So far this year, I had lost one of my good jobs because of the recession. The job was relatively stable and was providing me a weekly income of 200$-250$ per week. It was at part-time job at 22.5 hours per week. I was located downtown Montreal (Canada). The workplace was fabulous. In a nice tower, like the ones you can see at TV.The job consisted at calling customers and requested them some feedback regarding their repair or maintenance experience for their IT products (personal computing devices, enterprise servers, related storage devices, printers and other) being manufactured from a company that I won’t name here.

More about my situation

I am French Canadian and it was the first job where I ever had to work mostly in English. The job wasn’t too complicated. I basically had to read a text and ask some questions. Just little interaction between me and the respondent was required.

And I have to confess, most of the Americans that I had interviewed during almost a full year had been very nice to be, asking me to repeat whenever they couldn’t understand me. In other words: Americans are great people. All mornings long, I was calling all across the US and I find the respond quite great, especially from California, even if my English is not American. As you can imagine, when I speak English, I have a French accent. Even at 28 years old, I cannot get rid of it. It’s just too deep in my throat.

That survey job was keeping be busy during the mornings, from Monday to Friday. After what, in the afternoon, I had another job, an 8 hours was waiting for me. In date of today, I still have the same job. It’s a job as a customer service representative. During the weekend, I also used to have a third job. I used to work at another survey centre. And today was actually my last day of work at that job, because of a lack of work. But work should come back anytime soon. What’s annoying is that I don’t when there will be some work available. It gives you an idea of my work situation. Terribly difficult.

Activities to do while being job less

Now that I will only be working 37.5 to 42.5 hours per week, I have a lot of time to spend in my hand. I am not use to this kind of situation. I came with a list of activities to keep me busy, until I can find another part-time job.

It’s not time for me to purchase a TV and listen to it 30 hours o more week.. No way! I have all of the following things to do:

-A visit to the municipal library (it’s been a while!)

-Getting some exercises and looses that belly I got stuck with by working to many hours per week (I am looking forward to lose 10 to 20 lbs).

-Register to the online billing for all of my invoices.

-Clean my one and half apartment.

-Do my laundry (because no one else is going to do it for me (same thing for the cleaning))

-Write articles (what I am currently doing….).

-Simply enjoy the summer.

It’s about all I can thing for now.

Oh, and… finally:

-The regular job searching activities.

This last one should keep me busy for a little while.

Because there’s still hope

This year so far, I had survived to one major recession and 2 job losses. I had been able to go through it because my full-time job still remains for now. I also have almost 50 000$ value in investment and even in difficult times, my goal remain the same: to reach 50 000$ value in investments by the end of the year.

Suffering from a laid-off is not the end of world. If, like me, you had suffered from one or multiple job losses this year and that you are an American, I wish you all the luck in the world.