Jobs Part 2: Perseverance, Hope, Second Chances

Now this is the kind of story that provokes sympathy from me.  Frederick Deare was laid off from his factory job and it took months of searching to secure a new - lower-paying - job.  Deare experiences the entire jobless range of emotions from fear to hope, and though he definitely had his down days, he seems to have been extremely proactive in his search.  He eventually finds a job, but still:

There was only one downside: The work paid $10 an hour, 40 percent less than he had made at Old London. After taxes, his paycheck was even less than the unemployment benefits he had been collecting. But he tried not to dwell on this. “I don’t let it bother me that I’m getting less, because of the simple fact I have something, and a lot of people have nothing,” he said. “You have to crawl before you can walk.” Four and a half months later, he is still on the job.

Some letters in today's Times criticize him, saying that he doesn't deserve a job as an ex-con, or how dare he have a smartphone with bills so tight (I didn't gather from his phone's description that it was a smartphone, but I see the point).  As much as I like to get all hard-hearted about job searches and especially sense of entitlement (see previous post), I did not get that from this article at all.  And I really, really can't see how a reformed, now hard-working man is a problem in our society.