I have a Bachelors degree in English. Which means I can teach English if I get a Masters in English, maybe. That is all. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Thankfully I’m now gainfully employed full-time, but in the past I’ve had to scramble. *Now, to be clear, I’m about to do some griping about tasks that kept me financially afloat, so do keep in mind I’m still grateful I was able to get by.*
5. CalWorks Recipient
When I became pregnant with my daughter Layla, I was working as a writing tutor at a community college. This was 2009, and the recession hit, slashing the payroll budget. When I went on maternity leave, my boss assured me I’d still have a position, but that was not the case. I ended up turning to welfare. In exchange for money, I entered a full-time program centered on getting a job. There were classes on personal hygiene and wellness, and I attended lectures by Erin, who taught about writing resumes, dressing formally, and interviewing techniques. The shitty part was mostly my own personal circumstances. Layla was three months old at the time and not quite adjusted to sleeping through the night, and I had tremendous difficulty staying awake. I was also nursing, so periodically I had to find a room to express milk–inexplicably, I didn’t lock the door, and once someone walked in on me. When I wasn’t in lectures or classes, I was required to apply for jobs online, often for eight hours straight. Happily, after a couple of months my writing tutor boss found me some hours, and I went back to work. Years later I ended up at the library, and Erin was a regular patron, which was only mildly awkward.
4. Uber Driver
I didn’t get my drivers license until I was in my thirties, and I learned to drive in California. The roads are flat, pretty wide, and set far away from the curb, with sidewalks aplenty. I was also pretty familiar with the area, having been born and raised there. Which is not to say I never got lost. My sense of direction is rubbish, as is my ability to remember street names, freeways, or even landmarks, and I frequently get confused by Google Maps. It’s a wonder I can get anywhere. I was between jobs after moving to Kentucky, and Uber seemed like a sure way to pay the bills temporarily. A word about the road conditions in Kentucky, a state that, at the time, I had been living in for four months. Maybe four months is enough time for you to get accustomed to new surroundings, but alas, not me. The streets in Kentucky are narrow, and wedged against someone’s lawn, which more often than not features a large dip at the front to curtail flooding. The back roads, while beautiful, are like forests with bigass cliffs you can drive right off of. Not to mention that the highways are as curvy as Adele in 2011. Also, all drivers are in a goddamn hurry and they’re not shy about tailgating. In California, I staunchly drove the speed limit, but that shit doesn’t fly in Kentucky. I’m sure I drove my passengers nuts with my conservative pace. (A year and a half later, I’ve learned to compromise by not driving more than 15 miles over the speed limit, which by state law is a ticketable offense.) I’m also prone to social anxiety and am not a sparkling conversationalist at the best of times, so needless to say I made a pretty shitty Uber driver. I lasted for ten rides, and only one passenger tipped me.
3. Cash Office Clerk
At fourteen dollars an hour, this is one of the highest-paying in the listicle. When I first started at the library in Kentucky, I was only part-time, so I did 20 hours there, and 24 hours at a grocery store cash office. I didn’t hate it (in fact I liked it and would have done it full-time if it paid a living wage). But it was intense. Training lasted for months, and when I quit I still didn’t know all there was to know about the job. I came in at the ass-crack of dawn to count, balance, and inventory the cash register drawers before opening. I filled the lottery ticket machines, ordered money (that’s a surreal experience–yes, hello, I’ll take 2,000 ones, 10,000 tens, and one hundred dollars in pennies, please), emptied the self-checkout machines of incoming cash and refilled the drawers for customer change, printed out reports, and prepared daily bank deposits. After a while, the thousands of dollars I handled started looking like Monopoly money. Except when it was visibly dirty. Money is disgusting, ya’ll. At the library while checking in books, I play the mystery stains game, but it’s worse while handling money. Once I got a bill that said “drugs”, and it did not come from the pharmacy.
Being responsible for that amount of cash is a lot of pressure. Not to mention that few people are trained to do the tasks (even the store’s second-in-command had issues filling in when my coworker was out), so missing work is highly frowned upon. Once I was experiencing a pain in my side, which turned out to be a kidney stone, the worst pain of my life actually, and vomiting too, and they were still reluctant to let me leave. When a less prestigious but full-time position at the library became available, I took it, but I kept the cash office job to make up for the lower hourly wage, working 44 hours a week at the library and another 8-24 hours at the store. That lasted for three months, after which time I was crying at the drop of a hat and struggling to stay awake any time I drove, or sometimes even while counting money or hunting the library shelves for requested items. Something had to give, despite my not having a backup plan.
2. Survey Taker
It’s hard to squeeze in more than 44 hours a week of work with three kids; the grocery store only worked because my shift was 4 am to noon-ish. So I tried some apps. Branded Surveys is exactly how it sounds: you take surveys. But you have to be part of the demographic the surveyors want, so you may find yourself answering a dozen questions and then being rejected. The app can also crap out after you actually get accepted for a survey; I once got to the end of a 20-minute survey only to have the app lose all my progress. You may have guessed this is also a less than lucrative venture. I spent about three hours taking surveys, and earned six bucks. Winwalk, an app that promises gift cards for meeting a steps-per-day goal, appealed to me because I’m obsessed with getting 10,000 steps a day in the first place. And guess how else you can earn rewards? Fucking surveys. Their surveys were slightly better, but still not a great experience. I gave up after the pedometer stopped clocking me at 4,000-some steps when my fitness watch told me I had 7,000 and was still continuing upward. That shit is rigged, I tells ya!
1. Plasma Donor
I wish I could say I donate plasma because I’m a good person, but no. It’s $100 bucks a pop the first eight times you do it, and still fairly well-paying after. I’d never donated blood or any bodily fluid before, so I was unprepared for the barrage of personal questions (including whether I’d been to parts of Europe around 1980, which is before I was born), finger-stick to test for diseases (though seeing my blood get sucked into a capillary tube and go into a little centrifuge never gets old), physical to check me for needle marks and hidden tattoos and piercings, and six-hour wait time. The visits following the very first one (after you’ve gained their trust, bwa ha ha) are a bit more streamlined–there’s no physical, anyway. The procedure itself isn’t generally too bad, it’s just a quick poke; though the second time I went, I hadn’t drunk enough water and two staff members working in tandem couldn’t find a vein, even after digging around super hard with the needle, so they had to switch arms. Otherwise, I get to sit in a fairly comfortable, clean bed-type chair and read a book, and all I need do is pump my fist when the machine requires it until I fill a plastic 1,000-ml bottle (about four cups) with bubbly, brownish goo–it looks a bit like beer. The worst part of it for me was the air of desperation among those waiting to be seen–everyone is doing this for the money–in addition to the jaded attitude of the staff. The fellow who gave me the physical was the only nurse there at the moment, and he had to work through his lunch break, reciting to me a pages-long list of legal disclaimers and warnings about possible side effects from memory at a speed that would do Busta Rhymes proud. The phlebotomists (an underpaid bunch, ya’ll–our inner liquids are gross) are also overworked. They’re polite and professional, but it does make one feel like a bit of a bother when an employee leaves for the day by ceremoniously tossing her disposable lab coat in the trash and hollering that she’s going home.
All gripes aside, all of the aforementioned are still better than what I did upon first moving to Kentucky: hurriedly pack boxes for ten-hour shifts with mandatory overtime at the warehouse of a certain multinational online retailer. Whoo, I’m glad to be outta there!
GhoulieJoe 