Bullet-Dodging, Part 1

Now that we’re all back on unemployment, thanks to yesterday’s extension, the challenge now is staying on unemployment.  This is harder than you might think, as the rules state that you have to apply to at least two jobs a week, and if, like me, you’re indiscriminately shotgunning your resume out there, odds are that eventually someone will offer you a job.

This, obviously, is not acceptable.  Now people might say, “but you only make $250 a week on unemployment; at a shitty office job, you could make three or four times that!  It doesn’t make financial sense to not take a job!”

Well, let’s go to the numbers.  Let’s say I make $1000 a week as some kind of midlevel office lackey.  Divide that by a 40 hour workweek, and I’m pulling in around $25 an hour.  Not horrible, I suppose.  BUT.  On unemployment I’m pulling in $250 a week, for a zero hour workweek.  Do the math and I’m averaging infinity dollars per hour.  My calculator literally crashed when I tried to work it out.  I had to take out the battery and then reinsert it.

So why would I take a huge decline in quality of life AND a massive (nigh infinite) pay cut just to re-enter the workaday world?  It just doesn’t make good financial sense … and good financial sense is what this blog is all about.

But how do you avoid the dreaded job offer when the rules clearly state (and you should never break rules – it’s against the rules!) that you have to apply to two jobs a week?  Well, I’m going to go into that in the next blog post.  Because frankly, this topic is far to important to try and cover in a single blog post.  Also, the shitty Photoshop job above really exhausted my last reserves of energy and I need a beer.