Dignity

I made it to VMC today. They didn't have any work for me, and I'm kind of glad. I started doing a bit of math in the cafeteria as I was sitting there waiting to be told I wouldn't have a job.

The commute is around 30 miles, each way. There's no good route from West Seattle to North Redmond without passing over one major downtown area and one major bridge. This means that leaving at 5:30 a.m. is the only good way to get there by 7 a.m. which is necessary because of the bullpen day laborer system they run. This also means that I'm leaving a little bit earlier then I was when I was working at VMC and actually living in Redmond, which speaks both to the annoyance of the commute and how slow bus travel is.

I would be actually working from 8:30 until 5:30, which is only 8 hours of pay since there's a 1 hour unpaid lunch break. Pay is minimum wage, so after taxes I would make roughly $50 a day. Leaving at 5:30 and driving back through the aforementioned bridge and downtown would get me home around 7. Yes traffic is that bad at rush hour. So at this point I'm spending around 14 hours of my day, for around $50, which is to say that I'm trading my time away at something like $3.50 an hour. Work at VMC is not steady, and today would not have been the only day where I would have shown up only to lean that I'm out $6 for gas, and have no job. It's also often mind numbingly dull, and occasionally literally painfully repetitive. On top of this I would no longer be able to go to the gym, and my social life would be devastated by the schedule change, since I'd still try and get 8 hours of sleep, and hence be going to sleep by 8 p.m. All of this adds up to one conclusion.

It's not worth it. Yes I need a job, and no I can't afford to be picky, but I'm adding one requirement that any job I take must meet. It must not cost me any more of my self respect then being a 22 year old dependent does.