Stalking the Salvation Army

I’ve been looking for full-time work since the end of August and today is the first of January.

Back in spring of 2012, I found work while gimping around in an orthopedic boot that ran from my knee to the toes on my left foot. I started as a volunteer desktop publisher for an environmental non-profit at the suggestion of a state job counselor who said I had to "get something" on my resume that was more recent than 2008 -- the last time I worked full time. I volunteered part time while firing off resumes and icing and elevating my foot three times a day.

I got a direct-hire temp position in Kirkland working for a mobile phone app company. This was amazing as I knew zero about smart phones but the boss was a sweetie and he brought me on because of my tech writing and Photoshop skills. I learned so much about smart phones (Android, iPhone, Blackberries, etc.) that I don't think I’ll ever own one.

Literally, as the smart phone job was ending, I got a call from UW asking me if I was interested in another direct-hire temp position. I interviewed, snagged it and worked for a month at a living wage editing HeadStart manuals.

In early September I wasn’t too worried. I’d landed two contract jobs one after another and felt confident that a third was just waiting to be unearthed on Dice.com or old, reliable Craigslist.

I worked part-time for university parking enforcement in September and early October. It involved a ton of stress working in the worst possible traffic and at 65 bucks a day, didn't even cover my rent. I took it out of desperation and because I thought it would earn me kudos with a particular HR manager and hopefully a real job. It didn't.

While I was at the  job, a guy who was a former lab tech with UW Medical Center told me a Great Recession horror story. He’d been laid off when the department he worked in had budget cuts in January 2010. He had worked for UW for 10 years. He went on Unemployment. His condo was in good order, no scary mortgages hanging over his head. He drew Unemployment and worked for the UW temp agency several months out of the year. He started to get worried when he interviewed for another lab tech job in another department at the university. He did three interviews. Three. On the third one the interviewer told him it was down to him and one other lab tech and she not only had experience in the special computer software they would be using to log blood samples, she had helped write the program. “Guess who got the job?” he said as we stood in the break room on a sunny September afternoon. He, like me, was in his forties. The woman he was up against for the lab tech job was maybe 29 or 30 and, he said, she was pretty. He’d seen her in the hall near the interviewer’s office. “Most of the jobs on the UW Hires site?” he added, “They average 200 qualified applicants for every position posted.” He had a former boyfriend who worked for UW Human Resources. He's on Tier II Unemployment now and I don't know if he's found permanent work.

In October, I pawned my Marin bike. I’d bought it used in 2006 and then paid Recycled Cycles $150 to custom build me a Mavic rear wheel because the original was shot. I’d put on a used rear rack and attached my panniers. I had a way to get around Seattle that wasn’t bus dependent and faster than walking. I sold the bike to a creepy sports pawn place for $100. It was worth about three times that. I did this so I could pay my electric bill and buy 20 bucks worth of groceries.

The same day, I walked from the bottom of U District all the way through Fremont and Ballard along the Burke-Gilman trail. I looked for HELP WANTED signs and jotted down names of likely print shops or design firms that might hire me as a typesetter or similar. I noted about six, hunted down their websites and fired off query emails and attached resumes. I never heard a word.

The following weeks, I went back to one UPS Store in Fremont twice with a copy of the company’s online application filled out (all five pages of it) and my resume. I went back to the UPS Store in Ballard that had a HELP WANTED sign three times. I hit up the Trader Joe’s next to the UPS Store three times as well. Finally, in November, that Trader Joe’s sent me a little card thanking me for applying for work but 'no thanks'. It was kind of like a cease and desist order.

I had about 20 or 25 outstanding submissions for various administrative assistant, desktop publisher and receptionist positions on UW Hires websites. I stopped visiting the website in November because I got tired of reading the words: CONSIDERED, REJECTED next to the title of the position I’d tried for.

In October I went to the new Target downtown and sat through their moronic application at a computer kiosk in the store. I don’t know how many times you can ask an applicant ‘have you ever stolen a paper clip?’ but that’s what their application consisted of. They rejected my application via email about three days later, no doubt this had something to do with their credit check (I'm $90,000 in the hole according to various student loan collection agencies).

