Between GigsSurviving unemployment

Sometimes, when I search through the job listings on Craigslist, I find job situations that make me disappointed with employers, in general. Yes, there is a huge unemployment problem right now. That is not a reason to take advantage of people!

First, there was this problem on Craiglist involving an employer who wanted to hire skilled laborers. This employer wanted electricians, carpenters, and people with those sorts of skills, which was a good thing, because there were plenty of unemployed people who had those kinds of skills. Part of what happened when the economy tanked was that the value of houses went down. The eventual result was that there were less houses being built, which, of course, meant that more and more electricians, carpenters, and the like were out of work.

The problem was that this particular employer didn’t actually want to pay the skilled laborers he hired anything close to what their skills and training were worth. This was taken as a huge insult by many of the people who had the kinds of skills that this stingy employer was searching for. You could follow the trail of complaints about this employer by scanning the jobs list for the original job title, preceded by “RE:”.

Lately, the news has been saying that the economy is getting (slightly) better, and that we should all see more available jobs soon. We hope that this fairy tale is true, and that there are good jobs coming, and not just the McJob kinds where you can’t make enough to live on.

Instead, we get more of the same thing. Employers taking advantage of unemployed workers who are desperately seeking jobs. I saw this ad today on the local Craigslist. I’m going to cut and paste the actual ad, instead of providing a link, because we all know how quickly things can disappear on Craigslist.

Title: EXTENSIVE KNOWLEDGE OF PC COMPUTERS
“THIS IS A START UP BUSINESS. YOUR HOURS WILL VARY IN THE BEGINNING. YOU WILL BE WORKING WITH THE OWNER ON ALL PHASES OF THE BUSINESS. THE RIGHT INDIVIDUAL
WILL WANT TO BE PART OF A NEW VENTURE. IF YOU ARE AFRAID OF OF TAKINING CHANCES THIS IS NOT FOR YOU. PROPER CANIDATE WILL HAVE EXPERENCE WITH TROUBLING SHOOTING COMPLEX SOFTWARE PROBLEMS, BE ABLE TO USE DIAGNOSTIC SOFTWARE, EXTENSIVE MICROSOFT SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS AND A MULITUDE OF PC PROBLEMS. FOR A START YOU WILL BE AN OVERALL TECHNICIAN IN THE PC INDUSTRY. MY EXPERENCE STARTED BY USING DOS ONLY TO OPERATE A PC. I HAVE A BA IN SALES AND MARKETING AS WELL AS PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT. I THRIVE ON COMPETION. IF YOU ARE TRULEY INTERESTED WE CAN TALK AND EXCHANGE IDEAS.

Compensation: COMPENSATION WILL BE DISCUSED IN PERSON”

Yes, the person who posted this ad decided to use all caps, for the entire thing. Yes, there are several misspelled words in this ad. Yes, the employer decided to post the ad exactly as I have copied it here.

“TAKINING”
“MULITUDE”
“EXPERENCE”
“TRULEY”
… and that’s just the misspelled words that caught my attentions. I noticed these errors, and I am dyslexic. I can only imagine what the rest of you saw.

The first response I saw to this ad said:
Title: Re: EXTENSIVE KNOWLEDGE OF PC COMPUTERS
“Soooo…basically you want a highly-skilled expert to work for as-yet unspecified compensation and for equally vague hours in some sort of “business experiment.” And we are supposed to be impressed that you know how to run chkdsk in DOS. You could not sound more clueless or a bigger waste of time…

P.S. Spellcheck is your friend, dude.

Compensation: Air and promises”

That about says it all!

The job ads on Craigslist can be an endless source of amusement. If you can’t find a job on there, you might find something to make you smile, or at least shake your head and wonder about the state of the world.

It seems that the owner of the day care center I wrote about yesterday didn’t take too kindly to the response that was posted about her ad for a day care worker. Since Craigslist ads have a tendency to disappear in the blink of an eye, I’m going to quote what I found here, rather than link to it. Tomorrow, or a few days from now, the link may lead absolutely nowhere.

The title said “RE: Child Care Assistant”

“As the owner/operator of the day care, this is a response to the negative allegations made regarding my ad for a child care assistant. I’m assuming this post is from a disgruntled, dishonest, unreliable, prior assistant that is having a difficult time finding a job in this economy. The allegations that were made are totally untrue and this is slander! I have evaluation reports from licensing that show there are no deficiencies in this day care. Appropriate legal action has been taken!”

Interesting!

