Category Archives: Education

OK, I have three. The first lasted 20 minutes, second two days, and third, six weeks.

My mother got her paralegal degree. I was 18 and had a drivers’ license. She had me act as a process server, at my request, to make $18. Of course she wouldn’t send me somewhere where I’d get beaten or shot. I only had to go to a nursing home. I didn’t know what the papers said, only that I had to deliver them. The family of the old man was there, and apparently I was delivering papers that gave the family legal control over this man, despite his repeated objections. I left, burst into tears and said that despite the money, I was done with process serving forever.

After spending my life savings on cooking school and a culinary expedition via a non-paid apprenticeship when I returned home with pennies in my pocket I took a job at a local hotel. I had to enter through the basement and didn’t even know how to punch a time card (did it wrong and never got paid). They gave me pants and coat of a 300 lb. man who’d been fired in the past week. I pulled the pants up way above my waist and someone gave me a length of rope so the pants wouldn’t fall down around my feet as I worked.

There was one sink in the kitchen area and it was smaller than a household pedestal sink in a very small powder room. It was filled with cans. My job as garde manger was to scrape cheese off French onion soup bowls that had been through the dishwasher. Two days, 16 hours. Done.

My first trip back to my alma mater brought a temp job that corrected applications for college scholarships. Yes, these geniuses couldn’t even fill out an application. As I corrected by school district, I got many poor areas and even my school, in a fairly well-off neighborhood. The numbers frightened me and years later I got to work in education in some of those poor areas. But that’s not the point. The point is the pencil with the name “Ned” on it. Ned was a year-round unionized employee and he labeled all his pencils. We were allowed to use our pencils to edit applications, had scheduled breaks and it was as if we were robots. No time off was allowed.

When I asked for time off for a job interview (this particular job was only six weeks) I was denied. I asked to give up lunch and two breaks was denied. Fifteen minutes before the interview I quit, walked across the street and changed my life. I was offered two jobs that week, each would have sent me in very different directions. In the end I said no to the arts job that would have me as PR person in the summer and secretary in the winter. When I turned down that dream job I told them I had my own secretary.

Cheers, Dee

What happens to people on a temporary assignment where the US Postal Service does not deliver mail? And where over 90% of residents are not occupying their property so will not get the census form?

There are nearly 100 townhomes where we live that are not being included in the 2010 census simply because the USPS does not count us as delivery-worthy. We have to buy a box at the local post office or a full-service mail center. A lot of the places out here, out West, are refused service by the USPS. Makes me think we should create and market our own stamps and send our own mail.

Ten years ago I worked to get out the census forms especially to African Americans and Latinos, because the 1980 census had our city building schools that were too small for the legal population the day they were conceived and little kids were going to school in temporary classrooms that took over their playgrounds.

What happens when entire swaths of people are ignored because the USPS refuses to acknowledge our home address? Yes, a week after we moved here a census worker came by and said we could expect a survey. I told her she shouldn’t expect to have anyone answer the door as few people live here year-round. She said she understood.

How can one expect government “services” for one’s taxes if you’re not counted and even your mail cannot be delivered to your home address? Dee