The have's and the have nots.

Last year at about this time I was working at NMDP. I was a bit unambitious. It was a contract job, purposed for replacing a maternity leave. And I knew I didn’t have it quite made yet but I had little energy at the time to pull all the heartstrings and impressive feats for the company, while I breastfed two infants and kept the household running. I landed the job at the interview and I knew I had. I charmed the socks off of the two ladies that interviewed me and I intended to. But because of the overload outside of the job, and likely the level of wellness attained after birthing twins, I wasn’t impressive enough to stay with the company.

Such is the nature of finding a good company to work for and keeping your job with it in today’s market.

As I have just learned a good Seminary education no longer needs experts in hermeneutics and Church History. That seems about as foreign and bizarre to me as eliminating the Old Testament department at a Bible Seminary. It seems that is the nature of today’s economy. Everything, gets worked over and cut. I have come to see and understand what positions in a company are the “fat” and will get cut. I see it through more calculative eyes and I toss aside my emotions, when looking at company practices and structures.

All that is to say that I have, as an employee, become more calculative as well, not to the point of cruelty but to the point of survival. I think it will take more than 3 years of suffering to bring me to cruelty.

In today’s job market, cut-throat does not describe it fully, although that is the case also. There is this element of the “haves” and the “have nots.” Once you have a job or your spouse does, you rule the world and the have nots have no impact or argument toward you. There is no obligation to the have nots as they struggle and toil away. There is a sense of entitlement for the haves, concerning all that they have. A salary. Benefits. Paid vacation. They feel they have earned it and the folk who’s jobs got eliminated or downsized—well, somehow the don’t deserve the salary or benefits of everyone else.

Somehow, this mentality feels really OFF to me. A bit like the silence about the disparity between a CEO's annual compensation and the lowliest worker in his company. Sure, that is an extreme disparity, begging for criticism. However, I'm not so sure those who currently bask in their benefits on a 5 figure salary, would behave much differently than the CEO, with an 8 figure salary.