.

[Stitch]

Re: When did you give up on a job search and deliver pizza?

Man, this thread is depressing. I know work is work, but it says a lot about our society when college graduates are discussing retail or food service as serious job options.

 

[J-School Blue]

Re: When did you give up on a job search and deliver pizza?

I'm trying not to look at it like that anymore. I spent a long time being pissed off at the industry because the "career" I'd dreamed of and studied for had stopped being a job where I could've theoretically supported myself five or ten years before I graduated. But standing in traffic yelling about the direction it's moving doesn't change traffic. And if being a night manager at Target or delivering pizza puts more money in your pocket and allows you both more personal time and ability to pursue ways to better yourself than an office job that is more mentally and emotionally taxing on your life and requires an advanced degree, the fault is not with the pizza delivery jobs or Target jobs. In a lot of cases it is the smart choice for your personal life, at least for a short time, to work retail for awhile. If you do the job well and are paid equitably for it, there is zero shame in that.

I was reading Steven King's "On Writing" last night and I paused at the end of the chapter where he was talking about sobering up from years of alcohol and cocaine abuse. I would not compare working in an underpaid professional field with being a drug addict, but there was one line I've been thinking about all day, and I can't help but feel like it circles back to this:

"Life isn't a support-system for art. It's the other way around."

This is true of everything. Your life isn't a support system for your career. Your career is ideally one peg that makes up the support system for your life, but it shouldn't have anymore value than that.

 

[Brooklyn Bridge]

Re: When did you give up on a job search and deliver pizza?

Man, this thread is depressing. I know work is work, but it says a lot about our society when college graduates are discussing retails or food service as serious job options.

I got out about a year ago after more than 10 years in the industry and I haven't looked back. The lousy pay, the crappy hours, weekends, holidays and a desire for something better all paid a role. I think it is sad that a journalist can make more in the restaurant industry or retail or working at Starbucks than you can at journalism, but as J-School said Standing in Traffic and yelling for it to stop isn't going to stop it.

 

[Colton]

Re: When did you give up on a job search and deliver pizza?

Thanks to this thread, I just applied at Demand.

Thank you.


ADDENDUM: And was turned down. :

 

[Lieslntx]

Re: When did you give up on a job search and deliver pizza?

Temp Work. Trust me on this.

Check it out.

 

[Bodie_Broadus]

Re: When did you give up on a job search and deliver pizza?

Man, this thread is depressing. I know work is work, but it says a lot about our society when college graduates are discussing retail or food service as serious job options.

I'm a college graduate and I love my job. I work outside, I work with great people and I leave the job at work when I clock out for the day.

And I get to fly for free.

 

[Lieslntx]

Re: When did you give up on a job search and deliver pizza?

Man, this thread is depressing. I know work is work, but it says a lot about our society when college graduates are discussing retail or food service as serious job options.

I'm a college graduate and I love my job. I work outside, I work with great people and I leave the job at work when I clock out for the day.

And I get to fly for free.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Re: When did you give up on a job search and deliver pizza?

Thanks to this thread, I just applied at Demand.

Thank you.


ADDENDUM: And was turned down. :

Judging from the comments at the DemandStudiossucks forum, I don't think we're missing much.

 

[forever_town]

Re: When did you give up on a job search and deliver pizza?

After working for a manager and a company where I feel genuinely appreciated, my take on work is this: Don't waste your dedication on a workplace that is going to take advantage of you, take you for granted, and kick you to the curb when someone younger and cheaper comes along.

Newspaper awards don't put food on the table or pay rent. You can't make up for missing weekends and holidays with the family because of a big story or a front that has to be redesigned. It isn't going to bring you health if you're going to sit at a computer for 14 hours a day editing copy instead of going to the gym.

If you have a chance to make more working at Target or Wal-Mart, take it. Leave the idealism to the next crop of naive kids who watched All The President's Men one too many times.

 

[imjustagirl]

Re: When did you give up on a job search and deliver pizza?

I'm a month away from doing it myself.

 

[Precious Roy]

Re: When did you give up on a job search and deliver pizza?

I start graduate school for psychology in the fall. Ready to start the next chapter when I get this master's finished.

 

[As The Crow Flies]

Re: When did you give up on a job search and deliver pizza?

Temp Work. Trust me on this.

Check it out.

I'll second this. Some of it's crap, but some of it's not bad.

 

[WriteThinking]

Re: When did you give up on a job search and deliver pizza?

The problem with this business is that, unless you have made it to the very top, either position-wise at, say, at least a mid-sized paper, or unless you have hooked on with one of the very few major web sites, there really is no place for anybody in it who is over the age of 32.

And, well, this isn't Logan's Run. People don't stop needing to earn livings once they turn 30.

I'm with forever_town. Now that I am in something else -- something I know I could have and would have really excelled in and advanced in well, especially if I had started earlier -- I have lately been wishing that I hadn't wasted most of the best working and work-development years of my life on a business that never actually treated me all that well.

I, somehow, loved it, anyway, and I sometimes wonder now what that says about me. Because, in the end, it turned out to be a waste of time and didn't do much except hurt me, badly.

By contrast, here are a couple examples of why I am appreciating working at Walmart, regardless of similarly low pay:

1). We held a regional promotional drive toward the end of last year. Basically, stores within certain divisions compete with each other on the basis of things like credit-card applications, floor sales and the annual charity fund-raising drive. I happen to excel at all three of those things and was my store's leader, by a substantial margin, in the first and last categories.

