Work and crap

It looks like a fairly nice day out there with a good breeze coming in through my open window. I don’t even have the fan on and it feels nice in here.

Since September 2000 my life has been going along just fine. Sure there’s been some rough hills in the way; like me becoming diabetic and having cataract operations and laser surgery toothache pain etc, Anne losing her job. Then we lost that monthly allowance Anne used to get just this last spring. This covered half our rent. Losing that through a monkey wrench in our lives. Now the big thing for me is my very job could be at stake here. Not because of anything I’ve done but because of several other factors.

The first was the Lawsuit that happened last year, We were barely 1 year into our new office when we got this thing dumped on us. A couple of our staff members misrepresented the charity. The news hit me hard in January. Now (good for me) our local economy, thanks to the oil is booming again, has been on a steady boom since about 1997. Our General manager left for California. The day shift is full but it’s the night shift, that’s down to a skeleton crew. So the big talk was foreign workers to relieve the stress off of a tight labor market here in Edmonton. Even my wife lost her job in February of this year. Then Dell computers closed down their office and this spring Convergies shut down. TD bank moved their call center operation off shore. We got the foreign workers all right but because of the Lawsuit Service Canada and Immigration are very aware of our company. They won’t let foreign workers work at my place of employment because of it. Foreign workers at least the ones from India have to pay $5,000 for immigration and lawyer fees. Immigration lawyers are making a killing.

Through some fancy legal footwork about a dozen people came here from India last November. I thought we were going to get something like 20-40 people. But over several waves we got a doz. I don’t know anything about immigration. I’ve been to the states maybe less then a dozen times just to visit. And this was mostly roller skating parties in the early 1970’s with our Christian youth group at the time. We used to go every other Thursday to Blaine Washington. It took us an hour to get there. I think I went to Blaine maybe 6 times. I wouldn’t say I was a Christian back then but it was an outlet for youth in our local neighborhood. I was in Seattle once for the afternoon back in 1971. Since then it was Minneapolis 1997 with Amway. I’ve never lived in another country. But these foreign workers form India get more money then domestic workers and that’s understandable. In my company they don’t get much more then me, a buck more then what I’m getting. Big deal. For that they spend $5k? It’s not the company it’s just to live here in Canada. It’s a better life and a good deal for them.

The thing is, Service Canada won’t let these East Indian kids stay beyond 1 year because of Xl and the lawsuit. The lawsuit is what’s killing us and maybe even my own bottom line. Now we have this “do not call” registry thing (dnc) that’s coming into affect September 30th. It’s a Canada wide initiative. We have to say a disclaimer, which is an opening for the customer to say something like “Please take my name of your list.” Prior to this management never did take names off the list because if they did that we’d have nothing left to call. Basically all management did before and at times during the shift was to recycle the names and reload. As it is we’re working 3-4 campaigns/night. For almost 2 hours I was calling semies and cold on another campaign. We’ve got taps for maybe 2.5 hours. Half an hour past break all 4 remaining tap shooters move over to cold and semi calling, including me. It’s tough going.

That was when last night one of the East Indian kids my “Amway connection” told me about the trouble their having with this company. I learned that half of them have jobs with McDonalds. They at least with McD’s have extended their Visa until 2010. Most of them so the guy was told, are getting $12-14/hour. Add all the factors above and the dnc list in September if I don’t do something soon I might be without a job by the end of the year.

Then there’s my wife’s place of employment. She’ll get a full pay cheque Friday (towards rent) but next week, she’ll get half of that. This means that on Thursday and Friday I’m going to have to put some extra hours in. That’ll give me 29 hours. We’re experiencing a little crises because not only do we have rent to pay but we need groceries, bus passes my insulin. We’ll be steady in September but we might not be able to go to that nice dinner at the Ramada Inn. The other thing is we have back up options. Anne could go to the bank and pull some funds from her RRSP. If that doesn’t work out she has some hardship pension fund money she can take out. She’s off today so hopefully this week she does that.

The other thing is and we have yet to take advantage of this is CRHC and their rent subsidy program. I called them up a year ago and we got the forms. Anne had her subsidy form filled out but then lost her job like I said.

All this before she lost her allowance. She last accessed the pension fund so we could get that widescreen TV. Ours was going fast. Our next “Federal income won’t be until October when we get the GST cheque. That’ll be enough to cover bus passes and that’s it.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim