As terrifying as being on the outside looking in is, being on the inside wanting out is worse.
Needing to feed my face and pay the rent, I had taken a low paying job at the old Crocker Bank and after five years was making only around four dollars an hour doing office work. Having come to the point of overdrawing my checking account, I asked a bank officer if she would advance me twenty dollars until pay day. How many others have asked that question?
“No, because that would lower my savings account to a point where I would not be drawing top interest,” replied the bank officer to my inquiry
“The New York Times reports that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is setting new records, and on the same page notes that the numbers of homeless people and people living in poverty are also setting records.” – Tim Redmond, San Francisco Bay Guardian blog, February 13, 2013.
The next day the bank officer gave me a canned tamale.
Who corrected the bank officer’s writing for the bank procedures manual as it was put into the computer? I did.
Echoing through my mind are such remarks as, “How would you know I made a mistake in my statistics? You’re just a word processor with a Master’s degree in English. I am a bank vice president with an MBA.”
But did the VIP thank me when she found out I was right?”
No.
Trying to escape the bank, I discovered that it did not give employees seeking outside employment recommendations. It just verified employment and whether the bank would hire us again.
As Edward R. Murrow reported in his television report “Harvest of Shame, the plight of the migrant farm worker,” one landowner stated, “We used to own our slaves. Now we just rent them.”
And what in 2013 is the solution? You tell me.