Yesterday, I ran across what appears to be the almost perfect (if you ignore that it’s high-tech work) job on Craigslist. It’s in Emeryville, CA — itself not ideal, but it is adjacent to Oakland and Berkeley, which are probably (by my criteria) the two best cities in the Bay Area. And it would be fun to see places like Angel Island and the big parks in the East Bay Hills again.
However, the whole thing has the classic symptoms of the “grass is greener” syndrome. It’s hardly practical for me to shell out lots of money to make yet another long-distance move. All in all, I prefer a climate with more annual temperature variation than the Bay Area gets. Plus, it’s not part of Cascadia, the region I have a real attachment to.
Finally, I’m in something of a hole right now as a result of my degree and my job history. I’d really like to be doing something other than high-tech work. My past job (the one that just ended), was a useful part of a transition away from systems administration, but another non-sysadmin high-tech job at this point would amount to digging that hole deeper. And as the old saying goes: when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging.
Given all that, I still sent a résumé in, so I do expect to get a call from them. I’m planning on flat-out turning any offer down, but I will have a number of conditions (strong preference for telecommuting, refusal to pay any relocation expenses, etc.). If they’re willing to meet those conditions, fine. Based on my experience, however, they probably won’t be — which is also fine.
The story to date: Last month, I unexpectedly got laid off. It was more a shock than a disappointment — I was already starting to get the urge to move on in life, and doing a little planning for such on the side. Suddenly, those plans got thrown into high gear.
One of life’s rules is: if you’re entitled to money, take it. The state had been taking money out of my paychecks for unemployment insurance ever since I started that job, so of course I file a claim. Quick, easy, and I can do it all over the Internet.
Then It arrives in the mail. A letter saying I must attend a class or lose my benefits. It’s on what office workers call “goldenrod” color paper, set in a monospaced font with right justification. How 1982.
Today was the day of the session. I walk into the room just a minute late and am greeted by a sea of desks, each one already filled with a fellow unfortunate. Only a few chairs along the wall remain empty. I select the one next to a table, so I’ll have something to write upon. Conveniently, it is located behind a folded-up room-dividing curtain, so the “instructor” can’t see me as I scribble these words in my journal.
The walls are decorated with those ridiculous corporate “motivational” posters. The one closest to me is titled “Success” and has a picture of the Avenue of the Giants on it. Given that Humboldt County, California is somewhere I’ve always dreamed of living, this of course gets me fantasizing.
Some papers are handed out, then the instructor finally begins talking and my fears are confirmed. She’s merely going to rehash the paltry amount of matter she just handed out, most of which itself recapitulates what I’ve already read in the packet they mailed to me and on their web site. A grey-haired man sitting across the aisle softly grumbles a few single-word epithets.
The “class” is apparently a requirement of state law. Seemingly only a dozen minutes into it, a fifteen-minute break is called. The one bit of good news I’ve learned so far is that this exercise in bureaucracy does count as one of the three job contacts we’re supposed to be making each week.
If you divide the amount on my weekly UI checks by three and then three again for the length of the course, it doesn’t work out to be that shabby an hourly wage.
Mr. Grumbly starts writing during the latter half of the break, perhaps inspired by me. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
The “class” resumes and I start working on an updated résumé tailored to the sort of environmental and natural sciences job I really want. Might as well do something productive with my time.
All too soon, the lecture ends. How productive work makes the time fly. But not so fast — now we have to sit and wait for individual sessions. There being a surplus of attendees (and, as we are later to learn, a surfeit of UI bureaucrats thanks to the flu), this means that some of us are going to wait, wait, wait all for naught.
It is announced that if we’re not processed by 11:30, we can leave. I busy myself writing in my journal and working on that résumé.
At 11:20, Mr. Grumbly leaves the room, only to return a few minutes later and announce dejectedly that the “course” was scheduled to be three hours long, so we can’t leave until a full three hours pass. That means the earliest we’ll get out of here is noon, not 11:30.
At 11:30, the instructor comes back and announces there’s no chance anyone will be able to do any more individual sessions for at least 20 minutes, by when it will be almost time to break for lunch, so we can leave. Nobody argues with her.
As I leave, I confirm that the information they were going to enter into their résumé bank during the one-on-one session was indeed precisely the same information I entered into their system via the web last week.
While in a doctor’s office waiting room a few weeks ago, I ran across this article in Smithsonian magazine, which details one of the most dramatic declines of an animal species since the passenger pigeon.
It all underscores a key danger of rapid technological advancement: you never know where the next ecological sucker punch is going to come from. It’s obvious that things like pesticides, which are broadcast fairly indiscriminately and in large quantities, are something to worry about. But who’d think that veterinary pharmaceuticals could cause an ecological catastrophe?
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