Looking for Bookkeeping Job, Hate Work, Hate Looking For Job

Ms. Negative this morning.... oh, where to start? I spent 20 years in corporate environments, working F/T as a computer operator, programmer, database analyst, second-level help desk, reports analyst, support, etc. Hated it all! Lots of corporate-speak, lots of corporate games, but the pay was great.

I found little "real" meaning in any of it, maybe just my own cynical nature; it was rather hard to work myself up into feeling I'd done any good. I tried really hard, thinking, well, I've just made this person's job easier, which is worth something, but I realized it was just my trying to convince myself I was making a difference. The difference was miniscule. OTOH, maybe all differences an individual can make are miniscule.

Fast forward to post-marriage, when I THINK we can actually afford to both work part-time. Been looking for a part-time Bookkeeping job, which is what I've done for the last several years (teehee! Not looking, but working at it).

Believe it or not, owning almost 3 acres with a crappy double-wide trailer, our mortgage is only $308/monthly, since we bought the place 6 1/2 years ago, before property values went way up in our area. Even our electric bill is cheap... maybe $55-80/monthly. So if I ever FIND a job, it could easily work.

Sure, bookkeeping is just as meaningless as corporate database analysis, but I went to it because, in a rural area, NOBODY needs an analyst. I'm working on an at-home Bookkeeping course, and I DO have that "everything-in-its-place" sort of mentality, so it pleases me to some extent. However it's been difficult to find something part-time, and I'm really tired of searching-not-finding right now.

My last job I only held for 4 months, so it's not even on my resume.... oh, how I hated my boss! He owned a tiny local business (franchise). I did all his bookkeeping. He was named Mohammed & wanted to be called "John." He was so critical of virtually everything I did (and everybody else did), he lost employees faster than he could hire them. Every day I'd come in and, before I could put my bag down, he would start in on all the things he thought I'd done "wrong" the day before. In fact, I always work hard and am smart enough to hardly ever make mistakes, no matter how difficult the work may be. So I knew I was doing a better job than 90% (or more) of other local folk.

On my 3-month review, he criticized me for doing what he told me to do... it was my fault, he said, for not stopping him. So one day I said, good luck finding anyone who wants to work with the likes of YOU.... and off I went.

The job before that was 25-30 hours per work working for a local pest control business, which I held for 2 years. I answered the phones (oh, nasty nasty customers!), kept the books, vacuumed the carpet, everything nobody else wanted to do. We only had 3-4 employees.

The boss was 28-30 yrs old, just married with a 1-3 year-old child. He'd inherited the business (or this part of it) from dad, and complained constantly about how hard he worked, even though I actually worked quite a bit harder than he did. He'd come in for 15 minutes, go out to a 2-hour breakfast, drive around and visit friends, then come in & complain about how hard his life was.

This fellow lied to me virtually every day about SOMEthing or other, even trivial things that nobody cared about anyway. How I hated that! The end came when he moved the office into his house, with his screaming 2-year-old & wife who put dirty diapers in the office trash (not having kids myself, I never knew just how stinky a diaper could be!). Couldna stand it no more, given the lies, the lies, and the lies.

This is really just a RANT, can you tell?

NOW, I'm looking again for part-time bookkeeping, and finding nothing. Had a good interview last week, but haven't heard back from them. Since then I've started to apply for full-time, though I seriously doubt I'll keep anything full-time for more than a year, if that (not that I would tell an employer that).

I'm just feeling discouraged. Contacting a local employment service this morning. Comments/suggestions welcome.