Losses All Around

Bizarre dreams this morning.  My daughter and her fiance were leaving for home, which is far, far away, and I probably will not see her again for nine or ten months.


So why were my dreams about my job?  Because they are both great losses that I am experiencing, and yes, maybe with my daughter still sleeping under my roof it was easier for my brain to handle my job losses.


And they are not losses as in losing my job, although with my increasing unhappiness and management's megalomania, it could happen, too.  These losses are for a job I once loved despite poor pay and weekend hours and painful injuries that I am still trying to cope with.


I dreamed about a library-like place, where I couldn't find a person's books, staring at the computer and wanting it to work right, while someone else came along and got on the computer, threatening to lose the data that I had pulled up.  And I had been working by myself, and not known where the person who was supposed to be working with me had gone, while other people lined up looking patiently disgruntled.  And then, when everyone had gone, I tried to find my co-worker, but returned to find someone I didn't know sitting at my desk, who claimed to work reference, but couldn't say it convincingly.


And then at the end, there was the manager/cheerleader of the branch, directing a strange new program where at the end of the shift, we were all to fill up one row of some food/nourishment stuff, systematically, for the people to come after us.  And I was so lost, and so behind, that I never got to eat the food stuff, which whole thing seemed like nonsense and a waste of time anyway.


And then I woke up, and had to say good-bye to my daughter.


So the question became, where do I blog about this?  Does it go more appropriately in my personal blog, or my work blog? They are heartbreaking losses each in their own way.  But the loss I am experiencing at the library, where anyone who speaks up gets squashed by the director, the board, and the sycophants reflects the loss of a quality of life.  While we are celebrating all the good that the internet has brought, we are burning our books, or, in our case, "recycling" them.


Each time my daughter leaves I deal with the loss of her in my life, and it's the way it should be.


But the loss of our libraries, under the delusion of moving forward, is the one that I believe will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Dashed

So once again I went out on that limb and tried to call attention to things that are terribly wrong at work.  This time I insisted on doing it anonymously, and I'm glad I did.


The response I got was the party line.  All the things that are going on are for the good, and done with everyone's knowledge.  And if I have any complaints, I should go to my supervisor.  Who will then tell me the same thing, but maybe not as nicely.  And then will supervise my next evaluation.


So, in conclusion, let me once again say how much I admire the whistle-blowers.  Not the cowardly sneaky thing I just did, but people who go forward publicly, and face damnation from the public and those in charge.  The reason stupid and bad things happen is not so much that people don't talk, but that people don't listen.

The Sound of His Own Voice

The Mad Director has taken full control, and I can't even begin to keep on top of the weirdness that is going on here.

There is the insanity of taking a place which budget is on thin ice and eliminating overdue fines from children's books (isn't that sweet; almost as though he is doing something nice for the children by not having the parents be as responsible for their borrowing as they would for adult materials).  The first result of that decision was to order the staff to harass the other borrowers whenever they had any fine at all on their record, and not just collect fines upon the three-year renewal of their account.  The second result is the need to now increase fines on adult materials.

I am watching this impulsive, power-driven personality make decisions that are destructive and wondering how far it will go.

What blows me away is the disinformation that he passes for fact:

•  99 % of staff evaluations were "good and honest".  (What on earth does that mean, and how on earth would you know?)
• "Staff" really liked the customer service training presented on Staff Day.  I wonder how that information was garnered; apparently, I missed the anonymous feedback forms that must have been collected from staff.
• Circulation is up because of the "floating collection".  Actually, circulation is up because patrons can now check out hundreds of DVD's at a time instead of the prior limit of five.

This is a dude who is such a narcissist that reality is totally in his head.  I have heard that he is one not to be disagreed with.  I have an internal conflict with wanting to stay under his radar versus speaking my mind in order to do the right thing. This is not good.

I am not under the radar.

So we'll see what happens.  I know that, like Santa (the Bad Santa variety), he listens in to see whose naughty or nice.  He has let us all know that he has access to our library borrowing records, our internet communications, and the Staff Forum he initiated.

As narcissists do, he has also made himself very public.  I look forward to going to Board meetings, and I promise to read the minutes of all the staff meetings that get sent along to us mice, as disturbing as they are.

This is a small place, but it is turning out to be a real microcosm of what can go wrong when the wrong person is in control.

