Christmas, the most stressful day of the year. Especially when I have to spend it with my family. This year, we’re having dinner at my parents’ place. They’re financially comfortable: my dad, Stewart, is a retired auto industry executive, and my mom, Kay, was a part-time high school librarian. They’ve lived in the same spacious, two-story house on a peaceful, tree-lined street in a west Toronto suburb for over forty years.
So far, the day is going much better than I expected. Maybe things will be different this year.
I glance around the long dining room table, smartly dressed in a starched white linen tablecloth, the tall red candles in the center casting a soft glow, and sigh. The day is going a bit too well, and I can’t force myself to relax. Christmas dinner with my family is always a battlefield, and I’m usually one of the casualties. For some reason completely unknown to me, the holidays bring out the critic in my dad. It won’t be any different today.
“We’re going to Disney World in Florida for March Break!” my brother Jim boasts as he rakes several thin slices of turkey onto a large white china plate. “We’ll be staying at a Disney Resort hotel.”
“We can see all the Disney parks, take our time,” his wife Miranda adds, her voice brimming with excitement. “Our travel agent booked everything for us last week.”
Travel agent? Who still uses travel agents in this day and age? Who can afford to use them? Who has the time to spend a whole week at a Disney resort with full access to all the parks?
They can, I suppose. Jim, tall, dapper, slightly paunchy, and Miranda, tall and slim with long blonde hair and blue eyes, are well-paid corporate lawyers. They’re both forty-three and have two tall, sandy-haired, athletic sons, sixteen-year-old Doug and thirteen-year-old Carl. Their lives are nothing like ours.
“Isn’t that awfully expensive?” Mom pipes in. Today, she’s dressed in a lavender chenille crewneck sweater and black polyester pants, short white hair framing her deeply lined face, now furrowed with concern. Even though my dad always made a good salary, she has hang-ups about money; sometimes she feels guilty about spending it, other times, she splurges on luxuries. Maybe she’s still haunted by memories of her hardscrabble childhood in the 1930s, when my grandfather lost his job and her family was forced to go on welfare for a couple of years.
“It wasn’t bad at all,” Jim says, ladling a thick blanket of gravy onto his mashed potatoes. “We got a good deal.”
I’m sure it was a real bargain, Jim, on another planet. Most people couldn’t even begin to afford such “a good deal.”
“Sounds like a lot of fun,” I say, sipping a glass of the cheap white wine that Steven bought. Its vinegary taste makes me wince.
Mom gets up from her chair, announcing, “I have to check on something,” and disappears into the kitchen.
“So,” Dad says, staring at me with cold gray eyes that almost match the color of his thinning gray hair.
The needling is about to begin. I can hardly wait.
“When are you and Steven taking a trip?”
“Oh, sometime.”
“Sometime? You don’t have any plans to go away?”
“Not right now. I’m sure we’ll get away at some point.”
“Why don’t you have any plans?” Dad demands. “You’ve only taken one trip in the last ten years.”
“It’s Christmas,” I respond, my voice edged with frustration. “Can’t we talk about something else?”
Dad ignores my plea. He’s now visibly drunk, his voice loud and coarse. “Why don’t you want to talk about it? What’s the matter with you? Jim told us about his plans.”
Jim, Jim, Jim. Our parents’ favorite, the golden son, the one who could do no wrong. It’s always been that way, ever since I can remember.
“Look, Dad—”
“Your whole life isn’t work, is it?”
I pause. I’m getting nowhere, as usual. “Of course not. But Jim can afford these fancy trips. We can’t.”
Not with our shrinking nest egg; thanks to the recession, we lost $70,000 last year.
“You’re both working, aren’t you?” Mom says, returning from the kitchen carrying a large white ceramic dish with freshly baked bread stuffing, the top crust lightly toasted and golden brown.
A painful, awkward silence follows. Then Doug and Dad start chatting about football scores. Bored, I tune them out and try to drain my glass of vinegary wine.
“We can’t go away anywhere right now.” Steven is staring at Dad, exasperated. “We haven’t paid for our last trip. And our jobs aren’t secure.”
Everyone suddenly stops talking. Dad stares back at Steven. “What do you mean, your jobs aren’t secure?”
“The bank has been getting rid of people. Sarah’s job has been downgraded.”
None of this is news to me, but it hurts to hear Steven talk about it.
“I’ve been moved into a dead-end job,” I add in a quiet voice, answering the unspoken question in Dad’s eyes. A thankless, soul-sucking job, a job that’s nothing like the one I used to have. Once upon a time, I was a real editor, a good editor, an editor who was able to build a solid career by doing work that I truly loved. And now that’s all gone.
