Rant #2,425: The Prisoner

Tomorrow, on June 10, I reach an anniversary so unlike the one I spoke about yesterday that it pains me to even talk about it.

Tomorrow, on Wednesday, I will have been unemployed for exactly eight months, and what is worse, things have gotten so much worse for me during this time period.

Looking for a job beginning at age 62--now age 63--in our normal environment is difficult enough, but threw in the pandemic and the unrest we as a nation are going through now, and all the odds are stacked against me.

And maybe for the first time, I am starting to acknowledge the fact that nobody is going to hire me.

Sure, I have spoken about this before, and I have been realistic all the time I have been out of work about my job prospects.

But now, just about at the eight-month mark, the thing is hitting me in the face.

Yes, I received the expanded unemployment, but in my case, I have never been able to find out an answer about what that exactly means.

Yes, the money I have received from the extended unemployment has increased, and that has been a godsend to my pocketbook and my ego.

But in my case, I have been unclear since the beginning whether the expanded unemployment also relates to weeks. In other words, the expanded unemployment allows for 13 extra weeks of payments related to being out of work. Does the include me, whose joblessness began way before the pandemic hit, or does it just include people like my son, whose inactivity is directly related to the presence of the virus?

I have asked that question since the expanded unemployment was put in place several weeks ago, and I have never received a valid answer. At this point, I simply don't know if I can keep going like this through August, which the extra 13 weeks would push me to, or if my unemployment is running out about now, leaving me dangling without a string, with no money coming in and absolutely no job possibilities after a solid eight months of looking.

Look, I know it isn't just me.

The unemployment numbers are staggering. To have an unhealthy double-digit percentage of American workers out of a job right now is incredible, in particular since the economy was so robust just about three months ago.

But the fact of the matter is that unemployment figures are probably the worst barometer of our country's health that one can use to gauge whether the economy is good or not.

Even if the unemployment figures are between 3 and 4 percent--what they were before the pandemic hit our nation--you can bet that those numbers were at least double, if not triple, that percentage, because even in good times, unemployment figures are never very accurate, because they don't count people who have stopped looking and/or are off the rolls completely.

So if unemployment right now is 13.3 percent, actually taking a dip from the prior month, which experts say might have been due to some kind of glitch related to those on furlough and out of work temporarily. The actual number is likely 3 percent higher.

To put that into raw numbers, 21 million Americans are out of work, so when you add everything up, including allowing for the glitch and allowing for those not reporting or off the rolls, the numbers are probably over 30 million people being out of work in this country.

And I am one of them, and my unemployment predated the coronavirus by several months.

So, what do I do now?

Well, if my unemployment benefits continue, I keep on looking until they run out, whether that be today, tomorrow, or in August or perhaps beyond that, if unemployment continues to be extended, which it just might be.

If my unemployment has, in fact, run out, then sadly, I am done. I have tried for eight months to find a job worthy of my background--and even unworthy of it--and I have failed miserably. All the odds were against me, and I was a David against a Goliath, but in this instance, the Goliath won.

I have to move onto the next phase of my life, which is retirement. I will have to file for Social Security ASAP, and see how long it takes me to get onto those rolls.

I will also have to find some type of part-time job doing something ... what, I don't know.

And will I run into the same brick wall I have run into trying to find full-time work when I look for part-time work?

It is made all the more horrid due to the fact that I prepared for this scenario many months ago, and even good preparation led to nowhere.

As you know, I was hired by the Long Island Ducks, a minor league baseball team in the Atlantic League, for a seasonal job that never came to be because of the pandemic. There have been some rumblings that they are trying to begin their season in July, but there has been no official word yet on that. I have tried to find out more information about this, but as of yet, to no avail.

Would they even employ me if they started up again? With non-existent fans in the stands and numerous restrictions related to the coronavirus, I doubt they would even take a newbie like me, going with their regular crew before looking for anyone new.

I mean, I could be wrong about this, but the fact of the matter is that all of this remains up in the air, so right now, I have nothing.

I have no prospects, no direction, and quite frankly at this stage of the game, no hope.

If not for the strength of my family, I honestly don't know where I would be now.

I am cooked, I am done, and I am truly a prisoner of circumstances way beyond my control.

Frankly, I don't know what to do at this juncture.

And that makes me sad, in particular because six years ago, when I started my job quest while I was still employed, not only did I see the writing on the wall with the job that I was in and the company I worked for, but I knew that this was going to happen somewhere down the line.

I knew that the job I had--becoming more horrible and impossible by the day--was going to be the last and final full-time job I would ever have, so I decided to milk it to the max while starting my job quest, which led to nothing all these years later.

I guess I got out of it as much as I could--at least I could say I was gainfully employed, even though the pressures in that job became unbearable--and while the end was inevitable, when it came, it came crashing down on me, and at this point, it has buried me.

Since the company I worked for went out of business on October 10, 2019, I have had exactly two phone interviews for a possible position and two in-person interviews before the pandemic halted just about everything. And those two in-person interviews were somewhat bogus, because I went into each believing I had applied for a specific job, and found out as I was being interviewed that the job I had applied for had changed into something that I was not aware of, putting me at a disadvantage right then and there.

It was the classic bait and switch, and it had no payout but disappointment. I walked out of each interview knowing that there was no way I was going to be hired, and I never even received a courtesy "no thanks" letter from either place I interviewed with, which basically goes to show that I was probably better off not working in such places ...

But I would have taken on each job if given a real opportunity to show each employer what I could do.

So again, at this juncture, I am nowhere closer to getting a job than I was eight months ago, or six years ago, and that is with a Herculean effort to find something.

Yes, I can attribute it to ageism, which is both certainly the last taboo in the workplace and the most difficult to prove.

I can attribute it to the world passing me by as I stayed in a job for nearly a quarter century, something that few people are dong in today's world.

I can attribute it to a lot of things, but where does that leave me?

Nowhere, man, nowhere, which is they way I feel right now.

I am nowhere, with nowhere to turn, no direction, no prospects, no nothing.

Put yourself in my position--what would you do if you faced the same uncertainty?

I don't know what the answer is, and honestly, neither do you, and that is what makes this period such a scary one for me and others in the same boat as me.

The country has turned its back on people like me, and I just don't know what to do with myself right now.

And believe it or not, after you have read the several hundred words I have written in this blog entry, I am at a total and complete loss for words.

The End.