Originally posted by: =NCG=Leonidas
Originally posted by: Pixel
unemployment was very useful to me twice.
the first time i used it to get the unemployment tuition waiver at a state school. i got it for one year and I busted my balls to take as many credits as possible. after the first free year i took out loans and won some scholarships for writing poetry.
I finished my degree in 3 years by getting permission to take 21 credits a few semesters, and taking summer classes. i was taking 21 credits, working in the computer labs and then as a tutor, and for 6 months i worked saturday and sundays for 10-12 hour days assisting a wedding photographer. all i did was school, work work and homework. i had no time for anything else.
graduated magna cum laude as well. i'd say that was a very productive result out of unemployment.
the next time was after i got laid off from publishing as magazine sales tanked due to the internet. i applied for jobs very frequently but its bad out there. that's when we decided to open the food truck. i was putting in 10 hour days researching everything about the food truck business and set up the paperwork. so i was working to open a small business, which people should appreciate, and the measly $400 a week from unemployment let me do that ful time.
i'd say that was a productive use of unemployment.
i know people who have abused it and i know people who used it while being productive.
no matter what you will have people that abuse it but it's just collateral damage because so many people use it the way it was intended. you can't filter them out unless you assign people to follow everybody who is collecting. at that point it's more expensive than giving out the checks.
believe me, corporations in this country are getting billions with tax evasion, tax incentives and a plethora of gimmicks. i'd worry about them more than unemployment insurance.
ROFL. This is just another example of people praising something which sounds good but has had no real tangible results or benefit from society. Because he got a degree everybody is saying Bravo, but what has that accomplished? First off what was the degree in? Basket weaving? Let's look at the results. Did that Magna Cum Laude degree prepare him for the world? Did it give him the skills and education necessary to be succesful? The results seem to indicate the opposite. He says he went to a publishing company that "tanked due to the internet". I hate to be the bearer of reality but that business didn't tank because of the internet; it tanked due to failure to adapt and bring a desireable product to market. How you can be so smart and earn a degree with high honours and not understand such a basic concept just shows that the education you received or the lessons you brought with you from it was woefully inadequate and inherently flawed.
Next you were on unemployment and apparently unemployable even with this taxpayer subsidized degree so what do you decide to do? Open a small business? WTF! Seriously what paper mill granted you a degree that you attempted to open a small business while struggling financially? Then you brag about working 10 hours a day "researching" your food truck business. If you expect to create and grow a small business you'd better be willing to invest a LOT more then 10 hour days into making that dream a reality. Then let's see what that subsidized research bought the American taxpayer. First off when you stated your intention to open a food truck in New Jersey/New York I thought you were crazy. Not because a food truck can't be profitable; I'm a firm believer that almost any business can be profitable if one is both creative and willing to outwork the competition; but because you were attempting to open your first business in one of the most anti-small business environments in the nation. Furthermore the markets you "researched" were not just glutted with creative and hard-working competition but much of your competition was either already well-established or had deep financial pockets with which to grind you out of the marketplace. Even in spite of that from what I could see you still managed to bring a quality product to market at an economically feasible pricepoint. From your own statements the reason that business failed was more due to regulatory forces than market forces. So what did that taxpayer funded "research" actually net the taxpayer?
I'd say that both instances were failed investments.
I got a degree in English with a writing concentration. Without that i would not have gotten certain jobs. A BA was required. And I paid full tuition for 2 years. I'd say that is a success.
I researched a lot on the business on the ground, on the phone and online. I talked to other food truck owners. I looked at different trucks for their layouts and drew sketches of ours. I made lists of equipment and modified them all the time. I went to different food trucks and counted how many covers they did utilizing an app on my phone. I did this for multiple days and multiple times to get an idea of customer traffic at different points. Most small businesses fail. I researched ingredients and recipes. I found an ingredient that was totally unkown in America and it made our Lamb Kefta so special. I researched pita bread and suppliers. ETC
The failure? Well It was a combination of brick and mortar food places having more influence in towns because they paid property taxes and we didn't so they had more leverage to regulate us out of business. It was also an issue because in NJ there is simply not enough foot traffic to sustain the business during cold or rainy weather, unlike NYC. It wasn't our branding which I designed and people loved, it wasn't our food cause we had a 5 star average on yelp which is really tough to get.
And I don't see how being entrepreneurial and running a business for two years is any sort of failure. Honestly people that have the balls to open a business should be commended not put down. You are a weird dude to put that down. Benefits to society? We drove foot traffic in areas that needed more of it, benefiting local businesses. Especially in Newark. It was my idea to bring a food truck festival to jersey city that was a huge success mostly because of the trucks. And we gave people some damn good food and opened up people to different cuisines, which would now let them frequent more restaurants to get that.
And yes, when I said my publishing company failed due to the internet it should be understood that certain publishers failed to adapt to the new model. As a lower level dude I instituted SEO on my events website, started email blasts, designed ad campaigns, whatever it took. I had no degree in marketing, I just had drive and a brain and figued everything out myself and implemented it with whatever budget they gave me. Before I started there I had no fucking idea what SEO was. But within a month I had the companies SEO team on our goddamn website optimizing it. I had known what google analytics was just by reading tech blogs year after year. I was the first due to use it. considering our event was in 18 cities per year. knowing your web traffic for each of these areas was so important. I turned that shit on. And so much more actually.
I also talked to the publisher what we could do online that was better. But they didnt listen or have the resources and it just took them too long. Just like the music industry failed to adapt to digital media.
The main reason I was let go from my job in publishing is an interesting story. The manager of marketing was my boss. He was a shady dude but good friends with the publisher so he could do shit that was shady. He was having an affair with this woman and I was told he'd been trying to find a way to get her in to the company so be careful they might try to set me up. And her experience was in event production which is what I was doing.
I was very good at my job actually, I incrased revenue from the previous guy by multiple numbers. I was running an event sponsored by Sony and run by Popular Photography magazine. Because of my success Sony renewed the contract for another two years for 2 million. So anyway, this manager got me put on probation for a bullshit reason. I had 30 days to get out of it. I busted my balls even though I knew it was bullshit. People that had been there constantly warned me I was being setup. So what I did was get an external hard drive and made it the physical location of my emails cause I knew the IT there sucked and had no backups. I had an event in Orlando and the marketing manager brought his mistress along to 'observe' things. Basically to see how I did what I did.
I knew then it was over. So they let me go and indeed she was hired. And from what my ex colleague told me was that she sucked. Guess what, when the 2 year contract was up Sony did not renew. It was a shit show. My colleagues loved me because I was very personable and cracked jokes and was smart about giving advice. I was told by two colleagues that I made some of their worst days at work bearable by just being funny and honest and general good guy.
So when I was canned I took the hard drive with me and shredded all the paperwork for the work I had done. They were stupid to not have security watch me. I still would have gotten the hard drive but not be able to shred shit.
I was told that after I left the marketing manager, marketing director and the main man publisher were sitting at my desk with my laptop saying where the fuck are his emails. Like totally flustered and totally floored they weren't there. They were just like WTF they had no idea I could pull that off. They needed them to see how to run the show successfully like I did for the last two years. Ha. Fuck them. I knew I was being setup so I fucked them. Assholes.
P.S. and after they got a new publisher who wasn't friends with the marketing manager, who realized this guy was barely doing work, they put him on probation and then fired his ass.
Post edited by Pixel at 12/31/2013 3:19:13 PM--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The right is more virtuous than the left. They have twice as many virtues because they have double the standards.