Independence, Interrupted
Some people thrive on uncertainty. They like the idea of not being tied to a schedule, not answering to anyone, not being locked into a 9-to-5. For them, that kind of freedom is the goal. The ability to improvise, to pivot, to take each day as it comes.
I understand the appeal.
But I’m not wired that way.
This Doesn’t Work for Me
I’m not someone who does well flying by the seat of my pants.
I don’t find open-ended days energizing. I don’t feel more free when everything is unstructured. For me, that kind of “freedom” tends to dissolve into days without shape, decisions without urgency, time that slips by without much to show for it.
What works for me is the opposite: defined expectations, external structure, a steady baseline I can rely on.
A 9-to-5 job isn’t something I feel trapped by. It’s what allows everything else in my life to function. It gives me a foundation to build on, a rhythm that keeps things moving, and a sense that I’m grounded in something stable.
Take that away, and it’s not freedom, it’s the removal of the system that makes everything else possible.
Losing my job wasn’t just a financial disruption. It was a direct hit to the thing I’ve always valued most: my independence.
For as long as I’ve been working, my life has been built around the idea that I can take care of myself. Pay my bills, manage my own problems, not rely on anyone else unless I choose to. That wasn’t just a preference, it was a core part of how I saw myself.
And then, suddenly, that wasn’t true anymore.
What made it more disorienting was that I hadn’t been trying to leave. I liked my job. I liked the work, I liked the people, and I liked the structure it gave my days. There was something steady and reassuring about the routine of logging in, working through tickets, solving problems, collaborating with colleagues.
I had built a version of daily life that worked, even if, as the One True Libertarian©, the broader environment of foreign aid wasn’t something I would have chosen in theory. In practice, the work was steady, the team was solid, and I felt useful.
Losing that wasn’t just losing income. It was losing a system that worked.
The Plan (In Theory)
When I lost my job, I had a vague idea of how I was supposed to handle what came next.
I was going to treat job hunting like a full-time job. I was going to wake up at a reasonable hour, keep a structured schedule, track my finances carefully, and stay on top of everything.
That is not what happened.
The Reality (In Practice)
What actually happened was a long stretch of days that blurred together. My sleep schedule drifted. Some days I was productive, sending applications, researching, thinking about next steps. Other days, I avoided everything. Not emotionally, just quietly putting things off because I didn’t have the energy to face them.
When Structure Disappears
I understood something more clearly than I ever had before: I rely heavily on external motivation.
Deadlines. Expectations. Other people depending on me. Those things get me moving. They give shape to my effort and a reason to push through procrastination.
Left entirely to my own internal motivation, I don’t have that same constant drive. I can generate it in bursts, but it doesn’t sustain itself indefinitely.
Without external structure, everything became optional. And when everything is optional, it’s much easier to delay, to rationalize, to say “I’ll get to it tomorrow.”
The Market Moved
At the same time, the external environment had changed in ways I hadn’t fully accounted for.
I hadn’t applied for a job in over eight years. Part of that was stability – I had been in my role for 7 years. But part of it was also that, before this, I hadn’t needed to. Opportunities had come to me. I had been recruited, not the other way around.
That was no longer the case.
This time, I was actively applying, competing in a market that felt very different from the one I had known. I was in my mid-50s. The niche I had built my career in (administering government websites), was in a period of uncertainty, to say the least. The assumptions I had relied on – that experience would open doors – didn’t hold in the same way.
There wasn’t one single moment where that realization hit. It was more gradual. Fewer responses. Longer silences. Nine months without a single interview. A growing sense that the rules had shifted, and I was learning them in real time.
Good Enough Finance
I didn’t sit down and map out my finances in a clean, organized spreadsheet. I didn’t track every dollar. What I did do was more ad hoc: canceling subscriptions, cutting anything that felt unnecessary, eating less, giving up the finer things in life such as Pepsi and steak, keeping a running sense in my head of how long I could last.
It wasn’t pretty, but it worked well enough. Between 6 months of unemployment payments, savings, and family & friends, I managed somehow.
And that “well enough” is probably the most honest description of the entire year.
