Show Your Work: Unemployment
In this week’s Show Your Work, I’m going to start my writing adventure with a general topic rather than a full premise. It’ll allow me to show the process from the very beginning brainstorming steps, which can help when you don’t have a specific idea to work on. It’s also a good exercise when you have a general topic on your mind that you just can’t shake. Writing about it can serve as a way to work through it, understand it, and develop (both material and as a person).
When starting from this type of place, I like to take some time to write down any idea I can think of that relates to the topic. From the super-general to the oddly specific, just brain dump for a while. Then later, come back and look through it all, see what stands out, what has the potential to be funny, and look for other rabbit holes to crawl down and explore.
Here we go!
The day before I was laid off, I was playing with my daughter in the morning before work, and I said: “I wish I could just stay here and play with you all day.” Which is a real “be careful what you wish for” Monkey’s Paw type of way to get what you ask for.
Getting laid off feels bad. It feels like you did something wrong. But you didn’t; your former employer did. They’re the ones who messed up and didn’t budget correctly for the number of jobs they gave out (or, more accurately, are doing a dick move and getting rid of people to slightly move their bottom line.)
I was on unemployment once before, in 2009 after losing the worst job I ever had as a salesperson for Sprint cell phones. That was just after the financial crash, and the government extended unemployment benefits to what seemed like forever. I think I had full unemployment benefits for two full years. It was when I took advantage of my lack of job and safety net to lose 200 pounds. Something tells me even though the job market seems just as bleak now, our current administration will not be casting the same type of safety net for those of us in need.
I got laid off from a work-from-home job. There’s gotta be something funny here.
Getting to spend so much time with my daughter and focus my energy on being a dad truly is wonderful. But when the “oh shit I need a job for money to support this family” hits while having a beautiful moment with your baby, it hits way harder.
Thanks to parental leave, a work-from-home job, and unemployment, I’ve gotten to spend every day of the first year-plus of my daughter’s life at home with her. I don’t know how people leave home to go to work when they have small children — what the hell is wrong with us?
I was with my previous company for eight years before I was laid off, and I liked my job. It did always feel like it was dangling over the edge of a cliff, though. I think that’s kind of how all jobs feel for everybody these days. They don’t want us to be comfortable or safe. If anybody has a job like that, I’d love to know more about it.
I read that a lot of job listings are actually fake and that companies are just taking applications in order to collect data on people. So cool!
Job listing boards that make you pay to access applications are one of the most predatory and immoral business practices I can think of. I can’t imagine thinking, “I bet we can take advantage of the desperate situation of the unemployed to build a for-profit business.” Monsters.
I’m remembering some old jokes I have from my 2009 (through 2011!) unemployment that might be worth revisiting. One was about the job interview process and how (when you’re looking for a job to pay the bills and not your dream career) you have to basically lie your way through, tricking people along the way and pulling stuff out of your ass. In 2026, you’re lucky to even get an interview for a job, and who knows if a real human is even looking at your application — so now you have to also trick robots.
Some retail employers will make you take a long test as part of the application process. Every third question on these tests are some form of “Agree or Disagree: it is totally okay to steal from your place of work from time to time” or “True or False: taking a little bit of money from the register is okay if you really need it” or “Psssst, it’s just us here, between me and you, nobody at Target is gonna miss that twenty bucks, how would they even know, they’ve got like billions of twenty bucks, go ahead, put it in your pocket, do it, they’re not looking I promise.”
I always feel a tinge of embarrassment when I have to tell people I’m unemployed. There’s a sting there. I’m worried about their judgement. I also judge myself for not being more productive with my writing (even though I’m also full-time taking care of a baby and also looking for employment).
I posted a few reels on Instagram/You Tube with jokes about being unemployed, looking for jobs, etc. and the amount of random people who somehow found the post and used it as an opportunity to lick the books of the powers that be is astonishing (it’s not, like, a lot of people, but compared to the view count and how many followers I have — not many — the number is substantial). When this happens, I no longer feel embarrassed for myself, and I’m glad I’m not like these people.
I applied for a position as a mail carrier with the USPS, which seems like a pretty great job. I love walking around all day. I never understood the whole “going postal” cliché, but I’m sure there’s something I’m missing. The repetitive nature of it? Things that go on in the Post Office before hitting your route? A pressure to perform and hit goals and metrics? Having to deal with people — which means every type of person and all the different personalities and characters you encounter and have to serve? Dogs? All of the above? Anyways, fingers crossed I get an interview.
Navigating well-meaning messages from my dad where he checks in about my job search in a way that isn’t really helpful. I know he just cares and is worried about me, but he’s a real Boomer about the way he checks in.
The way jobs are advertised now and the verbiage used in job titles and descriptions makes everything sound so complicated and over-inflated.
Or they are crazy and don’t make sense at all, like this one that came to my email:
I’ve seen a lot of takes on this before — but the fact that low-pay, entry-level positions are asking for people to have all kinds of experience to be considered.
Okay, that’s all for this brainstorm. I’ll continue working on this joke in the future. Next steps will be filtering through all the bullet points and finding what sticks out the most to me. But that’s a task for another post.
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