This diary was started last Sunday right after the Super Bowl and was originally intended to be a reaction to the Presidents' interview with Matt Lauer and the halftime commercial that has garnered so much reaction narrated by Clint Eastwood. It's been revised and rewritten so many times that I was afraid my 'Edit Diary' button was going to quit working; I just wasn't quite satisfied with the results.
So I followed my old painting teachers' advice, Paul of the '3 Absolute Rules of Painting' whose one rule stated, 'When you get stuck, turn the painting to the wall and walk away for awhile and come back with fresh eyes or work on something else'.
So that's what I did and I'm glad I did because over the course of this week a decision was made where I work that, when put into context of what else my company has been experiencing the last two years, connected the dots to what seems to be happening around the country. There is a quiet, slow and steady recovery in private sector hiring and the numbers say it's been going on for almost 2 years. My company and my day to day working experience mirror those statistics.
So this will be written as I normally write, connecting a little of my past as I try and relate it to our today. So please take the jump back with me to early 2003 when I found my self drifting and a little lost after personal circumstances and a sudden sharp contraction in the economy in the summer / fall of 2002, ended in the closing of a modestly successful 10 year business.
'What are you going to do now? What do you enjoy the most?'
'Cooking. I can see myself cooking for the rest of my life.'
'At 48, you're going to start a career in cooking, are you sure?'
'Yeah........Why not?'
So that's what I did and I got hired as I always got hired and as I hired, old school style because I just happened to know a person who knew a person who needed a hard worker, eager to learn, responsible and dedicated and willing to do whatever it took to get the job done. That first job involved a three hour commute both ways and I did it because that's what needed to be done and because I was on a mission to succeed, I was driven and it was familiar.
The owner was also on a mission, to recreate an authentic New York Jewish deli experience as in the famous "Stage Deli' in Manahattan complete with meats from the same vendors shipped in every other day and smart aleck deli people behind the counter. As an ex New Yorker, 'Eh, fuhgettaboutit', that part was a piece of cake. The other part, the 4am wake up to open the store at 6, learning to cook fresh food everyday in a professional kitchen and learning how to be lightning fast behind the counter which is a hallmark of the New York deli experience, well, that took some time.
A little a day I learned, tried to improve and after a year and a half, I wasn't half bad really. I had gotten a raise and a bump to assistant manager but the commute and the daily grind was becoming an issue on me and on the used Honda Element my wife and I bought after our little Honda hatchback finally died after 250,000 miles; the miles were really racking up on us both. We felt okay about that purchase because things looked promising and we were rewarded in that leap of faith when I got hired on the same day in two restaurants across the street from one another, a short commute from our home.
Punch out there after opening at 6am, setting up and cooking lunch service, I'd walk across the street and punch in the other restaurant to begin the night shift, cooking dinner and most days had me smiling 12 to 14 and sometimes 16 hours a day.
Cooking professionally takes that much time and committment and there just aren't many shortcuts. You have to put in your time and assume your place on the line and in line, until maybe just maybe you did something to get yourself noticed like take the lead cooks' spot on the line for Sunday brunch when the lead cook just didn't show up and called in from the road on the way back home to Ohio, yeah, that will get you noticed in a hurry. And it did. I became a manager, got a bump in pay and was responsible for other cooks, had a hand in the menu planning for both Saturday and Sunday brunch service.
Both of these restaurants were less than 2 years old and both owners had sunk everything they owned into these dreams and by any measure were modestly successful, considering the difficulty that new restaurants have. Many simply don't make it, it's an incredibly difficult business to be in.
And then Phwiiiippp!
Like a bad magician attempting the tablecloth trick, everything I'd worked for was suddenly cracked and broken on the floor. The holiday season of 2007 which held so much promise for us all was a disaster. There were no customers, just a few stragglers wandering in and the rest is history and not a good history either.
I spent the next two years unemployed like so many others in our country and it was the first time in my entire adult life that I was ever without work so there was no being 'prepared' for such an occurance or the damage inflicted on my psyche and self esteem. Bills piled up, credit cards got loaded and the Honda Element suddenly didn't seem like the once good investment it did before. Nothing I tried worked actually as I tried to fit this square peg into round holes that just weren't there. I will spare you many of the details but suffice it to say it was probably one of, if not the worst two years spent as an adult.
I've been a worker bee all my life, that's all I've known. My work defined me to myself and to the world and to have that taken away by reckless, greedy people wounded me in so many ways that it's almost incalculable to describe. I was at rock bottom and eventually my spirit broke and I needed help and I got support continuously from my wife who never waivered and her parents, who helped a great deal. It was difficult but I just kept plugging away, we all did, being persistent even though I wasn't very hopeful.
'We find a way through the tough times and if we can't find a way, we make one.'
Yeah, I think Clint got that right. That sentence resonates because it's what I know and it's what I've only ever known. It's about work, hard work, long hours, sweat and sometimes dirty hands and a spirit that just will not be broken, that refusal to quit no matter how many times we get knocked down we dust ourselves off and punch in for another shift. It's a pure American message and it's old school and I'm old school too. It's an identity as deeply ingrained in me as it is in our own unique American history.
I've been working and mostly self employed since I was fourteen. It's not been about the money, although bills have to be paid and I've made a modest living, for me it was more about the doing, the sculpting and molding a business, creating an enterprise where there was none before, having a place in the world, belonging and of making things and employing people and paying my fair share so that others who had fallen down could get back up.
I've worn that belief like a uniform, put it on slowly everyday as I sipped my coffee for over forty years, working, considering what the day would entail, where I would need to be so that the people I employed and my clients who depended on me would get the best that we had to give. It's my self embossed identity and one that I proudly told to anyone who asked.
