My First New Year's Resolution!

I’m seldom home when the G-Man (Garbage Man) comes around each week, but due to the holiday, garbage was picked up today.

I wanted to meet the guy who picks up my garbage, mostly to give him a buck or two for the past year of excellent service. I managed to catch the truck at my house, and as I handed the driver a ‘double saw’ and some cookies, he mentioned he’d be sure to give the ‘tip’ to my ‘regular’ driver but thought he’d eat the cookies himself.

So, I gave the guy a CASE of cookies to take back to his shop. I mentioned that my wife and I valued their courteous service, particularly because I am disabled and she is elderly.

Smiling, the garbage man exclaimed, “Well, you don’t look disabled!”

I responded, “Well, my wife doesn’t look elderly.”

As the happy G-Man drove away in his stinky old truck, I wondered if what I just heard was a compliment, or an ignorant statement made by a fool who wasn’t thinking of others.

I figured it was likely an 'ignorant statement' situation, so as my first New Year’s Resolution, beginning MONDAY, I pledge to keep my fool mouth shut and not mention my disability to others.

Phew. That wasn’t hard.

Kelly

The Little Porta-Potty That Worked!

If you’ve kept up with homeless news, you’ve seen quite a bit written about the problems and laws and solutions surrounding homeless folks' need to use toilet facilities. Elaborate designs and sturdy structures costing tens of thousands of dollars have been proposed, constructed and tried in downtowns across the country and the world!

Didn’t we read something this past year about ‘public toilets’ located in some DT that became havens for drug abuse and prostitution?

Where did we read about those fancy, disappearing toilets that cleaned inside automatically only a few minutes after each user left? Problems began when the toilet's automatic cleaning feature began while still occupied! Seems that tourists would often pass out, drunk in the john, and promptly receive a through (however, dangerous!) cleansing.

HERE’S A SHORT STORY … of The Little Porta-Potty That Worked!

I served some homeless friends who lived in a junkyard full of old cars, with permission from the owner of the yard. I gave these friends fruit that was donated to me whenever I could, hoping the fruit would provide at least something ‘healthy’ for them to eat. On one occasion, the fruit I had to give was prunes. I was kind of joking when I gave my friends the first bags of prunes I had, but soon, they were asking for ‘just a few more bags’. And they weren’t joking.

I gave my friends many bags of prunes that month. My friends proceeded to get sugar and yeast (on Food Stamps), and combine those items with the prunes and four gallons of water in a six-gallon pail. Time passed (giving the prunes time to ‘cook up’) and my friends began dipping into their home-made hooch. No surprise, the hooch gave my friends quite a kick in the seat, and soon, they were running for the nearest ‘sh*tter’. The nearest ‘sh*tter’ happened to be another six-gallon pail that was hidden amongst the junked cars; only this pail was lined with a black trash bag. As my friends emptied the pail of hooch, the bag in the other pail quickly filled! After a week of hooching, and using what little common sense my friends had left (being drowned by gallons upon gallons of hooch!), one of them tossed the almost-full black bag into nearby weeds.

The owner of the yard didn’t know about the hooch. He always expected to find some semblance of sense among my senseless friends when he came around to check up on his property. Early one Saturday morning, after finding the crew passed out drunk from their homemade hooch, he angrily fired up his power trimmer and commenced to making all kinds of weed-whackin’ noise.

ERRRRR…ERRRR…ERRRR…. went the weed-whacker, as he moved his way along the fence line of overgrown weeds, right up to the black bag whose contents lay hidden until … ZZZZZZZZZZZZRRRRRRRRRRR … RIPPPPP!

He hit that black bag of stuff with his trimmer … the poop must have flown everywhere! His screams and cursing could be heard three blocks away … and quickly waked my slumbering friends.

As the story goes, the owner left the lot in quite a huff … covered in all kinds of ‘stuff’. It’s been said that he even had little strips of soiled toilet paper hanging from his wire-rimmed glasses. The owner didn’t come back to the lot for weeks, but on the very next day, a local company, NATURE’S WAY, delivered a bright, clean and shiny porta-potty to the yard. The potty stayed in the yard until the lot was sold for development.

