I have long been in opposition to Wall Street and to large corporations that have no heart and squash the American spirit. This is a personal tale of my experience with the complications of the system that benefits them.
Most who know me know my disdain for huge corporations and the passes they are given by loopholed laws and government officials that either look the other way or vote to deregulate them. Deregulation can and has been the cause of financial and market crises.
You may also know that I feel that the fact that Wall Street and other world stock markets being inherently linked to the individual national and the world's economies is simply a pyramid scheme. The success or failure of the markets affects the rest of us who don't care to participate in the legalized gambling that is stock trading.
Well, after being steamrolled by two American corporations today, I about lost it, but I found a healthy response.
Here's what happened:
Last week, after realizing I need to take my destiny into my own hands after striking out on getting substitute teacher gigs so far this year and getting rejections (or no responses) from employers both public and private, I took some action on wyzant.com ("wise-ant"). Wyzant Tutoring is basically a tutoring job clearing house and I acted as a subcontracted tutor through them. We split payments (60/40) in my favor.
Last Spring, I met with a client working to improve Praxis 1 Reading scores. We made great progress and we enjoyed working together. It helped bridge the gap between sub gigs and shifts at Auto Zone.
Last week, the action I took was to reply to some emails, apply for some potential tutoring jobs, take some subject certification tests online and order a background check on myself. For that last one, I had just over $8 bucks in the bank and the background check cost about $8. I didn't have to order it, but 8 is my favorite number and I was trying to get organized, motivated and proactive with my destiny.
A day went by and I didn't have the background check completed. No big deal. Then I got an email from Wyzant.com saying that my account had been deactivated due to a negative response on the background check I ordered on myself.
I'm not an idiot. I knew I had been arrested for 3 misdemeanors this past June 3 for refusing to leave the General Assembly building in protest of, among other terrible pieces of legislation, the cuts to public education. These cuts hurt educators, students, parents and administrators. So, I was proud to stand with all of them when I got arrested.
Since this is America, though, I assumed that because I was innocent until proven guilty, I wouldn't have that counted against me in my background check. Of course I was wrong.
I called Wyzant on Friday and a guy was very helpful and he asserted (after checking with supervisors) that only convictions of felonies within the last 5 years and convictions of misdemeanors within the last 3 years would call for my accout to be deactivated. He sympathized with my situation and he advised me to call Lexis Nexis (or whatever it's called now) first thing Monday (today).
I did.
The person on the other end of the line obviously didn't care. They told me that, indeed, my arrest on 3 misdemeanor counts in June was the cause of the "negative" rating on the background check for which I paid. Knowing there was no reasoning with a background check robot, I said thank you in robot language and we terminated the conversation.
So, obviously, the next step was calling Wyzant.
At first I got a young lady with an accent who, bless her heart for trying, couldn't help me. I didn't blame her and I know her position in the company. I called back and got a young man with a midwestern to northwestern American accent. "Score!" I thought (though I knew he was in the same position as the last person). I realized he could only listen and give me the information he knew.
I tried to request that Wyzant communicate with Lexis Nexis (or whatever) to get the mitigating information about my negative rating. He, along with the previous young lady, told me that they don't see the details of the background report. They just see pass or fail. I tried to request a refund of the $8, since I most likely will have to request another background report after my charges are dropped (as I highly anticipate them to be, since they are unconstitutionally bogus). Like I said, he and the previous young lady are essentially cogs in a big corporate machine, so I thanked them and asked them to pass my requests and my further information along.
I was angry...of course. Here I was trying to "pull myself up by the 'boot straps'" and work for my own successful fiscal destiny. Then two American corporations screw me over.
I began to think about my situation and how, in my opinion, background check organizations (that make a profit on our backgrounds) are rendering many of these "negative" reports unconstitutionally. It violates my 5th and 6th Amendment rights.
Then I thought about how I was in bed with the Gun Nut Wing of the Tea Party Rethuglicans. I shuddered, said "Ugh!" & went to work running errands for my parents, cleaning their shower stall and cleaning/organizing their back yard.
Then, wielding a mallet hammer, I decimated three plastic yard chairs for my parents to the tunes of "Bad to the Bone" by George Thorogood, "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey & "Hollywood Nights" by Bob Seger.
It's a slight loss on my part, but DAMN, that felt good!
Fri Nov 01, 2013 at 7:24 PM PT: Wyzant did refund the cost of my background check, but they did not reinstate me or offer any viable solution/agreement.