Asking for Help

[pure_doxyk]

SOMEONE NEEDS TO HELP ME PLEASE, says the answering machine this morning.

I’m fifty-nine and I’ve worked every day of my life, and I have a hi-lo license and a CDL and a perfect record and the plant I worked at closed in January and I’ve been looking for a job every day since then and no-one is calling.

When I lost my job I had to start paying my

Comments

[pure_doxyk]

it sounds corny, but "one phone call at a time". And for every call like this, there are two or three that I can actually give some helpful information to, so that's something. (For instance, I didnt' get ahold of *this* woman today, but I was the Awesome Lifesaver for a father of three and an elderly woman with a brain tumor, both of whom will at least be able to seek a decent outcome thanks to my advice. Things like that make this job totally worth it. ;)

The problem with short sales -- as with many options that work elsewhere in the country -- is that they depend on something Michigan doesn't have; in this case, buyers. But even if the poor woman could negotiate hard enough to get her lender to let her sell the house short, and then find someone to buy it (which is taking an average of 2 years or so now), she'd still be left with nowhere to live and no job with which to buy something else. Urgh.

What makes the difference in times like this, believe it or not, is family. People who've got others they can fall back on, trade favors with, and ask for really difficult things are the people making it out okay. Including me -- I'd be dead in the water if it weren't for my parents. ('Bout time they were good for something, after what they put me through as a teenager! ;)