For those of you not interested in my inane ranting, please skip this post.
Well, as of August 12th, I am no longer employed. I have been canned, fired, let go and laid off.
I have been in a panic for the last two days...How am I going to afford massage school now? Where kind I find another job for the next year? Can I get unemployment in the interum? What about my BEADS?!!
My husband is super pissed, as am I. I have been busting my ass trying to find ANY job to help pay the bills, but there is no way I will make as much as I did at the Home. PLUS I have to go back on my husband's insurance, AND drive 30 miles in to town which are both additional expences.
This is the second job I have been fired from...I was here for 1 and a half years and thought everything was kosher. I feel like such a f*ck up right now. Two of my friends think I should pull my plans for a webpage up and start selling my beads now instead of in a year like I had origninally planned. Having worked for myself before, I am not opposed to it, but I do not feel as if I am skilled enough to offer High Quality work yet, so I NEED to find a job.
And I JUST had my husband talked into letting me take that lampworking class, which now I can't afford to take.
*AACKKK!* What a horrible time to have this happen!
Thanks for listening...I will slink back to lurk now.
I understand. I was laid off a year ago last March and am currently underemployed. Part of that is my choice, part is the current state of economy around here.
As far as collecting unemployment, it'll depend on your state's laws. There is usually a difference between getting fired and getting laid off. Laid off almost always gets unemployment - getting fired depends on a lot of things.
The first thing you need to do is get your resume updated!! There are scads of sites out there to post it for free. If you have a resume, get it into a .pdf format so you can send it via email. I've found most places like a .pdf resume - don't have software compatibility issues. If you don't have Acrobat, you have a couple of choices, you may send it to me and I'll convert it for you or you can download PrimoPDF. It's **free** and creates a .pdf file for you. Very easy to use. The only downfall is that it's a 10MB download. If you have dial-up it's a pain in the ass. A long, slow pain in the ass.
Now, come out of hiding and get registed with Monster.com!!
On Sat, 14 Aug 2004 20:00:33 -0400, Vedis wrote (in message ):
Don't freak out, and don't worry about next year. Call the unemployment office, and get some concrete answers. They might want you to be there in person before answering anything, and there might be a special day of the week for you to go in. Once you have some reliable information, you can make informed decisions.
You don't know that. In the US, you are eligible for COBRA, which might be a better option for you than going on your husband's insurance. You cannot know that the job you just left is the highest paying job you'll ever have (I rather doubt that's true).
Again, what you need is solid information.
Again, if you can collect unemployment compensation you have more options. It's the weekend, you cannot get the answers you need tonight, so try to put that problem away until Monday. I mentally picture putting my problems in a box, and the box in a dresser drawer, and shutting the drawer.
Is it silly? yeah. Does it help me? hell, yeah, If there's a problem I can't fix right now, dwelling on it just makes me crazy.
Freaking out, feeling like a loser, blaming yourself and making rash decisions isn't going to help you right now. Later on, think about what happened with this job - if you were let go for cause. If you were "made redundant," it has nothing to do with you and just try to let it go. As a person who has had to lay off many, many people, I can honestly say that it was entirely a numbers game, and nothing personal. There were times I had to lay off my best performers because they were also the highest paid employees. That sucked more than you can imagine.
Right now, take this weekend as a time to mourn the loss of your job and how you defined yourself. Monday is when you begin the next part of your new life. Get some solid information and make your decisions from there. If money is as tight as you say, call all your creditors Monday and tell them you're unemployed. Make arrangements to reduce your payments (they'll do it - they'd rather get some money than no money). If you have any excess in your budget, now is the time to do any belt tightening.
In our house, our "pocket money" would go, the cable TV would go, and Beulah the Buick would be taken off the road so fast your head would spin. If several months went by with no prospects, we'd think about selling cars and soforth. We've lived on next to nothing before, we can do it again. Perhaps you can sit down with your husband and decide what is essential and what can go. Write it down - it will seem more real, and less threatening that way. Your priorities will definitely be different than mine - that's a good thing.
If you haven't paid for the class, then put it off. If you've already paid for the class, and cannot get a refund, consider taking the class anyway. You're unemployed, not being punished.
There is _never_ a good time to lose your job. I've had lots of jobs, and lost some of them. Later on when I looked back, I'm glad I lost the jobs that I did. Either I was laid off and found something better - sometimes in a totally new direction from where I was. The jobs where I was fired turned out to be a favor - I truly stink at some things. For you though, it's not the time for that kind of introspection - just try to take good care of yourself and land on your feet.