While most of my homeless friends have since moved on, there came a day when each could say they finally had a pot to ‘potty’ in ...

And it was the little porta-potty that worked!

Keeping **it clean,

Kelly

Miracle on Homeless Street

One of my favorite Christmas movies is Miracle on 34th Street.

If you’ve seen it, do you recall the very last scene when the folks walk into the living room of the house that's for sale, and Uncle Fred looks over to the fireplace, and there, leaning against the wall is … Kris Kringle’s cane?

Well, I found where Santa Clause spent LAST night!

At least, I think I found Kris's cane!




Kelly

Minimum Wage Is Maximum Wrong

Sorry about the spin in this entry … but I read an article (Minimum wage hike won’t go far) about a proposal to raise the Federal minimum wage to seven-something dollars. The first lines of the article read:

“Two months into her minimum wage job at Target Corp., (she) realized she and her three children would be better off if she was unemployed and on food stamps. So she quit.”

At that point, my mind wandered to an experience I had in Corporate/Employee relations, and that experience tells me that livability problems, even survival issues for employees won’t be solved by Federally-mandated rules and regulations.

In the late 80’s, Target Stores had a diverse group of employees, from elderly and disabled folks, to young people. Typically, the elderly or disabled worked at the cash registers, young people stocked shelves at night, and middle-aged men and women managed the stock room and performed janitorial duties. Then, some FOOLS introduced a new ‘employee’ program that changed the way employees were scheduled and the duties they were to perform.

The elderly ladies had worked at the registers for years … I mean, some for ten or twenty years, even coming from the older Dayton’s stores. These people were making upwards of twelve dollars (plus) an hour, not profitable for the Corporation. Longtime employees were ‘vested’ in retirement and profit-sharing plans, again, not profitable for the Corporation’s future. Older employees also took advantage of the opportunity provided by their employee insurance plans, and as this employee group aged, insurance and medical expenses were rising for the Corporation: again, not profitable for the Corporation.

The Corporation’s answer: Put all employees, current and future, into Teams. These Teams would be assigned ‘rotating’ duties, meaning cashiers now belonged to a Team that would have to work some overnight stockroom shifts, disabled employees might be required to corral carts (in the winter), and the folk’s who cleaned the bathrooms would have to work the snack bar. As the program was written and implemented, it was presented as a ‘fairer’, more ‘equal’ opportunity for all employees. Sounds good, eh?

The result was that the overpaid-elderly quit, due to ‘attrition’. The disabled were presented with tasks difficult to perform, so many quit. Anybody making over minimum wage was slowly forced to retire or quit because it wasn’t good for the Corporation’s bottom line.

I know. I was one of the FOOLS that worked on the new employee program. The program was called Team Flex Staffing. Every time I walked into a Target Store during while I worked on the project and saw one of those happy old ladies working the registers … every time I saw an elderly man happily cleaning and sweeping the isles … every time I saw a disabled person gladly working the snack bar … I sunk INSIDE because I knew their future with the Corporation would soon change.

I wasn’t around the Corporation to see what happened in the few months that followed the initiation of Team Flex Staffing. The program may have only lasted a few years, but the broader vision of the Corporation was Profits, not people. I wonder if the vision foresaw the workforce you see today at Target Stores; a workforce that can hardly survive at their current, minimum wage.

I quit the business of writing for Business and began volunteering with the vulnerable, the disabled and the homeless soon after my experience with Team Flex Staffing ended. So, in a way, I have the inhumanity of a Corporation to thank for easing me into the more ‘humane’ work of serving the homeless.

I don’t understand why a large business like Target can’t afford to make an investment in the personal lives of each and every employee. Target’s only excuse has to be THE BOTTOM LINE; a line that directly contributes to the numbers who live at or below THE POVERTY LINE.

Still working in the trenches,

Kelly