Strawberry Fields Forever
by digby
Atrios flagged this story about one of those lazy long term living high off the hog on unemployment because they refuse to take jobs they feel are beneath them:
When Laurie-Ellen Shumaker, 59, was laid off from her job as a lawyer for a shopping center in January of 2009, she assumed she would be hired again in no time. In addition to her impressive resume, which includes a degree from a top-tier law school and 23 years of legal experience, she has always been actively recruited for positions.
But in the past year-and-a-half, Shumaker says she has applied to over a thousand jobs — everything from secretary to file clerk to daycare worker — and she has yet to be called for an interview.
She has obviously failed to learn the most important part of a job search like this — lie about your experience. Clearly, her lawyer days are over. No professional office of any kind even wants to look at a 59 year old woman much less work with one and it’s a rare workplace of any kind who will put up with an older female who isn’t properly subservient. So she needs to remove that skill from her resume and put one together that says she’s been working as a sales clerk for the past three decades — and then apply for cleaning jobs in another state, like that nice, young Heritage Foundation fellow advised. (From what I hear there are plenty of them because the wealthy are spending so much time shopping and traveling, the call for servants is huge.) And if that doesn’t work, it’s getting close to harvest time in California’s Central Valley. So let’s not pretend there aren’t ample opportunities.
Depending on her savings (and who knows how much she has left after that pesky real estate and stock market crash and all) at her age she should be able to retire by age 66, so she’ll only have to work as a charwoman for 7 more years or so until she can luxuriate on all that free money social security provides. I really don’t see the problem here.
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