[John D]

You do not think 99 weeks is enough to find a job? How long do you think we need to keep paying you to sit on your butt complaining?
No I have never been unemployed. That is because I always know I could be next and ALWAYS work harder than the person next to me.
WalMart is ALWAYS hiring.

[ottbmare]

I don't know how long it will take to find a job. I've been looking for more than a year, and so have most of the people in my office. (More than 500 of us have been laid off in the past six months, but we had plenty of warning and were trying to get training and find new positions starting last summer.) NO ONE in my office over 40 has found a new job. I know the company valued me--I was one of the last half-dozen to be let go before the office closed forever--so my inability to find a new job isn't due to laziness, as you seem to hint.

Walmart already has an application on file from me. Maybe you'd like to call them up for me and ask them why they never asked me in for an interview; their HR office doesn't accept calls from job applicants so I'm in the dark. Or maybe the local Walmart really isn't hiring middle-aged white ladies with no experience at retail work and no ability to lift things.

Save your supercilious lectures. You could be in our shoes, no matter how hard you've worked. Millions of extremely competent, hard-working, focused people have been laid off. I truly believe that people like you who say "it couldn't happen to me, I'm too good" are whistling past the graveyard. You are just hoping it doesn't happen to you, too.

And by the way, so far you haven't been paying me to "sit on [my] butt complaining". I am not sitting on my butt; indeed, I am devoting half my waking hours to searching for a job and the other half to trying to start a business. I have yet to see a dime in unemployment compensation, but when I do it will be a combination of my employer's contributions and my own, per my pay stubs.

You have a rather cold nature, sir. This is not a noble trait. Perhaps your soul would be improved by a spell of hardship.

[hsmomx3]

It is people like you who have no idea what this job market is like and you sound like one of those Republican types who sit in their comfort zone thinking those little people out there—it is their fault for what they are going through.

Sorry, but here in Arizona, jobs are not that easy to find, not even in the fast food places, and not even at Wal-Mart.

Let’s see you try and make a house payment and pay all utilities and auto insurance on $240 per week! I have done it and yep, I have three kids as well.