What’s Worse Than Losing Your Job?

When you lose your job, you at least feel that you have a little control over your situation. You control the jobs you apply for and your interviews. When a loved one loses their job though, watching them suffer through the ordeal can be a painful thing. Today my sister lost her job as a Graphic Designer with the corporate office of a large drugstore company in Illinois. She had been with the company about 10 years.

I know there is no loyalty when it comes to the bottom line, but for some reason I seem to believe there still is or will be again some day. I am always disappointed at this prospect. My sister worked hard and participated in almost all of the things her company did outside of work hours. She put in way more time than was required and always did quality work. In return for all those years of dedication, she gets a pink slip with no severance and a look at the long unemployment line.

My dad worked a hard job and is now retired. For 40 years he worked at a bakery. He would often have to come in an extra day just so that things would move swiftly. He almost never too a vacation day and had a huge amount of unused paid vacation days when he finally decided to call it quits. He worked all those years with the expectation that he would have his pension and social security to take care of him. As a thank you, he is constantly threatened with losing his pension that he relies on so dearly.

It seriously makes me start to think that one day we might all have to wake up and realize that depending on a company for your living is not the way to go. Maybe it’s like Donald Trump says, you have to rely on yourself for financial independence. The risk of suddenly being without the ability to provide for yourself or your family shall a company decide they want make some cuts should start to get to people some day, right? Maybe soon we’ll return to the days when we all had trades and depended on one another individualy for our services. Companies will struggle to find somebody to even take part in their conglomerate schemes. I guess that’s just me dreaming though. As I write this the TV has video of people lining up for jobs with massive corporations. I continue to hope for something better for the average person.