petitefrancaise

Anyone applying for a job as a "covid contact tracer"?
In Texas they need another 5k or so... most states are going to need them.
My relocation work is thin on the ground of course so I'm considering this as a temporary stop gap. Pay is $14-$22 per hour and it's a full time gig.

sid nv

Efforts to develop a vaccine that will make computers immune from the spread of Windows 10 have so far been fruitless. I don't see how this can work.
https://www.contrace.org/contact-tracing-jobs

petitefrancaise

They're looking for medical background + languages and work from home, which suits me down to the ground. Better than sitting at home with not much to do :-)

jjmb

daughter lost her job last week. 25% of her state agency were dismissed. As she worked for the agency tthat regulates the utilities in Texas, expect water quality to go down and less regulation on the gas lines. She was devastated obviously as she has work there since she left university but she was unhappy there which has effected her health badly. Her daughter is up in NM at the moment with her Dad, so she is going up there for a while as she figures out her next step.

Lion in Winter

Have you heard back from them? My OH is applying for one of these here too.

scrubbedexpat091

I dunno how its going in the US, but jobs up my way in BC are pretty scarce these days, mostly skilled, semi skilled and management type, those of us with lower skill levels there is almost nothing available, March unemployment went up 2% over February pushing it up to 7%, I suspect we might be pushing 10%, some economists are predicting upwards of 14%, but wont know for another week or 2.

sid nv

To borrow from Kevin Bridges' terminology, I am now Unemployed As ****.

Lion in Winter

Can you try for one of those Covid contact tracing jobs? It's work from home, phone and computer based.

petitefrancaise

Haven't heard anything back at all. I'm not sure that Austin needs more contact tracers at the mo, the council seemed to be saying that between the state health dept and the local dell medical school they had enough capacity.
Saying that, domestic relocations seem to be be restarting. All virtual support at the moment but plans being made on how to do my job and maintain social distancing.

Lion in Winter

I believe the hiring will also be "rolling" as people cycle in and out and rates of infection change over time. So you might not hear now, but could in one, two or three months.

scrubbedexpat097

Did she work for TCEQ?

scrubbedexpat091

I signed up for instacart, wont be able to start for a week or 2 waiting for the payment card to arrive and background check to be completed. Not sure if its possible to make any money doing it here but we will see. In a normal month would need to make at least $70 a day working 7 days a week so we can get enough to pay rent, but not sure that is even realistic, to get food and pay bills and such obviously need more, but rent is about $60/day if broken down by day.

jjmb

No PUC which writes the regulations and takes companies to court.

scrubbedexpat091

We did Instacart work for almost 2 weeks, car is out of commission so we had to stop.

We did only a couple shops each day spending about 3 hours total, we averaged about $50 over the 3 hours including the drive to people's houses. So 2/hr over min wage before taking expenses into account , mainly gas.

Granted its not a huge sampling of people, but most we did tipped very little or nothing at all. Nobody ever changed a tip after delivery, and nobody seems to leave reviews. Granted when I have used intacart as a customer I also never went back to do a rating.

Flexibility is good, but its not a super popular service here, and someday's there are no orders within our area so it can't be relied on, its feast or famine type thing.

They are making changes next week, instacart shoppers will be able to cash out on demand for payment vs 1 weekly set payment, and they are also changing how long customers can change a tip from 3 days to 24 hours. (unsure if these are already in place in the US, the email only mentioned Canada.)

The biggest hurdle to speed is the grocery stores all going to one way aisles, so you have to go up and down aisles you don't need anything in to get to the aisle you need to be in.

Interesting experience anyhow, and interesting to see what people buy food wise, junk food is far more popular it seems ha ha

scrubbedexpat091

Downside to instacart is a lot of deliveries are to high rises without any parking requiring quite the walk sometimes.

Seems to also be fewer and fewer batches each day. But maybe its cause we are new. Only 8 reviews in total all 5s though.

Maybe its losing popularity now that things are returning more to normal.


If our car was bigger I would be interested in trying Amazon flex but we have a sub compact and they require an intermediate sedan or bigger.