I did this HIT even though it is late
Times are tough. Everyone I know is struggling. Those with good jobs are keeping their heads above water; those with jobs that are having their hours cut are sinking beneath the high costs of housing, energy and food. We are walking in a depression and don’t even know it. The American gloom is pervasive and my friends don’t know why they can’t get happy. There’s just not enough to go around. I’m one of those sinking. Catching every bit of income that I can. Hoping nothing “comes up” that would put another hole in my carefully maintained financial dike. When I accepted that my family might be going down this time, that I might not be able to save our home, our lifestyle, I felt my life open up a little. Make alternate plans, and hold on as long as possible and keep on keeping on. On the radio, driving home, I heard a spot on NPR about turking. A man who had lost his job talked about how he sat for hours playing computer games until he found mechanical turk. Now he turks for ridiculously small amounts of money, but it is something more than playing games. I think he said he makes about $125 a month. Well, I, too, lose myself in the mindlessness of computer games when I get home at night. It’s a way not to think, and even win. So I started turking instead of playing Tetris and Text Twist. I am fascinated how seriously I take this. There are HITs I’m not qualified to do and HITs that ask me to do things on the computer that are simply gibberish to me. I get crazy when I’m rejected and ruin my percentage so I find some quick and easy penny HITs to drive up my average. The main thing I want to say is, why can’t there be a place like this that actually offers the chance of making five or seven or ten dollars an hour? A place where some of these real clerical jobs, performed for a penny or a nickel, could be done for a quarter and moms and dads and singles and jobless teens and retirees and all of us Americans could actually make turking into the wad of gum that patches the hole in the dike. I did this HIT even though it is late, because it pays a quarter. And I appreciate that. Keep on Turkin’ and stay well.
