Adding Insult to Injury

Being 59 and unemployed is not an encouraging circumstance in which to find myself. It may not be the end of the world… but I can see it from here. It’s not the end of my life, but it is the end of my “American Dream.” The odds are that I will have no “comfortable” retirement.

I am not totally without hope. My life is in my mind, not in my wallet. Good thing, because my wallet is empty. I am becoming increasingly unable to compete for the physically demanding jobs with which I have paid my way so far and there seems to be a real shortage of entry level positions for older workers to break into a new line of work.

So, the wolf is at the door and my back is against the wall. That’s okay… the door is closed and having a wall behind you means you don’t have to cover your rear. But it does mean that until I get around to sending those certified letters to my creditors telling them to stop calling me that I have to put up with their constant and pointless phone calls.

While I maintain a certain level of effort to work my way out of the mess in which I find myself, and while my attitude is not totally in the tank, there is a burr under my saddle concerning one particular practice on the part of at least one of my creditors that just plain pisses me off. In spite of all the economic mumbo-jumbo about the pseudo wisdom of outsourcing our work to foreign locations, I get a little rankled when I pick up the phone and it is another dunning call on behalf of a creditor… AND IT IS FROM A CALL CENTER IN INDIA!

If you want me to find gainful employment and pay what I owe you, stop exporting my job opportunities! Outsourcing is not done to make a profit in order to stay in business. It is done to MAXIMIZE profit in the short run. To hell with your greed! Pull your heads out of the nether regions of your posterior anatomy, settle for a modest and SUSTAINABLE profit, and return to a mode of operation that strengthens our business environment in the long run. We can not all make a living shuffling papers and selling hamburgers to each other.

Under the guiding hand of greed exercised by many modern business executives the American Dream is becoming the American Nightmare.