employment

Would You Like Fries with Your Voter Intimdation?


McDonald's French fries Potato (01)

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Employees at an Ohio McDonald’s discovered a handbill in their most recent paychecks urging them to vote Republican. Reminding them of the following:

“If the right people are elected we will be able to continue with raises and benefits at or above our present levels. If others are elected we will not.”

Well, that was subtle.

And not even the tiniest bit legal.

McDonald’s disavowed the insert and the franchise owner, Paul Siegfried, and Siegfried has issued an apology claiming he didn’t mean to offend anyone.

But offense was clearly not the intent, the handbill which urged his employees to vote Republican in the races for governor, Senate and the 16th Congressional District implies they can kiss higher wages good-bye if Democrats – and their tax happy ways – gain office.

Not legal and not fair.

A person’s vote is private and should be driven by his/her beliefs and knowledge of the issues and candidates. It should not be dictated by bosses, churches or be cast under duress.

Siegfried’s sinister attempt at coercion shows that he not only values larger profit margins for himself over his employees’ standards of living but that he doesn’t understand – as so many Americans don’t – that the economic situation is still dire and precarious.

Taxes aren’t going down and they shouldn’t.

Americans want a lot. They expect services and yet feign ignorance about how these services are funded.

Siegfried’s employees hired a lawyer. The state of Ohio is investigating. Midterms elections are Tuesday.

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My New Office


Saturday morning I went into the “office” and began my new “job”.

It’s teaching. Nothing really new or different about it. Aside from the distinct lack of office supplies which totally doesn’t feed my need to periodically wander the aisles of Staples. I will have to find other excuses and I am sure I am up to the task.

But it didn’t feel like work. Not that teaching ever really felt like actual work. I’ve had jobs that were work in the sense that they didn’t matter, contributed nothing that wouldn’t be missed and basically contributed to the atrophy of my intellect.

So, I know what “work” is.

Teaching yoga? Not work.

I feel like I’ve discovered some great scam and yet, I am doing something for people and furthering my own journey.

The class went well. My timing bites, but it’s a learned thing and I will learn.

Interesting aside. After I locked up for the morning, I headed to the parking lot via the back stairs and as I approached the bottom, I stepped into a thick residual haze of pot vapors.

The young fella minding the skater shop across the way had just returned from a snack run up those stairs. Now there is the perfect teen job, eh?

But it was a good morning.

Publishing Opportunities? Where? When? How?


I found this publishing opportunity via another blog called Mommy Writes. I am not the best writer on demand, although I am improving, but I thought I might be able to pound out a couple of pieces that would pass muster for this anthology. I have to say, I am in awe of niche bloggers. They manage to find topics that are so simple and yet so full of writing potential and therefore interesting to a vast audience. Me? I am too egocentric I guess. (What?! NO argument at all? Thanks, so very much.) I just write about any old thing that pops into my head, flits across the day’s headlines, dances in front of my eyes on the dvd. I am just a topic of the nano-sec kind of girl.

I run across writers too who spread their blogging out over several blogs so as to create a separate space for each specific type of reader. That way no one has to wade through blog entries on say…potty training when they really come to read about the blogger’s latest outdoor trysting spot with his/her significant other. It’s a really good idea but as someone who ran three blogs simultaneously – and was basically using the same post for each blog – I can’t wrap my mind or my meager talent around it. I have enough to do furnishing this blog with material and writing my fiction and creative non-fic for, hopefully, publication in a print forum someday.

I have run across online opportunities that seem challenging and fun, but nothing has come of them yet either. Rob reminds me that I shouldn’t expect too much too soon. Good (or not so is my fear at times) as I might be, everyone starts out at the same place and that is what “aspiring” means. And okay, my aspirations are great and varied, so it stands to reason that my doubts sometimes match. But I am working on a great story idea now, courtesy of a conversation with my husband about the current food shortage in the world, and I have solved a problem with my serial sci-fi stories and just need to sit down and apply my solution. I saw an opportunity to write for a feminist/activism blog (yeah, I know I say I am not a feminist but I have been quacking too much of late) that if I am lucky might allow me to write a piece or two. I sent a query and am waiting to hear back and waiting and waiting and feeling a little like the red-headed step-child in the process.

The realist in me therefore is planning for the fall and applying with the school district for a library assistant or teacher associate position. Anything but teaching in my own room really. Applying for a teacher’s license is doable but only if I want to take a Mickey Mouse course or two to satisfy some Franco requirements that the province just added to the to do list of new teachers. The course requirements variation from province to province (state to state back in the U.S.) is the worst kind of pandering to regional universities. It’s all about sucking a few extra bucks out of you and not about helping you be a better educator. Digression though. Rob thinks a job will also help “socialize” me a bit and it probably will but I have always found that for the most part, work friendships often don’t survive the job by much. There have been but a handful of exceptions in my life to that rule and I treasure them, however, they by and large are situational.

I am also going to put in an app with the city of Fort Saskatchewan. I am still bummed about missing out on that cool museum job but I didn’t have my work permit in time to apply. My massage therapist tells me to inquire about the posting to see if it was filled. Her husband works for the city and apparently many of their postings go unfilled due to the lack of qualified (read “educated”) applicants. We are still in a boom economy up here and anyone with the tiniest bit of education is working for the oil companies in some capacity. However most of the jobs that go begging are in the service industry or the medical fields.

It’s dumb to be glum about what is really a great life just because I can’t write for anyone but myself, my husband and the handful of people who come to this blog (and thank you, thank you my loyal followers and commenters especially – I love comments. They make me feel less like an idiot screaming into the vacuum of cyber-space). I just want a chance. Catch a break. That miserable Catch-22 of “experience” is biting my bum in the most unfair way.