Largely on the strength of my efforts, my store won the aforementioned promotional drive, and, as a reward, we earned a store-wide financial bonus and a fairly large-scale company barbecue to celebrate. Well, one morning soon after the results were in, while I was en route to the time clock to check in, I happened to walk through one of those morning managers' meetings that people think of as cult gatherings. Well, one of the my store's assistant managers noticed me, and gave an unsolicited shout-out. "Thank you, WriteThinking, for the barbecue tomorrow," he said.

Trying to be inconspicuous as I inadvertantly intruded on the meeting, I'd intended to just keep on walking through. But at the assistant manager's words, I turned around to see the store manager and every assistant manager and department manager who was in at the time giving me a spontaneous round of applause for my efforts. I couldn't help but smile (and feel like weeping) and appreciate it.

2). I recently received a birthday card, snail-mailed to my house, that was hand-signed by the store manager and every assistant and zone manager in my store.

This was from the largest retailer in the world...and I am one of the cashiers.

I find that kind of amazing.

And on the actual day of my birthday, I was working, but my zone supervisor walked by and remembered, looking to me specifically to smile and wish me "Happy Birthday."

These are such little things, but they really do matter.

 

[Greenhorn]

Re: When did you give up on a job search and deliver pizza?

I start graduate school for psychology in the fall. Ready to start the next chapter when I get this master's finished.

Best of luck, Roy. Enjoy the experience.

 

[Buck]

Re: When did you give up on a job search and deliver pizza?

I start graduate school for psychology in the fall. Ready to start the next chapter when I get this master's finished.

Do you have an employment strategy beyond the grad. degree?

 

[Buck]

Re: When did you give up on a job search and deliver pizza?

Well, a $35k salary for a junior college instructor is better compensation than it seems at first glance.
At my community college that's 15 hours of class time and 5 hours of office access per week for about 34 weeks. Plus the benefits and retirement packages are excellent. Plus your step/column increases are locked in.

However, you have to be realistic about your chances of getting a community college instructional job. That's the part of the career path that many people do not consider.
You might need to get a community college teaching credential. You should probably get an online teaching certificate.
You might have to schlep multiple adjunct positions.
Do you know anyone in the field that can provide references and mentoring?
You should join an academic professional group in your field.
You should be a regular reader of academic journals within your intended field, as well as education, community college and higher ed. journals.

 

[Brooklyn Bridge]

Re: When did you give up on a job search and deliver pizza?

I know a guy who is adjuncting at two colleges, one a big state u school and the other a private university. He did both while working full time for a computer firm. He did give up the private school gig because of the commute, but has kept the other gig and makes descent money for part time work.

 

[User 11148]

Re: When did you give up on a job search and deliver pizza?

Well, a $35k salary for a junior college instructor is better compensation than it seems at first glance.
At my community college that's 15 hours of class time and 5 hours of office access per week for about 34 weeks. Plus the benefits and retirement packages are excellent. Plus your step/column increases are locked in.

However, you have to be realistic about your chances of getting a community college instructional job. That's the part of the career path that many people do not consider.
You might need to get a community college teaching credential. You should probably get an online teaching certificate.
You might have to schlep multiple adjunct positions.
Do you know anyone in the field that can provide references and mentoring?
You should join an academic professional group in your field.
You should be a regular reader of academic journals within your intended field, as well as education, community college and higher ed. journals.

I suspect the odds of getting community college teaching gigs in English rhetoric/comp are pretty slim. The barrier to entry is low -- a Master's degree with at least 18 graduate hours in the discipline -- and lots/most of the people getting the credential are targeting just such a job. I don't know about reading academic journals in the field, though; my gut tells me that being able to speak pedagogical jargon fluently is going to be much more important than one's grasp of the last few years of this or that leading journal. It's certainly the case that in my milieu -- the business school -- non-tenure-track folks we bring in are there to: A) devour tons of sections with heavy enrollment; while B) keeping student complaints to a minimum; and C) keeping the hell out of the hair of the "regular" faculty. It's a brutal gig, but I guess it compares favorably with journalism (or delivering pizzas).

 

[Stitch]

Re: When did you give up on a job search and deliver pizza?

When I met with a professor at Boise State (because why not do it cheap and local when I'm already poor?), I was already brown-beaten by talk of how I may not be able to grasp graduate-level English courses because I've spent so many years in journalism, writing for the lowest common denominator.

So, don't worry, I've given up on any notion of wasting any more time in college.

The professor is full of crap if he thinks journalists can't write. I get compliments from my grad school professors on my writing as I can get to the point, keep the paper readable, and maintain an academic tone.

As for the community college route, a masters won't get you a full-time teaching job unless you're willing to move around. I've seen some openings on HigherEdJobs.com and it seems a good portion of those are in Texas working for a community college district.

Don't get discouraged, but realize you have to be realistic. If you aren't willing to move, your options are limited, especially in Boise. It seems anyone who is in construction there is taking off for North Dakota for work.

 

[J-School Blue]

Re: When did you give up on a job search and deliver pizza?

I don't think academics have a good grasp of what journalistic writing entails, and there's a particular strain of both unearned snobbery and disciplinary myopia in English departments. I had a much harder time coming from a year and a half as an English major into J classes because there's not the same demand for speed or discipline. There are stylistic differences, but those can be learned pretty quickly.