Asking for Help (or Not)
There were things I know I should have done differently. One of them was asking for help sooner and more directly.
That was harder than anything else.
Because asking for help wasn’t just a practical hurdle, it cut directly against that core sense of independence. I had always been in a position where I could offer help. I love helping. Being on the other side of that equation, needing help and having to ask for it, felt completely unnatural.
So I didn’t ask. Or I waited too long. Or I hinted instead of being direct.
That had real consequences. By February 2026 I was at the end of my finances and the end of my mental capacity to handle the situation.
Who Actually Shows Up
It also changed how I see people.
Some people I thought I was close to disappeared the moment things got hard. Not dramatically, not with conflict, they just… stopped showing up.
And then there were people I didn’t expect, or didn’t know as well, who quietly stepped in. Allowing me to cry on the phone, offering financial assistance, taking me out for a meal, just sending a quick text to check in, setting me up with a job.
You don’t really know who’s in your corner until you have nothing to offer them.
Building… Something
At the same time, I didn’t just sit still.
I tried to build my way out of it.
I set up an Etsy shop focused on aviation-themed designs. I used AI tools to generate products, learned print-on-demand, and worked on SEO and listings. It actually got off the ground. No, I didn’t make any money at it, but I made a few sales to people I don’t know.
I developed a YouTube concept and researched how to grow a channel. I got far enough to buy equipment, and to understand what it would take, but never fully launched.
I built a full genealogy website, complete with services and structure. The website is still live. It’s just waiting for someone to find it. I even had a guerrilla marketing plan (showing up at ethnic festivals with a QR code on my back), but I never followed through.
I explored app development, using AI to learn the process and write code for an aviation-related idea.
None of these turned into income.
Most of them didn’t fully launch.
But they weren’t nothing.
They were attempts to create forward motion in a situation that otherwise felt stuck. They gave me something to work on when job applications felt like shouting into the void.
Looking back, I can also see where I held back. I didn’t push as hard as I could have. I wasn’t aggressive with marketing or SEO. Part of that was energy. Part of it was uncertainty.
Still, those efforts mattered more than they seemed at the time.
Cheap Life, Lucky Timing
There were also things that quietly kept me afloat – some intentional, some just luck.
Before I was laid off, I was already living a very low-cost life. I had moved onto Vivian the Class C RV in 2022, and campground rent in southern Appalachia is…cost-effective. That ended up being the single biggest factor in my survival. I could live on unemployment payments. When those ran out, I had enough savings to stretch a little further.
None of that was part of a grand plan. It just happened to be true.
The Emotional Loop
Emotionally, the year was defined by cycles.
Hope, when a new opportunity appeared.
Energy, when I started pursuing it.
Then silence or rejection.
And then the drop that followed.
Each time, it got a little harder to start again.
But even in the worst moments, I never completely lost a sense of curiosity about what might happen next. I’ve always had the sense that things can change quickly – sometimes through effort, sometimes through luck, sometimes for reasons you can’t predict at all.
I could feel discouraged, even hopeless in the moment, and still believe that something could shift tomorrow.
That didn’t make the lows go away.
But it kept them from being final.
After It Was “Over”
When I started working again, the mental shift was almost immediate.
The structure came back. The expectations came back. The sense of stability returned faster than I expected. I thought I would have trouble waking up in the morning, but that was not the case, at all. I was eager to start my day and learn the ins and outs of my new job.
But that didn’t mean everything reset.
I’m still working through the aftereffects of that year.
I haven’t really loosened my finances. I haven’t gone back to eating at restaurants or having a drink in a bar. I haven’t re-upped most of the subscriptions I canceled.
And I’m still rebuilding basic routines – when to do laundry, when to shower, when to go to the grocery store.
On the surface, things are back to normal.
Underneath, not quite yet.
If I Had to Do It Again
There’s no clean list of lessons.
But there are things I understand more clearly now.
I would build a simple routine.
I would face my finances directly.
I would be honest about how I work.
And I would ask for help sooner.
What Still Counts
I didn’t do unemployment “the right way.”
But I made it through.
