Hijacking of this thread stops now. Steve was using this thread to keep us posted on his situation. Any future posts better be very Steve-oriented.

Finally.....

What's your latest status Steve? How long till you are in a place of your own again?

And here I was just about to talk to SubSerpent about economics and money-printing.:rotfl:

I have no idea. I'm working fairly regularly now that I have my flagger's card, but I've also been sick for several days. Advice: never get sick in a shelter; they don't care, you still have to leave the premises during the day whether you feel like it or not.

I have to leave the shelter on the Fourteenth. You can only stay for three months, and I can't believe it's been that long. On the other hand I can spend a few days at the Rescue Mission and reapply to the shelter, and should have no problems getting back in. The bad news is I'm starting to sound like a professional bum, and I hate it!

The good news is I made enough money last week to finally get my phone turned back on (or did I already mention that on the previous page), and I'm in contact with my music-buddies again, so that's cheering.

Where is all your stuff from your apartment? Did you sell it or did you put it in a storage unit?

Great that you got your phone back on. What's your next step? Have you dialed for dollars to the unemloyment dept. yet? It might not be a lot but every little bit helps. They usually have an unemployment office around that you can go to during 9-5 hours and file for unemployment and use their resources for getting into a job fairly quickly.

Keep us informed and let us know if things get too bad.

As I said, I have been working semi-regularly at a day-labor job. Get paid every day, that's nice. I won't be looking at real jobs until I get a backlog of cash to see me through to a first real paycheck. That said, I hit the unemployment office every day I'm not working. I'm not eligible for unemployment, or even for food stamps anymore. Seems I quit a job not long ago, and they don't like that.

Hey steve cant belive that you are not eligible for unemployment:shifty: That really sucks. Though iam not from the USA so i have no idea of how there systems work. Im glad to hear you have some money coming in and good luck with the hunt for a real job. :up:

Sorry I didn't answer this part. My time at the library was almost up and I was typing as fast as I could.

A friend was kind enough to let me put computer, desk, bookshelves, clothes, dresser, bed, 40 boxes of books and a similar number of boxes of comics in his garage. He wasn't kind enough to invite me to stay there, but that is what it is, and we're still friends (after all, he has all my stuff!).

The way unemployment works, at least here, is that you have to have worked at a full time regular job for at least 30 days to be eligible, and that includes food stamps. I had a job a while ago that I quit because I had another job lined up, which fell through after the last moment. That's how I ended up in this situation in the first place. I won't be able to apply again until after I have a new job, at which point I won't need it anymore.

Catch-22.

I thought you were eligible for unemployment if you haven't found "reasonable" work after 60-90 days depending on what state you live in regardless if you quit your previous job or were fired.

Though, what is really bothering me as of lately is the way the system is protecting the companies so much more than the people. This is a complete OUTRAGE! The reason why local, state, and federal government likes to protect the company more than the people is because if the people quit or get fired for discipline problems, then no money is being made for the local, state, or federal governments who establish these laws.

Without people working they get less money on taxes and in a lot of cases they HAVE to pay the unemployed people money. This is why they put in their clauses that if you "quit" or get fired for reasons that were controllable by you then you get no unemployment money. So what happens then is the companies, just to really screw you over in a lot of situations, set you up to either quit or to get you fired for bad behavior etc... It's *******ING BS!!!

I've seen this in the last 2 jobs that I've quit. For one, I felt I was WAAAAYYYY underpaid. They started my off at $7.25 an hour to work 40 hours a week. I got a promotion to a different dept. and then they paid me $9.50 an hour to work 45 hours a week. Where I live, this is still considered poverty level pay. It doesn't even come out to $20,000 a year gross (before taxes). Then one day I approached my boss about a raise. I had taken on 2 extra jobs from employees that quit (who were making about $15 per hour each btw). I asked for a $2 per hour raise and my boss flipped through the roof. I was offened and shocked that she said no. She had me doing EVERYTHING including other people's jobs that the company had no intentions to ever fill. They were going to just work me to the bone and pay me no more than my original $9.50 an hour.

I sucked it up and hung on a bit longer to see if things would get better. They didn't of course. They just got worse. Now my boss had me add ANOTHER persons workload onto my plate to do and still NO BLOODY RAISE! WTF?!?!? 3 jobs now, not including my own that I am responsible for. *******ING BS!!! I was getting pretty livid by now and it was all I could do not to shove my foot up my boss's a**. She really deserved it IMHO!!! Still Does!!!

So one day, things at work got very chaotic and my boss was micromanaging me just to make sure I was doing EVERYTHING that needed to be done to keep this company from falling through the floor. I went outside to take my first 15 min smoke break of the day after being inside working for 4 hours straight. When I came back in she pulled me off my job and tried to write me up for taking an "unauthorized" break because the workload for the day was too demanding to warrant any breaks. WTF?!?!?!?!? This was the final straw, I could take NO MORE! I said the words with confidence, "I *******ING QUIT, YOU *******ING B****H" as I took the write up that she took the time to prepare and rubbed into my a** and b*lls in front of her and threw it hard into her face. I marched out to my car and I've never been back.

