My apologies for this entry. It's not really 'writing', but it's been a hectic few days, and this is the best I can do right now.
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After a week and a half of silence on the job hunt, sending applications and résumés but getting no responses... on Wednesday, there were suddenly so many emails and phone calls, interviews and offers, I needed a spreadsheet to help me decide.
• McDonald's wants me. They're simply evil and shouldn't be allowed to exist, but I liked working there 50 years ago, and burgers are still burgers so I'd probably catch on quick. The pay is OK (only because Seattle has an in-city minimum wage much higher than the federal rate), and there's a free meal with every shift. No benefits, though.
Drawback: My interview was at a McDonald's 25 minutes from home on the bus, but they bait-and-switched me. The job is at a different McDonald's that's an hour from home, which means two hours daily on the bus. Just typing it makes my brain mush.
I might work at the distant McD for a few weeks if I'm desperate, but the commute guarantees it's a short-term gig.
• Driving a paratransit bus — exactly the job I washed out on in 2022, but with a different agency. The pay is quite good by my standards, and it's a union job. At the interview I told 'em how and why driving the bus at the other agency hadn't worked out, and they thought the story was funny, thanked me for my honesty, and offered me the job.
Drawback: As I keep getting older, when I gotta poop there's not much time to get squatted. If my bowels stir while driving a bus, I'd need to find parking, then look for a restaurant or shop that'd let me into the john — but by then I'd have already overflowed my pants. Driving a bus means I'd need to wear generic Depends™, and I'm not eager to feel plastic diapers against my groin eight hours daily.
So sadly, my career driving buses is probably over.
• Helping the homeless for Metro Transit is still a possibility, but Metro is a huge bureaucracy, so even if they hire me, it'll take months. It's moot to my immediate need for a job.
• Office work. I've applied at two government agencies that provide services people need. It would be office work like any other office, only I'd be pushing papers to help people, instead of to help some company turn a profit.
Like Metro, though, they're bureaucracies, so the hiring process will take months. I need a job now and a paycheck by New Year's, or I won't have the rent.
So the job I'm tilting toward is:
• Answering phones at a call center. The pay is OK, and bumps to better than OK after a month. It's a direct bus ride, about 30 minutes, which makes it the shortest commute of any of these job possibilities.
It's the paratransit call center, and I'd be booking rides for disabled people on the same bus I'd be driving if my poops were more predictable. I'd feel good about helping folks get to their destinations, and in an office, I wouldn't need to wear diapers.
Drawback: It's a call center, answering calls, but I hate phones, and ain't wild about talking to humans.
I need a job, though, and by definition a job is something you don't like doing. If you liked doing it, they wouldn't have to pay you.
So I'm starting at the call center on Monday morning.
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Orientation at McDonald's is next Thursday, and that's my back-up plan. If I can't stand answering phones after three days, I'll quit and flip burgers instead.
My training as a bus driver begins on January 2, so driving in diapers is my second back-up, if the call center and the burger factory both go down in flames.
Whatever happens, I have a job, and two back-up jobs, and I'm a working man again.
Damn it.
12/15/2023
Aargh!
ReplyDelete- Zeke Krahlin
Exactly!
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