Not efficiently. Not gracefully. But I made it through.
*13 months
When I started working again, the mental shift was almost immediate.
Glad to hear you found something and it helped.
Been there a couple of times. I hated it with a passion.
😱
I was fortunate enough to never have suffered through you went through. 36 years at a family-owned truck equipment upfitter, starting as a parts guy before graduating to wearing a lot of other hats). Then it got sold. But at that point I was ready to move on. The parting wasn’t acriminious.
Because of the multitudinous often time-sensitive projects I was involved in and the ridiculous hours I worked there (10-12 hours a day was usual, often exceeded, and no free weekends during the annual January inventory count) I got used to always having something to do. I also had a number of engaging outside interests, some of them paying; botanical surveying, creative writing, historical research among them. So that once my regular employment was over I still had those to occupy me (and still do). I knew people who retired who because work was all they knew did not know WTF to do with themselves. Thankfully I’m not one of them, and like you I always tried to live frugally.
I’m glad you got the job you now have and hope you enjoy it for years to come. It was also nice to see you on Zoom, even if it was in honor of a late Glib.
I envy people like you who are able to maintain that pace. I’m a relatively low energy person, I guess. There’s so many hobbies and interests I’d like to undertake, and I technically have time for them now that I’m not working 50-55 hours a week. But after work each day I’m just not motivated to go work on something else.
I was laid off for 7 weeks at the start of my career. I also hated it. Looking back, I was living with my parents, had money in the bank, and was courting the future Mrs. TOK. It shouldn’t have been stressful, but it was.
I really admire all those projects you did. They didn’t make you rich, but you learned a lot, and made yourself much more valuable. For that you get an A+.
I’m facing a lot of uncertainty in my career with all this AI stuff, so this hit home. Thanks, and congrats on getting through it gracefully.
Glad to hear that you landed safely.
I find the prospect of “starting over” terrifying.
I find the prospect of “ending” semi-terrifying. There is no starting over once you’re past retirement age.
This.
I hope they don’t fire me before I can “return to the office” because that would kind of suck.
I can understand completely. The feeling of uselessness when there seems to be no demand for your skills.
Back is the Old Days I was an Electronic Tech. I knew all about tubes, ‘scopes, etc. Then something changed, I moved into more supervisory positions, electronics went solid state and I was left behind.
I accidentally found a retail job with a young, aggressive company that fit my introverted personality and I never looked back.
Good to hear you have made the transition, KK, and are back to being your self, with a few adjustments. You’re gonna be fine.
I’m on my third reboot in life now, and I wouldn’t want to do it again. If I had to, I’ve at least put together some resources this time so it’ll be easier.
I had a friend who said life changed completely every decade. He was right. It does get old.
I am glad you have made it through.
I am lucky enough that I have never been out of work for more than a couple weeks, I don’t know how I would do in your situation.
If you haven’t re-upped them yet, they probably weren’t that vital.
I had always been like – no trouble finding a job. Until the post dot-com blowout and then it was two years of very intermittent work. We got by on her income, and scraping hard. It actually made working for the government attractive, as it was damn steady.
My mind is boggled by the current job market (of the last few years). Relatively low unemployment, low labor force participation and every job attracting scads of applicants – even for niche positions with demanding requirements. I can make absolutely no sense of it.
“We don’t want these candidates – they’re Americans and not Unicorns. They expect to get paid.”
I think a lot of those application are fake or simply to check a box at the unemployment office.
When I posted on three different job hosting outfits I had one in person interviewee show up and one guy that responded to my call backs, one time. Out of the couple dozen applications I recieved.
What kills me about the current job environment is that GenX always knew we’d be working till we died. We NEVER expected to be unable to find work.
Yep.
Agreed.
Oh, me neither. I love my
98 to 5 routine.When they laid me off around 2019 I lazed around for most of a year – I also enjoy that very much – and I was just getting around to making some progress finding a job when the ‘vid hit and everything dried up.