I think that one of two things is going on here. Maybe the owner is correct in her assumptions, and the previous ad describing her perpetual absence was full of lies, provided by a disgruntled worker. The owner has evaluation reports from licensing backing up her claims, so that’s something. Unless she is lying about that. But, I think she’d have to be pretty foolish to claim she has paperwork as proof if she didn’t, in fact, have it.

On the other hand, I know from my years of experience working in day care centers that the people who come to do evaluation reports don’t stay long. It’s entirely possible that the owner was present the entire time the evaluators were there. She could have left the instant they did, to go play golf and leave her day care center woefully understaffed. It’s also possible.

The only thing I know for certain is that I have absolutely no desire to work for a day care center with this much drama going on.

I browse through the job listings on Craigslist every day. After all, I found one writing gig on Craigslist, so I suppose it’s possible I will find more. I also glance at the jobs for “teachers” that are really for tutors, and the jobs for “tutors” that are really commission based. Your paycheck depends on how many parents sign their children up for extra help this week. It’s not anything one can make a living at.

Often, I find myself looking at the ads checking out the ads for someone who wants to work in a day care. Usually these ads describe the job title as “teacher”, but, my years of experience working in various day care centers was enough to convince me that this work is not, in fact, “teaching”.

The best part of working at a day care center was being able to help young children and infants to grow, learn, and explore the world. The worst part was the paycheck, which was always inadequate, and the often temperamental “Directors” of the day care. I gave this potential career a good try, and several years of my life, before realizing that no matter how hard I work, this type of job will never allow me to pay my bills.

Once in a while, the Craigslist job ads provide a moment of humor. Due to the elusive nature of Craigslist job ads, and their potential to be removed from the net at any time, I’m going to quote what I found.

First, there is this ad for a a day care worker. Seems typical enough, at first. The title of this ad said “Child Care Assistant”

” I have a licensed child day care center on (location) and am looking for a temporary assistant for 3 weeks … April 12-30, as my regular assistant needs this time off. The hours are 8:30-1:00 and 3:00-5:00ish M-F. Must be experienced, energetic, dependable, reliable, and enjoy playing and interacting with children 1-4 years of age. You need to be livescanned and CPR/First-Aid certified. No smoking/drugs. If interested, please respond to (an email address that contains the phrase “golf nut”) or (a phone number), to set a time to pick up an application.”

And then I saw this one, titled “RE: Child Care Assistant”

“DO NOT apply for this job! The owner of the daycare is never around, she is always off golfing and leaving you with more children than you should be left with, meaning she will leave you with 3 under 2 year old and 5 toddlers. That is NOT safe for you OR the children. Don’t be so desperate that you have to apply for a job, not working is better than working for this day care.”

After I stopped laughing inappropriately, I took a good look at what this says. Here is a daycare owner, whose email address says “golf nut”. Here is one of her workers saying that the owner is never around, because she is golfing. I’m inclined to believe this to be true.

Always nice when you get a warning from someone who knows the truth of what it is really like to work someplace, before you apply! Thank you, anonymous day care worker!

Once again, I find myself browsing sites that have job listings, searching for something that would be good for me. This feels like starting over at the beginning, and also feels like the start of something brand new.

There have been some significant changes to the local Craigslist lately. Before, I would go to this website, click “jobs”, and a page full of listings, starting with the most recent, would appear. Not anymore! There is now a page that appears first, which says “SCAM alert!”

“SCAM ALERT – affiliate scammers are posting bogus ads promising (nonexistent!) employment, paid research trials, or other compensation, but then notifying repliers that they’ll need to jump through a hoop first, directing them to:

*background checking services
*credit checking or reporting sites
*sites where you are instructed to enter your resume or other personal information
*sites where you are asked to sign up for a “free” trial offer
*sites offering training or education
*sites offering a “system” for making money
*survey or focus group sites
*sites designed to deliver malware or misuse your identifying information

all in hopes of earning affiliate marketing commissions or otherwise profiting at the expense of persons seeking employment.”

Craigslist then goes on to tell you that there are many variations on these scams, and warns that many of them offer nonexistent compensation. This means that at the bottom of the ad, the little part that says “Compensation” is left blank, or has some ridiculous description meant to confuse a person about how much the job is paying. Under that is advice on how to mess with the spammers, by reporting their affiliate link, and then there is the link you need to click on to actually look at the job listings.

