Growing Edges
Aja-lexaArchive for Random
Business is Business
My friend just found out that today is her last day at work. She has been laid off.
Again.
Working in the mortgage industry these days is a shaky prospect, to be sure. In the last two years, she has been a top performer and reliable loan processor at two mortgage companies, only to become a casualty of a failing housing market.
And today, the employer who hired her as a 3-month temp nine months ago and told her they would make her permanent in January has decided that she was dispensable.
She is a single mother, working hard to care for her children.
She is wise with her finances and a woman of integrity, who just happens to have years and years of experience in an industry that is failing her now.
I wish such things were taken into consideration when the layoffs must happen. Then I remember that the “bottom line” is no respecter of persons. And that sucks.
© Alexa Lopez, 2010
Desperate Measures
My fingertips are more prone than the average person’s to crack open and bleed during wintertime or any other time of year.
I have yet to find the magical topical solution for this.
Even as a child, the soles of my feet cracked open and bled, which brought about a semi-regular nightly ritual my mom had for me: slathering A&D ointment on my feet and putting socks over them before sending me to bed.
By the time I left work for the day a few weeks back, six of my ten digits were bandaged (don’t want to bleed on the customers’ groceries as I’m ringing them through at TJ’s). My fingers throbbed that evening as I lay down to sleep, and they still throbbed the next morning despite my trying a Bag Balm/cotton glove combination while I slept.
Oh, so painful!
“When have I ever not had this problem?” I asked myself.I remembered that when I have nails, my fingertips take less of a beating and they are less dry.
Only I can’t grow nails because my nail beds are flat and thin. It’s a genetic thing.
And I stopped wearing fake nails nearly two decades ago because it seemed more about vanity than anything else. Not to mention that I’m not a dainty, delicate woman and I work a lot with my hands…not a promising combination for keeping pretty nails.
Desperate, I went to a nail salon and got a full set of acrylic nails for my very sore hands.
It has been a month. My fingertips are not cracked; my cuticles are not bloody, and I am not in pain.
It has been worth it.
Now, let’s see how “worth it” I deem this whole thing when my computer class starts later today.
© Alexa Lopez, 2010
