Posted on 05/27/2025 7:12:52 AM PDT by Red Badger
And to think nobody wrote sob stories about me the times I got laid off. There’s a Pulitzer waiting to be written!
Working for yourself can be working for the most unforgiving boss.
No, they had severe mental problems and should have been in a facility.
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Problem is, there’s no more ‘facilities’. A lot of mental hospitals were closed during the Reagan era. (Don’t get me wrong... I love and respect Ronaldus Magnus. It just happened under his watch.)
Perhaps President Trump can order the building of more mental hospitals.
Even worse...the dirty little secret in the government is that contractors do a lot of work that feds should be doing. There are legions of contractors in every agency doing all manner of work, and after awhile the feds find ways to shift work over to them. Contractors are supposed to perform discrete, specialized tasks for limited periods of time, but the reality is that many of them become extensions of the federal workforce — much to the delight of federal workers.
Same here in southern NH. There are help wanted signs everywhere.
The problem is that many of those jobs are real work. Meaning you have to wait tables or do something physical.
I do not mean roofing or landscaping either. Those jobs are so physically demanding that they are almost exclusively done by illegals.
I think I could make a living just doing odd jobs for things people need done around their house. I see them asking all the time on my local Facebook page.
IF you have a pickup truck you can make money just taking things to the dump for people.
I sell firewood on the side. It started mostly just to clean up my 12 acre property. Trees die, they break, fall over. Last fall I sold ten pick up truck loads. I could have sold twenty easily. It is hard physical labor though. I sell them for CASH. No credit cards, no VENMO, no Apple pay. No checks. CASH.
“Some of these people don’t know Jesus and the government fills that void for them.”
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For many, government IS their religion. They literally worship it because it benefits them in so many ways.
Even before Dei probably half the Federal workforce was incompetent and unproductive. Massive cuts were in order. The problem was that in any cuts the few good workers would be aced and the worthless time servers protected.
“I think I could make a living just doing odd jobs for things people need done around their house.”
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Very true. But one problem is that most people don’t want to pay you sufficiently for your services, especially when it comes to “small jobs” (which they think should all be quick and easy). Always charge enough to cover your time, materials, profit, and a possible call-back.
Unfortunately, “Now hiring” signs don’t actually mean they are hiring.
Like the streets, the office cubicle farm is the "mental health facility". Scott Adams of Dilbert fame made a fortune sharing stories about the goings-on in such "facilities".
Similar story here.
I grew up, got in gear sooner or later and carried on.
Throw God out of your country and guess who shows up?
Ghost jobs shouldn’t exist but they do.
Employers should be in jail for that.
Forgot to add ‘company went bankrupt’ to the list.............
Forgot to add ‘company went bankrupt’ to the list.............
Correct, which means you are in the $50-75/hour range to do small jobs.
There is a local guy I know who started a small engine repair service.
He is a retired engineer. He works on small tractors, snow blowers, lawn mowers, etc.
The first thing he needed was a pickup truck and a trailer.
Then he bought a winch to put on the trailer.
He charges $40 to pick up and return your machine. Then $75/hour to work on it.
He has more work than he can handle. He doe not advertise. It is just word of mouth.
FYI, he has my 1999 John Deere lawn tractor right now. He is doing a compression test on the engine. It is blowing smoke under pressure. I thought it was coming from a leak around the valve cover. It is burning oil. Might need new rings. Which means it is a PARTS tractor now.
A whole LOT more must be done for what THEY have done. Those types of individuals, knowing it is very difficult to terminate them after they pass probation, develop an intolerable entitlement attitude which develops into a very authoritative, despotic way of dealing with people. They KNOW they cannot survive employment in the private sector with that attitude as it is what they have become, so depression sets in when they begin to realize they will have to suffer the same humiliations we in the private sector have to endure on a day-to-day basis.
After treating the public so badly, the very thought of being treated the same way by someone without recourse leads to suicidal thoughts. Their very way of living destroys them, IF they get fired. If they keep working with all of the protections and benefits they have, most get worse and worse.
You could never charge them enough. The homeowners are reaching out on Facebook because there isn't a viable market in place.
You can go online and see contractor after contractor talking about how their business was previously 80% wealthy customers and 20% regular folks but is now 100% wealthy customers. The work is almost all new construction and installation instead of repair.
We've reached a stage where labor is prohibitively expensive while parts are inexpensive. It costs less to wire up a floor of a brand new house than it would cost to replace just one outlet in an existing house. The tooling and construction techniques for new work compared to renovation are a large part of the equation. Also, even just the cost of driving to the job site often far outweighs the cost of materials and labor for the actual work.
All that's before you get into the liability issue. Nick one water line or electrical line and it's game over. That $75 job the homeowner wanted just turned into thousands of dollars of damage.
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