In THIS Doggy-Dog world, you need a Jobby-Job

Lately, I’ve been using the term “jobby-job” to describe what I am forced to seek since I live in the one advanced country that hasn’t figured out health care.

This is distinguished from “work.” “Work,” while not as plentiful as in better economic times, is not as hard to find as a Jobby-Job. Work describes what I’m doing for ADCO, or what I did for The New York Post and other clients in the last few months. Actually, I enjoy doing this kind of work, far more than I ever thought I would in my regular-paycheck days. (Which is an interesting thing to learn about oneself.) And it has started to be apparent to me that this sort of work could be pretty lucrative once the economy warms back up, putting me in a position to maybe make more money than I did at the paper. If I can get myself fully established as a consultant while the economy is crawling, I’ll be ready to catch the wave when it comes, or so my more optimistic thought trains run.

The trouble is, I gotta have benefits. And that means a jobby-job. Which means I’m a distracted consultant, because I’m constantly looking to find me one of them. There are some intriguing possibilities in that area, including one or two positions that would promise to be very satisfying work, along with paying the bills. I would be very happy to land one of those. At the same time, there are other jobs (mostly stuff I find on the Internet) that I’m going after purely for the bennies. Oh, and if you are one of the prospective employers to whom I’ve applied, your position of course is one of those that I would find intensely rewarding…

And yes, I derived the term “jobby-job” from the classic video imbedded above, in which a crotchety character says to our protagonist:

And this one — Snoop Doggy Dogg — need to get a Jobby-Job…

One more thing to share… when Snoop Doggy Dogg first came on the scene it cracked me up, because a friend of mine had long used the term “doggy-dog world” to describe our Hobbesian state, based on what a linguistically challenged friend had mistakenly said once to her. It always brings a smile to me, as it did to Eve way back when.

And speaking of Hobbes, for those in this country without health coverage, life can indeed be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

With my mind on my money and my money on my mind, I am, yr most hmbl & obdnt srvnt…

5 thoughts on “In THIS Doggy-Dog world, you need a Jobby-Job

  1. Anne

    Wow. Brad, you are a whole new man in my eyes. I had no idea you were a Snoop fan. (I am too, although I can no longer listen to it in my car, thanks to the impressionable children.) Just don’t go rolling down the street smoking indo and sipping on gin and juice…

    A

  2. Doug Ross

    Brad,

    I think you are on the cusp of a transition in our workforce model where we all end up in one of three camps:

    1) individual contractors who are paid well for the work they do based on performance, reputation, skill set

    2)workers who lack the education or skills to work for themselves and must rely on a corporate entity for job security

    3) government workers

    My guess is that where the split may have been something like 25-50-25 in the past, the new split will be more like 40-20-40 in the future.

  3. Doug Ross

    and if the Obama health care bill does what it should do AT A MINIMUM, then the workers in the individual contractor group should be able to get the benefits they desire.

    If the bill doesn’t do at least that, then it is a failure out of the gate.

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