Ohio school gets 700 applicants for janitorial job

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Evidence of the slumping economy is stacking up at an Ohio school which has nearly 700 applications for one open janitorial job.

Officials at Perry Local Schools near Canton in northeast Ohio say they've extended the deadline until Monday to accommodate the overwhelming response to the week-old posting.

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Here in the New Orleans area, the economy is still pretty good. I mean, federal and state reconstruction dollars keep rolling in; indeed, NOLA is actually adding jobs, and at a pretty quick pace. I continue to make decent money waiting tables at the slightly upscale corporate chain restaurant where I work. It's easy here, and no doubt elsewhere in the US, to not emotionally grasp the gravity of the economic crisis this nation, the world, is currently facing.

But the above headline pretty much says it all. Janitorial work, especially at public schools, is shit work. Literally. These are the people who have to sprinkle sawdust on vomit and sweep it up. These are the people who have to scrub feces off the ceilings of boys' restrooms. And you have hundreds of people begging to do it.

I saw a spot on the news last night interviewing middle class homeless Californians who have set up a tent city on the same site as a massive tent city built during the Great Depression. These aren't people who fucked up somehow, or with substance abuse problems, or weird Bohemians rejecting mainstream norms. These are hard working Americans who can't find work, and have been thrown out of their homes because they can no longer make rent or afford mortgage payments. People like you and me.

Right now, I'm lucky. Like I said, the economy here, destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, has no place to go but up. For now. But this Great Recession is expected to continue well into 2012.

I hope my luck holds out. This is some bad shit.

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