Early this week I received a call about a possible temp job with a local bank to do some rudimentary accounting work.  I was pleased at the thought that my term of unemployment might be over, however temporarily.  I was not pleased by the salary; about half of what I was making at my last job in Los Angeles.  But one shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.  An hour later I was told by the agency recruiter that their client had decided to lower the salary by $3 an hour and would I still be interested in meeting with them.  

I cannot begin to tell you how demoralizing it was to hear that.  I weighed the reduced salary against my unemployment benefits and I still came out ahead and so I agreed.  The recruiter told me she'd try to pin down a time for me to meet with their client on Wednesday of this week.  At two in the afternoon on Tuesday I had yet to hear from the recruiter so I contacted her only to learn that their client had decided that I was overqualified and they decided to interview an individual with less experience and less skills.  

I applaud Steven Slater for who among us have not dreamt to quit a crap job in such a fantastical way.  Who among us have not wanted to tell our incompetent bosses to shove it where the sun don't shine, to tell our nosy co-workers that you'll be glad to be rid of them.  That if the best thing that could ever happen to you was that you didn't have to endure seeing their ugly mugs at 8:30 in the morning you'd take that, thank you very much.  

I've often thought about different ways to quit: show up in the morning, leave for lunch and never come back; spend the day deleting files and templates and then walk into my boss's office at 4:59 in the afternoon and hand my resignation letter and just walk out the door.  But the reality is I've often written a nicely worded resignation letter and gone out of my way to make sure someone in the office was properly trained to do what it was I did.  I once stayed until 7:00 in the evening on a Friday training my boss to do the things she trained me to do.  Then I came home and bitched about it to J.  

I was laid off from my job in Los Angeles.  After being unemployed for almost two years, J got a job in Seattle.  We moved hoping that what we were hearing from politicians was true and that I'd be able to find a new job quite easily.  It's tough out here.  It's a bit depressing not having anywhere to go, feeling as if you aren't contributing to your family or to society.  It's funny, I feel as if I'm at a crossroads.  I never liked any of my previous jobs.  When I learned I was going to be laid off, I looked forward to it.  I thought it would give me time to figure out what is I really wanted to do with my life.  People told me to take this time and reflect on my life and start down a new path, go on long walks, hang out at cafes, finish Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, when you finally do start working you'll wish you had more time off.  I heard these things and more.  

It was encouraging at first.  But what they didn't tell me, what they may have not known, is that it's not that easy.  When you're unemployed all you can think about is being unemployed.  I think many of us took pleasure in what Steven Slater did and wish we had the cajones to quit in a similar fashion.  But I think, like me, many more of us just wished we had a job so we could dream about saying, "I quit!"