no_hypocrisy
no_hypocrisy's JournalI was made "Cashier of the Month" for March!
I work as a cashier at a grocery emporium in northern New Jersey. Not a grocery store. Not a supermarket.
I took the job on impulse last July when I saw an announcement online they were hiring.
I sailed through the interview and was quickly hired.
I started to work around Labor Day after weeks of training which included memorizing the four-digit codes for fruits and vegetables and packing bags.
I was given an overloaded shopping chart with items to "return" to the shelves on my first day at work and I didn't know the layout of the store but I did it and found I was good at it.
I didn't see the "COM" coming. Matter of fact, I thought I was getting seriously canned when I was called from my register and approached a committee of seriously-looking supervisors. Instead, they made a big deal of clapping, cheering. I got a $30 gift card and balloons. And my store photo with a paragraph describing why I'm special is hanging up front at Customer Service.
My coworkers have been congratulating me as well.
Jesus, I needed this . . . . . I was happy enough to be thanked for coming to work during a pandemic by both superiors and customers.
Finished work 90 minutes ago and I'm still steaming.
As you may or may not know, I work as a cashier at a grocery emporium in northern NJ.
We've instituted safety precautions: latex gloves, plexi-glass partitions b/n us and the customers, choice of wearing masks, tape on the floor to show six feet length, hand sanitizer, etc.
This was my day:
The lanes for check-out are supposed to be every other one (b/c otherwise, you'd be less than 12 inches away from customers in the next lane). But no, all day I was put at check-outs next to another check-out and those customers didn't wear masks. Then MY customers were as dense as bricks: they don't get what six feet apart means. They stood apart before getting to the belt and then proceeded to stand at a maximum three feet from me as I'm bagging their 10+ sacks of groceries.
Then the apex of the evening: We're supposed to close the store by 8:00 by order of the governor and the county executive. Fine by me. Except at 8:05, I received word that there was one customer left. Well, we don't throw out customers whose shopping cart is overflowing with groceries that may ring up to $400+. Yup, that was my last customer. 25 minutes and 12 bags later, I was too tired to be livid. All I could do was ruminate "You had ALL FRIGGIN' DAY TO SHELTER IN PLACE. ALL DAY! And you decide to re-stock your proverbial bomb shelter at 7:45!"
OK, rant over.
Trump wanting the country to return to "normal" in the light of this pandemic
reminds me of our father.
It was Thanksgiving evening ten years ago. My sister and her husband are childless and had four dogs to love.
The newest puppy somehow escaped the house and tried to follow my sister when she went to walk our father's dog right before the meal. It was dark and raining. The poor dog was run over by a car. My sister's crie de coeur was unearthly.
She and my BIL cradled the little corpse in the hallway. I was crying with them.
Not our father. His idea was predominantly to ignore the obvious tragedy and the profound grief of his daughter. His idea of "comforting" was to re-direct their attention. He pointed out that my sister had three other dogs. That's right. You have too many dogs and that was a spare that was killed. He continually tried to get us to return to start the Thanksgiving feast he had prepared. Because nothing whets your appetite than putting aside a dead baby dog and digging into turkey and stuffing.
My sister, BIL, and I decided there would be no celebration, no holiday. I offered and they accepted a cardboard box I had in my trunk and we all went home in shock.
Now, granted, our father was 86 at this time. It wasn't dementia or senility. This is who he was. A narcissist. He was unmoved by what happened and tried to move us to gaslight the event so that his work in the kitchen would not go to waste.
My point: like my father, Trump has his own agenda and what happens to us is irrelevant. Easter and we're open for business again. Jesus makes everything better again.
For Mom, I think it was the realization of impending death.
Again, without telling her, Dad had her put on morphine, wherein she lapsed into what he called a "coma," but in reality, it was a drug-induced sleep that allowed her to avoid the horror of trying to take a breath and nothing happens. She didn't know.
I was with her at the end, counting the seconds between inhalation and exhalation, until the last breath.
Stage IV lung cancer
My mother died of it.
She didn't find out she had it until one week before she died, partially b/c our father made her doctor not tell her, but she figured it out anyway.
She knew she had lung cancer, but she didn't know how fatal it was. She did radiation and chemo. Lost her hair and a lot of weight.
Once it's Stage IV, the die is cast. All you can do is prolong your mortality and do palliative care (pain management). So to speak, Stage IV doesn't last very long.
Mom was a former smoker like Rush. She quit 20+ years before the cancer and it still happened.
As much as I like to be right, one of Mom's last comments was that she shouldn't have yelled at me when I was 9 and threw away her boxes of Marlboros.
I am heartbroken about my friend.
Exactly one month ago, he was involved in a head-on car collision, sustaining a broken neck, a concussion, and shoulder injury.
His spinal cord miraculously was not damaged. He can walk, think, speak, move all four extremities, breathe independently. He had successful surgery to align and position his neck and head.
However, his recovery is dependent upon his family and that is not optimal.
He is 72 and his wife is 68 and she dominates him emotionally and psychologically. That has been the basis of their marriage but it has not been determining until now. She browbeat him until he agreed to prematurely leave his rehabilitation where he was receiving physical therapy for three weeks and where he was making good progress. He echoed her pronouncements that the room was too small, feeding his claustrophobic feelings. The reason she wanted him to leave: so she could attend their daughter's Thanksgiving dinner 3 hours away in Pennsylvania.
