They Call Us the Working Wounded

It seems that every time I invest the best parts of myself in someone else's life, especially my loyalty, I get screwed over with no apologies. It happened just over a month ago when 15+ years of selfless devotion to my family was rewarded with eviction and the needless threat of police intervention. Now this.

I just lost my job of six years a couple of hours ago, minutes after making my last post. Early this year, I and everyone else at work to a man had made a verbal pact to walk out on the job if our boss was replaced with his nephew as per his mother's wishes. We stood together in solidarity and risked our livelihoods for a guy who'd sneered and snarled at us for years and years.

My reward? Getting laid off. Snippy and defensive to the end, he sneered that he also had to lay off his wife, which didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was him putting her on the payroll to begin with, which, for all the work she did there, was tantamount to embezzling from the company. Half the time she sat around reading Stephen King or Dean Koontz novels. At least it can be said that I stayed busy doing something.

But if he didn't lay off four of us, as he explained, then perhaps the business wouldn't be around by next week. Maybe this will be a wake up call for him to stop neglecting his business, including paying his overhead expenses, stop using company money to pay for his personal vehicles and to not pocket cash payments from his customers (the reason Mommy wanted to fire him) when it should've gone into the central account.

This is part and parcel to right wingers. Act as if ignoring problems is the best form of conflict resolution, make others pay for your fuckuppery then sneer and snarl at them to sink or swim while remaining in the catbird seat.

This comes at a helluva time. You all know my situation. I have no one looking out for me, no support network or family to help cushion the blow. I have a landlord, two utility comanies and my stomach to worry about and nothing but a parttime job pumping gas to help pick up the slack. After I post this, I will be logging on to the Massachusetts DET's website to open an unemployment claim and hopefully will start getting some pittance of relief. But with the Dept. of Revenue's Child Support Enforcement Division on my back, whatever little I get will be garnished and I may wind up clearing only a $100 a week after child support. And I'll have to come up with taxes by next year on both that and the child support I'll never see.

So I'll have to ask you all who can afford to to please donate whatever you can. I never expected this Paypal account to replace even my shitty weekly income from my late, lamented job because I know my readership isn't that large. But the situation, obviously, has gotten a lot more dire since 7:30 this morning and I may be looking at living off whatever money I have in the bank. I need to come up with $1500 to my landlord in the next 4 1/2 weeks and the bills ain't gonna stop coming in.