The Bizarre World of Bureaucracy

It's Monday morning, the busiest time of the busiest day of the week.  Our new boss has decided to invite our tech person to come to our building to give staff training in -- wait for it -- smart phones and iPads.  Now, not only is it pretty irrelevant to what we do, although they try to justify this training by saying it will help us help patrons, this enforced training is insulting in that at my salary I will never in my wildest dreams be able to afford either of these gadgets.  But I decided to keep my mouth shut.


I really don't want to offend my new boss.


But when he asked afterwards if we thought we were going to go out and get a new smart phone, how could I not say that at my salary I was going to run right out to get one.  Meanwhile, I spent the morning worrying about the car trouble that was being investigated by the mechanic across the street.


Sometime on my day off last week, the wallpaper was scraped off the wall in the kitchen.  Even I was amazed at this project, as things are in such disrepair at the branch that rewallpapering the kitchen could not possibly have been on anybody's to-do list.  Turns out that health inspectors were in, and noticed some peeling wallpaper, and something that could possibly have been mold underneath it, which could possibly have created a health risk.


Unlike the large plastic floor tiles in our tiny workroom that we periodically trip over, and which are decidedly a health risk.


I believe our health inspectors have it out for myself and my fellow workers.  A couple of years ago, they ordered the stovetop in our kitchen removed, as it posed a fire risk.  Although, come to think of it, in the thirty-some years of the building's existence -- not one fire caused by our stove-top.


Maybe next time they're in, they'll trip over the loose tiles and order them removed.  Or maybe not.

Dumb as Spit

I put my foot in it at work again yesterday.  I just can't make myself smile and say, "Yes it is wonderful how busy we are here at the library."  I am so damned thankful I have a job, it doesn't matter how little they pay us and how hard we have to work so idiots like you can come in and tell me how lucky I am to be waiting on you.

Sorry, I got carried away again.

I am usually pretty guarded about my views with the customers at this point.  I know enough to make absolutely sure who I am talking to before I let anybody know what I actually think; doesn't matter how much our patrons appear to want to engage in dialogue, 99.9 percent really just want to hear their own opinions agreed to, with a smile.

But this time I got suckered in.  There I was, doing work during my desk time because there wasn't nobody there to do it in the work room, like we're supposed to do, in order, of course, to give good customer service while we're on the desk.  It was a huge cart full of books to be sent to the holds shelf, and the smiling woman commented on all those holds, and that must be all we do.  Wow, she understands how much work is involved to get these holds out to people.  So I agreed.  Then she threw down the gauntlet:  "It's a good thing that you're so busy."

Man, what a sucker.  Those are the words that signify, time to tuck yourself into your shell.  But I didn't.  Instead, I said something to the effect that of course we're busy, what we have here is free.

Yeah I know, there are lots of better ways I could have even said that, and usually I do, but everyone is allowed their moment of less-than-eloquence.  Unless you work with the public, and especially if it's a government job in 2011.

So this woman who pays $35 a year for the dozen or so items she is checking out proceeds to tell me that if we were not pleasant, people would not use the library.  Right.

Oops.

Even at that point I could have backtracked and said, "You're right, that's why we try so hard."  And I have done that, I am ashamed to say.  But I did not.

Instead I asked her if she had summer reading forms, and fake-pleasantly added a couple more fake-important pieces of information.

And I smiled.

Happy Easter, Sears Employees

A fews days ago, with list in hand, I attempted to do my bi-annual (or tri-annual) clothes shopping.  I would have put it off another year, but some articles of clothing probably would not have made it another year.


I went to the Mall, to Sears, because the last time I bought shorts, maybe six years or so ago, they had shorts, in my size, and reasonably priced.  And unmentionables.


As I walked in, I was astonished to see a sign indicating that Sears was going to be open on Easter Sunday.  I nearly turned around and left at that point, but I am glad I did not.   l learned that:


On the Tuesday afternoon before Easter, Sears was the place to go if you needed peace and quiet. Customers were scarce, and so were employees.


There are no shorts for sale at Sears.  And there is no longer underwear at Sears in large sizes.  In Charleston, that means they are missing out on a very large demographic, no pun intended.


And there were absolutely no salespeople in sight on my first go-round, and on the second disbelieving go-round, the salesperson who looked like she was either taking inventory or trying to hide behind the rack of clothes, had no idea if they had shorts or large sizes.


