Comments on: What Kind of Work is Beneath You?

By: Dan

Dan — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 17:27:33 +0000

This is just my own experience regarding this issue. I have a bachelor’s degree, work experience and a Master’s. The only problem is I ended up graduating with my MA very recently…not exactly a good time to job search. I’ve been looking for a reasonably paying job for a while now without success.
While acknowledging that I would take any job I could find if I was in a bad financial state and NEEDED money immediately, my argument is that holding out for a higher paying job is a better idea. From a long term perspective I feel settling for a lower paying job than you are qualified for negatively affects your career earnings. Here is an example…. say you have a level of education and experience that should qualify you for a job in your field paying around 60K per year. You have trouble finding a job paying this salary so you settle for a job paying 35 or 40K per year. At this point it might take you 5 or even 10 years to move up in this job to the point where you’re earning the 60K that you should have qualified for from day one. I think a better option would be to stick it out with the job search for a bit longer and hold out for a job paying you what you wanted from the start. Even if you spend another year (or more) looking for a job, when you finally find a job with the salary level you were looking for you’ve come out ahead in the long run.
Again, if you’re in the position where you immediately need money I’d of course take whatever I could get….or maybe even during your search you should look for something part time to bring in some money. But I feel selling yourself short by taking a lower paying job than your qualified for reduces your career earning potential.

By: Hopeful

Hopeful — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 06:44:47 +0000

Having an education or job skills doesnot qualify for refusing to work outside of our expectations. It’s what we need, not what we want. If a service job is menial, oh well. Their is much to learn and experience from a job that can transfer those skills and even more so, the ability to share those experiences through socializing and relating to clients. It is a powerful asset to relate to a client’s situation and being able to feel comfortable knowing what the client is talking about.
Like others wrote, minimium wage jobs, the pay and humbleness bite, however, they are reliable. When does a service job say layoff, downsizing, etc. usual say we need you.
Anyways, people with money, degrees and fancy titled jobs are just people. We all have to keep busy, productive and healthy.

By: Mr Hardworker

Mr Hardworker — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 14:48:45 +0000

I have been out of work since beginning of 2008. Due to immigration policies, I was not allowed to be employed. Because I am not one to break the law, but still had to pay Child Support based on what I was making before.. I started to work online as an Independent Contractor. I needed $20 a day to get child support for the month. Most of the time I made it, some months I didn’t.

However, this year, January 2010, I finally got my greencard, and can work, but no-one is hiring. I work for temp services, and just hope that I can get full time work again. I have learned not to be picky about how much they are paying, and that money is money, no matter how little it is. Sure it sucks to work for minimum wage, doing 8 hours at $40 a day, but $40 a day works out to $190 a week. And if you have a choice of $190 a week or nothing, I’m sure I know what you would choose.

The only downside, I have signed up for 3 different temp agencies, and they all offer me jobs, I go with the higher paying job. However, one night I was asked to shovel snow for $7.25 an hour, for 8 hours at night. Starting at 10 and ending at 6, I took it, but then canceled because I got offered a job at L’oreal for $9.50 an hour. I thought, I made a good decision. I got there at 10, ready and waiting for work, and they sent us home because they had no work. So feeling like crap, I went home, thinking I should have taken the minimum wage job. Same thing happened the next night, so 2 days of no work, and because of the snow this past week, no work except for 1 day of shoveling snow. So I made like $40 this week, which is worse than working at home.

However, a bit of luck, since I had spared time, I signed up for another temp agency, and I start work on Monday for 11 an hour.

So although I hate minimum wage jobs, sometimes they are the most reliable.

By: chris

chris — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:12:45 +0000

I don’t have a car, so i’m forced to get a low paying job right now. I’v sold flowers on the side of the road plenty of time before, because my dad has a business in it, but i graduated from high school and took a vocational class the last two years in printing. When I was 18 I got a job at a large sign shop chain, and worked there for a year but a bad relationship made me loose my job there. I went to like 2 more sign shops where I lost my job due to the bad relationship on both. Trust me I’m not trying to blame, it was a bad relationship that really stressed me out and caused turmoil in my life. Anyway, since my dad has always done road side vending, work has always been kinda slow in that, and we lost our house ended up living in a hotel for a month, and then rented an extension of a house for almost 9 months from a friend of mine. We just recently have been able to afford a house that we’ve been in for 7 months now. I had a job painting for the first 3 months but couldn’t continue to work there bc of no transportation. So I’v been out of work for the last 3 months and its tough. My car broke right before we moved in the house so now i’v got no car no job, and still live at home. I could easily make 10-12 per hour making signs but seems not feasible right now. Life kinda sux right now, and i’m about to take anything that comes my way, but hopefully things will change soon.