I find this troubling. Recently, I noticed that some of the job listings were posted by job searchers, as a warning to the rest of us about specific scams they were aware of. These posters were saying that we, the job hunters, needed to band together, and flag all the job ads that were obviously spam. Many of the posters felt that Craigslist wasn’t bothering to weed out the spammers, and people had gotten tired of seeing listing after listing of jobs that weren’t really jobs in the first place. Perhaps this new screen that pops up before you can look at the jobs is Craigslist’s way of responding to the complaints.

There was an ongoing… “conversation”, for lack of a better word, about an job listing for laborers. Whomever placed the ad wanted to hire skilled electricians and carpenters at what many people felt was an insultingly low price. There were angry comments suggesting that the person who wrote the ad should go do the work themselves, because no one who actually spent the time and effort to become a skilled electrician or skilled carpenter was ever going to accept a job that payed as little as that one did.

There were comments about the belief that the ad writer was intending to avoid hiring workers who were in a union, and hoping to find some workers on Craigslist that he could pay “under the table” (at a much lower rate). Many comments mentioning how sleazy this employer was to decide it was ok to do such nefarious (and potentially illegal) hiring practices followed. Comments about how people like this anonymous employer were the reason it was so hard to find a decent job right now. The general belief was that now that the economy was so bad, it gave despicable and dishonest people an opening to cause harm to their fellow man, by refusing to pay someone what the years of their skill and experience was actually worth. There was much speculation about if this is how things would be from now on.

Another chain of comments stemmed from a different job that was a scam. Somebody posing as a realtor wanted to hire people to go around to specific properties, and take a bunch of photos of those properties from different angles. The pay was not clearly listed. Instead, there was some mention about how a person would get paid a certain dollar amount for each property they take photos of. On paper, it sounded like easy work.

But then, the comments rolled in. People found they were having problems getting paid from this realtor, once they turned in the requested photos. Soon, they placed their own ads about this job, with the words “SPAM ALERT” in the title. There were comments stating that it was impossible to make any money from this because the properties were located “all over the hills”, and that you would spend more on the gas it took to drive to them than you would be able to make in the job itself. People found that some of their photos were rejected, which meant they spent the gas to get to the property, and the time it took to get the photos to the realtor and got absolutely nothing in return. After that, comments flooded in pointing out that this particular realtor wasn’t using his or her own license number, and there was something fishy about the fact that they were using a bank account under a different name, or something to that effect.

Spammers make me angry! There are more unemployed people right now than there has been in a long time, (or maybe ever, I don’t know). To prey on the desperation of people who are just trying to find a way to pay their bills before the lights get turned off, or they lose the house is nothing more than pure evil. It is good that Craigslist has started to point out to people how to spot Job Spam, and what to do about it, because I believe this will cut down on the number of people who unknowingly send a bunch of personal information to what they think is a potential employer. It makes me sad that things have come to this, however. I lose a little faith in humanity when I see things like this.

Now, I am pretty good at spotting spam (see previous blogs where I harassed a spam artist who posted a fake job on Craigslist), so I have continued to use it to hunt for jobs. So, I am not saying avoid using Craigslist at all costs. I looked around a bit at Craigslists that were for other cities, and noticed that not all of them needed the warning screen to be put in place before you can see the jobs. Perhaps some places actually do have honest, real, employers existing there, wanting to hire workers. The main point I am trying to make with this blog today is this: Beware! You can’t trust everything you read on the internet, and this includes what may look like a potential job.

I am still doing what I am supposed to be doing while on Unemployment Insurance. Each and every day, the first thing I do when I get up is get online and start picking my way through the various job websites I frequent.

This was my third week of being unemployed. When I first lost my job, I saw the job sites as a field of possibilities. Now, after three weeks of trying to sift through them, attempting to separate the wheat from the mountains of chaff, I find myself becoming annoyed by these job sites. They aren’t offering me much for my efforts.

In a previous blog post, I wrote about an ad where someone wanted a “Substitute/ Associate Teacher”. I was trying to decide if it was a good idea to apply for that one, or not. I was concerned that this was basically asking for a Substitute Teacher, and wasn’t actually offering a full time position.

Someone on Twitter (I don’t know if this person wants to be named in this blog), had words of wisdom about this. “Apply for the substitute teaching job, because since it is not full time, you can collect partial bennies and they last longer.” The person went on to say “It also keeps your brain in the game so to speak.”

I decided this was sound advice, and intended to apply for this job. Now, one of the things I may be asked to prove to the powers that be from the EDD is that I “made contact” with employers. So, instead of applying immediately for the job, I waited a few days, so this “contact with an employer” would count for this week (October 11th – October 17th). I’d already had proof of contact for the week I actually found the want ad in.

