Amen to that...!

Steve Gilliard at daily Kos says it like it is!

This is the kind of economic crisis which will trump any temporary gains from the war. Most Americans will be happy we "won" and then will wonder why their bills are going up when they can't get a raise. But the severe cuts we're facing in New York haven't been seen since the 1970's. The official unemployment rate is 8.8 percent. The real rate is at least two points, maybe four points higher. Personally, most of the people I know working are either freelancing or doing spot work. I could go to dinner with my friends and only one or two would have full-time work with benefits.

I can attest to bleak job prospects in New York City. I just returned to California after spending almost 8 months fruitlessly looking for work in the Big Apple. In that time, everyone I knew was either (1)unemployed; (2) working a service job (Starbucks or a variation); (3)an unpaid intern, subsisting on unemployment, savings and/or a credit card; (4)a student (the lucky ones!); (5)a temp (the unlucky ones); or, (6)employed at a job they hated but were terrified to leave for fear of not finding another.

...No, wait! I just remembered one person who, I believe, was happy and satisfied and relatively well-paid in her job.

During the months I beat the online-pavement in NYC, I suffered through two temp assignments. (I hunted for more, registering with six temp agencies, but to no avail.) The first, was to be "on-call" for Morgan Stanley.

Ohhh-kay.... I squared my shoulders, donned my suit and tie and showed up on-time in their Times Square high-rise, prepared to sell my soul to corporate America to pay my rent.

Only, one other temp arrived there before me. The single assignment that came down the pike that morning went to him.

Shit...! But all was not lost. Oh no! For it seems MS has a vetting procedure for temps, and I was offered the opportunity to complete that while I was there.

First, I was asked to fill out an affidavit, detailing every job I'd ever held, every address I'd ever called mine and every name I'd ever been hailed by. Next, I was handed a permission slip to sign, allowing the company to perform a full-scale criminal background check on me.

That's not all. I tromped through freezing rain to a nearby auxiliary office, where I followed instructions and made crisp, black ink copies of every single finger print and both my palms, presumably to facilitate the aforementioned background check. Still there was more. I slogged back through the rain to yet another location, where I was required--to qualify for a future temp position, remember, that had yet to materialize--to pee into a cup to prove that I wasn't--at least on that morning--a user of illegal substances--at least, ones they test for.

This entire ordeal took four hours--I was paid for three, at $15/hour. Afterwards, I was not offered a job (despite almost daily calls to the temp agency) until months later, when a five-day Morgan Stanley assignment was dangled before my eyes (after yet another required interview!). Unfortunately--or fortunately, however you look at it--I already had my ticket to return to California before that week was out.

My second temp assignment, for Weider Publications (of Men's Health Magazine fame), lasted six weeks, during which American Media, Inc. (of National Enquirer fame), who had purchased Weider just before I started there, secretly prepared to lay off a substantial number of Weider employees. Which they proceeded to do, with no warning, the last week I worked there.

What a bloodbath. In a matter of hours, while large, beefy guys in blue polo-shirts, AMI's logo emblazoned over their hearts, roamed the halls in twos and threes, making sure no one made a scene or tried to cut out with company property, employees were called in, one-by-one or sometimes in groups, to be told their fate. People were crying in the halls, stumbling around, white as ghosts, dazed expressions on their faces. Name plates vanished from doorways, that's how you could tell who was gone. Rumors went wild. "So-and-so was out! No, in! No, out!" Who knew?! On one desk, a stainless-steel coffee mug sat sentry for days; its owner had brought it in, steaming, to work, plunked it down in anticipation of a savory, busy morning, only to then disappear in the blink of an eye.

Last to be laid off, at least from my temporary perspective, was my boss. A senior vice-president, she'd known the mass-firings were coming. She embraced them as necessary. Good for the company, even! She told me that, when she still didn't expect to get the axe herself.

Then sometime between Thursday evening when I left work and Friday morning, they gave her her pink slip. Was she shocked! She put up a good face. And, with her connections, she'll surely land on her feet. Not to mention, AMI probably gave her some sort of golden parachute.

But for that one day, her last eight hours at Weider Publications, she walked the hallways, ashen-faced like us other working stiffs, and with trembling lips that even her forced, brave smile couldn't quite conceal.

I was told at 4:45 p.m. that Friday, not to return on Monday.

To end this pitiful tale of personal woe, lest anyone out there believe my arduous job search was due to some sort of blighted employment history or terrible skills, rather than New York's serious recession, let me say this. I was offered interviews for both the first two job applications I filed in California, and then was offered the first job I interviewed for. A permanent job. With benefits, paid holidays and retirement. Retirement, that is, unless GW and his global-capitalist cronies decide to raid that particular retirement fund, too, for more money to go out and invade some other unlucky developing nation sitting on a goldmine of oil.