I have been dropped by a prominent staffing vendor and picked back up and submitted for technical writing positions with Microsoft, Honeywell and Nintendo twice in 2012. This HR firm has dibs on about 75-percent of all the new job listings flown by Microsoft. Anyone who attempts to apply to Microsoft directly is a fool. Their HR site receives something like 1,000-2,000 resumes for job listings per day. At least that's what the HR site project manager told me when I interviewed with her for a content editor position in late 2008 right before the Recession and my back injury kicked in. For companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Boeing the only way in is through a "vendor" (aka temp/headhunter agency). In corporatized America, nobody is hired directly. Why should companies risk liability when they can foist workman's comp, potential insurance and any labor issues off on generic temp agencies happy to screen thousands of IT applicants via their minimum-wage "job counselors" most of whom don't know the first thing about the positions they interview candidates for?

Around Halloween, I applied for a minimum-wage store clerk position with Office Depot downtown. I prefer working downtown because I can walk there. At the end of the interview, the nice store manager said: “Thanks for coming in. Boy, I hope I can get through all of these by Thursday.” I looked at him and he said, “You’re the first of 25 applicants I have to interview by Thursday.” This was for a minimum-wage job. The store had no HELP WANTED sign in the window and there were no job postings for that store on their corporate website. The manager told me he’d gotten over 50 walk-in applicants in October alone.

A few weeks later a temp agency in Renton, that had screwed up a job submission for me with Boeing (they sent another applicant's resume), contacted me and asked if I wanted to interview for a job with Xerox. The interview was held at Xerox’s sales office near Southcenter Mall. It was a 35-minute bus ride followed by a stroll along an express way with no sidewalk at 7 am. The interview went well. The lady liked me. I asked her how many vendors had flown resumes at her. She said, “about a hundred”. Out of that sea of applicants, she’s chosen “about two dozen” to interview. I was the first one of those two dozen she interviewed. This was for a $12/hour job working in a copy store in downtown Seattle for 18 months. The job contract would lock me in at 12 an hour, zero benefits, zero paid holidays, etc. I was told by the temp agency, if I made a peep about the wage or non-existent benefits they would simply replace me and send Xerox somebody else. 

Infographic courtesy The Atlantic, Feb. 2012

I didn't just try for downtown sales, low-end jobs. I've been trying for the more-appropriate-to-my-skills positions as well. I applied for an administrative position with Hugo House in late June while working for the mobile phone app company (I also did two in-person interviews for tech writer positions while still at the mobile app gig because I knew it was going to end). This would have been a non-profit, artsy job manning a front desk, answering phones and making copies. I got an email from Hugo House concerning this position in August. After ‘months of review’ the email said, the director had picked an applicant. They received over 250 resumes for the position. The person they chose was under 35 and an MFA candidate. What a surprise.

Here’s some of the places I’ve been online and in person:

• Woodland Park Zoo (cashiers)

• Fred Meyer (shot down due to bad credit, thanks Sallie Mae)

• Safeway (anything)

• Starbucks (barista)

• Tenzing Momo herbal shop (sale clerk)

• Microsoft via six different vendors (technical writer, content provider, SDK documentation)

• Shakti Vinyasa Yoga in Ballard (P/T front desk)

• City of Seattle (Police file clerk or fingerprint tech)

• Nordstrom’s corporate (over 29 desktop publishing, tech positions and counting)

• Macy’s (Xmas freight thrower, interviewed and told staff "full up")

• Bed, Bath & Beyond (sales clerk)

• Enterprise Solutions (vendor for Microsoft tech writer)

• Amazon (technical writer, interviewed with them FOUR times, have been submitted about 20 times for multiple content, editor and writer positions)

• Starbucks corporate (digital marketing)

• Getty Images (via Eastside vendor for image editor/cataloger)

• F5 (via my old vendor for tech writer)

• Avue Digital/USJobs (Forest Service positions – I’m too old)

• Catholic Charity Services (front desk, homeless shelter, all 12 openings)

• Navy civilian positions (they can't hire anyone with defaulted student loans)

• Bar in Ballard (no recent experience, though I've bartended in the past)

• Cafe Laddro (no recent barista experience, though I did it in 2002) 

• Seattle Goodwill (over 10 different positions) 

These are just the ones I can actually remember. The other 200  since September are a blur. Usually they were law offices looking for clerks or architectural/engineering firms looking for Adobe Creative Suite savvy people or chiropractor’s offices looking for secretaries.

