Whether surviving unemployment with benefits, or surviving employment, both are work along with an ability to distinguish between molehills and mountains to overcome.
But surviving becoming unemployed at age fifty three with the work experience I’d had, gave me way to much time to think more deeply about what employers are free to do, and what I was willing to do for a living moving forward until that day I willingly chose to retire.
The at-will employment doctrine had much to do with why I was feeling opposed to what I had always done for a living .. work for someone else.
Published in 1877 the at-will employment doctrine was promptly accepted as truth for pro-business judicial employment decisions. But back then, there weren’t many, if any, employment laws on the books that created policy exceptions to the doctrine by state.
In 2006, I saw my own unemployment benefits as being the peanuts I was receiving for steadfastly protecting myself from the constant threat of at-will employment and that a business I worked for, literally could terminate me at will, see me as only a human resource, or worst of all, nothing more than a line item on a spreadsheet to be handled with a strategy responding to a lack of work claim, that continuing suitable work was offered.
Not to mention the constant risk some personality at work might be smart enough to devise and carry out their own personal agenda to eliminate me.
My answer to the struggle of working at-will, may of well been simple-minded But it was 2006 and I figured, if I learned how to build a website I could always think of something that allowed me to be my own boss .. doing something I could put my whole heart into.
Yup, I proudly dream, but I also know that for dreams to come true it takes hard work and plenty of it.
Although the dreamer knew that to protect her right to feed her family anhd eat a few peanuts herself, she still had to make the decision to go back to the job as hearing coordinator if she wanted to continue to survive in a job that had been permanently eliminated just four short months earlier.
Three years later .. I quit that job, that continued on as a benefitless temp employee for a reason attributable to the work and employer.
Click here when, or if you’re ever ready to blog about surviving work, or unemployment. And don’t forget, why it’s wise for at-will employees and unemployed people to consider remaining anonymous, or at least using some creativity should you think to rename yourself for public consumption.