And on The Seventh Day, You Will Get Your Ass Up and Work

Under the job title of "Federal Emergency Relief Contractors / Special Project in South Florida," I found an intriguing call for "Cooks, Dishwashers, Food service workers, Shower operators (sanitizing showers and refilling supplies), Laundry workers, General maintenance people, Administrative assistants, Machine Operators, Project Managers (this is a higher skilled position), Janitors, Laborer, Grounds Maintenance, Washer, Machine Appliance Mechanic, General Maintenance Worker, Laborer, Driver Courier, Parking and Lot Attendant, Shuttle Bus Driver, Truck driver, Light, Truck driver, Medium, Truck driver, Heavy and Truck driver, Tractor-Trailer."

The best part of the ad was this paragraph:

Workers are expected to do any tasks assigned and work 7 days/week, 12 hour/ day – 40 hours regular time pay and 44 hours overtime pay. They must provide their own transportation to and from the work-site, and will be provided shelter, and all meals. This commitment could be up to 6 weeks or more. Workers will be paid the prevailing wage designated for each area.

So this thing is like bootcamp, or prison, except you get paid. It could also double as a sort of in-patient weight-loss or detox program and stop-smoking clinic, I'd bet.

If I was a Fox Newser, I'd cry out against the socialist nature of this Nazi Work Camp. If I was an MSNBCer, I'd glory in the Peace Corps/New Deal aspect of it all. As an unemployed writer, I see it as a story and two paychecks. Six weeeks of 84-hour weeks and free meals? Maybe a bunch of stories. I'd embed on this one.

I'm gonna apply for Laborer, Grounds Maintenance.

Rolling Stone? The Atlantic?

When Today was a Hyphenated Word

This depressing headline is what happens when you let government agencies create the motivational posters. Heads down, the men arrive to their dreary factory jobs in the cold dim of dawn. It's another day.

(Harp SFX as scene goes to black and white. Transition to factory boss rounding up the crew outside the gate for the morning pep talk.)

It's 1937, you jackleg bastards! And a whole lotta boys ain't got work. At least you have jobs, you ungrateful scoundrels, so why don't you buck up, take your measly daily wage and go buy some whiskey? Drown yourself in the only thing that might temporarily erase the shame of not being able to join the Army like the rest of the able-bodied men of this country. In five years, the Army will take the whole sorry lot of you, regardless of your pathetic conditions. And women...THAT'S RIGHT I SAID WOMEN! will take your shitty jobs. For half the pay! In the meantime, you sad excuses for humanity, get in there and start producing.

And make the day safe, you sunsuvbitches. One more severed limb during the day shift will mean mean smaller portions of horsemeat in your lunches!

Image via Vintagraph.

Grab a Shovel in the Shovel Ready Economy

Don't despair, out of work citizens. There are infrastructure jobs for the taking at Infrastructure-Jobs.com, or so this banner ad would have you believe. You'll be building bridges and highways and windmills and solar panels and electric cars and housing for the evicted people. Gonna be a fun time in the world very shortly. This is only one of many helpful sites where friendly marketers are setting up link farms to a bunch of other places, their white spaces crammed with Google AdWords ads.

But it's better than it used to be, or so I hear. In the olden days, when your grandparents and great-grandparents were out of work and looking for "infrastructure jobs," they didn't have some fancy websites where they could pick and choose. They just went down to the government shack by the vegetable stand near the railroad tracks and stood in line for seven days. When they finally got to the window, some mean government employee handed them a piece of paper and said, "Hop the next train to Reno and find a Mr. Williams. He will put you to work. You will be given one bacon fat sandwich per day and a ration of water. Job pays 25¢ a week. And if you don't want the job, you lazy bastard, there's 500 people behind you that do. And bring your own shovel, numb nuts."

The government shack was also adorned with encouraging posters. This was before we realized what was happneing in Europe; when we shared with the Nazis a mutual love for scary patriotic slogans, militaristic fonts and workers depicted as robotic wards of the state.