With states – and employers – struggling to pay for unemployment benefits, here’s a guy who is sure to tick off a lot of people.
Meet Franklin Schneider, a 32-year-old man who’s been fired from 10 jobs in just as many years — a streak of futility he claims has made him happier than ever. His story was recently told by Marc Hartzman of AOL News.
Schneider collected unemployment for 102 consecutive weeks by sabotaging his own job search with resumes riddled with errors and oddities. His benefits finally ran out this past summer, but he appears to have no intention of seriously entering the job market.
His reasoning: “I think when you start working, you’re essentially trading your leisure time (i.e., happiness) for money,” he was quoted as saying in Hartzman’s report.
No money, no problem
To get that happiness back, Schneider says people resort to shopping, which in turn makes them have to go back to work. That’s a vicious cycle, according to Schneider, who claims that when you’re unemployed you don’t need much money to survive.
Easy for him to say since, his landlord moved out of the country and hasn’t raised his rent since the ’90s. That’s allowed Schneider to survive on the money he makes from occasional freelance writing gigs and an advance he received on his book, “Canned: How I Lost Ten Jobs in Ten Years and Learned to Love Unemployment.”
He claims he doesn’t need a lot of stuff, because when he’s unemployed he’s relaxed — and when he’s relaxed, he’s happy. And that’s the message he’s trying to spread to others.
“File for unemployment and then relax for a while,” says Schneider. “It’s your money, anyway — you paid into the system.”
What’s your reaction to Schneider’s message? Share your opinions in the Comments Box below.
Source: “Unemployed Man Working on Staying Unemployed,” Marc Hartzman, AOL News, 2/3/11.
