Hey everyone kindof a loser here. I'm in my late 20s and I've only ever worked as a dishwasher and in the years 2018 and 2019 I hardly worked more than 4 or 5 months. When covid hit I was really nervous about leaving my house but now months later if I don't leave my house I'm going to blow my brains out, fortunately I have $0 in my bank account so I can't afford a gun. Wondering if anyone has advice, on job hunting that is not suicide, I think I can manage that by myself
My advice for applying for jobs is don't be afraid to outright lie about your skills if you think you can get away with it. I mean this. I've gotten my best jobs by lying through my teeth. Obviously don't lie about being a surgeon if you are not but definitely lie about having years of experience with software you've maybe worked with for 5 minutes once in your life. That kind of shit.
I got my current job this way. I’ve operated an excavator for maybe a total of 50 hours, but lied and said I did it all the time at my last job, done precision work, etc. now I’m making pretty damn good money, with okay benefits. And it’s not that hard.
Fuck yeah, exactly. Worst that happens is they fire you like a week after you get hired but in my experience lies like that are rarely discovered and you either sink or swim.
Try to get an office job. You can start out in the mailroom or as a receptionist. People can get those jobs without ever having worked in an office.
Ignore the job requirements that they post. No one who's ever been hired has actually met all of them. You can get hired without meeting any of them. If a receptionist job is asking for a degree and 5 years of experience, that's bullshit, and the people who are doing the hiring know it. They'll prefer someone who has those things, but they won't turn away someone who doesn't (unless they don't like you and need an excuse not to hire you).
If you need references, fake them. Get a family member or friend to lie on the phone for you. If you don't have anyone who would do that, someone here might offer to do it for you if you make a thread about it. Brett from Street Fight Radio does it for listeners if they ask him.
When you're making up a reference, though, don't make it for the same job as the one you're trying to get unless you've done it before. For example, if you're applying to work in a mail room, you could say that you used to be a file clerk. If you're applying to be a receptionist, say that you were a tutor. Something where you can't transfer any specific knowledge to the new job, but where they'd be like "this sounds like an alright person for the job".
Ignore the job requirements that they post. No one who’s ever been hired has actually met all of them. You can get hired without meeting any of them.
The one exception is public sector jobs. State and Federal government, especially -- if they say they want an Associate's or a Bachelor's and you don't have it, your application gets rejected outright. If they say "or equivalent experience," that's another story, but for the most part, they are hard-asses about that if you're surfing your state's job board site or usajobs.gov. With municipal and county stuff, it can vary depending on the area. But with private sector postings? Fuck it, go ham.
Edit: Also! If you're going to submit a resume for a Federal job, make goddamned sure you match the keywords from the job posting. They use a keyword scanning service that ranks you based on relevancy, not unlike Google or a word cloud generator. The higher your match percentage, the closer you are to the top of the pile for interviews.
Just make a fake CV bro no one checks that shit. Get a job as manager of Starbucks or some bullshit, just sit in the office and occasionally ask someone to put out more coffee stirrers.
Call up your local union / guild and ask if they need apprentices. Carpentry, Masonry, Electricity. They should spot the bill for trade school, and if you don't have a car, you can always meet your tradesman at a pickup location and just chill in his van all day.
my friend you know it is always easy to get hired washing dishes. I washed dishes for probably 8 years, also unti late 20s.
i'm currently on the 5th job I've ever had and it started being less significant around #4. Things like the intimidation factor and also having a set of people you've known irl, so you'll know 'talk to this person like I talked to josh at the other place'.
I hear that 3rd shift security is great for NEETs. Nobody is around to supervise you, nothing ever happens, and if it does happen your job is to tell the police. You sit there playing OSRS and watching anime at hours you would be up at anyway. Besides that, unpacking shit at grocery stores is supposed to be a low socializing field that seems to mesh well with the culture.
from my very brief experience as a night watchman (1 week, before they un-hired me for the dumbest reason lol) it also involves telling teenagers to piss off
Job hunting can be hard, sometimes it is best to kind of distance yourself mentally from the whole job hunt thing whilst doing it because it can make you wrongly invest your worth in it.
You could try putting applications into lots of varied places to keep your options open, that way you can find somewhere which is a less bad place to work for you. Also you can lie on your cv, nothing wrong with that
But whatever happens the world is a better place with you in it, we love you comrade
My advice, if you're of reasonably sound body, check and see if your area has temp agencies (sometimes also called staffing agencies). The work can involve anything from manual, menial labor (digging ditches, hauling lumber from A to B on a construction site, assembling furniture for a new store) to service work (I've had waitstaff and retail store assignments) and miscellaneous day jobs (road flagger, cleaning/setup for events, etc).
Pay varies by the assignment and the jobs can last anywhere from a day to several months, but if you get a good reputation at the office you may be selected for more lucrative stuff. Can also let you meet people who know trade skills, improve your own, and make friends who are in a similar work-seeking situation and share leads/advice that may be relevant to the specific area you live. I've also heard of temp workers who make a good impression sometimes being asked on by the paying company full time, but that's much rarer in my experience. It gives you a variety of cool shit you can write on resumes, too- I did everything from cut zip ties for $24/hr to waiting tables ten feet from Chuck Norris (which was a lot cooler of a memory before I started to lean into politics). Some assignments sucked. $8/hr for picking up rocks in Deep South heat gets old fast.
At any rate, it can be a great way to find out what kind of stuff you take to quickly and enjoy, it's what got me enthusiastic about doing construction and led to the slightly more stable situation I currently find myself in.
Best of luck, comrade, and remember you have value as a person that goes above and beyond how you choose to sell your labor or how well you can navigate capitalism. We've got your back :heart-sickle:
Aside from what others have said about trade work, from what I've seen, jobs at local government offices seem to be pretty decent. If you are able I would try to prioritize applying for stuff like administrative/secretarial/support staff work at local government sites, courthouses, local schools and universities, hospitals, clinics etc. These jobs will probably be boring AF, but they should at least be somewhat predictable, and you will at least not be required to "spend" your physical well-being to do carry them out (like landscaping and stuff where the bodily harm doesn't offset the benefit of the income). I was looking through some job listings at a local health clinic/hospital, and it was actually helpful that they have a 'job hunting' login so you can apply for multiple positions but not need to do a separate application for each one.
Oh! Another potential trade I just thought of is locksmithing. It can be surprisingly easy to pick all sorts of locks. If you pirate a couple of lockpicking videos and buy a few cheap picks, you may be able to get your foot in the door at a locksmithing place as an apprentice or something (people need locks changed and get locked out of their shit everywhere) if you demonstrate a little skill up front.
My personal recommendation would be to avoid anything where you interact with angry customers, especially if they are the ones who determine your pay (being a waiter). I did this for a minute and it literally made me want to die.
find somwhere that can fix your resume and fluff it up. seriously i know its lib af but it really helps imo
What area do you want to work in? What else have you done over the past 10 years or so, even outside of work, that was cool/required concentration/time?
