The Haughtiness Of The Unemployed

                                                             

As of Saturday over one million Americans will stop getting a government unemployment handout.  Until Barack Hussein Obama assumed the Presidency unemployment benefits were meant to last for six  months, affording those who had lost their jobs the time to find another one.  However, because the Obama/Reid/Pelosi regime's trillion dollar pork stimulus program created only "make work" and temporary jobs our unemployment rates were horrible.  In the "throw more money at it' fashion that the liberals adore, legislation was passed to extend unemployment benefits to two years.  Of course the problem with this, human nature being what it is,  the "less willing" decided that an unemployment check, paired with food stamps and a readily available food bank, was far better than taking a job "beneath their dignity".  

Well, for five years now, the Dems have rounded up enough Republican RINOs to go along with subsidizing a huge labor pool that could have worked but chose not to.  On Saturday the orgy came to an end.  Democrats have vowed to revive the program but I don't think there's much interest in that among the larger Congressional body.

So what are these "terminally unemployed" to do?

When I retired from the Air Force in 1989 I was slotted to be "fat-catted" into a highly compensated GS-12 civilian position at the Presidio in San Francisco.  I would be working logistics war planning, a position I was well qualified for since I had performed those same duties while serving at Headquarters Pacific Air Forces…and would have been paid three times my Air Force salary.

Sadly, George Bush I instituted a federal hiring freeze and I was left jobless with few prospects on the horizon.  All of a sudden I went from managing million dollar budgets and a staff of fifty, to being unemployed.  I then went after state jobs, tested out at 110% (1OO percent on the qualification tests plus 10% veteran preference, and found myself aced out by "the good ole boy network" of buddies hiring their buddies.

So I took a job in hotel security, using my past military cops skills to get the job.  I worked at that for a couple of months then found a job as an Assistant Manager at a Waldenbooks bookstore.  My boss was a 25 year old who hated having a 40 year old working for him.   He tried his best not to train me but I outworked him and soon took his job.

Not long after that I got an offer for ever higher compensated jobs in Saudi Arabia and followed into jobs more in keeping with my extensive project management skills.

My point in all of this is this:  there is no job that is "below my dignity".  Honest work is honest work.  If you have to flip burgers, or sweep floors, or wash cars, or stock grocery shelves, do it to the best of your ability and someone will come along and see your true value and reward you for it.

While still an enlisted man in the Air Force my quest for an education was so strong that I had accumulated 210 semester hours of college credits through night courses and still had not earned a baccalaureate degree.  I was working for a Captain who respected my work and thought it tragic that I was not putting all of that formal education to work.  One day he came over to my desk and said "grab your cap and come with me".  We got in his car and he drove me down to the Registrar's office at Chaminade University where I was taking part time courses at night.  As we sat down with the Registrar my boss asked her what I needed to complete my degree.  She pored over my many transcripts and said "he has all the courses required but he must attend in residence for six months to get our degree."  We then went back to the base and into the base education office where my boss signed me up for a six month leave of absence from the Air Force to attend college full time.  

While I was attending to those courses my boss was doing the military paperwork to get me into Officer's Training School with my shiny new college degree!  

And that's how I got a college degree, an Air Force Officer's commission, higher pay, higher responsibility, higher job satisfaction….all because I worked hard, studied hard, and someone came along and recognized my value.  

During my life I have worked the grapes, cotton and peach fields, worked in a box making plant, worked in an ice plant, painted fire hydrants, failed at plucking chickens, worked as a bar bouncer, mowed lawns, stocked grocery shelves, performed airport security at a major international airport and kept the whores off the premises of a hotel and managed a bookstore.  All of those jobs were my "non-professional" jobs…but all of them had value and bring as much dignity to them as you demand!

So the only advice to the million plus folks who lost their "green check" on Saturday is "get off your ass, take a job, any job, work hard even as you are looking for something better, and, for god's sake, have a sense of pride and get on with your life…there is no pride when you're sucking on the government tit!"  Someone will come along and give you the job of your dreams if you're willing to stand on your own two feet and work hard to earn it!