Signs of the Times: No One Escapes the Economic Crisis

No one is immune from the impact of America’s cur­rent eco­nomic crisis.

Last night I enjoyed din­ner and con­ver­sa­tion with a group of long-time friends. We decided to enjoy Chi­nese food from our favorite take-out restau­rant, Chop Chop, a Lodi Avenue fix­ture for more than 40 years. We gath­ered at the home of one friend who joined the grow­ing ranks of the unem­ployed when she was laid off a cou­ple of weeks before Christ­mas. She has a fab­u­lous atti­tude and we are all con­fi­dent she will soon secure a posi­tion, but in the mean­time, she is under a good deal of stress. Shortly after los­ing her job, she was involved in a motor vehi­cle acci­dent. Thank­fully, she was not hurt. She did not cause the crash, but she is under­stand­ably uneasy at the prospect of her insur­ance com­pany decid­ing to “total” her car because she would likely have a hard time secur­ing a replace­ment vehi­cle while unem­ployed. For­tu­nately, her par­ents have assured her that they will assist in any way possible.

One cou­ple is won­der­ing what will hap­pen in Feb­ru­ary or March.  Although they are both employed full-time by dif­fer­ent school dis­tricts, both are fear­ful that they will receive I.O.U.‘s rather than pay­checks. Hope­fully, at least one of them will be paid in a timely manner.

Last week, I had break­fast with another group of “girl­friends” with whom I grew up here in Lodi, one of whom now resides in Ari­zona. Her husband’s efforts to secure employ­ment have proven futile and she is strug­gling to sup­port their fam­ily with the income from her home-based busi­ness. How­ever, busi­ness has been extremely slow. She and her fam­ily were only able to travel to Lodi for a hol­i­day visit because of the gen­eros­ity of her par­ents. How­ever, her father has advised her, as well as her sib­lings, that addi­tional finan­cial assis­tance will not be forth­com­ing from her par­ents who have seen their income drop as a result of losses on invest­ments that were designed to carry them through a com­fort­able retirement.

None of my friends ever thought that, at this point in their lives, they would find them­selves turn­ing to their par­ents for finan­cial help.

In fact, last week I wrote these words to a dear friend who is 83 years young:  “Watch­ing all of the eco­nomic news must seem sur­real to you.  I have turned to Big­Bob so many times and said, ‘I’m glad my par­ents aren’t here to see this’ because they would be freak­ing out.  They were just enough older than you (my mother would be 92 and my father 90 if they were alive) that their mem­o­ries of the Depres­sion were vivid and those events per­ma­nently scarred them.  They would be scared out of their minds to see the eco­nomic con­di­tions peo­ple in this coun­try are fac­ing right now.”

Ear­lier this week, we vis­ited nearby Jack­son, Cal­i­for­nia.  En route we lis­tened to Tom Sullivan’s radio pro­gram.  We have been fans for many years, as he was a fix­ture on KCRA and KFBK before his show was syn­di­cated nation­ally.  (In fact, I was a guest on his radio pro­gram in 2001.) Iron­i­cally, he took a call from a lis­tener in Jack­son named Steve, a 17-year employee of the county’s largest pri­vate employer, Prospect Motors.  As he spoke to Mr. Sul­li­van, he was watch­ing trans­port trucks load up the vehi­cles on the lot.  The deal­er­ship shut its doors, lay­ing off 80 employ­ees and spark­ing a tsunami-like eco­nomic rip­ple through the region. Steve was one of a few employ­ees who remained to see to the final details of the clo­sure.  He sounded as though he was chok­ing up when he explained that he planned to take a lit­tle time off before decid­ing what to do next; he would not be seek­ing employ­ment in the auto indus­try, though.  A lit­tle while later, we drove by Prospect Motors.  The lot was nearly empty and, indeed, there was a trans­port truck on the premises.  I thought about Steve and his fel­low employ­ees …  and what their futures hold for them, as we passed by.

Big­Bob did not join me and my friends for din­ner last night. Rather, he was at home sleep­ing in antic­i­pa­tion of return­ing to work at 12:15 a.m. Yes, he is unfor­tu­nately back to work­ing the night shift, even though he has held the same job since May 1978 and has more senior­ity than any other employee. While we were on vaca­tion, his employer laid off an entire shift of employ­ees. That means that all the folks who, like Big­Bob, were work­ing the day shift had to either accept the new hours or become a “relief” employee, report­ing to work at the con­clu­sion of the first shift. But “relief” employ­ees are not guar­an­teed that they will work a full week and a cer­tain num­ber of hours are required each week in order to main­tain crit­i­cal ben­e­fits includ­ing, but not lim­ited to health insurance.

