Link: http://whistlecorps.com/blog/

Trisha Fells is a scam-artist, a fraud, a troll. A general, all-around lying sack of potatoes – with the critical distinction being that the average sack of potatoes may be julienned, fried and salted into a delicious state. Trisha Fells, if fried in oil, will not serve well to family and friends, as the Dead Sea’s-worth of NaCl will fail to season her rotten soul into palatability.

Looking for a job in America? Beware, because Trisha Fells (festering ass-boil) is looking for you.

I’m looking for a job in America, too. Having a small business is a lifesaver, for sure – but most small business owners are like me, and need a second (reliable) income stream to stay afloat. We don’t need much, but we need something. So, I’m out there searching for something.

For the most part, I use the Virginia Workforce Connection site. It’s a pretty good bet that, when you read a job description on VA Workforce, those words correspond to an actual job opening sitting out there somewhere on some HR person’s actual desk.

Whether there are jobs available within a workable commuting distance of your home, well, that’s another thing entirely.

Which brings me to Craig’s List.

I check the Charlottesville Craig’s List job postings every day for the local opportunities that sometimes slip through the VA Workforce net. And yes, many of these Craig’s List opportunities involve the words “escort”, “click here” and “make thousands working part time”. Dumb, I may be – in denial, I am not.

That’s why, when I tripped over a boring-enough-to-be-real ad for a court clerk and saw that a real person – Trisha Fells (plop of fetid water loitering in the u-bend) – was soliciting resumes from qualified individuals …

I fell for it.

Guess I am dumb. Within five minutes, I got a response from Ms. Fells (lumpy coagulate puckering the underbelly of American society) asking me to complete the online application. Link attached.

No doubt about it, I am stupid. I thought, since this was advertised as a city job, that it was reasonable to follow a link and fill out an official application. It took me 45-minutes to complete the process.

That was 45-minutes when I was (1) not tending to my child (home sick from school), (2) not keeping up with household chores, (3) not logging billable hours and (4) not applying for a legitimate job opportunity.

It ain’t easy for me to wrestle 45-stinking minutes from my day, let me tell you.

The Career Center Online. That’s where Trisha Fells (excrement-munching parasite) sent me. I’m not including the URL because I don’t want you to go there. I like you.

Less than one minute after I submitted my application, an email (containing links) went out to each of the professional references I submitted with the application. My professional references. Spammed.

Since I completed that application, we’ve all received various other solicitations courtesy Trisha Fells and The Career Center Online. Here are a few:

notification@facebookmail.com – Maria from Russia apparently remembers me from a dating forum I never heard of.

Cheryl Smith (postmaster@career-network.com) – Hopes I’ll be stupid again and click another link to confirm my interest in a fake job.

Samuel Brown (postmaster@career-network.com) – Hopes so, too.

Various individuals – Know where I can get Percocet.

Careers@jobenhancement.com – Bets with the odds that I am a complete idiot and will click another link for yet another fake job.

Cheryl Smith really, really wants to speak with me about her aforementioned fake job.

And some other guy from Korea knows how to enlarge an average penis.


There are others, I won’t go into it but, you get the idea.

About 30-seconds too late, I Googled “Trisha Fells” and “trishafells@gail.com” and found lots of similar job postings on local Craig’s List sites throughout the country.

I hate Trisha f*cking Fells. Somewhere at the end of that anonymous spam chain, there is an actual person sitting at an actual desk in their actual mother’s basement ... and that person – Trisha Fells in sweatpants and the flesh – is preying on those of us who need a job. Those of us who check the stupid Craig’s List multiple times each day, hoping to find SOMETHING.

First, do yourself a favor: Google the name and email address before you apply. It saves time and keeps your virus scanner under thumb: bored and unsatisfied.

Second, if you ever, ever in life, trip across Trisha Fells (fungus peel on the heel of a sweating, unconscious drunkard), tell her for me … tell her … tell Trisha Fells that I hope she comes to understand the value of the time and hope she stole from people.

And if she comes to that understanding whilst reclining tra-la-la under the wheel of a great big bus, well, then, so much the better.

I’m a small business owner. I’m for meaningful health care reform, including a public option. I’m even ready to put my money where my bleeding heart is:

Top Five Taxes I’m Willing to Pay in Exchange for the Public Option

1. Soft Drinks
A tax on soft drinks, including those neon-colored non-carbonates disguised as “fruit juice” is the best idea I’ve heard this year.
2. Sweets
While you’re at it, Senator, tax my circus peanuts. I love circus peanuts and, God help me, I’ll keep buying them when they cost a few pennies more.
3. Fast Food
I try to avoid it anyway (puts money in my pocket for more circus peanuts).
4. Small Business Tax
Find some clever way to hit my business, and I’ll love you even better if you cover my small-potatoes self with a sliding scale.
5. Income Tax
Direct and simple. Take my money, please.

