Due to the lack of hiring in my town, which is close to rural country, it has taken me months of applications and facing the possibility of homelessness, just trying to survive long enough with no income to see if a job would ever call, especially with all social programs clogged up with long wait times (1-2 years waitlist!). Numerous times I was contemplating suicide thinking it just wasn't worth it. But finally I got a call for a warehouse job and felt relieved I could buy food, pay bills, and other things I needed I had been struggling with, and was just about to run out of resources.
Things went well at first, I passed the interview, was shown around, and was given a run down of responsibilities two days in a row. I come back to work expecting to get started, but when I arrived i was told to do optional trainings on a computer instead, and only given a 6 hour shift (was expecting 8 hours). I was then lectured by the head manager who told me that I was prevented from getting started because I needed to have shoes that could handle slippery services he called. These types of shoes are expensive where I am because we don't have many chain stores that sell clothes people are used to elsewhere, only Target and Nordstrom, so the only store that sells these types of shoes around me is the local Mens shoe warehouse. Tried my luck at thrift stores too, and unsurprisingly they didn't have these type of shoes.
I talked with the head boss, but he wouldn't help me or come to an alternative. He told me that while I was not informed about this earlier, he is not allowed by the company to help for the required attire, nor can he personally loan me anything as it was against policy. He said I have to come back with the shoes next time, or he has to let me go and replace me because the company had a staffing issue they urgently needed to fulfill, and did not have time to give leniency.
Let me show you the cost of a pair of these black slip proof sneakers cost from the only place in town that has them that's accessible (to me):
$89!!! I need this job because without it I'm going to financially collapse, but I find it crazy that any job would expect an employer to pay an amount this high to start working! I can't afford such a high price when I had not had any income for such a long time. I had to default on a Credit Card just to make it this far hoping some job would finally call. Where am I going to get $89 so I can start my job?
If they need to hire urgently, why would they not have some sort of option to help out the new hire? This was a $47k fulltime job that I may lose and no one else is hiring.
It's almost like being poor comes with depression as a package deal. It's like there's no way out.