Having lunch in my spell of ‘underemployment’ and something struck me in the background: A film I’ve never seen, 1987’s “The Secret of My Success,” has Marty McFly trying to get a business gig. He keeps getting rejected and complains to an interviewer that everyone thinks he’s missing something. “I can be old! I can be young! I can be whatever you need me to be!!”
“Can you be a minority female?” Damn. I wasn’t expecting that from the Year of His Lord, Evan. (Perhaps I shoulda been?)
This was my experience. It was made worse by the blessing that I had friends to stay with — one of which was a lazy selfish guy always quick with a reason why he shouldn’t do something productive (a drummer!) and his stripper girlfriend who was funding everything. Some days I’d find way to work on the house after having put in my minimum applications to get unemployment, but often I was just sleeping in after having picked up the girlfriend at 2:30 in the morning, then cooking “dinner” for everyone.
I quit putting in applications. Look in the phone book, pick out a couple companies that I expected weren’t hiring and used them. I didn’t feel bad.
I was going to apply for a job as a cop, they weren’t hiring old guys (I was 39), the desk sergeant was fat, probably couldn’t run a 100 feet or do a push up. I only needed to be turned down, that’s when I went to Plan B (above).
I’m convinced I’m unhirable.
My skillset is so scattershot that no AI or HR filter will advance me to the interview stage because it doesn’t neatly cluster around any given job description. The skills I do have are the ones everyone will claim because they’re unprovable before you’re hired. I have almost always worked with old tech, but in the “clean up after the original experts are gone” stage. It’s like I’m the hospice administrator for dying computers and applications. Nobody hires for that role, some poor bastard just falls into it. Worse, I jumped to my current job to get out of a deteriorating situation where New Management didn’t want me or anyone who wasn’t ‘His People’. And having done pretty much all the tasks I set out to do in fixing the mess here, I’m bored. Ongoing maintenance of a relatively well-structured system is dull as dogshit. This has sapped my motivation and self-esteem, especially since my applications to other jobs don’t get call-backs. I don’t know if I’m a bad fit for those jobs because the state hiring system is fucked. The listing is “Manager of IT Service 1, Albany” with no more info on even what tech is being supported or what agencies are the clients.
I was last job searching in 2007-2008, was out of work for six months. It sucked.
May as well round it out with COBOL proficiency!
I’ve mentioned that when I took COBOL in the late 1980s my professor took great pains to explain that we were learning an obsolete language, but there was still value in learning the coding concepts.
I did take COBOL as an elective in college.
I forgot most of what I once knew 🙁
I might download OpenCOBOL again, but I need a project to use it for.
It’s so record focused – so anything you doing in SQL might be a project.
Everything I’m doing in SQL is “Pull from DB and make report” for work.
Sensei:
I learned Logo as a kid!
There’s a name I have not heard in a long time…
I wonder how that turtle is doing.
I remember Logo.
In high school I learned BASIC. Although I had a PC before that and already knew it. College was PASCAL, FORTRAN 77 and COBOL.
Who doesn’t remember trying to get time on the mainframe and after that going to a different building to get your ouput.
On the plus side – no punch cards in my career!
This got a guffaw out of me.
😁👍
“dying applications”
That is how I got laid off from current employer before they hired me back.
Now the next platform is dying too but I’ll either retire or move to something new if I don’t get AI’ed out.
I feel like the whole “AI is going to make programmers obsolete” thing is going to end up like when I avoided getting into IT 20 years ago because it was “The Cloud is going to make sysadmins obsolete.”
I wanted to complete a webdev bootcamp this year (probably won’t hit that deadline). That’ll be the 2nd thing AI replaces, right after my current job. But actually making functional things for a little while would be a nice change of pace. The work I do now is mind numbingly useless.
I really don’t expect it to happen to me.
Now that I’m using it it’s obviously more than just press a button and it does my job. It needs a lot of babysitting. It’s basically watching someone else do your job and then fixing everything they did wrong.
Congratulations. I’ve been forced into that situation twice.
My approach was to create the structure and treat finding job as my job. So that meant I worked weekdays basically 9am to 12pm M-F on job activities and other hours when needed.
That gave me the valuable structure and helped keep me focused. My longest was 8 months unemployed and I can tell you in month 7 I was really starting to lose it, but persevered.