So now I'm thinking, if Sears is a ghost town on a Tuesday, and they obviously don't spend a whole lot on employing "customer service" personnel during the week before the big dress-up holiday, why on earth would they want to be open on Easter Sunday?  Must be for those last minute going-to-church clothing emergencies?  Or maybe a lot of grills fail on Easter Sunday?


I am not a religious person, but I am a family person. It is outrageous that Sears or any big corporation would require employees to work on an important family holiday.  And if they think they are doing it for profit, the CEO ought to take a walk around the store during the week -- in fact, he could take a riding mower around the store with no fear of injuring a customer, or even finding one.


So, shame on you, Sears, and Happy Easter.

Are You Feeling Safer Now?

I noticed yesterday that the printout of the water analysis of my pool had the name of the young woman who helped me -- first and last name -- at the bottom.  This is a tiny shop that probably only has two employees serving customers.


And you can rest easy now, because your local library, which has long required it's employees to wear name tags, is now requiring them to wear photo name tags.  Doesn't appear to cost much, it looks like it was done in house (on the other hand, this means there are people that work up there in administration that actually have the time to take on this project).


No, this time it is not a "your tax dollars at work" issue. The issue is just how much do you need to know about me to feel safe having me check out your books?  Nikki Haley did not start the bandwagon, she merely jumped on it.  Basically, it goes, why don't employees at such-and-such have photo name tags?  That's it.


I'm thinking it must be that people are concerned that some shady character might slip into the library, steal my non-photo name tag, and pretend to be me when I'm not there.  And maybe recommend a book to you while they check you out.


It's not just a matter of how stupid are we, although that is a very large consideration.  It is a matter of how blindly are we willing to let ourselves be invaded?


Voter ID's, proof of US citizenship, a picture to go with your name because the fraud and criminality in this country would obviously be fixed if everybody was identified all the time.  Except it wouldn't.  All this obsession with ID's is a diversion from the corporate voter fraud and the criminal acts by Wall Street and BP and the lies by people like Jon Kyl (the "not intended to be a factual statement" Jon Kyl) that go on unstopped.


Look around.  How many of us are forced to walk around with  our names displayed on our chests for absolutely no good reason?  And how safe does it make an employee, knowing that any jackass can know your first and last name without your consent or even awareness.  Maybe no one will call the young lady at the pool store at home, but it's possible.  And why on earth do we all have to have that personal information?


I suppose when we have come to blindly accept the need for full body scans in order to get on a plane, and a search of our purses when we attend a concert, telling you who we are so you don't have to ask before you complain to management about our attitude is a small price to pay for security.

A Really, REALLY Fond Farewell

I've intended hundreds of times to write about a boss, but the time passes, and it doesn't seem so important, and I have an awful memory.  So, even though his backside has not actually passed the door for the last time, it appears we will not be working together again, and I will take this time to say good-bye.


I don't know what he did in his office all day.  He sat in front of his computer, and rarely came out.  I was fine with that.


One of the best things about the man was that he didn't do much.


Any attempts he ever made to manage were, honestly, awful.


He had, I was told before I came to work for him, been promoted so that they wouldn't have to keep turning him down, and moved to a branch where he would leave them alone, and, because that branch had always been a disaster, he couldn't do much harm.


Surprise, he ended up with a team of employees that were smart, and responsible, and liked each other.  There was cooperation, there was friendship.  AND, best of all for him, they completely respected authority.  Compliance and adoration.  It was hog heaven for a boss that didn't know too much and pretty much wanted to stay under the radar and not have trouble.


Shortly thereafter, I came along.  He was pretty much pressured to hire me; how he hired me a year earlier for a better position and then gotten me demoted again before I could ever work a day is a long story and certainly one of my most bizarre work experiences, ever.  So when I applied again for an entry level (lateral movement) position for which I was highly overqualified, he basically had to do it.


And sadly, I knew more, had more experience, more education, more training, and tended not to keep my mouth shut.  The ideas I had were good, but were met with suspicion, as he spread his feelings about me among the staff (I know this to be true because he actually spread some false words to me about the assistant manager he'd been pressured to hire, indicating that she was "a plant".)


So occasionally, there was head-banging.  The ridiculous annual evaluations were punitive, annually quantifying my bad attitude, which after a while became true, even, most absurd, my "lack of initiative", which was never true.


