People BEGGING on their KNEES for a JOB- for a JOB at the DUMP! Desperate and starving here in AMERICA! THE DEPRESSION IS HERE!

136 people show up for 3 jobs: “I actually had people on their knees begging me.”

Smelly jobs suddenly a lot more attractive

Wanted: Laborer willing to work 10-hour days outdoors in the stench and dust of the Pinellas County landfill. That’s year-round, so you’ll really enjoy the summer months when the landfill is ripest.

Starting salary: $9.50 an hour, plus benefits.

Sound like the job for you? With the economy crashing and unemployment rising in the Tampa Bay area, 136 people, most out of work, answered yes last month and applied for three such jobs.

“At one point I actually had a line of people 10 feet out the door waiting to talk to me,” said Scott Hanus, an operations manager for Veolia Environmental Services, which runs the landfill. “I actually had some people down on their knees begging me.”

Hanus placed an ad in the St. Petersburg Times for the openings on Nov. 24. In rosier times, such an ad might attract 10 job seekers. Hanus said that with the overwhelming response, he stopped taking applications around noon the next day.

The ad was for spotters, who show customers where to dump their loads and make sure that prohibited stuff like batteries, oil and paints aren’t going into the landfill.

Some who applied had college degrees, Hanus said, and many had recently been laid off or seen their companies shut down. The three people hired had a fair amount of experience working outdoors and solid customer skills, Hanus said. They started Dec. 8.

None of the four applicants who had begged on their knees for work because they could not pay the rent or feed their families was among them.
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“It was pretty hard watching so many people hurting,” Hanus said.

Kyle Martin, who lives in St. Petersburg with his fiancee, is one of the fortunate three. He lost his job as a cabinet shop manager about two months ago, when the company had to cut back.

He had been starting most days at a Hess station, where he’d buy the newspaper, scan the want ads and then go bang on doors.

The 23-year-old had no success. Facing the prospect of applying to fast-food joints, he jumped at the landfill job opening.

Martin said he loves his new line of work. There’s lots of overtime to be had, he said, plus he gets to be outside.

“I thank God I’ve got a job, I got a house and a beautiful wife-to-be,” Martin said.

Another Distressing Job Article
As rain pelted the roads and Obama announced more Cabinet appointments, close to 500 people filed through the hotel lobby, hoping to get a job flipping or serving burgers.

Today more of the same is expected, meaning that by day’s end close to 1,000 will have applied for no more than 50 $10-an-hour jobs at an In-N-Out restaurant opening at Tropicana Avenue and Tee Pee Lane.
Some wore ties. Some wore their pants too low. Some were balding. Some owed two months of mortgage payments. Some spoke openly of suicide. Some asked this reporter for a job. Some asked the manager at the hotel hosting the event for a job.

Worst Christmas Sales in 40 YEARS as the DEPRESSION Deepens!

Dec. 26 (Bloomberg) — Consumers spent at least 20 percent less on women’s clothing, electronics and jewelry during November and December, resulting in what may be the biggest holiday-shopping sales decline in four decades.

“It’s been difficult, much more difficult than anyone expected,” Gilbert Harrison, chairman and chief executive officer of retail advisory firm Financo Inc., said today in a Bloomberg Television interview from West Palm Beach, Florida. Consumers “will spend on necessities, they’ll spend on what they need, but they’re being very particular in what they’ll buy.”

Discounts of 70 percent off or more by Macy’s Inc., AnnTaylor Stores Inc. and other retailers failed to prevent a spending drop of as much as 4 percent during the final two months of the year, according to data from SpendingPulse. Including fuel, sales tumbled as much as 8 percent.
More than a dozen retailers, including Circuit City Stores Inc., have sought bankruptcy protection this year as the credit squeeze and the U.S. recession dried up funding. The holiday results indicate further filings are possible, along with consolidation among similar companies, said Harrison.

The decline is the worst since MasterCard Advisors started tracking data in 2002 to provide the SpendingPulse service, said Michael McNamara, vice president of research and analysis, in an interview yesterday. He estimates sales, excluding autos and gasoline, fell 2 percent to 4 percent from Nov. 1 to Dec. 24.