Your Voice Into the Future?�

2003-10-14

So I called my agency today and told them I had a problem. The person I was filling in for said she wasn't coming back.

This would not normally be a problem. But I don't want to stay. Not that they've asked me to.

The more I wander around in the job market, I wonder if the reason that they don't want older people (read above 25) is that the older you get, the clearer a picture you get of what you will and will not do.

I really don't want to hang around as a temp for the next few months just to be filling in for people taking holiday time. There is a battle, from highest to lowest, going on about who will get to take the day before Thanksgiving and Christmast Eve off.

Thursday last week the woman I'm replacing came in to say she wasn't coming back. No one was totally surprised . . . or totally prepared. They were all pretty sure, but not entirely sure, that she was coming back.

I figured it out before I was told. One of the other new moms, they seem to have between ten to fifteen per year, per building, called her a traitor.

That meant to me that she had chosen something other than the company. She was giving her fidelity to her family, not her company. I can only applaud her.

I believe that a company will only keep us as long as they think it will benefit the company. And, way more importantly, I think we should raise our own children.

The best caregiver can only give your children their values. Whatever they were raised with. In this country, childcare is one of the lowest paying jobs availble. Are you really going to give the minds and hearts of your children into the care of the lowest bidder.

Most Americans do. And the news shows that they do. And then complain about it. Why would you want someone else raise you children? Why have children at all if you can't raise them yourself?

Having children is the most egotistical thing you can do. You are saying that your genes, your values, your thoughts are valuable enough that they should be passed to the next generation.

But. . . If it's not worth enough to give your own personal time, is it really valuable enough to the rest of us?

If your own children, your own voice into the future, isn't worth your care, why should it be worth anyone else's?

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