Why does the public option appeal to me?

Security.

Sure, competition and cost controls are great and wonderful and necessary – but really, it comes down to security: eliminating the fear of diagnosis. Because, in the corporate-controlled system we’re in, diagnosis is already a trigger for rationed care.

Since Mike lost his job in July, we’re still covered under COBRA. (By the way, our premium is more than $500 per month for our family of three, even with the 65% reduction currently in place. That’s almost half our mortgage payment.) We have this coverage for six months – after that, who knows what kind of insurance, if any, we’ll be able to afford?

I just turned 40. Guess why I’m not calling my doctor to arrange a mammogram?

Just in case, that’s why. Because health insurance companies have turned preventative care into an at-your-own-risk gamble.

I know you’re struggling with the same issues. You know folks, like I do, who don’t have insurance. That’s bad enough – but you also know that having health insurance is no guarantee of coverage, either. You have friends who’ve bumped up against annual or even lifetime limits; family members who were denied treatment. You’ve seen how past history impacts current premiums. You know, same as I do:

The government is accountable to us. The CEO of UnitedHealth Group is not.

That’s why I’m willing to throw the first circus peanut into the ring and shout, “Tax me, Mr. President!” (Gosh, I hope I get my circus peanut back.)

I’m a small business owner, and I’m willing to pay for the security and well-being that sky-high private insurance premiums just … don’t … cover. Choke on that, Murdoch.

I have this uncle, an airline pilot, who developed a bitterness habit, characterized by What’s-the-Use-type exclamations, that roughly – well, alright, exactly – coincided with the moment our Congress allowed the airline and union to dissolve his pension. *poof*

It happened just a few short years before the forced-retirement phase of his 37-year career. He found himself booted out of Happy Retirement Land (where your income and health care coverage are guaranteed to sustain life), dragging his own luggage into Retirement? What Retirement? Welcome to Super*Mart-Ville.

Most of us know the place, I suspect.

He eventually landed a job with a corporate jet company. Nice job, good folks. Layoff. He’s unemployed again … and happier than he’s been since being a pilot was just a wish he made on birthday candles.

Why’s that? Well, because there are certain upsides to unemployment. If you’re unemployed, you know what I’m talking about: when one lacks a certain degree of control, one sometimes experiences the same free-wheeling, “what the heck” euphoria that drives a kid to buy another ticket to ride the triple-loop coaster.

You can’t help it. For every day when you re-connect with the reality that $300-a-week unemployment income won’t keep you in lattes and designer clothes … or a house … there comes another day when you laugh and tell your niece how beautiful the Blue Ridge Mountains appear from the back of a motorcycle.

So, Mike and I had one of those days recently; and we took our misguided joie de vie to see the new Harry Potter movie.

Alright, here’s the humiliating truth: I’m a PotHead. Yes, I read literature and recognize the clear limits of J.K. Rowling’s prose, just as any good cocktail-party-intellectual would do – but, honestly? The woman created a fabulous world, and I am awe-struck by the achievement and a devoted (and detail-oriented) fan. Wish I could pass that off as my eight year-old’s obsession, not mine, but I can’t. Have to own it, so I am.

Perhaps that is why I felt so ruthlessly betrayed, when, in the very first scene of the movie, the moguls-that-be showed Harry trying to pick up a busty waitress in a whistle stop café.

I didn’t actually yell “WHAT THE—?!?” in the theater, because I think that might be illegal behavior (and I can’t afford the ticket just now), but I was sure thinking it. They changed Harry Potter’s character.

They did it in the last scene, too – and I won’t mention how, because I hate to be a spoiler, but my fellow Potheads will know the problem when they see it.

They changed the character. How dare they do that?

I was moody (not the Mad-Eye sort, either) for the rest of the day. In fact, I’m still perturbed. But it made me think: here we are, at a coming-of-age junction (of sorts) with Whistle Corps. I have to grow the business, have to do it quickly, and that necessitates some changes: opening new markets, marketing with some renewed verve and enforcing some policies that I’m not used to being a stickler about.

But I’d better stay true to our character while we do it. We have clients we’ve been working with for ten years, in some cases. They know what to expect from us: they know our values and service standards. We’re like Hogwarts! Alright, maybe that last part is all in my mind, but, if I change the character of our business just to grow the franchise … well, people are known to walk out on that sort of thing.

Well, that’s it. Mike’s career with They-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has reached its official and very clinical end. Stockholders everywhere, rejoice. We wish you well.

Goodbyes said, the only thing left to do today was to ship his computer back to its somehow-more-efficient-now-they’ve-let-an-exceptional-employee-go-to-serve-their-slavish-devotion-to-some-made-up-bottom-line corporate sponsor.

