I would not be able to talk about being
unemployed without first talking about employment.
Since 1982 I have been working in many different occupations. I originally
was going corporate with a background in advertising sales. I was a pretty good
advertising salesman. I was not from the "Madmen" time, but more
of the Charlie Sheen, "Wall Street" era. My partner and me were out
in the field selling advertising space to local businesses for a
local Free TV Guide magazine.We had a mentor, Candido, who we looked up to because he was the only Latino with a six-figure income that we knew of. He worked for AT&T before the breakup. He was responsible for negotiating major technology and corporate deals. He worked his way up from an encyclopedia salesman to an executive account representative. He was responsible for the original ATM machines, called MAC (money access center). These machines appeared all of the sudden throughout the city.
I was doing everything to make it. Both my partner and me who would later become my brother -in-Law, Roberto were trying to break out of our lower social environment.
I felt that my future was set. I asked my girlfriend, Roberto’s sister, to marry me on New Years Eve in 1984, even though I was broke. All of the my sales profits went back into the business. I was on my way to corporate bliss. I had become a confidant sales account representative. I was bringing in real money for the ground floor enterprise. I had negotiated thousands of dollars in advertising contracts. If I hadn’t invested my commissions I would have been earning about a thousand dollars a week in 1983.
I was married at City Hall in April of 1985 and celebrated with a humble gathering of friends and family at the house I grew up in. My father cooked up a feast and I was happy to be married. I had all of the confidence in the world and a real faith in my abilities and my future, when my whole plan fell through.
The Monday after, I found out our partner, Randy Williams, a squirrely looking man who looked liked like an African American version of Paulie from the Godfather, stole all of our liquid assets and disappeared. Roberto had his safety net. He had applied for a civil service job and was hired some time before. I, on the other hand was fully physically and emotionally invested into the business and had no such net.
I was devastated and experienced my first bout with depression. For those that don’t know, depression is not the normal feeling down or sad. It’s usually the overwhelming inability to deal or bounce back from a crisis. This was my first crisis. This was supposed to be my path to financial success and freedom from my humble beginnings. It was not the future that my wife and I had counted on. This wrecked my confidence and forever affected my relationship with my wife. It probably affected all of my subsequent relationships since.
After loosing my chosen path and falling without a net I had to find more earthbound work. I eventually after some time started delivering pizza while my then wife was delivering my son Charles (Bobby) Robert, then eventually finding a retail sales job at Buster Brown Franchise store. I worked my way to assistant manager and became a Mallrat. The funny thing about working retail in a Mall is that you get to know what’s going to be on sale at the other stores before the public does. All of your friend start asking about getting a discount. Fortunately for the discount, I was able to shoe both Bobby and Sarah, My daughter. I was also able to maintain a new wife, property and a living, even though it was not to last.
In 1993 was laid off due to the store that I worked from was closing and went back to school for some time. I was separated and divorcing at the time and put all of my angry energy to school. After that I ended up doing and AmeriCorps Term of service. That was 1995. I became more interested in making a difference in children and their families’ lives. I had found my next purpose. I have worked the next 17 years in non-profit in children, teens and family programs for community centers. I had always felt that I needed to have a purpose. Being unemployed had made it challenging to say the least to continue with a purpose.
I felt that the good that I did would come back to me somehow. I have gained a lot of experience and consider myself very capable of doing many different things. I have been a supervisor, interviewer and workshop facilitator and yet I still feel unprepared for the job seeking experience that I am currently doing.
I was completely caught off guard with my being laid off of my last job. I had been told the whole summer that things were rough. I was given extra responsibilities because I had the right "Skills-Set" and facilitated some life skills training at the high school level. This made me think that I was a vital part of the organization. The fact that I could be in different positions within the organization made me realize that I do have certain skill sets that were vital to the organization. Even when I was told that I would be let go, I thought that at the last minute things would turn around. They didn’t.
I was devastated. I did not tell any of my co-workers until the last day. I was angry that I worked so hard for the summer. I had been working sick. I didn’t know that I had diverticulitis and was in constant abdominal pain. I continued to work the summer subconsciously trying to prove my worth to the organization. My sacrifice for the job made the realization even more devastating. I usually have a comedian’s sense of humor. If something happened bad to me I would find someway to make a story out of it. I would tell my coworkers these stories. I would say things like, " You know Marriage is temporary, Divorce is forever!” I had nothing to say that day. I worked as if everything was normal. I told a few coworkers and left. I had been thoroughly embarrassed.
Being unemployed as a young man is different from being unemployed at near 50 years old. It doesn’t matter that the economy is bad. It’s a blow to my abilities that I was not able to be smart enough to avoid it at my age. I just couldn’t move back with my parents and pick myself up. This is my third crisis I will talk about the second one later. I tackled the crisis like the others. I try to get busy in order to get my mind off the crisis.
I applied for unemployment and signed up for job search through the state. The state’s sight is not the place to look for work. I know from my experience as a recruitment representative. The State’s career site posts jobs that are rarely looked at by the employers. When I was on the other end looking for applicants I would have to physically logon to the site. The candidates that were being recommended had no experience in the positions that I was filling. The other job sites aren’t that much better.
I do the usual applying to jobs via the Internet and wait for calls that do not come. Sometimes I don’t even get a confirmation. I used to look in the newspaper for the job listings and send resumes or show up to advertised hiring events. Those days are gone. I am constantly looking at my resume to make sure its different and that that might be why I am not getting any calls. Sometimes I get sick of looking at it.
I was telling my students during the summer when facilitating work readiness training that the job applications process is actually designed to reject applicants out of the process. In this economy with so many people applying for so few positions hiring managers design the process to go through many applications. There are even companies that have set up apps just to process applications without any human review at all.
Having that knowledge doesn’t make my job search easier. The hardest thing about applying online and never knowing how you are doing. You never get a call and you cannot call anyone to check on the status of your application. The government site is not worth it at all. There is no guarantee that your application is even getting looked at.
I recently went to a career fair in which the venders did not have many jobs. They were offering trade careers in bar-tending, cosmetology along with for profit colleges. I felt that I was being taken advantage of. It was a real waste of my time.
I try to remain hopeful and am continuing my job search. I am old school.
Job means purpose.
