Forums » Smalltalk » Job Help?

So just a warning, there's gonna be a lot of whiny woe-is-me in this post, but I am looking for suggestions or info. The whining is my attempt to communicate the difficulties I keep running into. I'm posting it here publicly in hopes of a greater variety of answers.

I want to know about viable ways to make enough money to live on in/around a metropolitan area where things are expensive. Just a studio apartment tends to run over $1000/month with requirements that a person's income be 2.5-3 times rent. Places with lower prices do exist, but you have to qualify for them and they tend to have very long waitlists (the city's be dealing with a housing/homelessness crisis for awhile now).

At the moment I have two jobs. At one, I enjoy the work, but I've been increasing having difficulty with my boss and am strongly considering resigning (it's not a reliable source of income anyway, it's appoint-only rather than regular hours). At the other, I enjoy time with some of the people (who I don't keep any contact without outside of work), but frequently am highly frustrated by things like folks not following standards (including safety standards) and higher staff not seeming to realize how difficult some tasks actually are. When I say "frustrated," I mean it sometimes honest-to-goodness reaches wanting to yell at people, or break things, or just quit and storm off. (I am not claiming that my reactions are reasonable, and I'm very good at not following through on these smoldering urges, but it's still very unpleasant.) Based on my experience with enough other jobs to look highly unreliable plus the complaints I've heard from other folks about other jobs and companies, the conclusion I've come to is that any job is going to have those highly unpleasant times. This conclusion does not bring me any peace. It only makes the idea of another job I'd hoped to pursue seem that much more... pointless.

There are a lot of things that get in my way.

• As illustrated above, I can get very easily frustrated when expectations are not being met. Anything that involves health and safety makes it significantly amplified (food service has been particularly problematic). So far, the "best" this has played out has been me steadily giving up on standards myself. Another time, I was driven to quit in part because I "tattled" to the health department about things that concerned me.
• I am not good at communication, especially when I don't have writing to go through. Anxiety, nervous laughter and down-playing, negative reinforcement against bothering to try to communicate issues, fear of coworkers turning on me... These things make it very hard for me to communicate when there is a problem, or when I have a question, or when something is just difficult for me. I'm also reflexively self-deprecating, making interviews or anything where I need to sell myself very difficult.
• I need a very careful balance of pressure. I need eustress to motivate me to actually do things (usually as the idea that a superior might be watching or be informed), but I can get overwhelmed easily and end up stuck on trying to figure out how to even start on anything. At that point, pretty much all I can really react to is whatever is currently "on fire." I also have a garbage memory, but just trying to maintain a task list can up taking up all my focus and overwhelming me, or else being tossed aside and quickly becoming useless. This tends to rule out any form of self-employment.
• I can't stick to anything. I have plenty of baseline and above-baseline skills: art, writing, crafts, cleaning, web dev, etc, but I can never stick to anything, and the moment it becomes a requirement, there seems to suddenly be a block on my capacity to do that thing in particular. Even roleplay - I've hardly done anything in-character in like a year now, maybe longer. It's not that I don't want to do these things, it's that I just don't seem able to anymore.
• I don't drive. I don't have a car and have never had a license. Back when I was still trying to learn, when I could finally get past all the anxiety about anything, and without ever really learning how to react to many basic, common situations, hyperfocus set in dangerously. I saw the bumper and back lights of the car in front of me, and that's it - no signs, no other cars, no other lights, sometimes not even processing what the lights I did see actually meant. I am reliant on public transit (and my bike tires are flat right now...). Aside from making it a lot harder to get around, this also automatically disqualifies me from many jobs, including some that don't even have driving as a requirement.
• Performance anxiety prevents me from doing many things, and has even kept me from getting certifications. For example, I was in a First Responders course years ago, and ended up dropping out. Even when I understood the instructions just fine, that performance anxiety would prevent me from performing the task correctly, just like someone shy about singing struggling to even make no noise no matter how good their voice might actually be.
• I sometimes have difficulty processing things. Sometimes it's the "hidden hearing loss" issue. Sometimes it's following steps, needing to see things over and over or even be directly guided before I can make sense of what's happening. Aside from the driving thing above, noticeable instances have been how hard it was for me to learn a single, basic foundational move in a brief self-defense class; and how I am actually incapable of enjoying things like RiffTrax because I can't follow along with anything that's happening or being said. There's too much going on at once and nothing makes sense.
• I am physically small, relatively weak, and generally at doing all things.

And yes, I have been diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety, ADHD, an extremely vague Mathematics Disorder (just extra slow), and scored high on measures of PTSD (not diagnosed because nothing stood out as the cause). No, none of these are sufficient to get me any specialized income assistance.

Basically, I'm feeling stuck. It doesn't seem possible to get a job that I can consistently manage and that won't sometimes lead to me hating everything. Yeah, I mentioned I enjoy one of my current jobs, but if I leave it, due to an agreement, I won't be allowed to work in that industry in my area for a year, and after that it would have to work as a self-employment thing (again, historically has been problematic for me) and it would be even less reliable for income. It'd also be nice if it felt like I was actually achieving anything with a job, not just clocking in and out for survival. Having a purpose makes things a hundred times easier, but it seems like that's usually all volunteer stuff with no income.

I don't mean to sound defeatist but... I've already tried so many things...

I feel you on many levels, and I have to agree on the unfortunate factor that every job will have ups and downs. It's quite discouraging and I hate it equally for you.

I am also physically weak and small in a lot of regaurds, so i found desk jobs to be easier for me. If you're living near a large metroplex of some kind I recommend highly looking into the hotel industry. Night Audit is the overnight shift and you generally deal with the least customers and 90% of the hotels I have worked in let you work alone at night. Your task is straight forward, not direct math as you use excel sheets, your job is your job and there is usually only one other person doing that job with you. I have also found in the audit field that most people are just as particular and tidy and efficient at the work as myself if not more so. I rarely see my boss, but the hotel industry has almost always communicated by emails or written log that everyone is required to use appropriately each shift to keep all shifts up to date.

No coworker has ever been perfect, and a lot of the day shifters have not been the best or adequate, however it usually is a high rotation job for day shift workers. I really recommend looking into it because with my own generalized anxiety, depression, and adhd this has been an amazing solution for me while also being unmedicated. I love my work and I honestly couldn't push more people toward it enough.

The bonus is that night audit hotel jobs tend to be paid fairly decently, but it also depends on the state/country you live in. When I was working in the states at a Holiday Inn in Tennessee I made around 8.50 an hour, definite 32 hour weeks, but that was before the state minimum wage was following the federal minimum of 7.25.

Look into the audit work, using LinkedIn and job search websites also helps you see what people are offering towards pay in your area. I wish you the best of luck and I'm sorry that its been rough on you lately. I hope it gets better in some way.