Tough Luck
Introduction
So, the other day I spoke with a credit card company that I had a substantial
debt with.
After talking for almost half an hour explaining in detail all of the
hardships I have endured over the last ten years. I thought it would be
a great idea to sit down and write it all out and share it with others.
So here goes...
Oregon/College
I moved to Oregon after my father died in '94 and after my brother moved
up her in '95. Both he and my mother convinced me to move up her 'to keep
the family together.' and because it was 'just too much work for one person'.
Of course after moving up here, my mother moved back to CA and my brother
got married and moved out. Leaving me up here with 'too much work for
one person'. Well I got by and had a job at a titanium foundry in town
making engine parts for Boeing jets. Within a year there was a big lay
off and I was included. They did offer to pay for my first semester of
college for retraining. They had an Associates Degree program for Computer
User Support that I thought sounded good. Little did I know that whole
field would soon be out sourced to India.
Homeownership
In the economic chaos that followed 9/11 one of the good things was very
low interest rates on homes. I purchased my first house with a fixed 5%
thirty year loan. I was nervous, but had a good paying job and figured
I would never see an opportunity like this again my lifetime. Time was
running out for me and I was getting tired of the whole house shopping
experience. So I settled and bought a ten year old manufactured house
in a residential section of Lebanon. Right after signing the papers I
started moving my possessions in. I stayed at my mothers since she was
out of town at a dog show. Three days after buying my house I was working
graves at Target, came home at 3 am and went to bed only to be woken up
a few hours later by my sister in law telling me there had been a fire
at my house.
It seems that someone had kicked in my door and stole everything I owned
then set my house on fire.
This devastated me to say the least. Of course I immediately called my
insurance agent and the process began. I had planned on doing a home inventory
as I unpacked my belongings, but that was two days too late. So my suggestion
to everyone is to do a home inventory as soon as possible. Fortunately
for me, I had ACR (actual cost of replacement) insurance, which turned
out to be a godsend. The insurance company would replace all of my belongings
at the actual cost instead of depreciating each item. However there was
a catch. For example, say my couch was going to cost me one thousand dollars
to replace, they would give me three hundred dollars and as soon as I
provided the receipt they would give me the other seven hundred dollars.
It went on like this with all of my belongings. So from memory, I had
to come up with a list of my belongings, and I was provided with a check
for approximately $8000. Far short of my losses. Of course if you just
purchased a home, you are not sitting on a pile of cash, so I had to take
that initial check from the insurance company and pay off my credit cards
then go out and go shopping and max out all of my credit cards. I handed
in my receipts to the insurance company and wait for them to send me another
check so that I could repeat the process again. The catch is that the
insurance company only gives you sixty days to perform all of this so
they take their time in sending you any money. I had to keep on them with
repeated phone calls. If it was up to them they would have waited the
entire sixty days to pay me.
Add to this turmoil, the insurance company wanted to rebuild my ten year
old manufactured home at a cost of over 90k instead of replacing it for
79.5k. My title company said that their collateral was on the old home
and refused to replace it. When I told them that I would walk away since
I hadn't made a payment yet, they knew I wasn't bluffing and agreed to
allow me to replace it under certain criteria tho. I had an FHA loan so
there were certain things I had to have done to the first house in order
to qualify, like spending over four thousand dollars to have foundation
piers poured under each support and have it cross tied to hurricane standards
(in Oregon, like we ever get a hurricane here). That all came out with
the demolition, there was over $4000 wasted. Then I had to get two additional
appraisals done, one from the blue prints to make sure that the value
meet or exceeded the value of the original home, and one more after installation.
So for my first house I had to buy three appraisals at over $400 each.
While all of this was going on my insurance company put me up in the Phoenix
Inn Suites at a cost of one hundred dollars a night.
I spent the next two months re-purchasing all of my lost possessions and
playing the insurance receipt game and trying to get the process of replacing
my home under way. After the third month and as I was preparing to move
into my new home I was contacted by my insurance company with the news
that they were not going to pay for the last thirty days in the hotel
because they originally wanted to rebuild the house instead of replacing
it and that they could have accomplished that within thirty days so they
refused to pay the $3000 dollar bill for the last month of the hotel.
What a nice Christmas time surprise.
Finally, after three months of headache and turmoil I could at long last
move into my first home. I did get all new appliances and furniture, but
the trouble was far from worth the gain. One good thing, in fact the only
good thing I can about Target was that right after my house burned down
my senior group leader Andy Barnes approached me and told me that he was
going to get the ball rolling and get me access to the Target Teammate
Emergency Relief Fund. Five hundred dollars, tax free to use to buy new
clothes and what not. Which was very nice considering the fact that the
only thing I had was the clothes on my back. Nobody, even human resources
had ever even heard of this fund, but with Andy's help, it panned out
for me. Everybody disliked Andy, but I thought he was a very nice person
that helped me out immensely in a time when I was really down and out.
