After leaving my state-owned enterprise job, I returned to my small county town, only for the pandemic to break out and leave me completely unemployed...
I was too embarrassed to take one of the entry-level jobs around town. I kept thinking, I worked in customer service and as a phone operator more than ten years ago. I'm well into my thirties now. Do I really have to go back to that? Back then I was young and full of energy. What about now?
Life in a small county town is even more cutthroat. Since it's so small, almost everything depends on connections. Without them, there's no way to get into a decent company. After spending over ten years at a state-owned enterprise, I had no marketable technical skills, so I ruled out skilled trades right away...
I was overqualified for some jobs and underqualified for others, so I simply gave up. But with a family to support, every minute I wasted brought my wife's complaints. My child kept asking, “Dad, Dad, what exactly do you do for work? Our teacher asked us, but I couldn't raise my hand because you never tell me... Some of my classmates' dads work at banks, and some are police officers. What do you do?”
