The Emerald Rose

I’m 72 years old, good health, no life threatening condition on the horizon, and LOADED with a superior business background, long term team formation and leadership, and decision making ability and actual history.

SO. WHY IS there NOTHING BUT PRE-HIGH. SCHOOL LEVEL JOBS AVAILABLE  TO ME??

I started my “legal work life”  “shagging grocery carts in the parking lot of an A&P Super Market, at 14 years old. I would hate to think that my last job in life would be “shagging grocery carts” in Publix or Winn-Dixie Super Markets Parking lots.

I’m not through “contributing to this country’s growth and prosperity”, so don’t tell me, “that’s all there is for you at 72 years old!”. Not that it’s below me, or physically challenging for me, it’s just,….well a downright waste of my waning years, your paltry $8.00 per hour, no benefits (already got them, they are called a monthly well earned Social Security payment, that I EARNED for 45 years of working and paying FICA to get, a basically GREAT Medicare Medical plan, a small pension from a “post 65 year old job for, managing aRetail Chain Store for six years, and you are shortchanging MY country as well as yours, by telling me “shagging carts is the best you can do at your age!”

We are in this whole Social Security and health care conundrum because  “OUR GOVERNMENT”, borrowed” all of our retirement money, from the Social Security TRUST Fund, to fund the Vietnam Nam war, and other things, and never asked us, and now CAN’T  pay it back.

They tell me that your resume “should not be longer than two pages”, and be concise, and not more than a “few”jobs. Only a couple of highly credible “references”, (i.e. Dr. So and so, Judge Whatshisname, etc.) My Doctor and I don’t talk, (First of all He’s long dead, and secondly, because he slapped me on the butt when I was born for no good reason!) Don’t know any  Judges,  because I never had to go to court in my 72 years of “crime free living”! But beside that,….

Please tell me why you don’t want to know who I am, nor what I did, nor for the Companies that hired me! My mother-in-law used to think I was a gypsy because I did not follow the old adage of , “…….go to work for one company and stick with them until you “retire”.” I was wise enough to see the change in American business coming ,….and they are the ones that caused today’s problems of un-employment and created a new term, “under-employed”. All those “slick terms” are only the new “bullsh*t” of the “modern business era.

I’ve never been a real Union advocate, because I realized that every employee, individually had their own right to withhold or move their “personal services” elsewhere if they were not taken care of,…all they lost was a gold watch instead of the increase in their weekly paycheck! (Until they realized they still lost because even those who were not striving were getting the same increases!)

I have always been a strong advocate of the points brought forth by a Russian immigrant to the US, called Ayn Rand. If you have not read her masterpiece called “Atlas Shrugged”, do it! If it was ten, twenty or fifty yeas ago,…..REREAD it! It is the prophecy fulfilled on the conditions of today’s business. And the “ELITE” who keep taking their outrageous compensation packages, while all the while tightening the yoke on the “workers”. They disguise it in the shawl of “THEY”, (the government) are doing it to us, there’s nothing we can do about it,….we have to do it!!

I started this article with the plea, “I need your help,…..PLEASE!” . It’s not for me,….but OUR COUNTRY! Growing up my life expectancy was about 65 or so, and today it’s over 80 I understand.

But my question is simply, “Is that the best you can do WITH  me is ‘shagging carts in the Publix or Winn/Dixie parking lots?” I created small businesses, I paid for hundreds of  mouths over my years of “entrepreneurial”, and I would like to still be doing it, if YOU and today’s world had not lost their “faith” in entrepreneurial expertise and thinking.

The only “flaw” in our DNA is that we never stop pushing, (  nor trying to inspire others) to “try it”. AND, that like children with  ‘Attention Defeceit Disorder’ we work at 200% ALWAYS, but we need to be “rescued” from ourselves after every five or six years of “Entreprenuerial efforts”,…..or we CRASH!!

Small business is the life’s blood of America, our creativism, and our eventual greatness as a country is fueled by that core “fault” of being an entrepreneur! But don’t “….throw us in the parking lot to shag carts”. We CREATE, we provide initial GROWTH, we have the “LEADERSHIP skills and “DRIVE”, to “birth the baby, and nurture it to kindergarten,……but after that WE NEED YOU!

Help young “growing businesses”, and even “crazy ideas or concepts”, to grow and thrive. Those of us who are true ENTREPRENEURS, ……CAN’T move it beyond birth and nurturing til Kindergarten. We are limited by our ZEAL to do more, and squeeze as much as we can into our 80-90 years, we will find time to rest, and take vacations, but remember we don’t want “X” number of weeks a year, nor besides Christmas, and Thanksgiving” do we care about “paid day’s off”, we need health care, mostly for our families, and trying to sell us a retirement plan, or a 401K option is like speaking Arabic to us.

ALL WE WANT IS THE CHANCE TO CREATE AND GROW! We create our own rewards, and 4 days vacation, (5 if it’s a long distance) is more than enough, BUT when we need it ,we need it, just “suck it up Buttercup”,….now it’s your turn to keep us from a 15-20 career of “shagging carts” for $8.00 per hour. (By the way it used to be only $1.65 a hour,……but it still ain’t a “career opportunity as far as I can see!

-30-

7/24/2017