By Deborah Copaken
(This article appeared in Cafe.com , a human interest magazine.)
Spam is that most spam is an endless stream of fire hoses. Penis enlargement, Nigerians in a financial situation, hardcore porn, escorts are so accustomed to the influx of these exciting views more. But some of these spam-Project The Container Store caught my attention. "We are now recruiting for the holidays!" Exclaimed his head.
You are? I thought. Huh. I hovered my mouse over the subject line, hesitantly. And, dear reader, I clicked.
The illusion of an orderly life
I was looking for a new job for months in the study was not as good as I expected to go, and The Container Store, let's be honest, it's my kind of porn. I literally can not go past without popping in for a quick look. Not that I fall in kiosks quarters these days, but knowing that all of these boxes, containers, baskets and boxes are there when needed, gives me the comforting illusion that my life someday as my bookshelf cereals: in arranged transparent , neat, clean, contain vessels.
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The body of the email, once exposed was even more attractive. "Seasonal positions in our stores from coast to coast," he said. The editor in me wanted to change the tiny capital C, but so be it. Since I too painful meeting, nobody wants people like to hire me to no longer do this kind of work. On the same day, in fact, the New York Times announced the dismissal of hundreds of people.
But it was what after the uppercase C, one of which was the money shot came: "great benefits" Great benefits immediately say no more I welcome fill the online form for a holiday.?. the front of the store. So what if it's not the best job in my chosen field? These days, a job is a job, and a job with benefits is a unicorn. I could say hello to customers and identify a thief, the Container Store as easily as the next victim of a possible creative class enters.
Yes, dear reader, I was desperate.
My Annus horribilis
Last year, over a period of 10 months, the following happens in this order: I am of my husband for two decades, the left after losing his job in the recession, he moved across the country to be separated starting a business, and me as the sole provider and mother of two children still at home; I gave the novel I was working and found a job with benefits as an editor for an online health and wellness; I had left a guest in the room recently returned from my first year of college to help pay the rent, the new owners, who have completed an additional $ 900 per month because she could not; I was diagnosed with stage 0 breast cancer ; I looked at my company, the production was to go public, qualified dozens of firefighters in my first month of working people, after I was informed that my work was in the pit; I survived cancer, but I was fired from my job. So you can no longer pay the rent, I pulled the rest of my family in small excavations .
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During the first two months without pay before my little setbacks allowances, I tried in vain to get a contract to write a new book. I also received a bill for COBRA for $ 1764.29 on my family of five for the month of April to cover. I called ADP, the company that manages our account of COBRA and asked if I pay monthly instead of quarterly. No problem, Christy said, you beautiful woman manning the phone. I noticed the reference number to our call from 2 to 7068130583rd Then before the end of the current quarter ADP, sent a check for $ 5,292.87.
ADP charged. Then immediately my COBRA coverage. "Why?" I asked the new person, not Christy, who answers the phone. It seemed as if I was in a call center in India. I explained that I have with my three children for our annual visit to the doctor, assuming I'm covered. You must pay the bill me just sink.
"Because you have to pay every month," he said, "like sending letters told him he had to do." Christy and I told my number. He said if I do not disagree with this decision, you can write a call. I wrote a call. He refused. Without money to hire an attorney or file a second complaint, this was the end of it. It took three months to get my $ 5292.87 back. I had to call several times to remind people, call center in India to send the check. When he finally did arrive, my old address they sent.
I tried Obamacare apply immediately, but because three months - I thought covered the district - officially passed since my coverage was canceled, I'm not in the 60-day window for the application is required. I could coverage during the next open enrollment fall, they said. Meaning November 15. The problem was that I was. An appointment for an MRI at Sloan Kettering in August that my body was not returned Without insurance, the MRI only run me about $ 6,000. I pushed the RM to October and asked for a break on the employment front and good health.
