TLDR: People think Welfare is why there's no employees still? Not the low wages, 2 month long potential hiring process that you get ghosted on at any point, the lack of housing, the hoops to jump through to even attain housing, the lack of any healthcare and likelihood of being a hired temp just to get in? No, it's clearly laziness that is preventing us from getting good candidates /s
Have any of you ever received welfare? Before you downvote, let me give some context. I work in tech and we were waiting for a meeting to start (everyones favorite time of the day), and a discussion about the difficulty of getting decent candidates came up. Of course, without fail, one of the older folks in the room who hasn't been on the job market in like 15-ish years laments “It's the Welfare! Nobody wants to work anymore!”
I try to keep my mouth shut about anything that could be even vaguely construed as political especially with my boss, bosses boss, and the bosses boss's peer. However, it got me thinking. I moved out here with a little savings, no car, no house, no job. It took a month just to find a place that would lease to us with 2 of the 3 residents already having fulltime work.
Each private leaser had exactly `1 decent place listed, it was always “already leased”, and these people wanted more info than the IRS before they'd consider leasing to you. I seriously had to give my bosses phone/email, and track down my past 3 landlords (some of who's businesses are gone) for this lady so she could send them a questionnaire. We paid for the background check, we had to pay to even see the places, and in the end she says “yeah we actually just don't have anything for you, good luck”. So we lived the “Can't be trusted to pay 900 bucks a month between 3 adults, so better pay $462 a week to live in a motel” life.
Once I got an actual roof of our own over our heads I needed to get that “full time working residents” ratio up from 2/3rds to 3/3rds. I applied to every job in my field for 3 months before eventually a “service provider” hired me cheap, gave me a phone I couldn't even unlock to answer calls with, and put me in the oncall rotation. That last part really got me. They'll love to hire you sayin you'll be oncall once you learn the job and it comes with the healthcare benefits of being a real employee. Then less than 48 hours later you're the only oncall person for nearly an entire state including many dummy and old alarms that you're supposed to ignore.
I did this while desperately applying to every other job I could. This was hard as there was virtually no offtime and even when I was out sick, they'd call me to ask if I really needed to be out of the office. Since I was actually ill, it became “well can you at least field calls and do remote work”.
Then there's also the oncall. Being oncall every 3rd week (24/7 shift for that week) for an entire state is a bit of a challenge. It didn't make me feel any better to also need to buy a car within 3 days of starting because I couldn't rely on a company vehicle and, as so often occurs, the desperate make due and fill the gaps as best they can from their own coffers.
So then I get the first call from the place I currently work for. After 2 interviews, an HR call while I was onsite for the Service Provider job, and an interview with team leads and Directors I was hired. By this point, it'd been a little over 6 months since I'd moved here and I had 0 savings after the car. I felt exhausted, like I'd beaten the odds, and that I'd succeeded.
Fast forward to now and my lease is ending. The housing sitch here is even worse than it was before. I have nowhere to go and only half the savings I had built back up. I make too much to be allowed to use affordable housing, not that there's openings out here.
So with the struggle ramping back up I can't help but feel extremely resentful of the “nobody wants to work” crowd. I've been busting my ass and still not always keeping a roof over my head. To tell you the truth, I've been so burnt by it that I wouldn't take Welfare out of fear at this point.
The closest we got was unemployment, briefly, when a customer demanded my ex be fired as a cashier on the spot. District Manager was there and of course, you can't have upset Tortilla Factory patrons now can you? We had the audacity to apply for unemployment. We were young and foolish, barely 20/21 and were well below the poverty line. Between the 3 of us we ate for 15$ a week (2015); typically buying a sack of rice and some form of mass frozen protein. This was so we could scrape together the 864$ between us to live in a condemned 2 room with black mold and collapsing walls.
We got about 850$ before it was contested, because of course it was, and a month later while still in the same shitty situation we were ordered to pay it all back. Since she was still looking for work, that had to come out of “cost cutting” and the only cost to cut was eating what food we had at home. They sure showed us.
Anyways, sorry for the wall of text. That comment just really got to me this morning.