I did learn after a while to shut up.  I was working with some very nice people who allowed me to push my way into a niche in which I was doing work that I was actually qualified to do.  But there was also giving tasks that should have gone to me to the person below me, and it was hard to swallow that, but eventually I realized that there was nothing I could do about it, and as I burned out, I cared less.  That was what actually made it easier, last year, to reduce my hours to part-time, knowing that nothing I could do would move me up in that little fiefdom.


But enough about me.  There were moments that should be remembered.


The times a light bulb would burn out in the staff bathroom, and he would wait till the other one burned out and we had to pee by flashlight before alerting the maintenance supervisor.  The sluggish sink in the staff kitchen that over two to three months finally just stopped draining altogether.  The time some wiseass turned the sprinkler on and after a couple of weeks of it running nonstop, I went outside to find the faucet and turn it off.


We worked with one computer for six staff members, because he hadn't the desire -- or the clout, I believe -- to get us a second computer.  He did not have what you would call a working relationship with the head of technology, another infamously mean and burned out individually that he had bumped heads with often in the past, so it tended to be a combination of his refusal to call when we needed help and the other dude's refusal to give us what we needed.


He had pretty much the same working relationship with the head of maintenance.  So when a cart broke, she would refuse to replace it, and when it could no longer be repaired, she just kept it.  She would "yell" at him (by email) when he had the nerve to ask for something, once accusing one of us of stealing a very large case of bottom of the line quality toilet paper, which we had in fact moved out of the way in the back room.  It was pretty much a case of the war of the idiots, with the staff (and the branch) suffering the consequences.


So, ever complaint and protective, the staff would ignore problems, like burned out light bulbs and standing water, roaches in the microwave, inadequate computers and supplies.


And because the King of Tech and Queen of Toilets could not be addressed by other than management, we muddled along.


There was the one time I met with the acting director, to talk about the physical burdens of the cost-cutting, and she actually found two carts for us.  And the time when the maintenance worker came in and I told him how many books had been damaged because the old bookdrop had been moved from under the eaves and retained water.


After that, I was told not to talk to the maintenance staff, and if I had any complaints they were to go only to our boss.  And he would decide what to do about it.


When he first became manager, there was a woman there who was gruff and a bit scary, but good-hearted and quite the character.  She was a lower level manager, and had been there for years.  It took him a year, but he got her to quit.  I hadn't realized how he had done it until just a few weeks ago, when we learned he was taking early retirement, and I was feeling the first waves of relief.


He had shut her out.  Not given her information.  Worked around her.  Excluded her from any decisions.  Took a job that had meaning for her, that she had been proud of, and made her invisible.


He did that to me.  He took away work that I had done for five years, even giving it over to a volunteer, a friend of his, just because he wanted to do it.  He excluded me from decisions about the work that I had  been doing, acting not just as though he had no idea I had been doing it, but acting as though I had not been doing it.  It was about this time that my evaluation indicated that I "lacked initiative".


Had I not been around the block a few times, employment wise, I might not have stuck around.  I realized that the people I work with are at least good people, and in some ways have become family.  It also helped that I worked part-time.  Part of the squeezing me out was giving me absolutely ideal hours, so that I wouldn't complain I think, but also making me not as much a part of the team.  The whole package made it easier to tolerate.


And then, when I learned he was leaving, it was as though a boulder had been taken off my back.  As I told a friend, it's a bad news/good news thing.  The bad news is that with him gone I'll have to work some night hours; the good news is, well, he'll be gone.


Just on the chance that I might miss him, he wrote up my vacation hours in such a way as to give me two less hours of additional leave that we were being awarded, as two days off.    Anticipating this, I had clarified the number of hours I should be awarded with the head of Human Resources.  So that when I saw the schedule, I made the corrections, and told him that I was entitled to two-five hour days, not two four-hour days.  He exhaled, grabbed the schedule and said, "Part time is four hours.  That's what I was told," and took off to his office.  Fortunately I had the email confirming the number of hours, and forwarded it to him.


He changed the schedule.  And by the time I saw him on the next day (our last) he was acting quite sweet and innocent, again claiming that he had been told something different.  I knew he would lie if cornered, but I wonder if he even knew it was a lie.


So, it would be naive to believe that things couldn't get worse; we have had quite a Hall of Fame of managers at that branch.  But for now, I am going to enjoy a sense of relief, and the freedom to do a good job.  

