Job Interview 2

I always try to find the up side in a bad situation. There are always two sides to these situations, it seems. It turns out you can find a lot of lessons in the current economic crisis, and these are lessons we need to learn.

Before the economic crisis, I was feeling very anxious. I think the main reason I was feeling anxious was that I was feeling more and more gouged. Everyone was raising prices on everything--because they thought they would be paid. So where would it stop? The economic crisis has stopped it, so while this crisis causes anxiety, the pre-crisis gouging also caused anxiety.

I live in a small house that I grew up in. But think of someone who felt pressured, by their spouse, their kids, their friends, relatives, associates, coworkers, into buying a certain size house they knew they probably couldn't afford. Now they may be losing that house, but when things improve, they may live longer not having to spend their whole life hanging onto something they knew they really could never afford. I remember back in San Francisco in the early 1990's when I was a legal secretary. I would get temp jobs at firms where attorneys were told what kind of car they had to have, what type of person they had to marry, and what they had to do for recreation on the little free time they had in order to be accepted at the law firm. They had no personal freedom at all. They had lots of money and a prestigious job, but they were forced to do 24/7 everything the firm told them to do. I think lots of times they even had to pretend who they supported politically. I met a whole class of gay men who had to pretend they were Republicans in order to have certain jobs, date a certain type of guy, and be accepted in the right crowd. Now how crazy is that! The Republican Party at that time didn't think gay men should be allowed to exist, and these guys had to pretend to be Republicans so other gay men would accept them!

Well, there is an up side to this economic crisis, because all of a sudden, within a few months, the gougers found out that the gougees had nothing left to gouge. And the gougers found out, guess what, I can't live without the gougees. I'm depending on gouging people to make it and the gougees have nothing left to gouge.

This will explain why there is still quite a healthy job market here in Pittsburgh. I sure could see this when I visited this temp agency. Several years ago, when I was applying for jobs, most of the agencies were on the Parkway out in Robinson and Moon Township. There were a lot of jobs out there. These agencies just expected you to drive out there to apply with them. They just expected you'd be thrilled to commute 1 1/2 each way to accept one of their jobs out the Parkway. And they figured you'd do it for relatively low pay. Steubenville, Ohio started to run advertisements as the burb of the Burgh. They encouraged people to move to Steubenville for much lower taxes and commute 30 miles to Robinson Township for jobs. All the employers figured, hey, now all these Pittsburghers will have to compete with the people in Steubenville for jobs.

Well, all of a sudden, gas prices were over $4 a gallon and guess what. No one could afford to drive out to these agencies to even apply for a job. No one from Steubenville could afford to commute to a job in Robinson Township and neither could anyone in the Pittsburgh area. The pay didn't go up. They were still offering people $11 or $12 an hour and no one could afford to get to the job paying that.

When I went into the agency the other day, I was given a drug test. I was asked to sign papers for several investigations. I was told that if they got me a job, the money for the drug test and the investigations would come out of my first pay check.

Well, guess what? This agency can't get anyone to work for them because no one can afford to give up that much money from their first pay check. So people of good intentions who probably WANT to work for this agency can't afford to. They have to go elsewhere. They have to find an agency who won't charge them. They have to find a job on their own and can't afford to use an agency anymore. On the other end, the employers call up wanting a temp and find they can't afford the agency's fees. They have to make due somehow with the workers they already have.

I was as much as told by this agency that they had to move somewhere easily accessible by public transit. Apparently, they can't even find enough applicants anymore with a car. They also can't find applicants who have a car to get to a job. They have to start somehow to recruit applicants who have to use public transportation to get to a job. And guess what else? Suddenly, the job market dried up out on the Parkway, because no one can afford to drive there for a job. Now the jobs have very suddenly, very violently, almost, shifted back to areas where people can take a bus or subway or don't have to drive far.

Things could not go on the way they were. People were being charged and gouged more and more. People could not go on paying these prices, being herded around this way, having more and more asked of them and still paying their exhorbitant mortgages. A person who wonders if they will be on the street next month isn't in much of a mood to drive out the Parkway to apply for some job that may or may not exist and then fork over additional money to be drug tested and investigated. It appears the gougers got so greedy that the gougees had nothing left to be gouged ...