Monday, August 22, 2011

I Give Up

I Give Up


OK, I give up. Ya got me. I concede that you've won. You've beaten me into submission. So can we now call it a day and get back to business?


What am I talking about? What am I blabbering about in my incoherent, clumsy way? Well I'm going to tell you in a minute. But before that, please remember that the following thoughts are MY thoughts. They MIGHT be totally correct. Or they MIGHT be totally wrong. But they're what I see from my vantage point and what I hear whispered along the grape vine.


I'll bet it's close to the truth.


Anyhow...


It's this doggone depression. Or is it a recession. Or a business downturn. Or whatever the hell it is. I'm TIRED of it. I'm tired of reading about it. I'm tired of listening to the talking heads on TV speaking nothing but doom and gloom. I'm tired of the dollar taking a beating. I was in Canada recently and I just HATED having to give more of my hard-earned dollars for less Canadian funny-money.


But I'm mostly tired of not seeing a raise, not seeing any overtime and worrying all the time about whether my job, my wife's job and my friend's jobs are going to be there tomorrow, next month or next year. And it seems that a lot of that concern is beginning to become more and more specific to my particular place of employment.


My wife is employed in the office of a manufacturer. The past year to year-and-a-half has been a good time for them. Their orders are up, they're making money and they're hiring people. In fact, they can't even get the people that they need. They're even advertising overseas for people to fill engineering spots. My wife has received decent raises the past two years and the occasional extra bonus for this and that.


Things are going well for her.


The place my son works has received huge orders for the automotive part they manufacture and are running seven-days-a-week for pretty much the entire staff. At least through Labor Day, possibly longer. They recently hired a LOT of people. They're doing very well.


I've recently talked to a number of my acquaintances and the story I'm mostly getting is that things are looking up and they're all looking at raises and promotions. Almost all of them.


In fact, most of the people I know seem to be on the upswing in their employment. They were down but are now surging forward.


The depression/recession/whatever is, for the most part, over for them.


For them, I should repeat.


But not at my place of employment.


And that sluggishness of my business has become difficult for me to understand.


Maybe a little background might be in order here.


The department that I work in is a part of a county government. Most governmental departments; local, city, county, state, federal; are funded by taxes and are often are in trouble when economies are down due to reduced tax receipts. But our department is what's called self-funded. We sell a commodity that everyone needs; water. Most people in the urban environments we're based in buy our commodity – those without wells of course – it's a necessary part of life. It's a need rather than a want. So we take in the proceeds from the sale of water plus other proceeds from fees associated with new hookups to the water system and other fees. This money, this income, is then disbursed throughout the department. We are not dependent on tax monies for income. You'd think that, with adequate forethought and decent management, at least this department should run like a top and all employees in it should share in the proceeds from this business of providing a substance that everyone needs. In a non-tax-reliant, self-funded department.


You'd think so, wouldn't you?


But you have to remember this important part of the equation. This is a governmental department. And government equates to politics.


And that's where it gets sticky.


The other departments in our county government, the ones you remember I mentioned earlier, that require taxes to function? Well, they're hurting. Revenues are down so a lot of belt-tightening has occurred. And more is expected. At least that's what our management is telling us. They say we should expect more decreases in funding in the future. And we all should “help out” our employer by thinking up ways to save some money.


They're even presenting a veiled threat of future layoffs if things don't improve in the future.


And this is a blanket statement for all of the county departments. All of them.


And what's odd about all of this is that our department is now also hurting, at least per our management it is. Apparently due to reduced new construction resulting in reduced new water hookup fees and the need to “pay down our debt”.


I may be wrong, but I thought it was the responsibility of management to make informed, learned decisions about budgeting and to not make expenditures and incur debt that would be dependent on continued urban growth in the future. To be wise about incurring debt that only a rosy future would be sufficient enough to pay off.


Apparently this did not happen. Apparently, somehow, someone dropped the ball. Apparently we now have to pay off debts from expected monies that did not come in for expenditures that, possibly, might not have to have been made. Or could have been postponed until a more stabile economic period arrived.


And that's a doggone shame.


So I look at the net pay numbers on my paycheck and see the same ones I saw last month, the month before and the year before. I've pulled out the old ones and looked. Yep, same numbers.


And I look at the prices at the grocery stores and they are not the same as last year. The prices at the restaurants aren't the same as last year. The prices at Walmart and Kmart and Lowe's aren't the same as last year. And the prices at the gas pump? Holy-Aunt-Petunia-in-a-shoe-shine-box... they are definitely not the same as last year.


And the hole we're in keeps getting deeper and deeper.


And that's a doggone shame, too.