“But you both still have jobs!” Dad declares, his voice brimming with exasperation. “Don’t you?”
“For now,” Steven says, looking away.
“You’re lucky!” Dad says. “Millions and millions of people all over the world are unemployed right now.”
“Can we please change the subject?” Jim asks, laying his fork on the table. “It’s Christmas, for God’s sake!”
Dad ignores him. “You’re still getting paid, aren’t you?” he asks me. “Aren’t you?”
“You don’t understand!” I can’t take this any longer. This man just doesn’t know how to listen. “You had a nice, stable, well-paid management job. Your company gave you generous benefits. You were protected by a strong union. My job is nothing like that. It’s very unstable, I have no union to speak up for me, my benefits suck, and I have to pay a fortune for them. I’ve been pushed into a menial job where I’m no longer able to use my brain—”
“So what if you can’t use your brain?!” Dad shouts.
The room falls silent again.
Dad reaches into the pocket of his gray wool pants and pulls out a worn black leather wallet. “Take this,” he says, pulling out a crumpled $100 bill and flinging it at me. “Forget about work for a while. Go out to dinner somewhere nice on New Year’s Eve. Start enjoying your life.”
Sighing, I snatch the bill and stuff it into the side pocket of my dark green wrap dress. I don’t want to take it—I hate getting handouts from anybody—but there’s no point in arguing with him.
*****
Tuesday, January 4, 2011. First day back in the office after the holidays. I should be bursting with energy, but I’m not; I’m exhausted. Even though I’ve been out of the office for over a week, I don’t feel like I’ve had a real rest. Right now, all I want to do is to crawl back into my soft, warm bed and stay there until spring.
The moment I pry the door open, my eyes are struck by the harsh glare from the overhead lights. A handful of employees are already busy at work, their eyes glued to their computer screens. I greet a couple of coworkers, but they don’t respond. Half a dozen desks are still buried in tacky Christmas décor: green plastic garlands; large, shiny red glass balls; tiny, fake green Christmas trees; holiday cards full of phony cheer. A partially inflated plastic Santa doll, seated on a coworker’s desk, stares at me across the aisle, its mouth drawn into a small “o.”
The leftover holiday cheer is so crude and ugly that I almost burst out laughing. But I don’t, I can’t; the Christmas holidays ended badly this year. I had made reservations for dinner on New Year’s Eve at a dark and intimate French restaurant, but Steven forced me to cancel them, even though he had agreed to take me out. After I had gone to the trouble of dolling myself up in a chic, knee-length, black crêpe dress and dangly crystal hoop earrings.
“I’m not going,” he told me in a firm voice. “That place is way too expensive.”
“It’s not!” I protested. “My dad gave us $100 to go out—”
“That’s nothing!” he scoffed. “It won’t even cover the cost of dinner for two with wine.”
“I won’t order any drinks, I promise. Besides, we deserve to treat ourselves after all we’ve been through this past year.”
Steven shook his head. “We really can’t afford it. Look, Sarah, I know you’re disappointed. We do deserve a treat, and I’ll make this up to you, I promise. But my job isn’t exactly secure. Besides, why should I bother to dress up for some snobby restaurant? Just so they can talk down to us and push us around?”
It wasn’t a snobby restaurant, Steven, and the wait staff wasn’t going to “push you around,” not if they wanted our money. And I was really looking forward to that sirloin steak, warm and red and tender, the crispy and delicately seasoned baby potatoes, the dimly lit room, intimate and quiet, tall white candles flickering gently in the middle of each table…
But Steven’s mind was made up. So I called the restaurant and cancelled the reservation.
Trying hard not to stare back at Santa, I switch on my computer, hoping to bury myself in work.
I hope this year will be better. I just have to forget about the past and try my best to get through the next few months. And maybe I can book another reservation at that French restaurant.
The computer screen flickers to life, and dozens and dozens of unformatted and untagged documents flood into my inbox, all of them waiting to be tagged, even though the year has barely started. Lots and lots of unpaid overtime to look forward to.
Yet another email from Ramona, probably boasting about the “exciting” new book on Arctic wildlife that she will be editing.
And...a new email from Everett Bernard, the CEO of the company, marked URGENT:
Effective January 4, 2011, Bruce McTeer, Jeannette Tonetti, and Jason Levy are no longer employed by Quill Pen Press. Their last day in the office was December 24, 2010.
Gee, what a nice New Year’s gift from the company!