Later this month, ran after my release, has a Hail Mary pass flew to Los Angeles on the flight, crashed with a friend points and let my eight year old son in the care of her 17-year-old sister back to New York for three days at a colleagues and I could run a TV pilot. A few weeks later, I collapsed on the kitchen floor of my new apartment, when I heard that we sold. This means, among other things, get health benefits Writers Guild. But not until April 1 of next year.
Poland Container Store Jobs
The e-mail from The Container Store to help holiday came a week before my rescheduled MRI. Of course I showed up! You would too if I had a son to pay his own way through school, another application without health insurance, a package of hip, a broken marriage and an empty bank account. No time for shame in a recession. Do what you gotta do. There are many ways to spend the worst days to the visitors in front of a business by a company whose products you actually use to run welcome. A week later I received an email from the loss prevention service from Manhattan to The Container Store. Here is what he said:
Hi Deborah -
Thank you for your interest in employment opportunities at The Container Store.
All applications will be carefully reviewed and considered current and future potential of each individual. At this time, we are moving forward with other candidates for this position.
Again, thank you for your interest in the container store. We wish you success in your job search.
With best regards,
The Container Store
Loss Prevention Manhattan
Readers, at first I laughed when I read that. Then I cried. Oh, dear reader, I cried and cried, long and deep and sad. I cried for myself and my children, I called everyone in my situation, so I called for everyone in the worst ships. In an emergency, if a winner, The New York Times Emmy bestselling author for that matter, or elsewhere, as I try hard - - and a Harvard graduate can not get a job as a receptionist at The Container Store, we are all doomed ,
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For years, Americans have fed a convenient lie: study hard, work hard in their respective fields, work hard at your wedding, save money, organize your flour, salt and sugar in labeled containers and you will keep control of your life and your destiny. Control is an illusion for the better.
Loss of a job away from the abyss
Now, in this new golden age in which benefits outweigh the people and commerce trumps art; where CEO makes 331 times the salary of the average worker and a public company will no scruples in ordering layoffs seem to feel inclined investors; where a woman always wins only 78 cents for every dollar men and access to health insurance - though much improved - still bears strange gaps, some of us discovered to leave for months; where none of us is capable of almost as much as we should save despite cutting back on everything, including basic needs such as food and accommodation ,; where the universal affordable childcare, child care and maternity leave with pay are fantasies that our only appear in other countries, not; where higher education of our children requires the kind of ropes massive debt take too poor to pay for a future will have material goods on the need of the organization and contains most of us are just a job loss, a diagnosis doctor a retired broken marriage with a whirlwind, chaotic abyss, totally confined. Put all three of these stressors and in connection with a motion, and you have a 48-year-old mother of three sobbing at the sight of a rejection letter from The Container Store.
Fortunately, my story has a happy ending. I just got hired as an editor at the café. I make less than I do at my previous job, but no matter, because the atmosphere here is build-un-cool joyful thing instead of our heads toxic-are-in-the-box and November 1, finally I will have a have health insurance.
These are small favors, really. I am very grateful for them.
What's with the bankrupt and isolated?
But what about the others? What others? I often wonder. I think all these people layoffs at my old company before the IPO, with plans and the families and children of college age and disease and parents in difficulties and the rents and mortgages. One of them was a great video producer who navigate the complex worlds me both the diagnosis and removal of the tumor, which she had helped well lived. She was fired and summarily dismissed from the building before I had a chance to say goodbye or your e-mail address or telephone number.
When was the last MRI? I wonder. And he had the means to pay for it?
I've planned for Saturday, November 22, the first open meeting at Sloan Kettering. I hope that for once the good news is. If you or someone you know is to take time off in the morning to care for a greater good, obsessed Pokemon 8 years let me know. You can take it to the container store and there in the crowd. Let's believe that if he keeps his cards so Pokemon, nothing bad happened to him.
Deborah Copaken is the best-selling New York Times author of the Red Book, here and there between April and Shutterbab and Hell is other parents. His writings have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Nation, Slate and the Financial Times, among others.
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