The Economy

This was a 3x weekly and we did delivery by mail, so off the floor at a decent hour. It was a tiny shop (the publisher would sometimes cover one of the Friday football games) so they made sure to pick a night I wasn’t on basketball.

 

Yeah, but for the employer to be embarrassed people have to know where she works.

I can't honestly say anyone that sees me go in and out of my house knows where I work.

Just seems weird. A bad solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

 

My salary at my first job out of college I made $18K. I got an apartment that had a sliding rent scale based on income. I didn’t realize until much later that it was part of an affordable housing government program. It was a nice enough place and I was 22.

I was lucky and was ready to move around. I wanted to move around. Next job was a startup and the owners picked up much of the rent since it was a home office (in the 1990s!). The pay was like $24K but seems like a fortune with the rent deal.

 

In my single days, I rented a house with a succession of other media folks. At one point, a TV reporter lived there. He did a story about SNAP benefits raising the income ceiling to be eligible. He mentioned in passing in the newsroom that he was now eligible for food stamps. The news director damn near fired him for saying that and told him he would be fired if he used them.

Dude was making like $20,500 and had to buy and dry clean his own suits and shirts.

 

Do you think folks in Roane, Morgan, or Anderson counties don't know where other folks work?

 

There is a special place in hell for the family who owned the paper I worked for.

 

And that place is a never ending Kiwanis Club meeting complete with lukewarm chicken a la king for lunch, warm and flat caffeine-free Diet Coke and long renditions of the Kiwanis Club song.

 

I think this bunch was involved with Rotary or the Exchange Club!
The publisher brother was, anyway. The editor brother, who on the surface I despised because he had the news sense of a possum but who deep down I actually liked as a person, wouldn't have stooped to such mundane and secular endeavors.

 

If people didn’t know I lived in the projects before a paper canned me for that reason, I’d make sure they heard all about it afterwards.

 

I grew up in Anderson County. A few dozen people knew where my dad worked. Many less knew where he lived (an 860 sf, 2-bedroom house in a lower middle-class neighborhood). Many, many less would fill the venn diagram of knowing both. I don't believe the number would be close to statistically sufficient to embarrass Oak Ridge National Laboratory (or to be more precise, Union Carbide).

 

I obviously didn't pick out those locales out of hat when I replied to you. Maybe someone who has ties to ORNL or has lived most of their lives in south Florida or the greater Mecklenburg area isn't the best arbiter, but if you move east of Knoxville, folks know where their neighbors live and work.

 

And for the record, @BTExpress owns me at tip of the cap because I have covered high school football games at Oliver Springs, Coalfield, Oakdale, Wartburg, and Sunbright high schools. Not gonna lie, Sunbright kind of freaked me out.