Dave Knapik is a Chicago-based programmer, photographer and writer.
After a five month stretch of unemployment in London which ended with me having to move back to Chicago, I’m very pleased to announce that I found a brilliant new role within a week and a half of returning. Starting today, I’ll be the Marketing Web Application Developer at National-Louis University. Wish me luck!
Welcome to the third instalment of our saga, wherein our hero runs out of options and is forced to move back to his hometown with no money, no job and no hope. Well, there was the PJ Media Romanian money laundering option, but that’s getting ahead of ourselves.
Yesterday began with my first talking therapy session with an NHS counsellor. When I explained my current situation—how Design UK unjustly made me redundant and how PJ Media completely botched every attempt they made at procuring a work permit for me, resulting in my need to move back to America—she noted that I still sounded hopeful that something would work out to allow me to remain in the UK. I quickly clarified, “Oh no, I’m sorry. There’s no saving this situation. I’m moving back to Chicago on 1 February, I just haven’t fully accepted this yet. Any hope you hear in my voice is simply denial.”
Indeed, this is the plan. On 1 February 2010, Rin and I will board a one-way flight to Chicago with our two cats, Chloe and Toulouse. We have purchased extra baggage allowances for several suitcases which will contain all our clothes and a few household items like a pot and pan for cooking and some forks, as we’ve learned from one international move already that you don’t want to wait for the boat with all your boxes on it to arrive two months later before you eat. As it’s an early flight, I’ll leave in darkness, with my life in my suitcase. I’ll leave like a dirty fucking immigrant, the same way I came.
The cost of the flights and the excess baggage was approximately $1,200 (USD). The cost of shipping the rest of our belongings by boat will be close to £1,600 (GBP). All of this went on my credit card.
On 18 December 2009, shortly after I posted my last entry, I received a telephone call from the person who would have been my future boss at PJ Media in Marlow. He apologised profusely for completely fucking up my work permit application yet again and said that he had a new option that just might save me. He apparently spoke with someone at the Home Office who helped him find a loophole: if they could somehow off-shore my salary, they could employ me straight away, although technically it would be in a legal grey zone that could risk my deportation. As they had a company office in Romania, they decided they could have me start on Monday, 21 December 2009 as a contractor by simply paying from their budget into the Romanian office’s budget and then paying me from that. Then, once they could properly sponsor my visa in late January, they would, and I’d be totally legal. Come again?
In order to work in the United Kingdom, I require a work permit sponsored by the company that employs me. In order to simply live in the United Kingdom, I require what is called “leave to remain”. When you visit as a tourist from the United States, you are granted leave to remain as a visitor, and generally that can last up to 90 days. When you’ve been living in the United Kingdom for several years on a work permit that ended a few months ago, you can be fairly certain that you no longer possess anything resembling proper leave to remain. As I considered his offer, I knew that if my acceptance put me in a legal grey zone, I would probably occupy a space closer to the black, illegal, should-be-deported edge of that gradient than the white, legal, upstanding citizen side.
I told him I’d have to discuss it with my wife and that I’d ring him back on Sunday. The discussion with Rin mostly involved the words “money laundering scheme”, “illegal”, “dodgy” and “no”. Can you blame her? If it was just me making the decision, I’d have done it. This should give you some idea of who the most sensible person is in this relationship.
When Sunday came around and I had to ring with my answer, I told him that we had no choice but to return to the United States. I told him that I’d already put my family through enough of a struggle with this and that I couldn’t risk our deportation and whatever potential loss of our belongings and our cats that would entail. Nevertheless, I added that I was desperate for money. I said I could work for them as a contractor for a few days each week until my end of January departure, after which point I would work for them remotely from the States as a freelancer. He said that he would need to discuss this option with his colleagues the next day, adding that “my decision” was unfortunate.
In fact, through the rest of our conversation, he kept referring to my return to the States as “my decision”. One thing I was too shocked to clarify with him at the time was that nothing in the past few months has felt very much like “my decision”, least of all this. I was hired by a major corporation (owned by “Dragons’ Den” star Peter Jones) for a job that said that they would have my work permit sorted within a month or two. It dragged out so long that I ran out of money, then was given an illegal option as my last hope. Apparently upon deciding that deportation was rather unfashionable these days, I came to “my decision”. My fucking decision.
Although he said he’d have to discuss it with his colleagues the next day, I received a call at 7:30 a.m. on Monday morning, for which a voicemail was left asking me to come to Marlow as soon as I could that day. I didn’t listen to the message until 12.30 p.m., at which point it seemed silly to spend two hours getting to Marlow for only 2 or 3 hours of work. I rang back and left a message indicating that I’d plan on coming in the next day and would be there first thing in the morning so we could get started planning how to get the most out of the next few weeks of work.
That evening, the boss rang to tell me not to bother coming in at all. Apparently, in the time between his 7.30 a.m. urgent voice mail instructing me to come into the office for work and the end of the day, he had spoken with his colleagues and they decided that there was no way I could be of use to them unless I was going to always be in their office. He said that unfortunately the role had no room for telecommuting, which was really odd, because earlier that day, it did.
The extent to which I’ve been fucked about by employers and potential employers in England is shocking. My first job here promised me the moon and gave me Sweet Fanny Adams. They said I’d learn new programming languages and help craft cutting edge social software applications, but what they really meant was that they’d stagnate my existing skill set and have me reskinning sub-standard web sites which they had produced several years earlier. My second job gave me two stellar employee reviews, noting that I performed so well that they were hard-pressed to find areas in which I could improve, then my boss quit and my new manager put me at the top of his redundancy list.
It’s almost a shame that I never got to see what the third job would have been like, considering it started with a money laundering offer and all.
