I lost my canvasing job because I could not convince people directly complicit in genocide living extremely wealthy lives to donate $20 a month to feed the children their government is bombing.
I want to give up. I am about to run out of rent and bill money, all my savings and meager inheritance from my dead grandmother is gone. I gave almost all of it away, then I lost my job.
I don’t know what to do now, my mind wanders to adventurism.
Is your local parks department hiring seasonal workers? As a stop-gap, there has never been a job I’ve enjoyed more. You get to do real work for your community and they’re grateful for it to the point of thanking you multiple times per day. The pay sucks but it feels like the kind of job I’d do under communism.
I don’t have a driver license
Do you have state issued ID, despite it not being a driving license?
City where I’ve moved to usually has crews out in multiple individuals, and typically only one person is checked out to drive; on insurance, licensed etc. They hire folks with just ID here all the time.
That can be a tricky circumstance but one that my local department would work around. At least here they always operate in crews of 2-4+ for safety reasons and my coworkers have no problem divvying up the driving duties. For inter-park vehicles like Toolcats, Gators, and mowers there’s no license required and those are the only things non-horticulturists drive.
Oh I can drive and operate skidsteers/bobcats and all manner of heavy machinery I just don’t have a license and have no intention of getting one.
Some places do in house certs. When I worked at Lowes it was like an hour test and then a thumbs up from the supervisor essentially
Already knowing those platforms is a big asset. At least here only two crews of horticulturists and the foresters require driving a road vehicle. Everyone else is based out of a maintenance shop tied to a specific park/cemetery/golf course. The interviewers might be sceptical of you not driving, but if you describe what your favourite park means to you/people you know then they’ll hire you based on stewardship alone. It’s very radicalising work that puts you on the frontlines of restoring the commons and the full spectrum of your community, to the point that it’s the thing that has got me writing theory. Urban green space is one of those ultimate intersectional/interdisciplinary fields that makes you think.
I grew up right near one of the last old growth forests in California.
I also studied ecology and evolutionary biology.
Any combination of those things is very competitive. Even on my horticulture crew only a third of us studied horticulture and have a real interest in it. If you can explain why it’s important to protect green space then everyone you interact with there is a naive eco-Marxist who really gets what you’re saying. That doesn’t result in more than a $40-60k per year job with shitty benefits, but you feel really good at the end of the day.
I have never made more tha. 28k a year
With municipal careers the pay is at least enough to live in your community on your own, even if you’re stuck renting below supervisor positions (5+ years). They try to get everyone their 40 hours a week and the benefits package is usually better than private sector jobs. The lack of a profit motive makes everything so much nicer despite budgets becoming the limiting factor. Being able to easily transfer departments under the same pension track means you can focus on whatever local issues or fields seems most interesting at that stage of your life. Whatever seasonal jobs your regional towns/cities have are just a way to get into the system with preferential hiring. If you have a local workforce development centre they’re a great way to get in with the city/county.
I did this once and second the idea. I specifically worked in aquatics, public pools need more people during the summer for obvious reasons, if you can swim and are fit enough for lifeguarding then all the better but I wasn’t and it still helped me fill a gap in my life.
Our local recreation department, the ones who manage pools, seems like a great place to work. They also manage the concert halls, museums, and spots like the community farms within parks. There’s so much diversity and once you’re in with the city you can easily transfer wherever. I’d totally apply there if I wasn’t specialised in plants.