'Yeah, we can get that done for you, no problem'
Even if 'no problem' wasn't true, I'd see to it that we made it true because a client needed it to be done and if money came my way and a modest success it was because I fulfilled that promise and maybe just for good measure, maybe exceeded expectations just a little.
The President told Matt Lauer that day in an interview,
'What I'm going to just keep on doing is plodding away, very persistent.'
I think the President got it right too.
Persistent. That ten letter word holds so much promise, it says so much about who the President is, who we are and who I've always been. It's an American thing and it's why I love my country even today with all the incredible difficulties we've been confronted with, roadblocks that have been erected at almost every intersection yet somehow, persistently, methodically and with the full recognition of our past we can still believe our future will be better.
'I picked your resume because you have the experience we need, you're responsible and all your references verified that but I also chose yours because you own a Honda Element. I own one and I love it'.
There were a few follow-up questions but the rest of the interview was spent by both of us raving about our Honda Element. I was asked to start the next day and I did and I've been here for almost 2 1/2 years now. You might say the bar was not very high for this interview and you might be right but the employees who work at this small business go through a very rigorous background check and we are all bonded and insured. We are a service business and for reasons of anonymity, I'd rather not give many more details than that so I guess you'll just have to trust that the details I will tell you about are true.
This small business employs about thirty people and it is owned by two people, a woman and a man who met years ago and realized they shared the same ideals and committment. Our company is vey successful and growing rapidly despite the abysmal economic conditions in our country. We are all committed to the same ideal and very good at what we do and it shows in the ever increasing word of mouth recommendations that are continously adding new clients to our list and our schedules everyday. The last six months have been pretty intense as we all took on addded responsibility and hours to our days.
I can also tell you that we get paid much higher than industry standard and our salaries are significantly above minimum wage and I don't use my adjectives lightly. This is a committment these two people have made to their workers and it shows up in everything we do. We are a family here, we have each others back, we go the extra mile and when I wake up every morning to start my day at 7:30, I cover all the morning shifts, I don't feel as though I'm going to work. I love what I do and my days pass quickly.
There is also a committment by these two owners to somehow and at some point when it can be afforded, offer us health insurance as very few of us have it, myself included. That was verified the other day when I had a conversation with the male owner in a talk about writing this diary.
'I'm glad we are all doing well but it's not enough. It won't be enough until we can get everyone health insurance.'
This week it was decided that our new clients have outgrown our capacity to handle our responsibility without compromising the quality of our service. Two and possibly a third person will be hired in the next week so we will add to the statistic of the slow and steady hiring that has been taking place in the private sector over the last 2 years. It's a significant decision and committment for a small business to take on new workers but the committment taken by our new clients is significant as well and at this point, the evidence indicates rather strongly that it's not a temporary phenonmenon. In fact the last few weeks has seen a mini explosion of new clients.
So in our house and in my house, there is stability now where there wasn't before, debts are being repaid now when my wife and I couldn't before and there's a slow and steady repair to a damaged psyche and self esteem, I'm working again, contributing and becoming whole. There is a very fragile inter connectedness to recoveries both economic and emotional. I believe they feed each other and at least as I see it from our clients added committments, other people are feeling this way too, maybe a little more confident and that confidence feeds ours.
This is not in any way to suggest that everything is fine now because it isn't. Far too many of my brothers and sisters, my fellow citizens are still without work, underemployed or suffering horrible indignities just to make a living as Phil T. Duck so courageously wrote about. As someone who has been there, I die a little death everytime I read these stories but I read them anyway. It's important for me to remember, to stay grounded and be thankful everyday and empathize and encourage if I can, not that I could ever really forget. I just wish I could help more.
I honestly don't understand how people can do those things to one another, treat people that way simply because they can and think it's somehow right to inflict such pain on others when all folks want to do is work, put food on the table, support their family and maybe have a plan for a future. It's shameful and I guess they think unemployment just won't happen to them. Nothing seems guaranteed anymore, things just feel a little tenuous and fragile. I've been through all the recessions for the past forty years but I've never seen anything like this.
This will be a very slow recovery for so many people but I think it can happen, I just wish it could happen sooner and if I know anything these days, if anything is a guarantee, it's that whoever occupies that seat in the Oval Office might be more important now for so many reasons and so many people, than at any time I can remember. If that person is anyone other than President Obama, this fragile recovery will all go to hell in a handbasket in a hurry for the 99% of us whether we're working or not.
Every single Republican candidate is promising worse for us, if that's even possible and I believe them. The 1% are not in their 'quiet rooms' anymore, they're in broad daylight wearing their greed and racist hatred and intolerance like a badge of honor. They should be ashamed of themselves but they're not and that's what's a little scary.
So I've decided to set aside my differences with the President and get out from under my 'enthusiasm gap' and enthusiastically vote for him this November as I did last election. It's not in my nature to tell others how to think and I won't do that here. Voting for me is a very complex and personal issue and this is just my own personal decision. Of course this is not the only reason I'm voting for the President again, it's just the reason I feel comfortable discussing here in this diary.
It's the reason I finally signed up here at Daily Kos after lurking since 2007. I wanted to be able to talk to people, hear their views whether I agreed with them or not and it's been a tremendous help to me. Listening and talking and writing has allowed me to formulate and inform many decisions so I want to thank you Kossacks, one and all.
Being here at Daily Kos is absolutely one of the best decisions I've ever made.
Peace, everyone.
Sun Feb 12, 2012 at 2:46 AM PT: as i do sometimes after 'completing' a diary, i need to walk away a bit and refresh my eyes and lo and behold, i click and i'm home again in the community spotlight, my comfortable place. thank you rescue rangers, all of you back there for encouraging my new medium, my new obsession.