Enjoyed first P. and N., then the Singapore contingent on web cam calls yesterday. Other than that and the usual, it was pretty tame, so I'm going to devote this post to injustice.
Wider: At the supermarket nearby, there's a young woman cashier who caught my eye some time ago. I guess she's in her twenties or early thirties. She has a pretty, big-eyed face, but personifies the expressions "painfully thin" and "painfully shy." She's about my height--5'4"--and I doubt if she weighs over 90 pounds. I've rarely met anyone so introverted. When she rings up purchases, she glances at customers only occasionally and speaks in such a low voice, it's difficult to hear her. Not wanting to join the leagues of snap-judgementers, I'm not going to speculate on whether she could be identified as someone with Asberger's Syndrome, but it seems possible.
A few months ago, I saw her standing on Center Street and asked if I could drive her somewhere, but she declined politely, saying she was waiting for someone. Since then, we've exchanged a few words when I go in the store, as I did the other day.
After my years in HR, I retain an interest in employment and I asked about her work. I found that the store isn't unionized and a lot of the cashiers are high school or college kids, but she works full-time. However, she's paid hourly and gets no benefits at all--no paid sick days, no paid holidays, no paid vacation time, no retirement--and, naturally, no medical insurance. She remarked as so many people must, that she "can't afford to go to the doctor."
I wonder how much the owners or stock holders of Shop 'N' Bag receive. It seems so wrong and bad that this young woman is in such a precarious position and very likely she's doomed to remain there. I suppose that with a lot of drive and ambition, she could work to improve her situation--maybe go to school, or try to be promoted (to what?), or find another job (how?)--but that's not going to happen. If she had a lot of drive and ambition, she wouldn't be a cashier at that supermarket to begin with. And considering her extreme shyness, it's hard to believe she'll ever be able to move up or out. She may work there until she's unable to work, and then what?
Yet we see the pompous, arrogant, ever-so-well-fixed politicians in Washington spewing out their garbage to reject universal health care, then awarding trillions to banks and corporations and funding mayhem and murder around the world. How can this be right? How can it be fair? Why does such injustice exist?
Old questions become new when they acquire a face and the face for me is the shy young woman in Shop 'N' Bag.