I feel like society just wants me to rot in poverty all because of a mistake I made so long ago.. When I was 21 or so, I was young and stupid and got a possession charge for coke. This was my only charge ever, and after that I cleaned up my life, did the necessary requirements of supervision/treatment, and been clean for nearly 8 years. The local newspaper posted an online arrest article and my mugshot about me when It happened, and to this day the author refuses to take it down and it’s been ruining my life.
For context I was 21 when it happened and I just turned fcking 30. I haven’t been paid a living wage my whole life because as soon as anyone googles my name that’s what comes up. I finished a degree in social sciences a few years ago, have a decade of administrative experience mainly working for small family business was and that’s the only reason I was able to maintain employment .. a small family business doesnt judge as much or have time to judge me about my past. To supplement these jobs for those years, I’ve had to work at restaurants and bars cause living on 14-15 an hour isn’t easy but it was stable and full time. Then Covid happened and everything really just went downhill from there for me. I lost both my jobs at the small business where I was an admin and the restaurant I was also working at shut down permanently.
People don’t understand how hard it is to re enter the job search as someone with a prior drug charge. Yes I was able to work all those years before at the place I was at because I had established trust with them and they knew i was young when it happened and that I had my life cleaned up. But when interviewing for “new jobs” post Covid, I literally interviewed for 300 positions and got not one call back and this was not on just indeed, I personally reached out to local positions as well. Tried being open about it and got job offers rescinded with no explanation why.
Finally I had gotten employment at a diabetic supply company in September of 2021 last year as a customer care specialist helping people on Medicare qualify for x supplies. I was really good at the job and the owners did not care about my past because they were ex offenders themselves who had been to prison and everything (I only got probation) and cleaned up their lives and treated me like a person and accepted me for my past and focused on my actual skills. I ended up training a whole team of employees there. Simultaneously I ended up going back to school by getting a grant and aid for a 9 month program in medical administration/for careers in a wide range of fields like billing/codinghealth& human services and just finished their courses for it. All of a sudden shit hit the fan out of nowhere.
The job I had finally got pre Covid at the diabetic supply company had to immediately shut down because of some huge mistake the owner made and got flagged by Medicare. They say they’re supposed to re open in September soon but I’m doubting it. I wasn’t worried at first… cause I had money saved and was supposed to start a part time internship thru the vocational school to get me into the field, but they haven’t been helping me and I found out my school is basically a scam and I’ve now been on my own looking for an actual job because now I definitely can’t afford to do a free internship. I can’t find either. Nobody wants to hire me cause of my horrible online reputation. It’s insane cause I come up clean on a background check because it’s been a certain amount of time.. it’s the article on google that’s killing me cause I’m forever frozen in time on the internet as a 21 year old with a drug offense and mugshot and people fail to realize I’m a 30 year old woman now. And you’d think I murdered someone with the way employers act when i explain that it happened so long ago and to look at my recent accomplishments.
And no, I can’t work at Amazon or go back to restaurants because all of this time I’ve been unemployed caused me to be depressed and blow up/gain an enormous amount of weight and I literally ruined my health. I have chronic pain in my lower legs and developed PAD in my late 20s. I was formally at least a healthy young woman with a record. Now I’m obese and deteriorating at just 30 yrs old with a prior record which makes me double unemployable because I cannot be on my feet that long. And god dammit I’m 30 years old! I clearly learned from my mistake. I have 2 degrees one of which I just completed trying to “better myself and learn a new skill” I have all this prior experience.
I do have adhd and despite pushing to manage it, I feel like there’s just something about me that makes me different. I wonder if maybe it’s not my old drug charge stopping me from employment and hope maybe by having adhd I can feel better knowing there’s something scientifically wrong with me so I have an answer.. but I know my bad luck is based on a bunch of reasons, my decade old old online arrest article/bad internet Reputation being the main thing, combined with the fact that the months go by of me being out of a job with my career certificate I just got going to waste, making me more and more unemployable
So I’m giving up. Fuck working and fuck the whole interview job search culture in general. People are so confused how someone like me ends up at this point being literally completely downhill, unemployable for no good reason and this is how it happens. I just turned fucking 30 and bc of this dumb mistake I made as a 21 yr old by possessing a small amount of a controlled substance society’s shunned me fucked me and pushed me to this point for no good reason to where my life is basically over now…I’m unemployable, on ebt/food stamps and Medicaid, I’ve been surviving off my poshmark account and selling content on Instagram. I have no idea what I’m going to do come October when my savings for rent run out.
And what kills me is that there’s millennials quitting their high paying jobs as nurses to become content creators on tik tok. But I can’t get at least a simple admin /office job or a job a all that gives me a living wage.