The Economy on the Front Lines, and Other Junk.
oday, we had a woman in the restaurant who was extremely special. She was an older lady, obviously trying to dress to impress, in a business sense, not a dating sense. She had a very nice skirt outfit on, shades of blue and sea green in a flower pattern, but it had that “I got this from the ratty clearance bin at the Salvation Army” look to it. It was a bit on the worn side, is what I’m saying. And, though she’d put some effort into her make-up, her hair was stringy, thinning, and pulled back into a scraggly little ponytail.
She approached me at the cash register, where I was standing, reading the Sunday comics, because it was dead. I looked up at her, smiled, asked what she wanted, and she went off on tangent about where she wanted to sit, very pleasant, but quite full of herself, too. She was trying very hard to sound important, and failing.
She had me sweep the section where she wanted to sit, because, and I quote, “I have someone very important meeting with me, and she’ll be quite upset with you if it looks like this.” The woman she was meeting turned out to be a semi-regular who’s a bit of a snotty bitch, herself, so I had to laugh. The important woman also made sure to talk loudly to her friend, so we could all hear how important she was. She asked our server if we passed our health inspections regularly, too.
At that point, the server and I were giggling to each other in the back over the woman, making fun of her. She obviously wasn’t wired quite right, and it just struck us as immensely funny that this woman came in, acting as though she were at the local country club, when she was in our little greasy spoon of a place.
People are crazy, I’m telling you.
Speaking of crazy people, the customers have been mean lately. People are getting pretty aggravated with this whole $4.00/gallon gas situation. As someone who resides firmly on the front lines of our current economic debacle, let me assure you, people are pissed. They can’t afford to go anywhere, they can’t afford groceries, they’re sweating the bills . . . folks, we’ve got a problem brewing here, particularly in Michigan, where there are no jobs.
The Sunday classifieds this week listed about three columns of jobs, and they were all for upper education jobs, the kind that require higher degrees, or they were for minimum wage, part time grunt work.
People can’t get a job, have no money, can’t eat, can’t go anywhere . . . this is a pressure cooker, folks. When it blows, it’s going to be ugly.
I see we’re going to be running Obama vs. McCain this year, and I’ll vote Obama almost for certain, but I don’t have a lot of hope that either of these guys can fix the problems we’re looking at. I’ve heard rumors of gas costing six to seven dollars a gallon by this time next year, and if that happens, and we haven’t done something to alleviate our economic problems by then, people will be starving to death and/or turning to crime. There’s a whole lotta nasty coming our way if these two yahoos we’re voting for can’t figure something out.
I have no answers, and my only advice is to batten down your hatches, because the seas are getting rough out there.
On the upside, writing is going well, and I am so proud of myself for killing wasps in my house. I’ve had three turn up so far, and have managed to deal with them so far without a bunch of screaming and hyperventilating. Go, me! I still have a job, the bills are paid, I have a place to live, and there’s food for me and the dog to eat, so all in all, I’m doing great. Meanwhile, I’m also enjoying plenty of fun hanging around with my friends, watching movies, and just generally piddling about doing my own thing.
(Poster coutesy of Despair.com.)
June 9th, 2008 at 9:30 am
I say, don’t blame those two if they can’t fix the problem, because I believe there IS no way to fix it.
My understanding of the mess is that there are four factors involved:
1. China and India demanding more oil.
2. Lack of refineries on US soil to process oil.
3. OPEC could always release more oil…
4. Oil demand > oil supply. Especially in oil-hungry America.
We can’t do a thing about the first. For the second, we could dramatically lessen the requirements for building a refinery, but that wouldn’t happen overnight, and it could very well have serious consequences down the line. The third we can’t affect no matter how much we might like to. The fourth… is the fault of the previous administrations, who KNEW THIS WAS COMING and didn’t do a dman thing thereon. (Though I really blame Bush for squandering goodwill and national unity.)
JavaElemental Reply:
June 10th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
I’m not blaming them. I refuse to believe there’s nothing to be done for the situation — there are ways to cope. I just don’t think McCain or Obama has what it takes to find those ways and get them accomplished. McCain will just keep on with the same-old, same-old, and everyone will concentrate so much on the fact that Obama’s a black guy, that he won’t be able to get anything done.
June 9th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
At the bank where I work we are all just waiting to get robbed. I know it’s going to happen…just hope I’m on vacation or out to lunch. It is bad now and it is going to get a lot worse as far as crime. I am glad that as a family all of us are working and doing okay. Don’t forget that we can all move in together if we have to
I think that is something that we’ll be seeing alot more of also. I may have to make my decision on president according to their vice picks. That will probably make or break the election.
JavaElemental Reply:
June 10th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
I can’t move in with you guys. You only have dial-up.
Just kidding.
I suspect that before the end of this, we’ll see a lot more of that kind of thing going on — it already is, to a certain degree. As to the crime, I’ve been telling people that this place is going to be Flint in five years or less, but no one believes me.
June 10th, 2008 at 8:37 am
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, comunal living and subsitance farming is going to be the best way to go, if we had 5 or 6 incomes to help us all out we would all be better off, I think what we could do would be to put money into a single bank account and have our bills drawn off that, house payments, electricty, gas(propane), and morgage/rent.
Though the benifit of us all living together is that any extra money we make after all the groceries and such is paid is that we could put it towards the morgage on a big house and have it paid off sooner.
I don’t think the banks will be the first place to be hit when the crime spree starts, what we will have is people stealing gas first, then robbing the gas stations. I also forsee the banks going drive thru only with an armed guard.
It’s coming soon very soon.
JavaElemental Reply:
June 10th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
I don’t think the banks will be the first place to be hit when the crime spree starts, what we will have is people stealing gas first, then robbing the gas stations.
Oh, we’ve already got that going on. That’s why so many gas stations have cameras now — all the drive-offs. I saw a report on CNN about cars abandoned on the side of the road, because they’d run out of gas, and the owners didn’t have any money to get more. I forget where it was, but apparently, it’s gotten to be quite a problem in some places.
I don’t know what my employees will do if gas prices go up much higher. Some of them live out of town, and they’re already weighing tips and paychecks versus the cost of driving in to work. It’s crazy.