worked for Home Depot for over 5 years now. She has yet to see $10.00 per hour. Yet the 7-11 right up the street offers a starting pay of $12.50 per hour!! Something is not right here. And yet I can understand one's reluctance to work at a neighborhood STOP-AND-ROB!
My friend's daughter is 23, divorced due to a azzhat husband, has a daughter, and lives at home with mom and dad because she does not make enough to make it on her own.
Everytime I go into Home Depot or Lowes, or one of those other nameless big box stores, I wonder how anyone of the employees can make it there on the pay they make. Depressing.
And now that I will be out of work come December 31, I wonder just what is in store for me? I have been working since I was 18(before that if you consider newspaper routes and lawn mowing since I was 12). Rarely have I made less than $15 per hour since 18. Will I have to lower my standards now? Can I afford to? Can my wife afford to? $10 per hour is less than unemployment pay.
The future looks pretty bleak IMHO.
Believe me, I know what it's like. I know all too well. I've been living out my own Dark Age 2.0, GD 2, Paint It Black, whatever you wanna call it for over a decade now.
$15 an hour not enough? Hell, $10 an hour sounds like heaven to a useless, jobless sob like me...LOL. I've been without a "real" job for so long that I can't even get a job at a Stop 'N Rob, let alone something that pays $20 or $25 an hour. Those of you who have careers and an uninterrupted work history have NO idea of what it's like to not to even be able to fill out a job application, due to the lack of recent jobs to put down. The economy can be booming along at 10% annual growth, it matters not to me. I'm 42 years old, and I know without a doubt that I'll never, ever work for someone else again for the rest of my days, permanent Depression or no. And the most dreaded question that someone can ever ask me is "What do you do?" Oh, how do I hate making something up on the fly like that...LOL. Actually, I do a lot of things, but that's not an easy to explain in a sentence or two like most people expect. Oh well, such is the life.
How do I get by, you ask? Well, much of is due to the glorious excesses of the 20th Century. Family money and all of that, which I've managed to spread thin like butter for all of these years. Not to mention a loving other half that shares the same view about money as I do - that is, all income goes into a pot and gets used for the benefit for the both of us. Communism at its finest...LOL.

But I'm not independently wealthy by any measure, to be sure. I've just learned to live on very, very little money, as many of you will learn yourselves in the years to come. You'll be nothing short of amazed at how little you actually *need* as compared to what you merely want. Sure, you folks will no longer be living large as you've been accustomed to, but you'll still be able to get by. Believe me, I know how it's done.
As some of you might know, my S.O. was laid off Oct 1st of this year, with 17 weeks' of severance. Well, guess what? He's just been called back to work, starting next Monday, same pay and seniority as before. $17.10 an hour - woot! Time to start living large again - gotta break out the Corbel...LOL. 13 weeks of a free ride at full pay, only to be called back again - maybe this new GD 2.0 isn't so bad after all...hehe.
Of course, this is due to a part of the US that's doing even worse than Atlanta, GA, specifically Orlando, Florida. One man's loss is another's gain - Capitalism at its finest, provided one is at the receiving end, of course.
What does this do in regards to our plans to move to the new Promised Land of upstate New York? It'll be on hold for a bit longer, alas. (sniff, sniff

) At least it'll give me the chance to complete the carpentry program at the local tech college I've been wanting to do. I figure when I get done with that, we can put the house on the market and we can just up stakes and move north when we finally manage to find a buyer. I really don't foresee a total collapse of the US economy for a few years yet, due to countries like Japan willing to forgive our debt and China being played for a fool in financing the greatest government spending spree of all time. Big Brother Government at its finest - free money for all! :D
Sure beats working some dipsh*t job at $10 an hour to be sure...LOL.
Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez - Life sure is good, ain't it?

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide...
...and the meek shall inherit the Earth!