I didn’t blog yesterday because I worked until about 11:55 p.m. I won’t blog today because the news sources have gone home for the holidays, leaving their autopiloted publications with top-ten lists. Having no un-Constitutional public policy to whine about, the space today will be an attempt at human interest – a story that rambles about uninteresting daily things and ends with neither plot nor point.
Looking for work has not been successful. The first two jobs I landed worked well until I caught my hand in a conveyor belt. I was dismissed from that job, and urged by peers who like to talk a libertarian line to collect disability and apply for unemployment. As the months stretched on, folks of all conservative stripes suggested I get a grant to go back to college, get food stamps, apply for Section 8 assistance, etc. I was a charity case, but I was stubborn, accepting subsidy only from people like my poor, disabled mother, who gave willingly.
As has been mentioned, conservative friends also helped me in my job search. They kept me apprised of government job openings. There were also a number of jobs at companies that like to create jobs by accepting government grants and litigating. Then there was the whole genre of private-sector jobs that push paper and confer titles. I was in a catch -11. I could either take a gummint job or continue to be a parasite, living off the labors of my family and people from church.
At the point when I almost accepted a bureaucratic job that would grow the government’s role in intruding into the healthcare system, I received a phone call with an offer for seasonal employment. The job was in a town I liked and third-shift, so it wouldn’t interfere with other efforts to scrounge a few dollars here and there. Most importantly, it was with a manufacturing firm that kept its books in the black and accepted no stimulus. A higher-up in the organization had once said of his company’s view of stimulus, “If anybody helps us, it’s going to be us.”
The first night wasn’t that great, but the second I got transferred to another department for training. I had a rough time the first couple nights because everybody wanted to be a boss, and I was being given contradictory instructions right and left. It was infuriating. After blowing my stack, one of the guys came over to talk to me.
He had a Fonzie personality, and he told me I had bad energy. He proceeded to tell me his story. He had been in a bad accident and spent considerable time in a coma. He pulled out of the coma and went back to work, scars and all. A couple days later, the same guy hurt his foot. He didn’t miss a day of work, even though he had to walk like a baby, with his feet far apart and his hands up in the air for balance. He was a perfectionist, and when he was working on “the team,” I would have an easy night without having to shut down machines and request a lot of redos. He was never late nor absent, and was always willing to work an extra eight hours when asked.
Another guy worked at the stations next to me and elsewhere in the plant. He took pride in working sixteen hour days and working himself out of a job.
Another guy I liked was our technician. He knew his stuff, and was the reason our shift could do more than the other shifts with 1/3 as many people. He would often cuss at the computers, but he was kind and gentle with the humans, sharing his knowledge to make us all increasingly independent.
Sadly, sales took an unprecedented nosedive almost a week before anticipated. There was sadness in the air as the bosses started sending people home early. We could see the orders and knew they had zeroed out. We weren’t laid off, but we could feel it coming. People were crying. It wasn’t so much the absence of money we would face as the camaraderie we would lose. There was something about being on the A-Team among bright people who wanted to do their jobs well (and leave the other shifts in our dust).
The night before the phone came confirming the bad news, I couldn’t sleep. I drove to the apartment complex where I used to live and saw it had changed, but now it looked like it does in my dreams. I drove down the road. I felt impressed to turn on the radio just in time to hear an obscure song by my favorite band in the world. At that point, I realized we were “in the deep mid-winter.” Short Day was just around the corner. It seemed it was summer the last I looked.
The next day, oblivious to what awaited me on my cell phone, I thought I saw one of my favorite coworkers not once, but twice as I worked my mall job. Part of me wanted to run from my duties into the hall, give him a big hug, and say, “I love you, man!” But the discipline in me forbade it. I told myself I’d just tell him I saw him in the mall when I saw him that night.
But that night never came. We were all laid off, left with only a treasure trove of memories and the best of feelings for helping the economy, among friends.
