I posted nothing in 2013...

I'm thinking about coming back to this because my posts are too long for Facebook, let alone Twitter.  I'm a wordy old fart. As I get older, Facebook has less friends and more family and former co-workers. I don't feel comfortable posting my leftist rants there, which is bullshit, but whatever. Also, I post music I like there and get crickets in response. Not saying I ever got a huge response here, but I never minded.

Originally, this "blogspot" was a way to communicate with the woman who would become my wife when we were living 6 hours apart. When we moved in together, there was less of a reason to post here. A couple weeks ago, Facebook said my wife liked some local realtor's listing for a 3bd house around here. I asked her why she was liking that, and she said she didn't. Turns out it was a "sponsored post," where Facebook impersonates my wife and tries to influence me. That's not advertising, that's infiltration.

I wanted to delete my Facebook account, but there's a guy with my same name in my general area, and listed in his publicly available profile is that he and his wife are swingers. My sister thought I was him years ago because his profile pic was a pair of speakers and I'm into electronic music, so therefore...

In this age of corporate totalitarianism, one wants to avoid all controversy, lest one lose out on employment, promotions, professional esteem, etc...

Speaking of employment, my wife is newly unemployed as of this week. It's actually a fucked up story. She wants to be a good person and do good-people-type work, so she started volunteering at a local hospice. After a year or so, there was an opening in her field of work, and she was encouraged to apply. She landed the job. Her salary went from ~$25k/year at her old job to ~$34k/year at this new one. We were actually thinking about buying property (probably a 2bd condo, not a 3bd house).

But here we are, just over 6months later, and it's turned to shit. Turns out, the company was defrauding Medicare for a few years, was investigated in 2011, and the CEO/owner was indicated this past January.  This is real - check it out.  No one knew he was being indicted. My wife happened to be working from home due to a bad snowstorm, and was checking the local weather, and there was her boss's boss, right on the front page of the Chicago Sun Times website. My wife's boss didn't know. No one in that office seemed to know.

Within two weeks, there were layoffs. That group of people were the lucky ones. They were laid off that payday, a Friday, and we were surprised/relieved to find that there was indeed a paycheck that week.  The following Monday, Medicare officially refused to pay the hospice anymore. There were rumors that a national hospice chain was going to buy them out. On that Weds, my wife's coworkers were being rejected when they tried to give doctors and pharmacists their health insurance card. It turns out that the hospice had been deducting health insurance costs from everyone's paychecks, but had not actually paid the health insurer in months.

During this period we had learned that the hospice - which doesn't have it's own medical facility, but instead specializes in "renting" space and equipment from the nursing homes that the patients were already staying in (Apparently this arrangement is the "new thing" for hospice care.) - had not paid many of it's nursing home/landlord/clients since 2012. Many of the nursing homes in the area had pretty much blacklisted this hospice for non-payment. As you can imagine, no company wanted to buy this huge pile of debt obligations - it would cost too much even at a price of zero dollars.  Hell, they could PAY YOU to take the company and you'd still end up screwed.

So! - after not paying health insurance for months, after not paying "rent" to nursing homes that it depends on for business for over a year, after not paying its freaking PHONE BILLS and being told the phones were about to be SHUT OFF, the place was going down fast. Supposedly there's a law that anytime an employer in this area lays off 50+ employees, it must serve 60 days notice to the state. The hospice did not do that. The hospice also did not have any contingency plan in place to take care of/transfer it's hundreds of remaining hospice patients.

So what's an unethical, morally bankrupt, private, for-profit corporation to do? Make everyone left, including my wife, work an extra week, knowing full well that you will not be able to pay them come payday!  We kind of figured this, but many of her coworkers had no idea that was even a possibility. Many of her coworkers did not know just how dire the situation was. Everyone knew the company was closing down, everyone knew they'd be laid off "soon," but no one thought that the people left running the company (the owner/CEO was barred from having anything to do with the business by judge's order) would have them work knowing full well they could not pay them.  They even made a point to let everyone know that if they quit showing up to work, they would be "fired," and that being fired means you don't get unemployment benefits.

But can you really fire someone for not working when you have no intention of paying them?  Sure enough, the following payday, there was no pay, just lay off letters.

Now at my place of employment, which is a giant company, the paychecks we get on Thursday pay us up to the previous Saturday.  Unbeknownst to me, (but known to my wife), this place paid an extra 2 weeks behind.  So when she started working there, it took her a month to get paid, and when she didn't get paid last Thursday, that was actually for work from 3 and 4 weeks ago.

So we are screwed out of 4 weeks of wages, PLUS the health insurance money that was deducted but not turned over to the health insurance company, PLUS her vacation pay, which by law the company is required to pay everyone, but there's NO MONEY.

Sadly, it's not even worth suing for.  The corporation, the LLC entity, is busted.  $0 balance. Owes EVERYONE money.  The owner will likely be found guilty, and the government will demand restitution of the stolen Medicare funds which are more than his entire estate I'm sure.  His father, who is also part owner in the company and also runs a chain of nursing homes, is also supposedly being investigated AND rumor has it has defaulted on 2 nursing homes and recently put his house up for sale. I have a feeling suing these guys for lost wages will be like squeezing blood from the turnip, especially since, if I'm not mistaken, the government gets its money first. (Which I understand, and I'm not shaking my fist at the government over this).

Fortunately, I'm off wiener duty, and the company I work for is robust and expanding. I like my new job, I'm a data analyst of sorts (and I'm sure I could never be an analyst for any other company), it pays well, and I'm pretty happy with it.

I think part of the reason I quit writing was that being on wiener duty crushed me to the point where I felt like my thoughts, opinions, likes, dislikes, etc. didn't matter. I think I can honestly say that I've talked to a million people in the last 7 years, and that can really screw with your sense of self, especially when you're in a role of subservience to the general public. You have no idea just how dumb people can be until you've plunged yourself face first into a flowing river of dicks everyday for years, and years, and years...