No need to be sorry that you struck a nerve. Nothing I love better than a good debate. Funny you should say, though, that anyone who can't just suck it up when money is needed is considered unreliable and unemployable, because they sure are in good company. I could give you example after example of our greatest who had that characteristic. Buckminster Fuller and Tom Wolfe. Madonna. J.K. Rowlings. Whoopie Goldberg. Steve Jobs. Often these are the folks who make good entrepreneurs or self-employed, which is just what the original writer is proposing to be, and me too for that matter. I'll work temp to gather in a few quid, but I'll only work short term assignments, because I'm really not open to long terming the type of jobs that temp agencies have.
But you are not a successful entrepreneur, nor a successful artist, author etc and until you are I don't see why it's so great a leap to consider someone who is unable to stay employed should be considered unreliable or unemployable if they are unable to concede that it just might be something to do with their own attitude. If there is nothing missing in your skillset, you are capable of the job and can put your best foot forward- you will remain in a job (unless they literally have no more work and let you go, but this is different to being fired). I am sure all of the above had to do things they didn't want/like in order to progress or just to pay the bills.
Second point. Who said she was whinging (me, I'll whine if anything, whing is one word I won't adopt)? Could be a person just finds it hard to put on a false face. Some folks are just easy to read and kind of like themselves that way. My experience temping is that often the jobs were things that required a lot of waiting around, like answering phones when they weren't ringing (wander off to ask for more to do and you aren't doing the job you werre hired for), printing out vast numbers of letters and envelopes to later be stuffed, Xeroxing and Xeroxing and Xeroxing (again, wander off and you're not doing the job). I'll grant you that there's usually something else you can do with a permanent job, but that's not always welcome either. Especially when you happen to be innovative and think up your own more efficient way of doing something. Also, sometimes trying to change yourself and things around so that what doesn't fit will fit is just putting off the right solution to the problem. I was good at science, got my grant funded on the first go round, which almost never happens, but it wasn't good for me.
Putting on a "false face" in my view can also mean being a professional and just getting on with it. Every profession in the world has to do this and it has nothing to do with being easy to read, I think it takes a great deal of strength to get on with ones job day in day out whilst maintaining that professionalism.
3rd point. Why go for the job in the first place if it's not a good fit? Same reason they chose you for it. They thought it might be a decent fit and so did you. Both employers and employees make that mistake all the time because neither have working crystal balls, employers need workers now and don't always have the ideal candidates to choose from and employees need money and don't always have the ideal candidate jobs available. Why blame anybody? Both ways? I didn't understand that. What are the two ways you're talking about?
You are the one talking about responding to boredom in a job by not wanting to ask for extra tasks in case you dont like what you are given and not having a life beyond 2 hours to get home etc etc, my point was, if this is the case, why apply for the jobs in the first place, if you are clear you are not going to be suited to them. On the one hand you say you only take short term jobs you are suited too on the other you say they are boring jobs you can't really stick too- that is what I mean about having it two ways, you either want a job or you don't, if you get one, change it, improve it, whatever you need to do. I have spent time where I have been bored, but I was always taught to take the initiative and I can always find something valuable to do for someone, whether it be extra filing or creating new systems, there is always something.
know you're trying to be practical. I think that being practical leads an awful lot of people to lives of quiet desperation, and that being impractical often leads to interesting lives. How did you manage to make the leap across the pond at all without suspending practicality for a moment or two?.
DJC
I find it essential to be practical in order to maintain employment and keep my bills paid. No question I can afford to be fired from jobs for the employment history, my own well being and my bank balance and future plans. It also means I am in equal partnership with my husband, we are a team and in order to keep team dawn viable, we both remain employable, if that means Burger King next week, so be it. I do not consider myself above any work, there are jobs I prefer not to do, but I am not too artistic, bored or creative to remain in them when bills need to be met.
And I don't need to suspend that practicality to make the leap across the pond- I was born here! I have lived and worked in both countries and whilst I have little experience of the current U.S job market, I do remember being praised for my work ethic over there and if I was posting similar experiences as in this thread, I cannot imagine any employer (American or otherwise) would take me seriously, which is the point I was trying to make.
