So, I'm going to interject a little feel-good story here, so that when I look back at this build I'll remember what was going on at the time, and with any luck the good Karma keeps rolling. Feel free to skip ahead to the next post.
This time of year I work for H&R Block. I work my ass off for crap money. I do taxes. Sometimes I get to do some good. Today was one of those days.
A lady came in today. She's 61, worked in restaurants her whole life, owned one of her own on a nearby island for about 15 years, then the government decided in their infinite wisdom to bend us all over.
I worked in hotels, bars and restaurants for over 25 years, started when I was 14 at McDonald's. I've done every job from Dishwasher to Chef, Busboy to Food & Beverage Manager. I get it.
Things started coming to a head in about 2006 for the industry as a whole here in BC. Anti-smoking laws and new impaired driving policies that had people scared to have a beer after work. Government closures of mental health wards left us with an extremely visible and volatile homeless population, and cuts to services left the cities looking dirty. We were taken off of the recommended destination lists by U.S. convention scouts. Swine flu fears kept a lot of our usual Asian tourists from visiting for a couple of years. Pretty much the perfect storm. Then in 2008 the bottom fell out around the world.
I was still working in restaurants at the time, barely keeping a roof over my head, and had started doing bookkeeping on the side. My three main clients all went tits-up within 6 months. The big chains had deep enough pockets to ride things out, it made sense for them to keep the majority of their operations in place, for when the tide eventually turned. Which seems to be the last year or so, kinda.
A lot, as in thousands, of smaller operators tried to make it through as well. They mortgaged their homes and exhausted personal lines of credit. Hoping that the next year's 4 month tourist season would be the one to let them start earning again, to let them start to dig out of the huge money pits that their businesses had become. Restaurants are not for the lazy or the timid. Some of the smarter, or luckier ones cut their losses, closed up shop and hit the bricks.
You know who hires someone over 25 with self employment experience? Nobody. Not even as a dishwasher. Hell, as a 40 year old white guy, with no tits or ass to speak of, I may as well have leprosy myself.
So this lady had tried to stick it out. She gambled and lost. Everything. Her savings, her business and her home. After a lifetime as a Chef, (she prefers to call herself a cook) and eventual business owner, she is virtually unemployable. She's offered to work as a dishwasher for free, just to get a shot. One of her "friends" informed her that instead of hiring one person for a position now, he literally hires twenty kids. They are so desperate for a job that he can pay them minimum wage and he doesn't have to make any CPP contributions because none of them are making $3500/year. They are young and dumb enough, in other words to take this shit. What used to be a profession is now a meat-grinder for the lowest common denominator.
So she winds up working on a local farm for room and board, literally. She works to have a place to sleep and food 5 nights a week. On weekends she must take a ferry to the island here, to babysit so that she has a place to stay. Her only income is roughly $3000 in CPP, as she is only 61 and too young to draw OAS. She has declared bankruptcy, and her trustees screwed up her final return, so CRA thinks she still has a business and won't release the $75 Provincial Sales Tax credit, (which is the only refund I can get her because she has no earned income) until she is current with her GST returns for the non-existant business.
Fuck. Balls. Why the Hell hasn't someone helped this woman before now? I spent a lot of years on my knees scrubbing under ovens and deep friers with steel wool. Sweating my bag off and waiting for my back to give out. I know how hard this woman has worked, and I know how badly she's been screwed.
When I told her that there was no way in Hell I was letting her pay for her return, (for which she had proudly brought in two new crisp bills in an envelope, obviously fresh from a bank for this purpose) she lost it. Just sobbing. I also know how you can be so driven down so hard that what should just be SOP common decency seems like an act of God. It broke my fucking heart. I'd like to think it was the least I could do for a fellow professional.
After she left, I started looking into options for her. She had mentioned that she had been married, but that her husband had passed away years before, right around the time the rest of her life went to shit, if my math was right. Turns out that she may qualify for the Survivor's Allowance and Pension from CPP as he had worked and contributed earnings towards the plan. This would in effect more than double her income. Not that $7500 a year is going to solve all of her problems, but it's a start. I'll be telling her about this when I give her the package containing the application forms and instructions next week when she comes in on the ferry, to babysit for the rich folk, and stops by to pick up her tax documents.
Now if life goes as usual, I'm probably going to catch shit for using company time and paper and ink for non-tax related purposes. The Hell with that, and the Hell with all of the assholes that let this woman and everyone like her just fall through the cracks. I was fortunate enough to make different choices, but that could have been me on the other side of that desk today.
Some days I get to do some good. Those are the days I want to think about when I ride this bike. Most of us have to earn our joy in this world, I'd like to look on today as a down-payment.