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.
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.
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?
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.