One that sticks out from early December was the Salvation Army. I started by filling out an app with their Rehab clinic down in SoDo. Then I bussed all the way to their admin offices in Shoreline. Twice. To apply for a bell ringer position. Yes, they actually pay seasonal temps 9 an hour to stand outside and ring the bell. I phone stalked the bell ringer coordinator, called her every day for a week trying to get on. I then filled out a third application and applied with another Salvation Army admin office in lower Queen Anne. The HR person was nice, appeared sympathetic. She asked me if I’d talked to their Emergency Rental Assistance administrator. I told her what I really needed was a JOB so I wouldn’t have to apply for emergency services. When I mentioned I'd tried to get on as a courtesy clerk at Metropolitan Market, she told me her husband was a deli clerk there and that their 'hiring process is really slow'. This was supposed to make me feel better?

Interesting factoid: non-profits are just like regular businesses. They are just as overwhelmed with applicants for the few to positions they have open.

So here I am, rolling into January. It’s that awkward time of year between Xmas and NYE when nobody answers their phone, several local food banks are closed and half the temp agencies aka vendors are on vacation.

I still just want the same thing I wanted for Xmas. It’s the same thing I wanted for Halloween. I’m pushing 50, I have DJD in both knees from all the damage I did to them running up hills and jogging hundreds of miles on asphalt as a wildland firefighter. I’m tired of kneeling.

Happy Kwanzaa.

Validation

I've been going through a super tough time financially for the last several months. The old bugaboos of unemployment and possible homelessness have stopped at my place just in time for the Hallmark Holidays. Along with them, the Specters of Past Crises have come a calling.

I had a conversation with one of my older brothers about four years ago (this is how often we talk). I told him about a stint I had working as a contract "rural carrier" for the post office back in late 2000. I mentioned the shift: usually 5:30am to 6:30pm and I mentioned the fact that I rarely had so much as a 15-minute break unless I pulled off of Mount Rose Hwy to stuff half a sandwich into my mouth, and then gunned my Hyundai on to the next clump of frozen mailboxes. His response was "I don't believe that."

I'm pretty sure my brother -- who once was a cop who got fired for beating a handcuffed suspect -- has never actually worked for the post office. I'm also pretty sure he hasn't scrambled to find a Day Job since about 1992 when he sold his company for several million dollars and dipped his toe into the gambling-addict world of day trading.

Likewise, I had a similar conversation with an older relative (they're all older than me, I was my parent's mid-40s surprise). She spent years struggling to make it and did well, has a nice home and some nice real estate income. But she did this struggling and this doing well when it was still possible to do that in this country. I was talking about my desperate three-year stint at a state university in Nevada, in the early 1990s, and how catch-as-catch-can my summer and Christmas break jobs were. My relative interjected: "But your dad helped you, right?" I explained he'd given me a couple grand when I'd first moved to Reno and that was it. My father never offered to pay for a single mind-numbing course I took at that fourth-rate college. "Really?" my relative asked, leaning in, like she was a detective and I a questionable witness. Finally she sat back in her chair and said, "Well, I don't believe that."

I don't think I'm unique. In fact, I think half the reason American society is as Depression-era stratified as it is right now is because of disbelief. Like alcoholism or drug addiction, 99-percent of the poverty problem is denial on the part of the Haves that the Have Nots even exist.

I want to reassure everybody that the real reason I can't find work is because I'm not looking hard enough. It's weirdly comfortable to the Haves if they could just blame me for my poverty. But the last interview I went on was for a $12-an-hour copy store job. The company had flown the job announcement on a website (everything is online now) and nearly one hundred vendors (headhunter/temp agencies) had responded. I was the first of 25-plus applicants the nice executive in Tukwila interviewed. One of 25. For a job that pays just a dollar above the Washington state minimum wage. No benefits. Contract would be for 18 months effectively locking me out of any health benefits and/or wage increases for over a year should I be blessedly lucky enough to be the chosen one.

So while the Haves continue to live in denial, I and half the rest of the country, slide deeper into long-term unemployment, poverty and possibly homlessness.

Merry Christmas.

What'd you get for Thanksgiving?

I got seven (nearly identical) letters from the Department of Education right before Turkey Day. Like hundreds of thousands of others, I am a victim of predatory student loans.

Here's a little FAQ.

1. Why did I take out student loans? Because I had been going to college part-time for years, taking 100-level classes at community colleges, etc. I was 25 and working unbelievably low-paying jobs. I naively believed the myth you can't earn a decent living without a four-year degree.

2. Why did you take out loans for every school year? Every time I tried to get a SEOG, BEOG or an addition PELL, I was told I didn't qualify and/or there were no funds left. The UNR Financial Aid office kept stacks of private loan applications at their front counter and they would shove the stack toward me. Also, I tried for several scholarships but the person primarily responsible for deciding who got which scholarship in my department was a mean shriveled dick who hated me. He got a thrill out of causing kids to drop out of the Reynolds School of Journalism.