Not Quite as Bad as I Thought

The meeting with the Director happened, and in fact, I did not get fired.  I felt the displeasure in spite of his words to the effect that I have every right to speak my mind politically.  Coming from Louden County outside D.C. he would be sharp enough politically to know firing me would be out of the question.  But the words out of his mouth conveyed threat.  He questioned why, if I were injured at work, I had not filed a workers comp claim.

--Because it could not have been proved that it happened at work.

--You said in the ad that you tore your rotator cuff at work.

--No, I did not.

Well, it just happened that he had the ad up on the t.v. sitting right next to him at his desk, and he played it, and in fact I did not say that I tore my rotator cuff at work.  I tore my rotator cuff "carrying books".

I explained that this wasn't about the library, this was about every service job where people do the same activity for hours a day, five days a week, and the wear and tear on the body, and the threat to extend the retirement age for those people.

His response was, I need to retire too.  Really.

The other big CYA issue on the agenda was whether or not I was now able to do my job.  I assured him that with the doctor's limitations on hours, the cooperation of my branch manager and co-workers, and regular cortisone shots and physical therapy, I can do my job.

When he said that that was all, I suggested that if he had let me know a week ago I might have saved a couple of bad nights' sleep.  He didn't laugh.

The man sent me an email confirming the above points, and I sent him one back assuring him that I was able to do all aspects of my job given the above conditions.

All very formal and cold.

I wonder what would have happened if in the ad I had said I had injured my job at work.

Still employed, I also continue to practice the art of CYA.

And Now a Word from the Powerful

I got a call today from the HR person at the library.  She informed me that she had emailed me yesterday, and that the director wants to meet with me next Monday or Tuesday regarding "the ad".  I know what this means.  It means I am in trouble, and may mean I will lose my job.

This is South Carolina.  I work for the government.  Therefore, I should know I have no rights.  I should, indeed, be thankful to have a job.  I am likely to get completely paranoid over the next six days, not for no reason.

And I've been around long enough, and do indeed, have a background in psychology.  I know all the power games.  The phone call from HR instead of direct contact.  The fact that he is not available until six days from now.  It is small consolation that I don't make enough that the loss of the job will not wipe me out financially, immediately.

At least I have a few days to get used to the likelihood that I will have lost my job.

And that's the way the country works these days.

A Word from the Man in the Street

I made an ad, and I must admit, it's a little embarrassing.  It's an ad for a non-profit group, appealing to Lindsey Graham not to vote to raise the retirement age.  It was done with sincere feeling, although the "script" that was based on my words was a little stilted.  I would have said "busy library" as opposed to "local library" (the linguist in me bristles).  The editing, although brilliant, made me look a little more pathetic than I think I really look, even when I'm in pain.

I did it, not for the 30 seconds of fame, but because right now I need to do everything I can to try to get people to listen.  This is about the working poor.  And nobody, nobody, is speaking for them.

All the hot air in Washington is about the middle class, which a lot of us used to belong to.  I am no longer a member of the middle class, although I have the cultural awareness and the education.  I am a clerk.  My opinion is not sought any more than that of the greeter at a Wal-Mart.  My value is in the fact that I work pretty hard for very little cost.

I did the ad because I am not alone.  The people who work until they ache go home too tired to try to become politically aware.  They can barely turn their TV channel from one biased news network to another, and the nightly news works hard not to have an opinion because their corporate overlords would frown on that.  Read a newspaper?  How about, pay for a newspaper?

And for those who are able to pay for reliable internet access, it is probably unfathomable that there are people who cannot.

Beware of the Boehner and Demint philosophy that if you are down on your luck, it's because you haven't worked as hard as they have.

The voters who elect the republicans and conservative democrats, or those who rabidly support tea party candidates, have just enough to be afraid of losing it.  And they have been convinced that those of us beneath them economically -- the working poor as well as the unemployed -- are the ones who will try to take away from them what little they have.

And it's easier to get angry at us than the legislators and CEO's that are in control.

But I did that ad to remind people that the working poor are out there.  And like so many of those who angrily vote conservative, we too are trying to get by.  And they are more like us than the politicians they support.

Pardon the Paranoia

There's a guy after my job.  Honest.  He has been hounding me since I went out on extended sick-leave over a year ago.

My problem is that he seems like a nice person.  Everybody likes him.  He's opioniated, like, he knows everything about everything, and the people I work with, other than me, are so tolerant they don't even realize they are being tolerant.  He's the boss's friend, and where I work, that's good as gold.

