Sinners in the Hands of a Confused Goddess #1: Parents

[Rupert Giles]

Augh.  My parents.

They brought me into this world.

They and my grandparents helped to teach me what now-a-days is considered a warped value set.

Oh, and my father made sure that the words, 'Yon' and 'Yonder' were in my vocabulary.

I'm still a bit peeved about that, not so much at him but at others who don't remember that when something is close to neither party in a conversation it's 'Yon book,' or, 'Over Yonder,' not 'That book,' or 'Over there.'

But anyway.

I currently live in a College town.

Gainesville, Florida to be precise, home of the University of Florida and the Florida Gators.

I live 3 blocks from the 'famous' restaraunt, The Swamp.

And I'm about 7 blocks from the actual 'Swamp,' the football stadium.

In this town of roughly 100,000 persons, about half of them are students.

And we come to the problem my parent's don't seem to understand.

This is an employer's market, not an employee's.

Assuming two thirds of college students need a job, you have roughly Thirty Three THOUSAND ( That's 3.3 times 10 to the Fourth ) person looking for a job.

People who are only going to be here for four years.

People who can swap jobs on the drop of a dime.

My parents do not understand how it took me 3 months to find a job when I moved here (I walked into my position at the Humane Society), and when I quit it, how it's going to take me probably 6 to 8 months to find anouther one, since they forbid me from delivering Pizza, which I may just get a job doing anyway.

They don't understand that with such a saturated job market that employers can pick who the hell they want to work.  It's not like back home in Spartanburg where it's fairly balanced.

They also don't understand that my job at the Humane Society was HIGH PAYING for this town.  I was making 6.50 an hour doing office work without a GED or a College Diploma.

I've tried to explain this to them -- hell, my uncle, Christian, age 22 years, definately not a cabbage, has tried to explain it to my mom and dad.  They respect his opinions on things, and they still don't believe it.

I just don't understand it.

My parents are both well educated persons.  My mom is a Master's of Social Work, and my Father is a Regional Compliance Manager for an Insurance Company (He dropped out of College, but this man is the very model of what Benjamin Franklin and the other founders would have wanted in a citizen.  He's educated himself in so many topics it's not believable.  He can understand German, Latin, Greek, Italian, knows French fairly well, has a very good grasp of Math that you have to be a Masters in Mathematics to know, and is well versed in Philosophy and Religion), and yet these two seem to think that the world is still the way it was when they grew up -- that you get rewarded for hard work, that people expect you to tell the truth.

They find it completely shocking that I was slapped, slapped, by woman not more than 5 or 6 years older than me for opening a door for her at the mall.  They don't seem to understand that people don't want the truth.  They want lies, sugarcoated lies.

And I just don't understand how two persons, who seem to be in full possession of the faculties, cannot grasp such a simple thing as a convoluted job market.

But speaking of the Job Market, what's up with all these jobs that Bush has created?

I need a job.  I would be happy to be a waiter, working for 2.13 an hour plus tips, in some restaraunt.  My dad suggests this, and he doesn't understand how I can't get a job doing it, even though I explain if you have 50,000 students, and 51% of them are women, that means that there are roughly 25,500 people in this city who, if they applied for a job waiting tables, are going to be picked before me.

They just don't understand that I can get a job as a code monkey, or designing web pages, in a town full of people majoring for Computer Science or Computer Science and Engineering, without a degree, or being enrolled.

They are truely Sinners in the Hands of a Confused Goddess.

[Wishfarple]

Could it be they are trying to confuse you into moving somewhere with fewer drunken crackerlings?

[Rupert Giles]

Could it be they are trying to confuse you into moving somewhere with fewer drunken crackerlings?

About 10% of the time I am a drunken German Boy, so I don't see what the big deal is.

I just don't understand how there can be a flaw so fundamental in the wiring of their brains that they just don't grasp this concept.  It's not rocket science.

[Wishfarple]

It is a simple idea, yes.  Makes me wonder if voicing their unrelenting confusion isn't an attempt to frustrate you into seeking out richer job markets.  My parents aren't nearly as well-educated as yours, but they're still smarter than me.

[gnimbley]

To quote what President, then Governor, George W. Bush, said to Michael Moore: "Behave yourself will ya; go find real work. "

Prehaps your parents are the type that believe you can accomplish whatever you set out to do and bemoan that fact that you seem to them to be the type that accepts your fate and refuses to rail against it.

Have you ever thought about starting a business that caters to 50,000 temporary residents? (When I was your age typing term papers was big. With computers, I doubt it is anymore.)

(Oh, and your parents have undoubtably read the statistics that state that pizza-delivering in one of the, if not the, most dangerous jobs in America. Ranks up there with being a clerk at an all night convenience store.)

[sakredchao]

have you considered selling drugs?  in a college town i'll bet there's a lot of money in the drug market.

scratch that.  i -know- there's a lot of money in it.

kim