Working in a Coal Mine, Whoop! About to Slip doooown

My mother has worked in some fashion since she was about ten years old (back in the day 10 was ok to baby-sit for your family's little ones. Yikes!). Throughout her working life she has held jobs in approximately three...or four fields - service, administrative, industry (a factory), and office management. She's worked for a lot of different places, especially when she was a waitress. But overall, she's been pretty steadfast in her working habits and never been unemployed. Her longest career was as an office manager with the State, where she worked for about 12 years.

Currently my mom is again an office manager. Unfortunately, she's the office manager of a dying office. Her boss is cutting costs and saving money, which could mean my mom loses her job. My mother is 56 years old and going back on the job market probably isn't the first thing she'd opt to do at this age. This irritates me, pains me, and adds to my disappointment in our system of work. No one who is over the age of 50 should have to start all over again. They've done their time. They've worked. They've contributed to social security and to the unemployment fund. Shouldn't we start paying THEM and congratulating them for a job well done? I'm not talking about forced retirement and no options to work again. No. I am talking about a system with healthy supports in place for people over 50 if they lose their jobs. A system where there are jobs for people over 50 who want to work, and not just the crappiest jobs no one else wants to do (this sounds so familiar...). Old people, immigrant peoples, any one who is not young, virile and otherwise PERFECT in every way on some checklist only available to the elite, are all marginalized in our country. Shoved out of sight, working at night, and given little to no support. Here's a scenario -

Last summer, I stopped at a Dunkin' Donuts in Quincy. The day was Saturday, around 9:00am. The parking lot was full with a line of cars waiting and there was a crowded waiting area inside. Behind the counter was either a woman who looked to be about 80 years old from years of abusing her body or a real 80 year old woman. I believed the latter to be true and it pained me to be there, watching her fill orders for breakfast sandwiches. The woman was 80 years old! No one who is 80 years old should be working in a Dunkin' Donuts. Later, when I shared these sentiments with a friend, they challenged my assumptions by asking me how I knew she didn't want to be there? How did I know? How did I know that an 80 year old woman might not want to be up at 9 serving teenagers with hangovers their breakfast sandwiches? My retort was not based on fact, "Do you know ANYONE who wants to be working at Dunkin' Donuts if they don't HAVE to work there?"

This is the fate I would like to be avoided by my mother and other women and men like her, people over the age of 50 forced back into the work force to compete against fresh faced 20 somethings with a competitive edge that could be lethal.

end rant.


* * * For anyone interested, my beau and I biked our first twenty miles and you can read about it here. * * *