Aces in my book.
Target
One month after the September 11th disaster I got hired at the Target
warehouse and within a year was trained as a back up computer room technician.
I passed up job offers for computer support positions at the local hospital
where several of my college classmates were working because I was under
the impression that I was in line for the position that I so desired with
Target. This was going to be perfect, I planned on retiring form Target
with a nice secure job in the computer room.
There were several other techs but most were getting ready to retire and
I was assured of a position after one more person retired but I just had
to do the interview process to be all company compliant. I was the last
of the four to be interviewed and shortly after my interview, Lance, the
manager that told me I was a shoe in, died of leukemia complications.
His boss was called in to deal with replacing him and finish the hiring
process for the tech position. Instead of hiring me, who had just graduated
with a degree for that exact position, he decided to give the job to someone
else who admitted to me once that his experience with computers was basically
playing games with his daughter on the computer.
Changes
There were a lot of changes at Target, one of them was when they hired
an inexperienced restaurant manager named Denise Richards. She came in
as a butcher, to cut the fat and save the company money. She had it in
for me right from the beginning. There was a feeling of stress through
out the entire warehouse. People were being written up for the silliest
of things or for no reason whatsoever because their manager would make
up bold faced lies. I was written up for and eventually terminated for
creating a hostile workplace but there is more to the story than just
that. While putting pallets of freight away in the racks, I heard a conversation
over the radio about the receivers wrapping white shrink wrap around the
pallets of high security freight such as iPods and X Boxes. They had to
wrap the pallets in order for the cameras to track them as they traveled
through the warehouse. But we were responsible for removing the shrink
wrap prior to putting them in the racks. However the receivers had a history
of building pallets in such a manner that they were unstable unless they
were wrapped up. Imagine placing a pallet with thirty cases of X Boxes
on it worth over ten grand in racks forty to fifty feet off the ground
and all of the boxes are standing on end stacked four high. Common sense
dictates that stacked boxes would be more stable laying flat on their
widest surfaces than standing on edge. So, back to the radio conversation.
I spoke over the radio and stated that since they were 'high dollar, urinalysis
type items, it might be prudent to have the receivers put rubber bands
around the pallets in addition to the shrink wrap that we had to remove.
Well, apparently that comment (according to the group leader) created
a sense of fear amongst my co workers that they would not want to go into
that aisle if the act of damaging freight meant taking a pee test. I'm
telling you they had it in for me.
Lebanon Community Hospital
Fortunately for me, I started a second job at LCH as a housekeeper to
help with the mounting bills. Plus it would be a foot in the door for
an opportunity at a computer room job there. I had been applying there
for several years when I figured out that there was going to be chance
with Target. But had been looked over for people that were current employees.
I had applied and been rejected so many times I no longer got the personal
phone calls instead I would just receive the form letter in the form of
an e mail. It wasn't even personalized, just a computer generated form
letter. After six months of scrubbing toilets and emptying trash cans
for just over minimum wage, a job posting for a tech position at the coast
for the hospital came up. This would mean many things for me, either commute
3000 miles a month or sell my house in a down market or try to rent it
out. But then I would have to find a place at the coast that would accept
my dog and not break my bank, all during the middle of tourist season.
As it turns out, I didn't get the job, they gave it to someone from the
coast. Thats OK, because a month later another position in Corvallis opened
up when one of my fellow classmates moved back to Canada. Perfect. After
several weeks of hearing nothing I send a polite email to the person that
interviewed me, another fellow classmate, asking if I was still in the
running. He informed me that they had already made a decision and hired
someone else from outside the hospital with more experience. It seems
that since I waited for so long for the Target job to pan out I haven't
done anything since graduation and lack the experience.
In Summary
So that is where I stand right now.
A five year old college education, mounting student loans, credit card
debt that has doubled in the last six months from penalties and fees,
my income slashed to a third, and a part time job cleaning toilets and
emptying garbage. Not that I find the job demeaning or beneath me. I feel
any job that is done right and with pride is good. I just don't like the
condescending attitudes of people that don't think the same. People that
are money and power driven. They seem to think that a class system is
fine as long as they are further up the scale. The same people that wont
look you in the eye when passing you in the hall or even if they do they
still look down upon you as if to say 'you should have gone to college'.
At least I have a brand new house, even tho they raised the monthly payments
on me due to the fact that the property is valued at $60k more than when
I bought it and the taxes and insurance are built into the loan payments.
Its just too bad that it is in a state with the third highest unemployment
in the nation at over 12% and even if I did work forty hours a week I
still wouldn't make enough to make the house payment, let alone the increased
water and sewer bill, electricity, and food bills.