I bookmarked the ad so I could easily find it again. A few days later, I was ready to send an email and apply for the “Substitute / Associate Teacher” job, whatever it turned out to be.

This proved impossible, however. I found this job on Craigslist, and now, instead of the ad I bookmarked, I was staring at a page that said that the job had been flagged. It had been removed by Craigslist, because too many people marked it as Spam. If the employer who wrote the original ad had filled the position that fast, it would say something to the effect that the ad had been removed by the poster, not that it was removed because it was flagged too many times.

So, overall, I suppose it was a good thing that I didn’t immediately apply when I first saw that ad. If I did, I might have ended up giving out a bunch of personal information to a Spammer. It’s still disappointing, however, that the ad wanting a “Substitute / Associate Teacher” wasn’t actually for a job. I never thought I’d see the day when finding work as a teacher was so impossible that the Spam Artists would start using offers of potential teaching jobs as bait!

This is (hopefully) the last part of the “Is This Spam?” saga. If you are reading the Between Gigs blog for the first time, I suggest you back up a few posts, and read the saga from the beginning. That way you can hear the whole story.

I thought the last email I sent to “John Doe” was crystal clear. I’d been asking him to tell me something, anything at all, about the job he supposedly was attempting to hire people for. He refused, over and over again. I’d had enough. I sent him the email I shared in my last post, and assumed he would take the hint, and realize he had failed in his attempt to trick me into attending the super secret “event” that he kept prattling on about.

Instead, John Doe sent me one more email. :

Re: why I think your ad should be flagged?
From: biblicalphrase@email dot whatever
Sent: Fri 10/16/09 7:45 PM
To: MySpamAddress@email dot whatever

Thanks for letting me know now u feel. I can tell u this…this is our 4th event at (Particular Local Restaurant) and we have put 22 people to work these people all responded to our CL ad …so say what U want we are helping people ..what R u doing to get people jobs.
Sent from John Doe’s BlackBerry

Ooh… it seems I hit a nerve! John Doe clearly wanted to have “the last word”, which, I assume, helped to assuage his guilt over all the deceitful words he spewed out to people who responded to his want ad on Craigslist.

My best guess is that John Doe was thinking that I would read this email and suddenly think to myself, “Oh, no! They hired 22 people! How could I have been so wrong, to think this wasn’t a real job! I simply must attend that “event”, and make amends.” Yeah, that’s going to happen!

Let’s take a closer look at the email John Doe sent. The last phrase reads: “…so say what U want we are helping people ..what R u doing to get people jobs.” I am overjoyed he wrote this! This sentence, all by itself, completely gives away the truth that John Doe is working so hard to conceal. These are not the words of a professional business person, seeking to hire new employees. No, these are the words of a child on a playground who got into an argument with another child, and lost. It’s basically a slightly more verbal version of “neener-neener-neener”! His use of “R” instead of “are” and “U” instead of “you” further emphasizes that something not quite on the level is going on here.

Real employers do not throw questions at job applicants such as “what R u doing to get people jobs.” Real employers know how to tell the difference between a declarative sentence, and an interrogative sentence, and know which one should have a question mark at the end of it. Also, I suspect that most employers who are interested in hiring people for a real job already realize that potential job candidates are not the ones that are supposed to be doing things “to get people jobs”. That’s what the employers are supposed to be doing!

Look at how misleading this phrase is: “..this is our 4th event at (Particular Local Restaurant) and we have put 22 people to work”. Simply throwing a few numbers into a sentence, without any context, or any proof that your data is accurately representing what you imply, is not the way to convince someone that you are right and they are wrong.

Let’s see, they have had four events, and they hired 22 people. Oh, excuse me, they “put 22 people to work” (not the same thing). That is 22 people out of…. how many, exactly? For all I know, a thousand people showed up to each of the four events. They “put 22 people to work.” This is not impressing me.

They “put 22 people to work”…..doing what? I still have no idea. John Doe might have “put people to work” mailing religious literature to everyone in town. Perhaps he “put people to work” carrying signs at a rally. Maybe he “put people to work” sending everyone on the internet a spam email, or he “put people to work” making a fake account on Twitter to send spam DMs out of. Maybe he “put people to work” selling gold on World of Warcraft, until their fake accounts finally get banned. Who knows? I have no actual proof that John Doe did anything at all to “put people to work”. There is no way to verify his claim.