It really will be all right in the long run.
Whatever makes you feel the best. You want to post and unload - that's perfectly fine.
Vedis, I wish you oceans of luck in your new endeavors. It might be exactly the thing to push you to improve more quickly in lampworking! Sometimes we don't leap until we're pushed. {{{{{{{{{{{Vedis}}}}}}}}}}} ~~ Sooz
laid off and/or fired is good. It means you can get unemployment. I was unemployed for 6 months, recently. I look back on that time fondly now. It was the only time in my adult life that I haven't worked. Nice to have a break. Becki "In between the moon and you, the angels have a better view of the crumbling difference between wrong and right." -- Counting Crows
I appreciate everyone's reply, and support. It is nice to be able to hear that I am not the only one who has been let go. Makes me feel less like a social outcast and more like a flawed Human Being.
I am not going to be applying for a lot of the higher paying jobs, simply because I am only going to be at them for a little while. 9 more months and I will be a Massage Therapist. At that point I can get a job doing that...which is what I intended to do in the first place.
Yeah, It helps that I was going on vacation this week, so I wouldn't have been working anyway, and my Husband is here to walk me through it. It helps...But I am not one that has EVER gone without a Job for long periods. It is a bit scary.
But there is good news! I have been making beads like crazy! Getting better and better every time I try something new! So it isn't all that bad.
Ah, no, I was fired because I didn't get a call light close enough to a resident that they could reach it (I was unaware of this fact at the time, they were not in their 'right mind' at the time) and then I took my Break.
So they had a reason, and I PROBABLY won't be able to get unemployement because of it. *sigh*
Currently we talking with a friend about renting out an extra room. The extra income would be helpful right now. I didn't make that much so it can be replaced fairly easily with THIS method. Once again, it only has to last a few months, and then I can get the job I have been dreaming about for YEARS!
Thank you for the suggestions! It is excatly what we were doing.
No, it was not paid for...and yes, it shall be put off. I was just really looking forward to it! But there will be other classes I am sure I can take at a later date. Perhaps by then I can take the intermediate class! *LOL*
Yeah, I am totally pampering myself this weekend...hot showers, sleeping in late, beading all day...the works!
You know what? No one needs to know that. You have every right to get a job you are qualified for at the best pay you can get regardless of your future plans. Why should you deny yourself? What if you were planning to move instead of planning on changing careers? You still have to live in the meantime. When you take a job, you're not promising them your entire future. You're promising 40 hours of work for 40 hours of pay. And we both know you will give them that, whether it's for 9 months or for 19 years. I say, go for the bucks hon. Maybe you'll be there longer than 9 months. Maybe you'll start giving massages part time until you build up a clientele. Anyway, that's my opinion FWIW.
Be careful when you inquire about unemployment that you do not mention potentially owning your own buisness in the future. That can cause difficulties in getting unemployment (or so I understood when I asked questions about it at the unemployment center... they invited everyone from the company I worked there to come in and gave a talk about unemployment since we were facing layoffs).
On the other hand, if you are recieving formal training, eg for the massage therapy, make sure to tell them. It sounded like if you are going to classes and don't tell them they can end up asking for all the money back. On the other hand, if htey think the retaining would be good for you and it is relatively short-term, they might offer to pay for it!
Good luck....
Take care of yourself and come here if you are feeling overwhlemed.
((((((Vedis))))))) Go down to the unemployment office and ask them about your rights. In NJ you receive unemployment if you are laid off or fired, if you are fired, there is an extra "waiting week" for funds, but if you are unemployed for a month, you get the waiting week $$ back anyway. Sometimes getting or not getting unemployment depends on why you were fired. Lots of times employers will phrase the reasons vaguely, sometimes you need to have an interview with the unemployment board, but it's more of a formality than anything else. I got unemployment once when the insurance agency I worked for was bought by another one and they fired all the old staff because they had their own people. They could have laid us off, but they wanted to see if they could get away with not paying their part of the unemployment, so they fired all of us. We all got unemployment anyway, we just had to have another interview with the unemployment board. They sent me my first check the next day. In NJ you cannot qualify for unemployment if you are in school full time, part time is ok. In dealing with state agencies, I feel like the less you say, the better. Patti
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