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Another Perspective
Fed Up With My Job
The President has declared there must be jobs — I once had one of those.
“DeMint is gone from Obama’s speech,” a friend said.
“De Mint is gone long before Obama’s speech,” I countered. “Now we’re borrowing the cash from China.”
Still, as the talking heads’ talking points remind us, we must respect the office of the Presidency. The President has declared that there must be jobs, so no one can doubt that jobs will be forthcoming forthwith. We all know that the Federal Government can create jobs like nobody’s business. Why, back in the 1970s there were all of these great jobs programs by Uncle Sam, and they brought much prosperity, did they not?
All of this musing catapulted me back in time to my first job, back in the summer of 1976, shortly after my 18th birthday. Yes, your faithful correspondent did start his employment career collecting a paycheck from the Feds, under the rubric of the CETA aegis, or possibly the aegis of the CETA rubric, I forget which. CETA was the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, designed to teach minorities how gainful employment worked.
Of course, Jews and Asians are supposed to know that they are not really the minorities intended here, but a few of us played dumb and they could not turn us down. My father was a civil servant for the City of New York, so he was able to point me in all the right directions. Sure enough, I would work nine to five for the government, then take my college courses from 6:25 to 10:45, packing twelve credits into one summer, so life was good.
I would get my paycheck on Friday, run to Sears to cash it, and spend myself silly over the weekend. By Monday, I had exactly enough money left to pay for my carfare to work and school, and I was back to brown-bagging lunches for myself from whatever I could scavenge from my Dad’s fridge.
The American taxpayer really came through for me in that spot, and I am eternally grateful. In philosophical terms, programs like that may not be a great idea, but it definitely taught me how to punch a clock and how to maintain a basic performance level as an employee.
The vast majority of my coworkers were black, but none of them had the surly Black Power attitude which was rampant on the campuses at that time. They dressed well and were polite and friendly, with great senses of humor. Some of the girls were very pretty and everyone seemed bright and capable. There was one fellow, whose name might have been Alan Martin, who played for a college basketball team and who used to keep me — and all the girls — spellbound with amazing and amusing anecdotes about the personalities he encountered.
There was no such thing as staying a minute extra, but neither could you shave time off your schedule without getting docked. The office was in downtown Brooklyn, a 35-minute train ride from where I lived. The department I worked for was called HRA in those days, Human Resources Administration, and it consisted of case workers handling interminable lines of Welfare recipients. I was in charge of producing the case file of each person who came in for a status meeting in a particular section, hundreds of files a day.
My superiors treated me very nicely, and even the one woman who was hard on me clearly had a soft spot for me on a personal level. The frustration I experienced, which gave me a glimpse into how incompetence could perpetuate itself in government employ, came from the inability of whoever preceded me in that job to follow alphabetical order beyond the first two letters of the name. If the file cabinet read JA-JE, it would have Jeffries and James and Jessup and Jackson all lumped together in no particular order.
As to using first name, they really had no clue. To put Jackson, Adrian ahead of Jackson, Beatrice was way beyond the ken. There were two or three nightmare cabinets labeled Johnson. Johnson is the second most popular name in the United States after Smith and if Michelle Johnson and Patricia Johnson and Ramona Johnson turned up on my list, I could count on a frantic forty minutes spent knee deep in that maelstrom.
As I say, we did learn discipline in the workplace and it was a fruitful training ground in that sense. For a guy who had perfected the art of playing hookie all through school, this was a rude awakening. Finally, I managed to cheat the government out of a few dollars when we had some kind of training day with a lecturer in Manhattan. I walked into this huge auditorium, signed in, then walked right out for a day on the town. I saw The Shootist, with a dying John Wayne playing a dying cowboy. I had read the book (from which I learned the word yclept), so there was no way I could resist the film.
Thirty years later, I was with my family on a vacation at the resort by the International Hall of Fame in Orlando. The kids flipped on the cable TV and I saw The Shootist up there on the screen. My children looked at me quizzically as I immediately asked God forgiveness for defrauding the government to watch it the first time around.
All in all, I look back on that time fondly. I did not witness anything egregious, beyond the illiterate filing. The workers were fairly dedicated and the Welfare recipients all looked like life was moving a little too fast for them and they were barely hanging on. I would not recommend the government gets back into that type of program anytime soon, but neither could I condemn it as outrageously bad.
About the Author
Jay D. Homnick, commentator and humorist, is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator. He also writes for Human Events. Here he speaks at the Rally for Religious Freedom in Miami on June 8, 2012.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (15) | Leave a comment
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scythe| 9.14.11 @ 6:46AM
I too was "gifted" a C.E.T.A. "job" in my callow youth. Spent most of the day sleeping in a broom closet, seriously true! because the nights were wild and carefree. Got a taste of what it was like to "earn" government money for doing nothing and it was a disturbing experience. The "job" didn't last too long because believe it or not, I started to complain and told my "superiors" they could find me in a closet on the third floor resting on a sponge mat should they require me to actually earn the money I was being given. Well. It's one thing to do nothing and take from the public but rat out the system and bring attention to the fraud? I had to go and quickly. Had I kept my mouth shut, I might have parleyed the gig into a lifetime of literally sleeping on the job, with benefits and a pension. Hey Jay, think we might have been "co-workers"? LOL
Lawrence Boccardi| 9.14.11 @ 7:27AM
Sounds about right!
Dick Nome| 9.14.11 @ 8:05AM
..and on the 8th day Obama said "Let there be jobs".... but there were no jobs. Obama was shaken to find he was not God.