Apologies for the semi-accidental spillage of editorial commentary. That was entirely my own vitriol, and I promise to act more grown up-ish in the future. When I can.

In the meantime, I took Mike’s computer up to our local pack-and-ship joint to, well, pack and ship it. I asked the man behind the counter if he would ship via FedEx using the company’s account number (relax, they approved the expense).

It came out, in the course of conversation, that Mike had been laid off and I was there to overnight the remains of a promising career. No big whoop, and it was not an emotional scene.

He packed the equipment and labeled the box. I took my wallet out to pay, but he shook his head and said, “No charge.”

“Oh, thank you,” I said, “but I can’t possibly accept that. You packed this box for me, and I want to pay you.”

“No. Look, I used old materials that I had sitting around.”

“Yeah, but—”

“The thing is,” he said, “I’ve been there too. That’s why I own my own store now. You can’t trust anybody else, and we got to stick together.”

I thanked him with whatever sincerity those two silly, overused words can convey, and he wished me a “better day”.

That was a small kindness, but so much appreciated for its inestimable personal value. That gentleman’s empathy gave me pause to recognize, again, why it is important to buy local (I could have gone to one of the box stores expecting to pay a lower price for packing) – but also why it is important to be a small business owner.

A telemarketing representative called the other day to glean my opinions on grocery store brands. Apparently, there’s another ‘Super*Cheap’o Mart’ coming to town. The opinion I gave was this: “I have recently come to the realization that cheap goods come at too high a price for me.”

And wasn’t I right? Because I just saved $15 and my faith in humanity by buying local!

That guy’s shop is called Copy Right, by the way: Timberwood Blvd., in Charlottesville (up there by Forest Lakes, next to Food Lion and Tuesday Morning). http://www.copyrightva.com/

He does good work.

Mike is dead man walking at his company. The They-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named global telecommunications empire he serves laid three working weeks between the “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you … to know you’re expendable,” message and his actual saved-spot on the unemployment line.

Ample notice, and we appreciate that. Ample time, as well, to transfer his workload and hard-earned contacts to overwhelmed co-workers; to write lists and clear, step-by-step instructions; and to field calls from supervisors, senior executives and other erstwhile decision-makers, in which they express their regrets. There was, apparently, nothing any of them could do. A random decision rolled down off the mountaintop, and Mike got in the way.

Three weeks. 15 working days, roughly 150 hours … 9000 individual moments which find Mike battling his inner playground mentality: the one that pulls back a slingshot band and shouts ‘Avenge me, you maties!’ in his ear.

Because, really, why should he help this company (a business he faithfully and tirelessly served) transition him out? Why soothe the aching consciences of still-employed managers? Or grit his teeth 9000 times to thank executives for this “opportunity” or that “experience”?

Because. That’s the way grown-ups do it.

Passive-aggressive vindication tactics are, apparently, the new trend in post-employee behavior. The two-week notice courtesy, for one, is out the door. Other niceties forsook. One can understand, perhaps even empathize: companies (especially large ones) have dehumanized their relationships with workers. There is no more stability; no more correlation between work and reward; no promises sacred enough to keep.

People are devalued, disenfranchised. Disgusted. And they want to strike back.

That’s understandable, but short-sighted. You see, we still need jobs. We need incomes. So we need to tell our ex-bosses that it’s okay for them to sleep well at night, that we’ll be alright and no harm’s done, anyway. Because we need their help to deliver us to the next opportunity (via recommendations, contacts, etc.).

Self-interest. Convince yourself of that, my friends, then move on up the high road – the only path that is paved with your enduring good reputation, and shaded by your own conscience at ease. What will resentment bring, but self-destruction? You can’t share your ulcers with an ex-boss, after all.

And the fact is, Mike did like his job. A lot. And it was a great opportunity: telecommuting allowed him to draw a big-city salary in our small-town community; he expanded his skill-set and made it to the table on time for dinner every evening. He met and worked with some really decent people. He received occasional performance bonuses. It was a great job, and it’s good for us to look past the layoff to remember that.

Yes. There’s got to be a way for us to reinstate the social contract; to remove the comfort of anonymity from corporate decision-making. We have to do that, because this environment we’re in is just plain old crap. None of us can thrive, and few survive, in it. So we must change it – leaving bitterness and vindication out of the discourse.

What is this mysterious way forward? I’m not sure. Maybe it’s small business. Maybe it’s that we business owners – how many of us felt forced, as I have, to regard entrepreneurship as a last stable career resort? – write a new contract of shared responsibility between ourselves, our customers and the people who work with us. Maybe we show the big guys how it’s really done: with dignity and humanity intact.