The problem with all of them is that I like my time. I was born with all of it, and I’ve never seen why I should give it to someone else unless it’s what I want to be doing with it. I’ve found jobs based around things I like doing. Things like skiing, kayaking, and hanging out in bars. The problem is, if somebody is paying me, my time quits being mine and becomes his or hers. Employment is a form of slavery. As soon as someone starts paying me for my time, I realize how much it’s worth to me. And the problem is, my time is worth a lot more than $20,000 dollars a year let alone $6.50 an hour.
Don’t get me wrong; I’ve had “good” jobs. Job’s where I was treated right, the pay was decent, and the “benefits” were comprehensive. I knew my time belonged to someone else and eventually I had to leave. Since I don’t know when I will die, it was unacceptable to give my time away. I’ve never had a wage-slave mentality. I refuse to get a minimum wage job at Wal-Mart. I’d rather eat cat food from dumpsters.
The guys at the top aren’t working. They encourage us to fill our houses, our garages, and our stomachs with things we never would have thought of were it not for their non-stop television, radio, and print campaigns. The advertising companies work for the factories that churn out more and more useless ‘necessities’ every day. They encourage us to consume, consume, consume and spend, spend, spend.
The bottom line is you gotta do what you gotta do to get the money to survive, but it’s foolish to do more than that. I’ve broken up concrete driveways for Irish Gypsies in England, moved tons of rocks in Hawaii, and taught conversational English to schoolchildren in Indonesia. Working while you are on the road is generally more fun than having a real job because you know you are going to be leaving. If having a career works for you, more power to you, but so far it hasn’t worked for me.
Getting a Phone, Physical Address, and E-Mail Address
If you want to get employment it is always helpful to have a phone number and address. Not only do they give potential employers a way to contact you, they also give your family and friends a way to contact you. Same goes for e-mail. If you don’t have e-mail yet (note: when I wrote this in 2001, email was still sort of optional. If you don’t have it today, you’re obviously making a technophobe statement — Good for you!), you’re missing out on a great way to keep in contact with the people you know and the people you meet. Most libraries offer free internet access, internet café’s are plentiful and cheap, and there are plenty of free e-mail options available.
These things are now essential if you are applying for any type of government benefits. Sometimes you can use a friend or relative’s street address, but there are other ways to get a physical address. When I moved from North Carolina to Washington State, I used some of my limited resources to get a post office box at a shipping supply store. The advantage of this over the Post Office is that you can use the physical address of the place on resumes and job applications. For a phone, I paid $30 to get a number at a message service.
Prepaid cell phones have made things even more cheap and convenient, so you cannot only get messages but also have a phone. My cell phone and 200 minutes of prepaid anytime use cost $138 at K-Mart. This includes voice mail. If I want to buy additional minutes I can buy 150 for about $40. (Note: I wrote this in 2002, today you can get a prepaid phone and minutes for as little as $10)
WiFi and Laptops
With my laptop I can find internet access pretty much anywhere. It’s called WiFi. Lot’s of business’s provide free wireless laptop access if you buy a cup of coffee. If you don’t want to buy a cup of coffee you can do what we old geeks used to call ‘war dialing’. You go to a neighborhood where someone might have a wireless network. There are commercial products you can use to find these ‘hotspots’ but what I do is put in my wireless card and drive around the rich neighborhoods slowly until I get a good signal. Then I pull over and surf the net in my van. (Note: Today you can find iPhone and Android apps for your phone that will find open WiFi signals.)
Who would of guessed the homeless would get internet from the rich for free?
Daily Labor
Daily labor is one way to get money in your pocket. The problem is that you need to get there early, the pay isn’t usually good, and the work usually sucks because often it is back breaking labor or monotonous factory work. I’ve used services like Labor Ready twice in my life because I can usually find a better way to spend my time and get what I need.
Under the Table (Risks and Benefits)
Working for anyone under the table is always a risky venture. You are putting trust in someone that you probably don’t know very well. The truth is, if they choose not to pay you or to short your pay there isn’t much you can do about it.
On the positive side, if you are getting paid under the table you aren’t paying taxes and your boss isn’t paying taxes so you are both making more than if you were legitimate. Personally, I like that none of the money goes to supporting wars, mono-cropping subsidies, auto bailouts, bank bailouts, or other programs I don’t agree with. (We can always anonymously donate to causes we do agree with.)
Farms
If you arrive at the right part of the year, you can almost always find farm work in exchange for food, shelter, or even cold, hard cash. Farm work isn’t easy. The hours are long, the work is usually dirty and labor intensive, and the pay is usually minimum wage or less. However, I have known people that had wonderful times picking apples in Washington State or Australia, pulling potatoes in Idaho, or working on organic farms in the Cascades and Kauai.
Gambling
Gambling is a good way to lose money. There’s a reason the casinos are so fancy. The reason is most people lose. I decide how much I can afford to lose, I stick to that, and every time I win anything in excess of my original amount I put it in my pocket. Once I lose the amount I planned on, I leave…usually. When I have continued in the hopes of ‘recouping’, I’ve almost always lost.
I don’t’ recommend gambling to anyone, but the combination of unemployment checks and casino winnings took me on a four month journey through China, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Taiwan. Sometimes it works out…but only if you’re lucky.
Legitimate Work aka Wage Slavery
I hate legitimate work. It’s a strong statement and a true one. I hate it. At this moment, as I write this I am struggling over whether to re-enter the work force. I’m broke and it sucks. I’d like to be traveling or drinking with some fancy woman. Unfortunately, I hate working for some jackass that makes more money off the work I do than I do. So I probably won’t do it.
It’s a periodic struggle and I’ve fallen prey to it before and certainly will again. I did the stockbroker thing, the restaurant thing, the construction thing. It all sucks. The last legitimate job I had (when writing this in 2003) was trying to book people into timeshare presentations in Waikiki. It was so gross. I had to walk up on people trying to enjoy their vacations and sucker them into going to a timeshare presentation. I sometimes wanted to murder these nice people because they would put up their hand in the “”talk to the hand” gesture. I wanted to scream at them that I was a nice guy only trying to make a living but knew that wouldn’t earn me any commission. So I did the right thing. I quit.