3. Why major in print journalism? Naively, I had no idea how desperately underpaid 90% of people working in journalism are or that the entire newspaper industry was a house of cards that would collapse when the World Wide Web reached critical mass. Today, print journalism is ranked No. 1 in lowest pay per education followed by public school teacher and nurse. To quote P.J. O'Rourke: "Thanks to the internet, I'm no longer a (magazine) staff writer. I'm a 'content provider' and I'm supposed to work for free."

4. When you realized that journalism was a lose/lose situation, why didn't you change your major? I tried to twice and was told I could not by the academics counselors.

5. Why didn't you work your way through school? Are you kidding?! On five bucks an hour? I could barely make my rent working 50 hours a week at Kinko's, let alone magically produce a couple grand every semester for tuition + books. The three years I went to college full-time I worked part-time jobs, one of them was as an unpaid 'intern' at a local paper. I also worked for the college newspaper, which was virtually unpaid, but necessary as without 'clippings' I couldn't build a portfolio and without a portfolio I couldn't get a job as a reporter.

6. Why didn't your family help you out? Good question. My mother was retired and living on a microscopic pension from her government file clerk job. She was poorer than I was and died while I was in the middle of going to college. My father and stepmother had all kinds of money but, as my friend Louis Hornstein once said: "You know how rich people get rich? They don't like to share."

7. Didn't you realize you'd have to pay the loans back some day? Yes, I did. I imagined myself the variety editor of a mid-sized paper in a second-string market making $40,000/year while writing movie reviews and somehow making monthly payments of $300-$500/month probably for the rest of my life. Reality sunk in when my first newspaper job paid just $8.50/hr, I averaged 100 miles per week on my disintegrating truck and I got my first real bill from Sallie Mae for over $1,600 per month ... on the interest.

8. Are we (American taxpayers) paying for your defaulted loans? Yes and no. Supposedly, the Dept of Ed guaranteed half of my loans. So when the loans defaulted, theoretically the Dept of Ed paid my original loan writer, CitiBank Student Loans. (CitiBank was a recipient of the Wall Street bailout orchestrated by the Bush Administration and the Federal Reserve.)

9. Why are you reluctant to make payments right now? Because of the above reason. My original loan amounts HAVE BEEN PAID by the Dept of Ed to CitiBank. Any money I send to Sallie Mae is basically gravy, it's strictly a for-profit collection agency, any money they collect goes toward the operation of their 1,000+ collection agencies which engage in horrendous, illegal collection practices because the Truth in Lending Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act and a dozen other federal laws do NOT apply to Sallie Mae.

10. What's the big deal, why not declare bankruptcy? I can't. Basically the year I left college, 1995, was the year Sallie Mae had the bankruptcy laws re-written. Student loans are the only debt that cannot legally be discharged through bankruptcy court.

11. So you don't pay your loans, so what? What's happened is Sallie Mae has reported my bad credit to every one. I literally cannot get a monthly cell phone plan because my credit rating is so bad. I can't get a lease on a decent apartment because of my credit. Even potential employers run credit checks on job applicants. I was told by a headhunter that I was "barred" from ever applying for a job with Amazon.com again. Ditto for T-Mobile. All of these companies deny they are doing this but if you've ever applied for a job, you know they often ask for your social security number. My ss# is tied to my loans for all eternity. Even government contract jobs are off-limits to me. If I was fortunate to land a gig with the USFS, BLM or even the military, Sallie Mae would be garnishing up to 60% of my pay within three month's time. I have a friend who is in the Army. He took out a tiny student loan years ago when he was only six months into his military career. The lenders sold his loan to Sallie Mae and a few years later they seized his entire Army pay for several months. He nearly lost his home and car.

12. What are you going to do? I don't know. But in the mean time, along with Alan Collinge, Robert Applebaum and the folks over at DEFAULT, I'm going to tell everybody I can about this crime and warn every college freshman and every parent of college-age kids NOT to fall into this trap because financially you will never escape.

13. Surely they're not that bad, can't you reason with collection agents? I have a high school friend who took out a tiny student loan back in 1986 for about $1,200. She then had a baby, went through a bad divorce and stopped attending community college. Six years later, while she was on welfare and trying to raise her then 5-year-old daughter, the student loansharks tracked her down. She started making payments to them, fell behind a few times, but kept going all while working two full-time jobs and raising a child. One day the loansharks called her. They told her they were going to garnish her wages. She told them if they did, she would quit both her jobs and go back on welfare. They went back and forth, finally they said they would take her income tax return (again). Ultimately, she paid over $3,500 on a loan which originally was $1,200. Yes, they're that bad.