It really is a great feeling when you finally land something again.
Boy howdy. Self esteem drains away quickly when it seems like all the hiring people are to dumb to recognize one’s skill sets.
But a fella feels pretty good when that first paycheck comes in.
Until you see the FICA deductions.
There is always taxes to bring you down a notch.
FICA? FICA stops in January for me…
https://www.ssa.gov/faqs/en/questions/KA-02387.html
Or maybe not.
Today I learned Sensei is retiring in January.
I took that to mean he’s making @ $2.5MM/year.
Glad to hear you found something, and came through that crisis.
My experience ending up here in Texas was similar. I had been running my microbusiness for a decade while helping my parents rebuild their life, and then just as soon, caring for them through their illnesses and deaths. The business had become part-time in terms of actual working hours and income, which was fine when pooling resources, but left me utterly fucked afterwards, the more so since I lost all the equity in their home, for which I paid half. Getting here tapped out my entire savings, and then some. I arrived with a little over $200 in the bank, an $1,800 balance on my credit card, and insufficient earnings to pay all my bills. The weeks that followed were rough, but I immediately picked up a shitty part time job that could cover my bills along with my business income. Ended up keeping it for 2 years, even after I got hired at a shitty full time job 2 months later.
Weirdly enough, I’ve been feeling extremely nostalgic for that time here lately. After so much upheaval it was such a relief just to be able to know “I’m going to be OK, I’ve got this.” I was so grateful for every little thing that even trivialities like walking up to the post office to drop off my shipments would put a smile on my face. Being in survival mode gave me a clarity of purpose I’ve rarely experienced. By contrast, after 2.5 years at my full time job, and having quit the part timer last November, I feel really restless, bored, and anxious now. I wouldn’t have ever described or thought of myself as someone who thrives on uncertainty, as you described, but maybe I am, I guess. I wouldn’t want to go through the same circumstances again, but I do miss that energy and clarity.
That’s something I’ve always struggled with, and another thing I miss about that otherwise tough time – notching off those must-dos had me in a state of hopeful optimism for the first time in my adult life. When I need a reminder, I always call up the line from the poem Go to the Limits of Your Longing:
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Glad you’re back working. Baby Steps, even, are Big Steps. Onward, upward, indeed.
This bit hit me: “Left entirely to my own internal motivation, I don’t have that same constant drive. I can generate it in bursts, but it doesn’t sustain itself indefinitely. Without external structure, everything became optional. And when everything is optional, it’s much easier to delay, to rationalize, to say “I’ll get to it tomorrow.”
Biggest blessing and curse for me? Loving, supportive family. No rent. (No ‘Life,’ either, and directly related.) Without *that* outside pressure, it’s awfully easy to ‘want’ to sit back and enjoy shit. (That, I do as best as I humanly can, but I’m pleased nothing about me will ever be ‘Content’ living like this.) Nothing is as urgent or frightful, easy trap to spiraling further into the under /unemployment stage.
A ‘comfortable’ box is the hardest to break out of. (‘It’s so damn NICE!’)
It truly can be worse. Today’s ray of sunshine in the news.
Lt Col Matt Johnson, who piloted the helicopter, revealed that his aircraft had only about five minutes of available fuel remaining for the rescue operation when the last of those in the raft was hoisted up. He told reporters that moment was “bingo time”…
Florida crew recounts ‘miraculous’ Atlantic plane rescue with fuel low
All 11 onboard survived after the plane made an emergency landing near the Bahamas
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/14/florida-atlantic-plane-rescue-fuel-low
I’ve had at least 5 periods in my post-college life where I was unemployed for 6 months or longer.
Frugality helps a lot. It’s easy to be frugal when you’re single and childless.
What I learned: apply for the jobs you want but take the jobs you can get.
Especially true if you just need to replace the income quickly and keep the lights on. You can always keep applying for “the” job while you’re plugging away at “a” job.
All of my jobs have been this way.
