for some reason this reminded me of those animated horror stories posted on youtube

Maybe I don't know how to game the system, but I was thankful to recently get a minimum wage, part-time job.

I honestly suspect a lot of the people on this system are abusing it, especially since 'covid' where a lot of people wont work because they're "scared" or something. There's Help Wanted signs everywhere but if they can get free money why would they work?

I didn't even know that was possible. I have free healthcare, because I make less than 130% of poverty or whatever it was. If I didn't live with roommates who value my cooking, cleaning and shopping as enough to negate my rent, I would be screwed.

When we got out of quarantine my boss said when we were opening up again and they told me that i didn't have to come back on that day and i was the first one back everyone else was collecting on unemployment

That's pretty sad. I mean why work when you can just get free unemployment that might be making more than what you originally made?
My workplace never closed (essential workers), when the whole "Lockdown" thing hit we ran with an alternating-by-week 1/2 staff crew for like a month. Nobody ever left or went on unemployment, in fact after we moved to our newly rebuilt location we even hired a few more people onboard.

His face is priceless!

That's pretty much what mine looks like every morning (or at least how I envision it)

It's a love affair. Mainly Jesus, and my hot rod.

Err, what I mean is I'd love to work a job repairing cars, just for the joy of keeping old cars on the road. What do you mean you only work on modern cars?

I work on primarily modern cars yes. I work for a dealership meaning most of my income comes from vehicles 10 or less years old, many of which are still under warranty. I think one of the main reasons WHY I'm still there is because of my passion for cars (and the general environment where I work) but Flat Rate Pay SUUUUCKS.
At home however I work on whatever, pretty much anything from the 1960s and up (mostly project cars we have, but sometimes friends of my dad or neighbors bring their vehicle by for me to look at for a little side-cash).

I live in Canada, so I don't know all the details about how this works in America, but from what I hear even before COVID America was beginning to enter the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, meaning tens of millions of people were under threat of becoming homeless.

Even here in Canada before the pandemic the housing crisis was starting to, and still continuing to get pretty bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI3I1Fw7gvo

Before covid things were honestly doing quite well (there was a bad recession around 2008 but things were rebounding), but now... yikes. Now is one of the strangest economic times I've ever seen, I have no idea what to call it because it seems like people are dumping money left and right but there's more unemployed than there has been in a long time. I mean I really don't understand why but New and Used cars are selling for OVER sticker price/value, try buying a used pickup truck today and you'll spend 2-5x more than its worth. Housing is even worse right now, places are going for 2x (or more) than what they're worth and selling in a day. It's like 'who the heck has all this money!?!' .
I'm hoping things will start to calm down in the future year or two and things might start to become affordable again but until then I'm kinda stuck in my parent's spare bedroom...

Well on the housing market front at least, we all have Wallstreet and international billionaire investors to blame.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca_qZyNDnfc

Oh, yeah. We can't get people to come to work for us for that very reason.

BTW, this past Thursday I went back to work after being out for a week with the CoVID.

We can't hardly find good help (although that was a problem before covid, there's not much in the realm of skilled auto repair). But driving around town there's a Help Wanted sign in nearly every window... And yet people wont get a freaking job!

I bet that was 'fun'. I went through that in January 2021 and my sense of smell is still jacked.

I never lost my sense of smell or taste. I lost my appetite, though. NOTHING even sounded good let alone tasted good.

Weirdly my sense of taste never really changed (it might've been dulled a little bit during it like on a typical cold) honestly I thought I just had a cold until my smell left me... Then work wanted me tested so yeah. My brother caught it at the same exact time I did but we were only around each other for the day prior (so I find it unlikely that we gave it to each other) so idk where I caught it from. We haven't had anyone gone from work because of it for several months now (that I know of).

It does seem to affect each person differently. I'm not sure how or when I caught it unless I caught it from a co-worker who came to work knowing he had it and he spoke to me. However, he was about 10 or more feet away from me when he spoke so I can't even guarantee that he's who I caught it from.

Bad news Jay, your truck has the creeping cancer.

I'm living off an IRA I converted from three old 401k accounts. The core amount was doing pretty well until the stock market went south two weeks ago; I lost over $10,000 last week alone. Pretty hard to pay myself dividends from investments that are losing money.

I just did some research and calculating. The IRA is paying less than a Poverty Level wage for a senior citizen living in Connecticut. I don't know if there's enough in there to get it bumped up a little, but I'm still looking for work, as long as my body holds out (as we discussed).

You're getting underpaid then! Unionize!

Another reason for UBI - it would mean citizens can reject heavily exploitative jobs!

F&#k unions

Honestly how it feels seeing all the 18-19 year olds on Furry Twitter all getting pilot's licenses, driving classic luxury cars, and owning $4K fursuits meanwhile I'm almost 26, still stuck in a studio apartment, struggling to get consistent employment, and dealing with medical debt.

Having rich parents must be nice.

Yeah it must be nice. The moment I turned 16 my parents made it to where I had to get a job to buy practically everything of my own with my own money, heck even before then it was practically that way and I had to buy everything with my lawnmowing money (I even bought my first car that way for $200, that's the truck in the drawing in fact).
I'm 26 now, working my a$$ off and I still cant afford to move out of my parents basement at least not in a way that I want (I want to buy a house but I don't need nothing fabulous, just a house and a couple acres) but the cost of land and everything else in the past few years has gone up astronomically and my pay hasn't gotten any better... (I need to figure out what other kinds of jobs I'd want to do because obviously car mechanic is a dead end street, I'm waiting till the end of the year to see what becomes of my "promised raise"...)
So I'm stuck here in my parents place; I pay some of the bills, help out on the farm, keep the vehicles running and whatnot.