Also, to “put people to work” is absolutely not the same thing as hiring someone for a job that has a specific wage, specific hours, and specific work related duties. To “put people to work” is to hire someone to stand on a corner with a sign that says “going out of business sale” and has an arrow pointing the way people should drive if they want to shop it. It won’t offer enough money for a person to live on, and it’s certainly not going to offer any benefits.

In my experience, not just with employers, but with everyone, I have noticed a repeating pattern. People who intentionally set out to deceive others, for whatever reason, are the same people who lack the skills to say “I’m sorry” when someone calls them out on their despicable actions.

I think these people have deluded themselves into thinking that they are the ones who are acting morally, when, in reality, they are not. These are the same people who, when caught in a lie, will say anything they can think of to try and convince the person who caught them that they are the ones with the warped moral compass, instead of the lier. It must be incredibly draining to be emotionally twelve years old, forever and ever. Twelve year olds shouldn’t be on the internet unsupervised. They might start creating ads on Craigslist for jobs that don’t exist!

Again, if you are jumping into this little saga here, you might want to scroll back, and start at the beginning.

“John Doe” sent me another email. Unfortunately, he didn’t bother to answer any of the multitude of questions I have been asking him, in regards to what the job he is offering actually is, once again.

Here is what John Doe had to say this time:
Re: why I think your ad should be flagged?
From: biblicalphrase@email dot whatever
Sent:Fri 10/16/09 12:32 PM
To: MySpamAddress@email dot whatever

Jennifer
I wish I had the time to email back and forth with u. I would love for u to attend but I don’t need u to attend. The reason I don’t answer more of Ur questions is because I don’t want to let too much out of the bag..other wise why would someone attend. This isn’t a scam or time share its a 1. 5 billion dollar world wide company. This is all I will let out…either u show up or u don’t its your choice….got to repost now someone flagged me again….cioa

John Doe has had a change of heart in his regard for me, it seems.
He is now calling me “Jennifer”, my full name, all nice and formal. He has stopped calling me “Jen”, something a friend might call me.
I suspect this email was sent from his Blackberry once again.

I don’t think I could have been more clear with John. I said that whether or not I attend his all important event would depend on if he decided to give me some clear answers about what, exactly, the job he was offering happened to be. For reasons I cannot explain, or entirely understand, he neglected to do so.

I decided to send one last email to John Doe, just to let him know that I would not be going to his super secret “event”, and why:

John,

I have given you several chances to give me a clear and specific answer about what the job you are offering actually is.  You have now decided that you don’t have time to email back and forth with me, and refuse to answer any of my questions regarding your employment opportunity.  I stated, quite clearly, that whether or not I would attend your event would depend entirely on the quality of the information you sent me about the job you are hiring for.  Either you would answer, or you would not, it was your choice.  You chose to continue to be vague, and to continue to avoid telling me one single concrete thing about this job.  I suppose it is a good thing that you “would love for (me) to attend, but don’t need (me) to attend”, because I will NOT be attending your event.  

I cannot understand why a “1.5 billion dollar world wide company” has to resort to using an intentionally vaguely worded ad placed for free on Craigslist to find potential job applicants.  Shouldn’t a company making that much money be able to use one of those “headhunter” organizations to assist with that?  

I’m not at all surprised that your ads keep getting flagged as Spam.  I tried to help you write an ad that wouldn’t look like Spam in the first email I sent to you.  Adding a few clear details to your ad such as: what the job is, what the job pays, and if the job is part time or full time really would help you avoid getting flagged as Spam.  

But, I guess you don’t want to do that, because all that is important to you is that people attend this “event”, not that the job seekers actually find viable employment.

This is incredibly cruel of you, and your “1.5 billion dollar world wide company” to do to people, considering today’s economy.

Good luck! (I think you will need it).

Jen 

I suspect this is the last I will hear from John Doe. I did not find a job at the end of the trail of misleading emails, but, honestly, I didn’t truly expect to. I am sick to death of people who, like John Doe, and whatever “1.5 billion dollar world wide company” he is supposedly connected to, take up space in job listing sites that could be filled by actual jobs.

Since I have become unemployed, I have taken notice of how often people choose to use language that is designed to confuse job applicants. To them, it is all just some kind of sick game. My life, and the lives of all the other millions of unemployed people out there, are stuck weeding through piles of lies and innuendo laden job ads, in our efforts to seek employment, and be able to pay or bills. It’s not fair, and it’s not right! I consider this saga “Is This Spam?” to be one person’s attempt to fight back against the sleazy and dishonest people out there, and hold them (somewhat) accountable for their words. Some might call that “karma”.