Oh, I’m so sick of Republicans and their “immigrants are taking away the best jobs from Americans” illogical nonsense, and their “unemployment benefits only encourage laziness” ignorant generalizations.
I can tell you, I’ve had cube farm jobs that were considerably less challenging than qualifying for unemployment benefits. I’m thinking about one in particular, a support position at an international retail chain, where I was paid to sit on my ass for half a year, doing absolutely nothing (because interoffice communications were crap: there was need for me, it’s just that nobody knew I was there and I didn’t know there was work I could be doing).
But unemployment? Prior to 2012, all you had to do was dredge up your work and residential history for the previous ten years. Every temp job I landed, every apartment I moved into and out of, every address, phone number, and ZIP code. That’s all. Every supervisor you’ve had at every position, regardless of whether they’re still there or not, they all have to be listed. That’s all.
Now it’s even better. On top of throwing my resume at every business in the downtown area (I made a checklist on Google Maps, so I know what I’m talking about), hunting down their partners and contacts and throwing my resume at them too, now I can’t apply for unemployment without having submitted a Work Plan to the state. That’s more than just saying “I should do ______ to look for work”; it means I have to list people’s names and grill them for job contacts, then add more names next week; I have to attend classes on Creative Job Searches and interviewing skills. I have to generate a proactive agenda to fulfill within a limited time frame, in order to hunt down positions and companies and convince them to give me an interview, assuming they’re hiring at all. Most places aren’t.
This is harder work than many of my paying gigs have been. Republicans can eat a bag of dicks.