Sadly I held myself out of jobs I could do that paid better because somehow I felt they were skilled jobs and I didn’t have the skills.
https://babylonbee.com/news/faux-pas-trump-gifts-president-xi-with-pot-of-honey-from-white-house-beehive/
Fourscore hardest hit….
Scam
House GOP leaders will be divided on a vote Wednesday for a bill allowing year-round sales of an ethanol-heavy fuel blend for the first time.
House Republican Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota will vote for the E15 sales bill, according to a statement shared exclusively with POLITICO.
“I’ve always supported year-round E15 and I’m proud to vote YES on the House floor later today to support Minnesota’s farmers and producers,” Emmer said in the statement.
House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain of Michigan meanwhile told POLITICO she’d vote yes, adding she is “pro-E15.”
“I have a huge farming district,” she said.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana said he plans to vote against the bill. Speaker Mike Johnson has not said how he will vote.
The E15 sales bill is backed by farm state Republicans, but many gas and oil state GOP members oppose the measure.
Stickin’ it to Big Oil.
Team Red – It’s OK to stick it to Illinois, but we’re worried about Iowa…
““I have a huge farming district,” she said.”….
…. while blinking “hostage” in Morse code.
That was terrible threading on my part.
When people say that no one would ever yell “F the firemen”. I say F the fireguys. And the farmers. Damn welfare queens farming subsidies and not crops.
There was a discussion once in the past about how to help farmers here in Iowa who were struggling with collapsing commodity pricing.
Someone suggested that legalization of MJ would give them a crop that they could make money with. I said that within a decade, farmers in Iowa would be producing so much weed of such high quality that the price would crash and they would need price supports (like tobacco) to make any money at all.
I sympathize with both side of the arguments on farm subsidies. But those subsidies exist in large part because of the much larger political maneuvering regarding crop pricing for both domestic food costs and international market manipulation.
But fuck ethanol in gasoline. It’s obscene.
They can grow alfalfa using less water, fertilizer and spray than corn, feed it to beef and make everyone healthier while making cash.
Once there is a constituency there is no turning back.
The homeless are doing their part of picking up the ethanol excess but need some help.
Subsidize the homeless, give them ethanol coupons redeemable at the local retail outlet.
I support giving E85 to the homeless
Nothing says smart agricultural policy like using arable land to grow subsidized crops so you can turn them into a less efficient, more corrosive version of gasoline.
While using nearly a gallon of diesel to produce a gallon of ethanol that has only 70% the energy as a gallon of gasoline.
Totes environmentally friendly and efficient!
I see irrigated corn being planted today. Global warming must have shifted the Corn Belt further north.
All the way from the Mexican highlands.
That’s a lot of global warming Fourscore.
Nothing says the stupidity of our current governing structure than Congress passing bills determining when a particular product can be sold.
Founder of HealthSplash found guilty in $1 billion Medicare fraud conspiracy
https://www.wftv.com/news/local/founder-healthsplash-found-guilty-1-billion-medicare-fraud-conspiracy/UW2ISE4D5RGAXMLZPSIKBVHP6E/
Mind you that’s just the cost of the improperly prescribed medications and devices – not what he netted.
But the guy was saving the world!
HealthSplash is the result of Brett’s dream to eliminate suffering from disease by instantly delivering healthcare data to the right person at the right time to save lives.
https://blockchain-expo.com/global/speaker/brett-blackman/
Because BLOCKCHAIN!!!
I’m on month 3 of unemployment here. Been firing off applications, but no interviews as of yet. One of the joys of being in a niche industry.
On the plus side, I had well over a year’s full salary stashed away, which can last me several years. If I don’t have something by the end of summer, I’ll likely start casting around for at least a part time job to bring some cash in.
… I only have three months net income stashed away in savings, with an equal amount in the brokerage.
I’m in awful shape.
I have reached the point where I am mostly immune from being fired. I would just put in the paperwork to retire and then look for a work-from-home contract engineering job.
But getting skinnier, that’s getting closer to being in decent shape.
Always look in the bright side of life.
Open a bar! It’s easy, they make money hand over fist and are totally stable!