When my friends inquired about BigBob’s where­abouts last night, I jok­ingly told them, “Be glad he’s not here. He’s not fit for human com­pan­ion­ship. He’s a total buzz-kill tonight.” Indeed, he was very grumpy all day yes­ter­day when he found out that he would be return­ing to work a lit­tle after mid­night. In his defense, it is phys­i­cally dif­fi­cult for a nearly 58-year-old man who is dia­betic and man­ag­ing a severe case of sleep apnea to work the night shift. The neigh­bors mow their lawns, the tele­phone and door­bell ring, the dogs bark … he finds sleep­ing in the day­time very dif­fi­cult. We are for­tu­nate that the boys are old enough to appre­ci­ate the cir­cum­stances and coop­er­ate fully by keep­ing the house quiet. And his mood was bet­ter today. I think he just needs some time to wrap his head around the idea of again work­ing nights at his age and after so many years with the same employer.

MattieBoo’s 2008-09 School Photo

Tomor­row, it’s back to work for me and Mat­tieBoo returns to school. He has enjoyed a nice break from his stud­ies since Decem­ber 17, 2008. A week later, as we were get­ting ready to attend the Christ­mas Eve can­dle­light ser­vice, he announced that he could not go because he did not have any long pants that fit! Sure enough, in one week’s time, he under­went a growth spurt and could not wear any of the trousers he had been wear­ing to school right up to the point that his vaca­tion began. I couldn’t believe it because I bought him all new clothes to begin this school year in late August. He had a growth spurt last spring after about three years of not grow­ing at all.

So ear­lier today, we went to the local Tar­get store in search of school uni­form trousers. Since Mat­tieBoo enjoys shop­ping nearly as much as I do — not at all, in other words — I took advan­tage of the fact that I had him hostage in the store and forced him to also select new ten­nis shoes. Since he is now taller than either Big­Bob or #1Son, I was not sur­prised to find that he required size 12 shoes!

When we got to the reg­is­ter, the clerk indi­cated that I had to process the credit card pur­chase myself. After punch­ing a few but­tons to con­firm the amount and autho­rize the trans­ac­tion, the mon­i­tor dis­played a ques­tion I had never seen before. It inquired whether I wanted to com­plete the total pur­chase using the same credit card. With­out think­ing, I blurted out, “Well, what other card would I use?”

The cashier looked up and explained, “Our pro­gram­mers just added that ques­tion recently.”

I looked at him quizzi­cally. “Some cus­tomers requested to spread their pur­chases over more than one credit card,” he said qui­etly. It took me a few more moments before I finally under­stood his meaning.

“Oh, my gosh,” I said softly when at last I real­ized why the extra step had been added to the process. “Peo­ple are max­ing out their credit cards so they can’t put their entire pur­chase on one card?”

“Yes,” he nod­ded his head sadly. “So the pro­gram­mers decided to add that option.”

Mat­tieBoo is a “deep thinker” — quiet, thought­ful, sen­si­tive, and tender-hearted.  He picked up the bags con­tain­ing his trousers and shoes, and walked to the car with me in silence.  He remained quiet when we got in the car and explained to Big­Bob what had just tran­spired.  He under­stood much quicker than I had.

“A sign of the times,” he sighed.

On the way home, I did not com­ment upon the sev­eral new “for sale” signs I noticed in and around our neigh­bor­hood, includ­ing the one pro­claim­ing an impend­ing “fore­clo­sure” just a cou­ple of blocks from our house on a street where I would never, ever have believed I would see such a sign.

More signs … of the times.

And finally, the State of Cal­i­for­nia is sched­uled to run out of money some­time in Feb­ru­ary, so I may receive my own I.O.U., cour­tesy of the Gov­er­na­tor, as well as two “fur­lough” days per month. That would amount to an approx­i­mate ten per cent salary reduc­tion. I’ll take the reduc­tion and not com­plain if it means that another employee will be spared from being laid off.

No one is immune, unaf­fected or untouched by the eco­nomic times.

How has the eco­nomic down­turn impacted you and your fam­ily?  How are you coping?

Tech­no­rati Tags: Eco­nomic cri­sis, Life in Lodi

On the Same Topic:

• I Heard the “D” Word on Christ­mas Day (Part One)
• Remem­ber­ing 9/11
• Signs of the Times
• An Inde­pen­dence Day Reflec­tion: “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe…”
• Life in Lodi: The Vil­lage Has a Real, Live Hero