Not Working Nation: Tales In Transition

Marques, sports reporter

Where do you live? Northern Virginia

What was your job title? Reporter.

In what industry? Newspapers.

How old were your coworkers? 30s, 40s, 50s.

How did you find out you were losing your job? Phone call upstairs, told in person.

Did you have to leave immediately, or did they give you a few weeks to get used to the idea? I had until the end of the week.

Tell us a little about what you did: I covered professional sports

What was your favorite part of the job? Talking with successful people, experiencing different cities.

What was the worst part? The mood in the office.

Did you like going to work? When on the road, yes. Going to the office, no.

Did you feel like you were making a difference? We all want to believe that.

What have you done since you've been laid off? Spent time with my family, applied for work.

Have your spending habits changed since you've been laid off? (Have you cut back on anything? Given up coffee?) I was already pretty thrifty.

Do you have big financial worries -- kids in college, etc.? When the transition pay runs out, I'll let you know.

Do you have a spouse who works? Yes.

How many jobs have you applied for since you've been laid off? At least 8.

Are they in the same part of the country or someplace else? Same part.

What kind of job are you looking for next? Will it be in the same field or a different one? Why? I'm open to anything.

Krissy Domm, 31, creative writer: A clean house

 It was spooky being surrounded by the translucent images of other women’s breasts in a dark room at six in the morning, but that was my main task at the hospital.  I used to hang Mammo X-rays on the illuminated rollo-scope for the radiologists to decipher.  It was a part-time job and the pay wasn’t compensating the drive, so when my summer class schedule clashed with my work schedule, I chose to dump the part-time job.  It was really quite liberating.  Being a creative writing student, I felt that the added free time would allow me to concentrate on finally writing that long-talked-about collection of short stories.  But as they say, when you are busy you do more.  I wasn’t very busy.

            Sure, I had math and science classes three times a week, which kept me semi-occupied with occasional bouts of crying and calculator throwing, but I still had plent y of time to look for jobs and do some writing.  Which I sort of did.  After spending a few weeks sending out my resumé without getting so much as a sorry-you’re-highly-unqualified-for-this-position reply, I decided to give up and enjoy the summer. 

            My boyfriend at the time rented a room in his friend’s house.  Being somewhat of a neat freak, I’d compulsively clean his bachelor pad when I was over.  Knowing that I was broke, and noticing my attention to detail, he asked me if I would clean his house for pay.  So I began to clean twice a month for twenty dollars an hour.  Then I called my former landlord and asked him if he had any work for me.  He owned an apartment complex and hired me to clean and paint the vacated apartments, the hallways, and eventually his large, ransacked-by-children house.

            The work he had me do was anything but glamorous.  In fact, I started (and then deleted) a blog about cleaning called “I Will Clean the @$%&! Outta Your House.”  I wrote about how I judged my clients when I cleaned, the diarrhea back-splash underneath the toilet seat, the mouse-droppings and dog food in the left-behind trash bin at the apartment complex, and so forth.  At one point, my former landlord had me clean out a rental house that was abandoned by (what looked like) a family of badgers.  There was broken glass in the living room, boxes full of cigarette butts, wet clothing and empty beer cans in the basement.  They stole the dishwasher and unplugged the refrigerator.  On the hottest day of the summer I stood weeping in front of that moldy fridge filled with a sloppy mess of rotting meat, vegetables and mayonnaise.  I had forgotten my latex gloves.

To read the full essay, click here.