By: Top 135+ Personal Finance Posts for 2009 (That can be used 2010 and beyond)

Top 135+ Personal Finance Posts for 2009 (That can be used 2010 and beyond) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:32:10 +0000

[...] Is Any Kind of Work Beneath You? With the rise of unemployment during this recession, one question many workers must ask is whether they’re above any kind of work that can feed them and their families. [...]

By: Reed al eddy

Reed al eddy — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 18:14:44 +0000

Until recently I like everybody else believed that when out of work you take whatever you can get. I could not afford college,qualify for a loan, and got denied a government grant/loan pell or payback, so 10 dollars a hour 12 hours of back breaking work was a great job, hell it’s drilled in to our head from childhood that real men work hard even if it don’t pat well you still have a job and if you don’t take a job even if it’s something you hate, your a bum or are lazy, “a loser”

Now that I did something I never had time to do, inform myself,read, and learn about current and past events, I realized we are slaves to the rich, expendable. The rich family’s set it up so we are thought that working 60 plus hours a week and still living paycheck to paycheck is good. They don’t want educated well informed people. We would realize how bad we are getting screwed. The middle and lower class make the least money, but make all the physical things like homes,tools,cars,food,ect. The people that make the most Like bankers make nothing, they make millions by just loaning made out of thin air money, Since they only have to have 10% of the money they loan physically held somewhere. The people who make everything we , let me put it this way if everything the bankers made disappered tomorrow you would not notice a thing—- But if everything the regular middle and low class guy made disappeared you would see nothing but grass there would be no building homes,cars,bridges, anything.

It is unbelievable that the guy who makes the building and homes can barely if at all afford one himself(it’s owned by the bankers till payed off), and the bankers who make nothing, you can count paper money if you want, make the most, take the CEO of bank of America who in 2006 made a little over a 100.00 a minute everyday and night including weekends, that about a hundred and sixteen thousand a day( what a low end house costs and takes us 30 years to pay off) in all 41.9 million dollars that year. It makes you want to not see your family,take the bus to a minimum wage job work 60 hours a week and still have to have one or more roommate or mates. I don’t care anymore call me a loser, I turned 31 in may and I am not going to break my back doing construction or roofing 12+ hours a day,hate my life, pray I don’t wake up in the morning to slave for some rich guys who sit in a air conditioned affice a few hours a day, well when ever the market is open and congress gets summers off vacations all the time for doing nothing anyone of us could not do ourselves, let see one of them change a hard drive or build a computer(rig), from scratch.

I am done being nothing more than a worker ant for these people. They can put me in jail along with the other 1 in 99. They can pay over 50,000 a year to incarcerate me rather than loan me 20-40,000 once in my life to go to college and have a good job. I guess I am the only one who realizes this is all a game that is rigged so 90% of us lose.
Reed al eddy´s last blog ..Weeds finally watch a good show, it’s been long enough.

By: fathersez

fathersez — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 01:23:34 +0000

I guess that only the over egoistic amongst us would feel that any job is “beneath us”. I would work out the hourly wage of a job that I feel that I can relatively easily get, like giving tuition or something like that.

I, then, might not consider a job that pays less. But this is maths, I think, not ego.

And the comment made by a reader about “jobs that we cannot do safely” makes sense. Still this is also not “ego”, rather a great sense of responsibility.

Regards

By: Janet Wendy Spiegel

Janet Wendy Spiegel — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:45:35 +0000

This is a very interesting post. And the comments are across the board. As someone who specializes in career and job issues for Boomers and 50 Plussers, I will say that when someone needs money, there is no job beneath them. If you have responsibility for a home, children, or parents, then whatever you have to do (honorably) to keep some money flowing, is not only fine, it is necessary. The biggest challenge I’m seeing is that this demographic IS willing to take just about any job…but employers will not hire them because they are overqualified.

By: Sara at On Simplicity

Sara at On Simplicity — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 05:21:44 +0000

When you truly need income, I believe no legal job is below you. Still, I would argue that the biggest danger in a low-paying, underskilled job is that you can become too comfortable in it and spend much longer than you should there. Personal experience talking here.

By: Dawn

Dawn — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 22:47:48 +0000

I know some folks that are hurting financially (almost to the point of losing their homes) but they won’t take lower paying work because it is beneath them and it won’t pay the bills. Me, I say any job is a good job when you need one and even a little money is better than none. I took a job where I am working 9, almost 10, years ago as a “Well, I’ll be here a year.. maybe” temporary thing until I found better work. Turned out that the company is amazing and before I was 30 I was made VP. Just goes to show that you never can tell.