Do You Remember What It's Like to Work?

Has anyone been unemployed so long you've forgotten what it's like to work? It's funny what I used to take for granted when I was regularly employed. Cashing checks, making bank deposits, or even getting to spend some of my earnings are distant memories. Sometimes I forget what a pay check looks like.

Another thing I noticed is how rare cash as an object seems. If it wasn't for my emergency cash or wallet money, I might even forget what paper currency looks like. Sometimes in public I'll look at employees like they're a different species altogether. I look at them with a mix of envy/jealousy and also a little sadness. I wonder if they get paid enough, or if they like their jobs. Because if there's one perk to unemployment, I'm a lot freer than they are. It's kind of liberating when you don't have to fight time and traffic to clock-in every weekday, but I guess that's better than sitting at home.

That's another thing that's played with my mind, when you don't go to a job everyday, the world feels a lot smaller. Sometimes I wonder if I could survive without a job, by living extremely frugally. I've taken an interest in prepping and survival skills. I think the long term unemployed should be helped to get re-integrated into society, if that isn't too extreme an idea. Like with military veterans or prisoners. I hope someday the world will be a more compassionate place, that doesn't look at us like some untouchable social caste.

You make very valid points. Also keep in mind that the vast majority of us were pushed out of our jobs THROUGH NO FAULT OF OUR OWN! It could be as simple as not knowing the right people where we worked and/or just being unlucky enough to be in the department being eliminated when all companies were forced to cut back during the economic collapse.

The unemployed/underemployed are being treated as criminals without having committed any crime. Losing our jobs certainly wasn't a crime, but in my opinion, the way we were terminated, and then the discrimination against the unemployed that followed IS a crime!

Ponzu wrote:I think the long term unemployed should be helped to get re-integrated into society, if that isn't too extreme an idea.

That isn't too extreme at all; in fact, in an ideal society, that would happen naturally.

A lot of work skills, especially technology-based ones, become outdated and quite rapidly, too. Many of them cost money to keep going in some fashion or another -- and money is what the long-term unemployed don't have much of.

Without some sort of access to cheap or free training, there's little chance long-term unemployed individuals can stay current...nevermind fight the discrimination of being without a job for X months.

And that's hard enough to fight by itself...

But there's sadly little support available once that unemployment check is exhausted, and far too many people who believe unemployment is merely a matter of conviction and motivation.

Hell, at my last volunteering gig, I was told by one of the coordinators to not come back until I got a job.