And so he agreed to be driven with a newly repaired and still healing broken neck for three hours during (arguably) the most dangerous time to be out on the road (greater risk of accidents) with a woman who drives with her left foot due to having a drop foot. What could possibly go wrong? 
Well, they made it safely to the daughter's home. And you figure, well, the daughter is a physical therapist. Good, right? Nope. Daughter was preoccupied with feeling extended family of 12, understandable. My friend has not received physical therapy for four days now. No prospect of getting it as of today.
I spoke to his sister who attended yesterday's Dinner. He was stuck in a corner and ignored by everybody. His two children, his grandchildren, his in-laws, his wife. Neglected and ignored. He only got food when his BIL prepared a plate for him. The irony: he told me he wanted to go to Thanksgiving so that he could enjoy the company of his family. It didn't exactly work out that way.
He lacks the personality and the will to protest. He is meek and accommodating. I understand that it's his decision on one hand to submit to this situation. But he deserves more, better. He is an accident victim and one would think that at least a fuss and true thanksgiving of his survival would be made.
It's time for drastic measures.
To get to Trump, you have to get to the FOX News Channel.
And it's simple: BOYCOTT THEIR SPONSORS. You don't have to watch those awful shows. You can still exercise your freedom to purchase otherwise and write to the manufacturers to let them know why you aren't buying their coffee or potato chips or pillows.
Reverse blacklist.
If we all do it, we have leverage.
I paid for my 16 year old sister's abortion in 1975. One of my best choices.
My sister was sexually active and found herself pregnant one month after her 16th birthday. Of course she didn't use birth control, but then again, she was 16 and couldn't have visited a gynecologist (at least someone who didn't know our father, another doctor).
I gave her $214* for the procedure. She had to have it in New York State, Long Island. Her boyfriend, age 20, went with her. She was fine. I was in another state, at college.
She left her boyfriend about six months after that. Because our father never found out, she went on to a good life. She enrolled in the same college where I was enrolled. She met a very nice man and married him and remains happily married 30+ years later. Because of a sperm issue, they couldn't have children. But they have four rescue dogs and that's enough for them.
I never told on her. Not even when I was totally furious at her and she used our parents against me.
I could have had a niece or nephew aged 43 years old now I suppose. But my sister had nobody else to turn to in her hour of need. We were just lucky that she was able to decide.
* $214 was big bucks in '75. Minimal wage was $2.10. It took a long time to save up that money as I only worked 20 hours a week.
Breakthrough
It's five years since my father passed at age 93. I felt disoriented, confused, and angry during the last 10 years of his life. Dad had always been difficult, but he was in new territory after my mother/his wife passed.
I'm talking about words and deeds that were beyond the Pale. Stuff like when my sister's beloved puppy was struck and killed right before Thanksgiving dinner, and she and my brother-in-law were weeping and cradling the little dead body, Dad was trying his damnedest to get us to the supper table. No empathy whatsoever. Stuff like disinheriting me and my sibs but leaving $35,000 to the neighbor. Stuff like screaming at me for washing all the pots and pans and dishes on the counter b/c it would give the cleaning lady "nothing to do". Repeating verbatim whatever he had heard on FOX News, repeating like every 3 minutes. Bad driving (which eventually and consequently killed him). Refusing to let any of us prepare checks for him to sign for six months of unpaid bills. And more.
My sister and brother didn't have an answer. He was too functional to be senile or suffering from full blown dementia. And we were certain that if we couldn't exactly put our proverbial finger on the problem, we couldn't get help for the "new normal".
But today, I believe I know what the problem was: Frontotemporal Dementia. https://www.alzheimers.net/signs-of-frontotemporal-dementia/
My father had 9 of the 10 warning signs. If anything, all of us are nominated for sainthood for the extra abuse we received from our father. When he died, it was truly a relief. (I had the brunt of the responsibility as I lived the closest.)
Please appreciate this revelation/discovery has done wonders for me. My head has stopped spinning and the anger really starting to dissipate. My father "died" years before his mortality caught up with him. I was dealing with dementia, not Dad.
Paying back a bad loan
I'm an attorney and have a new case.
My client had a shopping disorder and maxed out her credit cards behind her husband's back. Five figures.
Worried about the debt, she consolidated her debt and took out a loan that paid off her credit cards. Behind her husband's back. She signed the papers but didn't read them and didn't understand what the conditions were.
Her husband found out about the loan when he protested the cost of his auto premium. (Your credit history affects your premium.) But she denied, denied, denied. And he couldn't do anything about it.
My client fell and is effectively disabled and got a lump sum for her workers comp. She wants to pay back the loan in full, which is responsible. With the outrageous interest on the loan, the figure is $65,000-something. It's almost the sales price of their home when they bought it in 1978.
She tried to pay off the loan but the company is refusing the payment and wants her to continue monthly payments in order to allow accrued and compound interest.
I'm taking over and closing the file.
I really don't want to do this case, but I realize that she's in bad medical shape and if this isn't addressed and concluded now, the debt will attach to the marital home and her husband will have worked for more than 40 years to pay for the home that he would effectively lose. Or at least dramatically affect his credit, his ability to borrow, and his insurance premiums.
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