We thank Bruce, Jeannette, and Jason for their years of faithful service, and we wish them well in their future endeavors…
The email is so laced with chocolate-covered bullshit that I’m tempted to scream.
If this company truly valued the long years of “faithful service” that it got from these three customer service reps, why did it take away their hard-earned paychecks? Why did it dump them into a tough job market? If this company really “wished them well,” why didn’t it bother to throw them a farewell lunch, or a party with coffee and cake, or even a cheap reception with cheese and crackers? Why didn’t it warn us that these employees would be leaving, give us a chance to say goodbye to them before it heartlessly tossed them out the door?
I scroll down the screen, searching for familiar names. There’s something about the promotion of Gerta, an always-helpful soul in Tech Support, to Team Leader. I continue scrolling…
All employees are invited to an Information Session in the boardroom at 10:00 a.m. this morning. Coffee and donuts will be served.
Oh, great, another boring, tedious, disheartening meeting that will gobble up an hour or two of my already scarce time. But the company will be giving us FREE coffee and donuts! I can hardly wait!
*****
Over two hours later, the information session is—finally—over. I managed to get through all of the dull, long-winded speeches without dozing off, but I’m nervous, upset, unsettled, and I just need to vent.
A few minutes later, I head toward an indoor mall a couple of blocks from the office, a cold, mean wind slapping my face. Passing through the front door, I’m greeted by a blast of warm air. Just inside, there’s a small space with a row of three old payphones, a thick, tattered, and yellowing phone book attached to each one by a black plastic cord. There’s nobody else in the room. Thank God.
I place my handbag on the ledge below the middle phone, pull out my smartphone, and call Steven.
“I can’t come to the phone right now,” his voicemail informs me. “Just leave your name and number, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
I don’t want you to “get back” to me, Steven; I want to speak to you. NOW.
“This company is royally screwed up!” I shout at the voicemail. “We’ve all been putting in long hours. I’ve been busting my butt, doing unpaid overtime because the company is too bloody cheap to hire enough people to cover all the work. So how does it reward us? It lets three good employees go on Christmas Eve, cuts our health and dental benefits and makes us pay a lot more for them, cuts our yearly bonuses. AND it changed its decent DB pension plan to a risky DC one. That means we won’t be getting a guaranteed annual income when we retire—”
I’m interrupted by an ear-piercing screech as the answering machine cuts me off. I end the call then call him again. This time, he picks up.
“Steven?”
“Sarah? Is something wrong?”
I pause for a few seconds and glance behind me. Three young women in their twenties, dressed in short puffer jackets, their uncovered heads dusted with snow, have entered the room, giggling and chatting loudly.
“It’s this stupid company,” I respond, struggling to keep my voice as low as possible. “They’re cutting our benefits.”
Silence on the other end, long and unsettling.
“Steven? Did you hear what I just said?”
More silence. Why doesn’t he say something? Anything?
“At least you still have a job,” he says in a quiet voice.
“What? I thought you, of all people, would understand what I’m going through.”
“I understand,” Steven responds, his voice tinged with impatience, “but you still have a job. I don’t.”
“You…lost your job?” I can’t believe it. Steven is one of the bank’s top computer programmers. This simply can’t be happening.
“First thing this morning, the HR manager hauled all the programmers into a room and told us that we’re no longer needed at the bank. Apparently, we’re being replaced by contract workers. They’ll save the bank a ton of money, I’m sure.”
Steven expects me to feel guilty because I still have a job, but I don’t. I can’t. I’m angry as hell. Angry at our bosses for screwing us around. Angry at our inability to fight back. Angry at the rich assholes who own and run these companies for not giving a shit about their employees.
“No warning, no chance to say goodbye to anyone,” he says. “Ten minutes to clear out our desks. Then a couple of big security guards escorted us off the premises, like criminals.”
I don’t know what to say. And I still can’t believe what I’m hearing. Computer programming used to be a ticket to a stable, middle-class life. What happened?
“Don’t worry,” I tell him after a long pause. “You’re lucky to get out of that terrible place. You’ll find a better job.”
“No, I won’t. I’m over fifty. I’ll be lucky to get anything, let alone something good.”
“Not true. You’ll end up with something better.” Deep down inside, I know he’s right—nobody wants to hire someone over fifty or even forty—but I have to lie. What else can I say?
I snap off my phone and dump it back into my handbag, feeling more defeated than ever before.
The three young women rush out the door, chilling me with a blast of icy air as they pass through the doors, unaware of what I’ve just been through.
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