14. But if you contact the loan collection agencies things will improve, right? Let me tell you another story. While I was a temp employee for an airplane company in Seattle, one of the collection agents called my temp agency with 'urgent information concerning a sick relative' of mine. The collection agent persuaded a receptionist at my temp agency into giving out my business cell phone. This was a cell phone provided by the airplane company I worked for and was for business only. The collection agent called me under the guise of telling me my grandmother had died! I don't HAVE any living grandparents!!! When one of my on-site supervisors found out a collection agency had gotten access to my business cell number, she hit the roof. I was nearly fired and my temp agency nearly lost the contract.

Thanks to the economy, up until a few months ago I've been on unemployment for over a year and a half. Right now, I'm currently undergoing physical therapy for a back injury and I hopefully will be physically able to return to work again ... if I can find any.

None of the original loan amounts listed in the letter (transcribed below) matches my original loans. When I went to UNR, I could not take out more than $2,300 max from Citibank per loan per semester, and only two of these per semester. After "processing fees" I usually got a check of about $2,200. Toward the end, when UNR's tuition tripled in just two years, I was getting even less as the Financial Aid office deducted any tuition before I got a check for the remainder.

Apparently, Sallie Mae has some how managed to sell my loans back to the Dept of Ed with the interest rates attached as principal. So I'm guessing the Dept of Ed paid Sallie Mae for my original loan amounts (or whatever number they gave them). This is the ultimate shell game for a corporation. Or rather the ultimate Three-Card Monty.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
November 18, 2010
The U.S. Department of Education now holds the defaulted student loan from Citibank NA SLC to attend University of Nevada, Reno for which you are responsible. The entire outstanding balance on this loan is now due. You will also be liable for the costs of collecting this loan. These charges can add substantially to the amount needed to satisfy your debt. (Actually, they've tripled it.)

The department wants you to know that paying your debt by a mutually agreeable installment plan may make your loan(s) eligible for loan rehabilitation or payoff through consolidation, which will remove your loan(s) from default status and may improve your credit rating, and will make you eligible for additional Title IV student financial assistance. (My loans were consolidated when Sallie Mae bought them from CitiBank Student Loans in July 2000).

To remedy your default status, you can pay the total amount due immediately (follow the instructions on the above coupon), or contact our customer service representative to enter into an acceptable repayment agreement or to find out additional information on the benefits of the department's loan "rehabilitation" programs. You may contact our customer service center at 1-800-***-****. (Where did I put that six-inch stack of 100-dollar bills?)

All of the department's repayment opportunities are designed to assist you in remedying your defaulted student loan status.

Failure on your part to repay your debt may result in the department moving against you with one or all of the following collection measures:

• We will report your default status to national credit reporting agencies; this may hurt your ability to obtain further credit. (Too late, Sallie Mae already has.)
• We can refer your debt to a collection agency, and charge you the costs incurred by the department in having that agency collect this debt. These costs are currently up to 25% of the principal and interest owed on your loan. The department applies any payments you make first to these costs, and then to your loan balance. This will increase the cost to you of paying off your loan by up to 25%.
• We can notify your employer to initiate wage garnishment; (Again, too late. Sallie Mae did that while I was making monthly payments to them.)
• We can refer your debt to the U.S. Attorney for litigation; (So they can ship me off to debtor's prison???)
• We can perform computer matches with other federal agencies to determine if you are a government employee or recipient of other federal aid for purposes of offsetting all or a percentage of these funds; (See? If I manage to land a government job, they'll take every dime I make.)
• We can refer your debt to the Department of Treasury for offset of federal funds due you (including your federal income tax refund). (Again, see what I mean? They have more power than the IRS.)

To avoid our reporting this loan to the credit bureaus as in default, you have 60 days from the date of this letter to repay this loan in full, make satisfactory arrangements to repay and actually make the first payment under this arrangement, or to request an administrative review.

To request review, an explanation of this debt, copies of documents, or an opportunity to dispute this debt, you must send a written request to the following address: (Note: the Dept may use a contractor to provide information, arrange repayment terms and process payments.)

U.S. Department of Education
PO Box ----
Greenville, TX 75403
Sincerely,
Dwight Vigna