The Unemployed Guy's Guide to Unemployment

The problem with most 'experts' on Unemployment is: they've never been out of work! The Unemployed Guy's Guide to Unemployment is a fresh, forthright, and often funny analysis of the emotional, practical, and financial aspects of joblessness. I've has been there, and I'm sharing all the tips and tricks I've learned to stay sane, feed your family, and snare that next job. This book is not scientific. It's not based on hard data and intensive studies. I'm not a trained and certified job coach or employment counselor. It's not approved by the Chamber of Commerce, your State Employment Office or anyone's corporate Human Relations office. These are simply the options, tricks, and traps I've learned through often-painful experience. (In other words, follow my advice at your own risk.) This is not advice for the hard-core poor trying to survive on food stamps and minimum wage jobs. You don't need my smart-ass comments and you really shouldn't waste your money on them. It's for you - the middle-class worker who thought this would never happen; who believed you were invulnerable, destined for a great career, and that unemployment was something that only happened to other people. It's for people who see the American Dream moving inexorably out of reach. This is real-world advice based on having lived through the sledgehammer blow of being fired, the terror that wakes you up in the middle of the night, the desperation when you hit the ATM and your account is empty, the day when you don't even have enough cash to get your car out of the parking lot. It's also the tricks I've learned to keep afloat, to buy the baby diapers when I didn't have a single dime, to pay doctors and hospitals and lawyers and insurance and mortgages, to slide through with my skin intact, most of my family at least still speaking to me, and even have a laugh or two. It's a compendium of what I really bought with the money I wasted on that online job-site upgrade, paying for a 'professionally-written' résumé, and hiring that 'job coach.' Not to mention all the times that I've worked weeks on a project that everyone 'simply knew' would bring in a million dollars - except that it didn't. With any luck, you can learn from my mistakes - and I think I've made all of them.