He didn't plan on going after my job, in the beginning.  I was working full-time, and he was a bored retiree.  He'd hang out and schmooze for hours with whoever was unlucky enough to allow a conversation to start with him.  I was very grateful when the boss was in and he went and hung out with the boss for hours.

Then, when I came back from eight weeks of sick leave, he had become a volunteer.  There he was, doing things none of the other volunteers ever do, in fact, nothing that I had ever done in all my years volunteering, and there were a lot.  He wandered around the back room, checked out all the bulletin boards and people's desks.  Helped himself to a huge mug of coffee, commented on what other volunteers had signed in, or why they hadn't.

And he took my one of my jobs.  I had this job that nobody else wanted.  I had been doing it for five years, and I loved it.  And when I came back from sick leave, it was no longer mine, because he wanted to do it.  And he was the boss's friend.

Now, I'm not that diplomatic sometimes, but maybe if you were returning from an extended sick leave and feeling a tad insecure, you would have reacted the same way.  When this volunteer told me he was doing my job, expecting praise and gratitude, I commented instead that it really was my job.  Now this is where it got interesting.  The volunteer told me the boss said that I didn't really like doing the job, and that's why he did it.  My boss, when I complained to him, said that I had told the volunteer that I didn't like doing the job.  And because I made the unforgiveable mistake of complaining, I became A Problem.

A few weeks later, when I was experiencing renewed pain and also running out of leave, my boss "encouraged" me to step down to part-time.  His motivation was that a co-worker who had been happily part-time needed to move to full-time.  A co-worker who never confronted the boss, I might add.  A nice person.  So after a few more weeks, I conceded and went to part-time.  No more insurance coverage, no longer able to apply for disability if the problems became more severe.

Here we are a year later.  The volunteer seems to show up every day.  I see him more than I see some of the full-time employees.  Yesterday he worked 9-2 -- MY HOURS.  He hustles like he's auditioning for the Olympics.

So I'm thinking, a bored retiree, a bit of a tightwad who could probably use a little income.  A boss who would promise him easy hours to get him on board.  And, without me there, a totally family environment.

What would you think?





 

A Job Loss

My daughter lost her first professional job Friday.  She had been searching for a year after graduation and had been delighted with her new job.  She took it seriously, putting in more hours than she probably should have, and was totally invested in giving it her all.  In other words, she started this new career with the honor and intensity of so many recent college graduates.

For that, she was unceremoniously ushered in to a meeting at 4 p.m. Friday, and told that she would be given two weeks' severance, and then watched as she cleared her office and escorted out.

In the interest of CYA, she had some six weeks ago, during her first employee evalution, been told that, while she was otherwise doing an excellent job, there was one area in which she was deficient.  She was too embarrassed to tell me what exactly this deficiency was, but took it upon herself to do everything within her power to repair this problem.

Meanwhile, for the past eight weeks or so, she was doing her own work plus that of her immediate supervisor, who was out on maternity leave.  For that, she was told to leave on the day her supervisor was due to return to work.  She does not believe her supervisor was even aware that this was going to happen, and of course, therefore, was not at all involved in advising or working with my daughter on how she could remedy her problem.

She liked her supervisor, and felt badly about leaving without the opportunity to say good-bye.  For that matter she was also unable to say good-bye to co-workers she had become friends with in the five months she was employed.

She had been hired as one of two new employees, for similar positions, in different departments.  The young man was fired also, apparently for the same deficiency, on the same day.  Which leads me to believe that either this employer sucks at hiring, or feels free to try new employees on for size rather than actually be committed to an employee because there are so many potential employees out there.

My guess is the latter.  Potential employers today have the attitude that people in the workforce are a dime a dozen.  This has pretty much always been the attitude for low-wage workers, but now has been adapted for all levels of employment.  The American employer needs maintain no loyalty or commitment to their employees.  The workforce has been sold out by management, with the blessing of the government, since 1980 and the sainted Ronald Reagan.  As a result, workers are spread too thin, given too little, and dumped at the first hint that the employer stands to gain from the dumping.

We hear Congress pontificating about the American people acting like grown-ups, while they are being treated as inanimate objects, to be used as cheaply as possible, and then discarded.

My heart breaks for young people believing that hard work will provide them good work and a secure life.  My heart breaks for my daughter, because she is a victim of the greed and hypocrisy by which we have allowed this country to be ruled.