A History of my contact with grunt work after my professional IT career ended 12-31-2001.

Here is a chart of all my interim jobs and leads for jobs since my main IT career-ending layoff at the end of 2001.

Date	Place	Employer	job	Pay	Initiate contact	Response	Result	Employment period	comments	Web presence matters?
2002-03	Mpls MN	Landmark Theaters	Clerk	$8 hr	Personal paper app	N				n
2002-04	Mpls MN	Minnesota Orch	Telefund	$6/hr comm	Call	Y	Hire	2002/4 to 2003/6	Part time	n
2002-04	Bloomington MN	Primevest	Sell term life ins	Comm	Jobfair	Y, interview	N		“We give you the words”	y
2002-08	Mpls-Stpl airport	TSA	screener	27000 yr hrly	jobfair	Partial interview	N		Misunderstanding on pay	y
2002-09	Bkmgtn	Express Scripts (for HIPAA)	Contract mainframe pgm	60000 yr	Head-hunter	Interview	Near miss		“You tried too hard”	n
2002-11	Richmond, VA	PPO (for HIPAA)	Contract pgm	60000 yr	Head-hunter	Phone screen	Miss		Long delay before interview	n
2003-01	Largo, MD	Group 1	Mainframe pgm		Phone	Interview	Never heard		Intv went well,	Y?
2003-01	Dulles, VA remote	Brain-bench	Design test (contract)		web	Interview	Hire for job	2003/1 to 2003/3	Completed contract	Y
2003-04	St Paul MN	TriAdvantage	Debt collector	$11 hr comm	Phone	Interviews	n		Manager says I can’t exert authority over others for its own sake	N
2003-05	Mpls	Green cab	Drive cab		Phone	Phone screen	Decline		Seff-employ	N
2003-05	Mpls	Target	Collector	$12 hr?	Phone	Interview	N			N
2003-05	St Paul	RMA	Debt collector	$11 hr	Phone	Interview	Hire	2003-5 to 2003-8	Decide to return to dc	N
2003-10	DC	Arts Marketing, NSO	Sell concert subs	$6.50  hr comm	Phone	Interview	Hire	2003-10 to 2003-12	dispute	N
2004-2	Rockville, MD	Debt coll law firm	Debt collector	$12 hr	Phone	Interview	N		Required some supervision	Y?
2004-3	Dulles, VA	Inde-pendence Air	Gate agent, uniformed	$9.50 hr	Online	Interview, with speech	N, but got free air travel
2004-3	North Va	Newspaper distributor	Deliver papers by car	$7 hr and exp	Phone		Decline		Would require starting at 2 AM	n
2004-3	Arlington	Hollywood video	Clerk	$8 hr	Paper		No response			n
2004-4	Fairfax Cty	Public schools	Substitute teacher	$13.50 hr*	Online, BI	Online	Hire	2004-04 to 2005-12	Mixed, will explain	Y
2004-4	DC	USPS	Business analyst	$65000	Written	Mail	N
2004-5	Arlington	Public schools	Substitute teacher	$13.50 hr*	In person	Interview	Hire	2004-05 to 2005-10	Mixed, will explain	Y
2005-4	Tysons	NYLife	Agent	Comm	Unsolicited by me	Interviews to stg 3	Decline		No outside income allowed by law	y
2005-9	Arlington	Humana	Agent	Comm	unsolicited	Phone	Decline			Y
2005-11	Arlington	USPS	Letter carrier (or rural delivery)	$17 hr	Written	In person	Decline
2006-5	Fairfax	Public schools	Grader	$25 hr	Phone	Phone	Hire	2006-03 to 2006-06	Grading special ed binders	N
2007-1	Fairfax	Public schools	Substitute teacher	$14 hr	Phone	Resume	Hire	2007-01 to 2007-06	Leave again for	N
2007-8	Winston-Salem NC	Loews	Contract pgm	Head-hunter	Dice	Phone	No response			Y
2008-2	Tysons	Fundraising company	Supervisor of youth	$12 hr	unsolicited	interview	Decline			N
2008-9	Arlington	HRBlock	Tax preparer	$8 hr start	Unsolicited	Phone	decline			Y
2004-2009		USAJobs (IRS, Labor)	Systems		Resume and KSA’s				One IRS contractor job by phone, too	N
2010	Arlington	Census	Diennial	Interviewer, $20 hr			Y	2010-05 to 2010-06	Very efficient	N
2011	Arlington	Census	CPS	Interviewer $14 hr	unsolicited	Phone	Y	2011-1 to 2011-8	Training in Charlotte, NC	N

This chart gives a good bird’s eye view of what the job market is like for someone over 58 when he gets “bought out” by a major corporate employer.  Fortunately, I had good severance and retirement, and then social security.  And I came out pretty well with the estate when my mother passed at the end of 2010. Still, many of the jobs were very low in pay and had working conditions and regimentation that would have been difficult for me to live with.  Some jobs involved a great deal of hucksterism.

The last column is my assessment as to whether my visible activity on the Web (as through search engines, especially Google, and even before Facebook and Myspace were popular) could have affected the hiring decision or presented a conflict at work.

Once I had decided to set my self as a kind of independent, rogue journalistic arbitrator in public (with my first book in 1997), there really was no turning back.

I would get unsolicited calls to see if I would become a life insurance agent or tax preparer.  Many of the jobs involve working with individual clients and families at a personal level.  I think I had put myself in a position where I was no longer game for that.

I recall that on the Arts Marketing job in late 2003, a young man came from Toronto to help the callers sell National Symphony subscriptions.  He said that he had a music degree.  I thought it was odd for an artist (performer or composer) to be asked to sell music in a “cookie cutter” fashion to people who would buy subscriptions because their knowledge of music is not specialized enough for them to pick and chose what they want, as I would.  I encountered this concept again when a man about 40 approached me about buying long term care insurance (which I eventually did, but much more cheaply through a bank) and then shared with me that his real life was playing in a rock band.  He had to turn huckster to make a living.

Likewise, becoming a life insurance agent and financial planner would have meant dedicating my whole public presence to sales of a narrow service, and giving up journalistic presence entirely.  In that world you have to use your social media reputation (and there are no double lives now) to generate leads.  And there is this idea of proving that you can “sell” what paid you a stable income for years as in individual technical contributor.

I would attend a couple of two-hour seminars, one of cash-flow management (which is followed by an invitation to drop $3000 for a whole weekend before starting the program), and another on distributing phone cards to convenience stores.  How does someone used to (almost) unlimited cell and land service and Internet sell limited card products aimed at low income people?

So much of the work, both in telephone sales and in debt collection, was about “creating urgency” and then  “overcoming objections”, when the consumer objections were valid and the arguments offered to overcome them were misleading or sometimes false.

Can nerds sell?  Should they?  For some people, “right” is more about prevailing in social competition than in the truth of what is conveyed.

The substitute teaching issues are explained in the DADT-III book but will be further explored here in detail soon.  So will the “conflict of interest”.

I think this is all rather sobering.  I am lucky.

Originally Posted Jan. 27, 2014.