MikeBee| 9.14.11 @ 8:49AM
Dick,
No! No! No! Actually, its, "Obama was shaken to find the Republicans could put up roadblocks even for God."
Maddox| 9.14.11 @ 8:14AM
I worked a summer C.E.T.A. job in Alabama in the 70's too. I actually performed duties though. My task was to help others fill out unemployment claim forms. The details of their lives were exposed on the forms. That is where and how I learned exactly what liberal gifts to lifetime voters were all about. I guess I can thank them for my training in that. I haven't voted for a Democrat since.
Brian Mc| 9.14.11 @ 8:40AM
I remember my first pay check back in the mid seventies that included a government mandated minimum wage increase. I am just a tad younger than the author. While all my buddies at the hospital dietary department slapped each other on the back in the locker room during our break, I could only smile, albeit slightly, because something was gnawing at me.
It came to me later in life...I hadn't earned the increase. Had not deserved it and this discomfort in the back of my mind was...resentment. Or was it guilt that caused the resentment? I always get a mirthful smile whenever I hear the Detroit lady calling out for Obama Money without shame...because she is owed, I suspect. I wonder if she will ever feel that tinge of guilt.
Bruce| 9.14.11 @ 9:31AM
Brian;
The only way it could have gotten better was if you and your back-slapping buddies had decided to form the HDUA (Hospital Dietary Union of America). That way, you could have gotten both the government AND your employer to pay you way beyond what you felt you deserved.
Ret. Marine| 9.14.11 @ 8:59AM
I too have to say I joined in on the ranks of the C.E.T.A program and landed in the Bankruptcy Court as a clerk, wow what an eye opening experience. Needless to say, I quit when it became obvious to me, the Government was a joke back then under the hi "i pick peanuts" jimmmah carter and again needless to say, nothing has changed but the name of the second biggest idiot to quat in the White House blackened with a lust for political power, under the name of hussein. I am grateful to have for the first time in my life understand what happens to a citizen when the gubmint decides to undertake what should be the sole responsibility of individuals, responsibility for themselves and their lives.
Bruce| 9.14.11 @ 9:36AM
Thank you for your service. The only time I have been on the "government dole" was as a soldier and retiree. Although I served during a period of relative calm (1972-1993), I did manage to find two potential "hotspots" during my career - serving in the Fulda Gap in Germany and learning Arabic in case Desert Storm would have lasted a little longer.
David T| 9.14.11 @ 9:39AM
Forgive me if I'm wrong, Mr. Homnick, but shouldn't you have written that you would not recommend the government "get" back into the program? I refer to the rubric of the subjunctive tense.
Petronius| 9.14.11 @ 10:37AM
H. L. Mencken said, "getting a living in this country is far too easy. It promotes inferior men." And we are now in thrall to economically illiterate despot who has never earned a penny. His beliefs, along with the rest of his party concerning markets and life in general are warped to say the least. They never learned and refuse to consider one word of reason that would put a dent in their sandbox mentality. A simple primer is in order. Work is a duty. Employment is a privilege. This means a job is not a property right. A person gets hired because another person is willing to pay him or her to do what they want done as well as when or how. Second: their belief system is an extension of the the words, "have, get, and benefit." Nowhere is there any mention of Value, a thing which only a Free market can set. Ergo, supply siders are worse than lepers. Third: "fairness". They refuse to define it for others because Liberals don't believe in absolutes. To themselves it means satisfaction and sometimes a sated lust for vengeance of the variety reflected in the words of that ignorant snotty bitch in the film Dr. Zhivago; "now You're going to have to live like the rest of us!" Take yesterday. The announcement that 46 million Americans are now classified as impoverished yields public displays of angst on their part while such a circumstance delights them, and bolsters their belief that these people will have to vote them back into office next year or face starvation. And they say we are Nazis. But they don't know history either. After Corporal Hitler was put in the Chancellor's chair by Hindenburg, a person joined the party or died. Anybody see a pattern here?
Stammon| 9.14.11 @ 12:10PM
During college in the '70's I was a Mercedes mechanic and eventual shop manager just outside of Manhattan. At In '76 I was called into the Social Security Office because I spell my name in the Old Danish, unlike my father. I stood in line behind those "inferior men" and swore to myself I would never set foot inside that office again. I haven't. And if given a choice I would vote against that office today. I believe government employment in a free society is a disgrace, and best avoided.
crypticguise| 9.14.11 @ 1:19PM
Very enjoyable article.
Johnny Lucid| 9.14.11 @ 2:57PM
Amusing reminder of my own tenure as a CETA hire for New Jersey's DMV Vehicle Inspection stations. Our of college all of 6 months in late '75, I was asked to apply for the job when at the local community college a "jobs counselor" asked me if I knew anything about cars. I said I read Car & Driver and Road & Track magazines. So I was given an application, interviewed and hour later and told I would report to work at the Inspection Station in my home town - I didn't even own a car but I could walk or ride my bike there. It was the easiest $169 a week I ever earned. There were enough breaks in the day that I read 4 newspapers and lots of books. After 6-7 months, I was going crazy, so I opted out and went and obtained my NJ teaching certficate.
POST American| 9.15.11 @ 3:08AM
--------------------FINAL WORD------------------------
--------------In other words,
YET ANOTHER manifestation of
our 4 decades on, deliberate, carefully
engineered, Globalist RED China set up,
sell out and TREASON OP.
Let's STOP taking our rundowns, our
clues, our directives ---from the perpetrators.