HA! If I was going to go full delusional, I’d go for a brewery. 🙂
Bartending is likely where I’ll be casting out, especially at one of the local breweries.
Go whole hog – brewery/distillery, make 100 year aged spirits.
Got a CDL?
Can ya strike an arc?
Turn a wrench?
Mind weekends and holidays?
No to all four.
Trouble shoot circuts?
Threedoor:
I’ve been doing IT work for ~30 years. Mainly doing support for large call centers. I haven’t even needed to tone out a phone line in ~20 years.
Seems like its easier to get a job if you are already working. A person is more relaxed, confident and the employer knows you are productive.
When I was looking for my first job after retiring from the marines, I sucked at interviews and part of was due to me feeling pressure that I needed a job.
When I was looking for a better job, the pressure was off and I did much better at interviews.
Speaking of the poor farmers, that backstabber Trump is talking (again) about increasing beef imports. Just when the cattle farmers had cut supply enough to start getting a fair price for their animals.
Economics is not Trump’s long suit, his advisors are in the pocket of Big Stupidity.
“dissolve into days without shape, decisions without urgency, time that slips by without much to show for it.”
Self employed homeschoolers here. Good night is this true.
The Supreme Court of the United States handed down its decision in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, this morning. It was unanimous. Nine to zero.
The Supreme Court just told every freight broker that they can be sued
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/the-supreme-court-just-told-every-freight-broker-that-they-can-be-sued
You know, like the rest of us. If my clients are injured by a third party that I contract with on their behalf we expect litigation including us. It’s part of the due diligence we are expected to do when we contract with them on behalf of a client.
I’m on the non freight side of the trucking industry.
I’ve never dealt with a broker but I have heard some horror stories from the truck driver’s end.
I have dealt with Fr8Star once and another load contracting outfit once as a guy getting Less Than Load and a hot shot load brought to my place. The hotshot was great, the LTL guy was a Russian that pretended not to speak English and drove into my neighbors yard against my ground guiding him to drive the opposite direction.
What Yang did was buy a 2001 Lincoln Town Car in the States and then fit it with Hongqi components that he imported from China.
For $10k and 75k miles – you get something that will get you noticed at the car show and you can get parts and fix it cheap.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/you-can-buy-this-lincoln-town-car-reskinned-with-chinese-domestic-market-parts-from-a-bygone-era
Shoe on the other foot. Spring 1983, I was installing a book store in Madison, WI. I ran an ad in the local paper for 2 employees, with a kicker “Liberal Arts a plus”.
I had well over 100 applicants, a number of which were master’s degrees. I interviewed for 3 days and had to choose 2. So much talent, so much education.
I finally narrowed it down, hired 2 and they were super, as I’m sure the other 100 would have been. One was a slightly older male, recent graduate in English, the other a music degree, female. The woman became the manager after a few months, stayed until her boy friend graduated.
I got chased out of a pubsec job, and fell into a funk that lasted for months.
Even though Breaking Bad hadn’t come out yet, what finally got me going was eerily close to the Mike Ehrmantraut method of motivation.
Like with torches and pitchforks?
Oh I get it. I tried a pubsec job. It was torches and pitchforks for my individualist green ass.
Sounds like you didn’t file the 54(f)-3 §P4(c).3 form correctly.
Democrat-ocracy is hard
A lot of Democrats are willing to sacrifice Black voting power to beat the GOP.
In the two weeks since the Supreme Court significantly narrowed a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, Republicans have kicked off a fresh round of redistricting across the South. Their aim is to dismantle majority-minority districts, which they’ve long argued are unconstitutional, and to try to keep control of the House.
New results from The POLITICO Poll show many Democrats want their party leaders to fight back hard — even if it means breaking up districts designed to protect the power of Black voters and other minority communities.
Incoherent nonsense about gerrymandering. The needs of the DNC outweigh the importance of majority black voting districts. Just as long as those black people stay on the plantation everything will work out.
Creatively racist design of districts is not a “key provision” of that act.
Stop lying, Politico.
Nothing says the stupidity of our current governing structure than Congress passing bills determining when a particular product can be sold.
But without winter blend gasoline people will die.