This is the view from the kitchen window of my flat in Kensal Green in the afternoon. Soon after this was taken, the sun would set, as it’s winter now and the days have grown quite short. It’s a view I’ve become rather accustomed to seeing since I was made redundant. The chimneys, the Victorian rooftops, the vacant sky. It’s beautiful and sad. It comforts me and it torments me. I want to work, however it’s December and I’m still waiting on the work permit that my new job promised me by October.
Back in October when the visa didn’t come and hit its first delay, I told them very truthfully that I only had enough money to last me through November. I was assured that once I started working for them, I’d be given an advance to help pay my rent and bills, so I waited. What else could I do?
November came and they realized that the company that they had hired to work on my visa application had actually done nothing at all with it. In other words, in late November, I was told that all the waiting I had done up until that point was in vain: no progress whatsoever had been made. They assured me that now they were taking matters into their own hands and would push this forward immediately.
For this company, getting me to work there is a two-step process. First, they need to be able to sponsor a foreign worker. When I first accepted the position, I was told they already had this approval in place. That was quite sadly wrong. Second, I need to apply for the work permit to work for them. Once those two steps have been completed, I’m cleared to work.
When I say that nothing had been done by late November, I mean nothing: they weren’t even allowed to sponsor a foreign worker yet. Immediately they submitted their application to be a sponsor. I was told this would take several weeks. Today, 18 December 2009, was the day they were supposed to have this authorization. Two days ago, however, I was contacted by my recruiter and told of the latest hiccup: the company had forgotten to post the job publicly with a Job Centre, which they needed to do in order for me to apply for a work permit for that position. I was told this week that they did that immediately and that now I would have to wait until 12 January 2010 to apply for my work permit. My permit application, if I’m lucky, could get expedited and I could start work for them in late January.
The trouble is, I barely have any money. Since the bad news of mid-November, I’ve been putting every expense I can on credit. This debt will haunt me for years to come, but it’s helping me survive now, when I’m not even sure if I’ll have years to come. Rent is, probably thankfully, something you can’t put on a credit card.
Since I’ve been putting so much on credit, I can afford to pay my rent for January, but that’s it. They now say that I’ll have this job by late January and that they will advance me February rent once I start working for them, but if another unforeseen glitch occurs, I’m completely screwed. I’ll be unable to pay my rent and I’ll face eviction. I’ll have to pack up all my belongings as fast as possible, secure international movers within days and also buy last minute plane tickets for my wife and my cats and put those on credit as well.
It’s looking like my hand is forced to make a decision now. I need to buy late January plane tickets to my home country by next week, otherwise they’ll be insanely expensive. But is that the best choice? I have a job that wants to hire me, so they say, waiting for me here, but I have nothing at home. Going back in late January means staying with my wife and two cats in a friend’s spare room in their apartment while I look for work and try to save money for our own place. It will take a while to get back on my feet.
Aside from all this, there’s the stress of being wrenched out of my life here in London. Over the course of three years, one builds up a substantial life in a place. I have loads of good friends I’ll leave behind, plenty of travel left undone and tons of loose ends that will never get tied up. It’s fucking rotten.
I’ve begun aggressively looking for jobs in Chicago. Next week, it seems very likely that I will have to purchase one-way tickets to Chicago for the end of January. Everything completely sucks right now, but it will suck a lot less if I can line up a job before the move. At least then I’ll have an immediate source of income and will know I’ll soon be back in a more stable situation.
I’m an honest, hard-working web developer with many years of experience. I can do client-side creation of rich user interfaces as easily as server-side code and database administration. If you know of anyone in need of these skills in the Chicago area who would not only like a fantastic addition to their development team, but also to help out a hometown boy, please put them in touch with me. You can find my latest resume here.
Will it all work out? Everyone says it will, somehow, but what else are your friends going to say? No one would tell you even if they thought you’d soon be eating out of a garbage can.
Almost as soon as Tourism Queensland announced their competition for The Best Job In The World, it became a meme. How could it not when they set it up so perfectly? Create a one minute video of yourself explaining why you should be the caretaker of the islands of the Great Barrier Reef, upload it to them and cross your fingers with hopes for the best. Within days, news of the contest spread across mainstream media outlets and blogs alike and soon thousands of videos poured in.
Never one to ignore a powerful meme, my lovely wife Rin knew she had to step up to this challenge. Since three memes are always better than one, she found inspiration in the recent rash of covers of Britney Spears’ “Womanizer” as well as VH1’s Pop-Up Videos programme to bring you this:
Please visit Rin’s page on the competition’s official site and give her 5 stars if you’d like to help ship us off to Australia. Also, in case you were wondering, I am accepting freelance work as a professional hand model (see 0:22 in the above video), so if you’re trying to move some soap or Casio watches, do be in touch.
Recently it has been brought to my attention that, in my thirty-three years, not only have I told a fair chunk of people to fuck off, but I’ve also become quite good at it. Admittedly, it’s a skill of dubious honour to possess, but if there’s one thing I learned after twelve years of Catholic school, it’s that God wants you to make the most of the gifts he bestows upon you. Sometimes those gifts lack subtlety, and on the surface can seem like the by-product of an antisocial personality disorder, but they are natural talents nonetheless. Besides, I’ve never told anyone to fuck off who didn’t deserve it.
Over breakfast on Saturday, Rin suggested that I chronicle my many fuck off stories here. Later that night, I started making a list and found that I’ve told a surprisingly high number of people which exit they can get off at. Sometimes I stayed friends with these people and sometimes we parted ways, but everytime I told them to fuck off. This will be a series of at least five or six parts. If you don’t like it, feel free to leave a comment, and if you’re really lucky, I’ll tell you to fuck off, too.
Recent Comments