Listening Ears

Listening, listening.

There is anxiety in her voice, recalling the day spent at the MediCal office downtown and being clustered and crammed into a too-small, windowless office with uncomfortable chairs. 

She was there to get relief from crushing medical bills after a surgery. She keeps current on a $600 a month medical plan although she can't really afford it. It used to be decent coverage with modest out-of-pocket expenses. The monthly costs have gone up and the benefits have gone down, leaving her with a co-pay of thousands of dollars she was not expecting to owe. Former work buddies tell her they too have filed for MediCal assistance to help with co-pay expenses and they are working full time.

Her disability checks are small and almost cover rent and heat and water and garbage and food. She tells me about $5 Fridays at Safeway, where you can get a turkey breast almost $4 off.  She does ok, if the 14-year-old car she shares with her daughter doesn't need tires or brakes. Or if medical coverage plans stop covering actually what she needs them to cover.

This is how she came to be in the last place she ever expected to be. She worked 30 hard years to develop the skillsets she has, being both smart and educated. She has a polished resume showing job stability and has been on unemployment for nearly 2 years.  I don't know about everywhere, but here the job market is saturated with Administrative Assistants and employers can and are being choosy and cheap.

Most of her applications go unanswered. It is a toss-up whether the discrimination is age-related or earnings related. An employer can't come out and ask a person's age, but they can ask the high school graduation date. I have a calculator right here in my purse: let me get it.

Add to that the fact that nearly all job applications ask about prior earnings before it can be uploaded to a website.  So if you earned $25 an hour but suspect the job is paying $12, and you don't want to lie, typically that type of thing is addressed in the cover letter: ... for the right opportunity ...  my salary requirements are negotiable ...

She doesn't think the machines scanning resumes are sophisticated enough to include hers in the pile that makes it to the HR tech's desk. And when she does miraculously jump all the hurdles and lands an interview, the employers see a woman hobble into the room with her 5 week old hip and 50-something everything else. They're thinking about the costs to cover an older woman with visible health issues. How can polish and experience overcome that?

Is it unfair?  You bet.  Illegal?  Absolutely.  Also impossible to prove.  So I will stay a good listener for the phone calls that are coming. Unless something changes, there will be more of the same kind of day she just had.