My wife works for this same company still and she said as soon as I left my boss got 4 new hires to fill in all the jobs that I was doing and started paying them all $11 an hour. WTF?!?!?! Where did all this EXTRA money come from?!??! Obviously it was a setup to force me to quit and to keep the company and state government from having to pay out any form unemployment. For some reason or other she had a problem with me because I wasn't as religious as her and because I smoked. WTF?!?!? God, I HATE the deep south!!!!

Anyway, I am still unemployed but I do have a job exam slated for a much better job working for the county coming up at the end of the month. I am also enrolled at a technology college as a full time student. So hopefully I will be able to find something much better once I get the degree I need.

Anyway Sailor Steve, I know what your going through. I can't say I've ever slept in a shelter, but I have had to go without several times in my life since I've gotten out of the Navy. It's a complete shame there isn't a guranteed federal job system setup for vets to get them a good job right away if the one they currently have isn't working out for them. Instead I sometimes feel like I served for nothing. It feels like I got out and realized the US population is still as ungreatful and uncaring about their vets as they've ever beeen. This is one of the problems I have with the US right now. There are just too many ungreatful and spoiled rotten people living in it. They feel they owe no one a bit of gratitude or respect because they aren't members at mommy and daddy's *******ing golf resort.

I feel for you Steve, and I'm praying for ya as well. At least we can always thank ourselves for serving and for that, I truly am grateful! :up:

Funny thing is, I got a great job right out of the service back in '71, working in a warehouse here in Utah at Hill Air Force Base. Problem was I'm an artistic (read lazy) type, and I just knew that I was going to have a successful music career and who needs this crappy job anyway? Besides, I'm not going to be in Utah for more than a year. I never thought about it again until five years ago, when I realized that if I had stayed there I would have retired in 2001 with a 30-year federal pension.

From your description it sounds mostly like a personality conflict between you and that particular boss. You're both probably better off in the long run.

As for people being ungrateful, federal funding is like population growth: every year there are more veterans and there is only so much money to go around. The schools need it, the military needs it, and they have to deal with taxpayers who wish taxes would go down, not up. Every time I visit the VA hospital they ask if I have medical insurance, as they can take it and they do need it. In reality there's only so much that can be done.

I've never collected unemployment insurance, as they always had some excuse as to why I did'nt qualify. So I don't look for help that way. I always manage to get work one way or another.

I remember back in the late 60's and early 70's selling poppies for Armistice Day, at school, and then taking all the proceeds to the Veteran's Hospitol. Kids everywhere did that, but in the latter 70's the fund drive stopped. City wide we used to raise around $8,000.00 for the vets. I know it's not a lot, but it did help the soldiers who depended on the V.A., who weren't rich or had any decent insurance.

Hi Sailor Steve, i'm very sorry to hear about your situation.My thoughts go out to you mate. It is a real shame you dont live over here in the UK. You could get housing benifit, a free house/flat, unemployment benift or even Income support. I have relatives who fought in GW1, when they left the army they used thier qualifications and found a job straight away ( lucky i know ) I just hope It is a two way street..we are taking somethings onboard from you guys over there in the US, i also hope your govenment will take our benifits onboard.
Take care mate and stay well :up:

Well, I've put off adding anything new until I had some good news, but things have turned sour again. The last time I reported in I had a card that let me flag traffic at constructions sites. No sooner did I start doing that than I got sick. For two weeks. Two weeks after that I got sick again. Then November came and it started getting cold, so construction stopped. I tried doing regular work again, but the fact is my old body just can't keep up anymore.

A month ago I said to myself "Hey! I've been doing this for three months and more; let's see if I can get unemployment again". So I applied, and I can get unemployment again! Good news. The only problem is, my bank account is closed, so I can't have it deposited there anymore. They do have a way to set up an account directly with Workforce Services, so I applied for that. They said that I had a card before with them, so I have to file for a lost/stolen card. They said they would send me a new one, but it would cost $5. They said I couldn't give them the money, they had to take it out of the account. They said the first money into the account didn't register until a couple of days after it was released. When I called them again they said "Oh, apparently we never sent you the card. We'll send it now. It takes five to seven business days to get there. Well, three weeks after I applied for unemployment I finally got the money. I'm also getting food stamps again, but that stuff only lasts a little while, and it's not enough to get an apartment.

Since I have unemployment I have bus money, so I started looking in earnest again. The state told me years ago that they would pay for schooling, but they wanted a copy of my birth certificate. I've been trying to get that ever since, but the state of Texas says they have more than 300 Steven E. Bradfields, but I'm not one of them.

I finally convinced the state to take my DD-214 (military separation papers) as proof of birth, so I talked to the local CDL truck-driving schools and got that all arranged. I also checked into computer schools, but the course I need is eight months long, and I don't have eight months right now.

Yesterday I went to apply for a phone-answering job that looked good. They told me the training class runs from 0600 hours to 1530, and the first bus that goes that way starts running at 0617.

Today I checked back with my VA rep at Workforce, and he told me that his superior told him he was wrong; it's the birth certificate or nothing.

So, after almost six months in the homeless shelter I'm no closer to a solution, an apartment or playing SHIII than I was back in July.

At least I can still get online at the library.

Steve,
I'm glad to hear you're hanging in there:) . Other than work :damn: , do you need anything? It would be cool if you could come over for Christmas dinner. Too bad airplane tickets are so expensive.:shifty:

mcbee:lurk: