Finally….a vacation…..NOT!!!
Wow! This is great! Tomorrow’s Monday and I can sleep in. No alarm clock for this guy. Stay up late and wake up when I’m damn good and ready. Wronnnnnnnnnnggg!
It’s just not the same as having a vacation when you don’t have a job to return to. You work five days a week and then some, always in anticipation of that week or two weeks out of the year when you can finally leave it all behind, temporarily and get away to some vacation destination or just stay home, unwind and perhaps catch up on some projects around the house. “Temporarily” is the key word here because under these circumstances, there’s a job to return to when the vacation is over. You may say you hated to come back but in fact you can’t deny that it’s the job that helps pay the bills and everything else in life that a steady income takes care of.
Unemployment has always been a “dirty” word in my vocabulary and one that I’ve always done my best to avoid. I can’t remember ever voluntarily leaving a job without having another, better job waiting. Two weeks notice was the rule I tried to follow even though I understand state law allows an employer to terminate employees for no reason or any reason. Hmmm! Sounds fair, doesn’t it?
It seems to me that many people who for whatever reason find themselves collecting a weekly unemployment check can look at this situation as a time to sit back, make sure they meet the minimum requirements to keep the checks coming and for the most part, not make a serious attempt to rejoin the workforce. For these people, unemployment IS a vacation of sorts. But not for me.
Now I wonder which looks worse to a perspective employer who’s reading your application or resume. Circumstances aside, are you less likely to get hired if you quit your last job or if you were terminated? For me, as bad as the working environment was getting and even with the increasing pressure that hurt my appetite and often made it difficult to sleep at night, I simply could not let myself walk away voluntarily. I saw what was coming and I tried to ride it out, even though I had very little hope that things would improve under the current management. I guess how it all ended won’t be “water under the bridge” until I get another job. The search continues.