An article in Saturday’s Washington Post entitled: A Snack, a Slip and a Second Chance, tells the story of a man in his mid-30’s who, despite various disabilities, is supporting his wife and four children as a deli counter worker at a grocery store chain, The Safeway, in the Washington DC area.
Mr. Holland had worked for Safeway for 10 years before receiving full-time status and a raise. He has now been there 18 years — that is, until he was recently ‘let go’.
What did he do, you might ask?
Told to take a 10 minute break on a busy afternoon, he picked up a glazed donut and small carton of milk on the way to the break room, then he forgot to pay the $1.87 in his haste to return to the counter on time. The Safeway managers considered this a terminal breach of trust. Although Mr. Holland had not meant to ‘pocket’ his break snack as a freebie, his ‘punishment’ was severe: he received a humiliating reprimand, a fine of $50 and — he was fired by letter delivered his home.
When his uncle tried to speak for him, the man waited without result — for three hours — at the Safeway’s Administrative offices. Presumably, at that point, his uncle contacted the media in order to initiate one of media’s more beneficial roles: publicity of wrongful acts against our more vulnerable citizens. Only after Safeway ‘officials’ knew that the Post had his story did they agree to reinstate him.
Mr Holland is simply glad to have his job back.
After reading this article, I went on to read for school and learned an interesting fact:
By the year 2015 in this country, the pay ‘gap’ (an accurate term, I think, if one could also consider the Grand Canyon a ‘gap’) between worker and executive will approach that which existed during the reign of Louis XVI, circa 1789 — the beginning of the more famous (and less successful) French Revolution.
2015 is only seven years from now.
Considering things French, I suddenly remembered — Jean Valjean and his infamous loaf of bread!!
About one hundred years after the 1789 French Revolution, the socially and politically conscious French writer Victor Hugo wrote his well-known novel, Les Miserables. There is an eerie link between Mr. Holland and this novel’s protagonist, Jean Valjean, I think. Valjean as a young man, had been arrested and incarcerated after stealing a loaf of bread, worth a few centimes, to feed some hungry family members. He spent 19 years in prison for this (plus multiple escape attempts) and his life spun off, as a result, in extreme directions of punishment, deprivation, shame and redemption. The effect of Holland’s firing would have been catastrophic in this economic climate, had he not been reinstated — it took 18 years for his salary to reach $17/hour — probably not something even possible today, were he even to be hired with his disabiliy. With today’s sophisticated methods of discrimination, he may have found Welfare or disability a more feasible option.
Both vulnerable innocents, Valjean and Holland, had been subject to the full letter of and very little-to-no spirit of the law. This makes me wonder if history does repeat itself — sometimes.
I wonder if we will continue to just read the media accounts of the coming ‘recession’ which, I don’t know about you, but I felt coming on at the end of the 1990’s, as more and more adults and children suffer without adequate health-care, jobs, homes, food and maybe the root of it all — love — while those not affected watch the proceedings as if they are inevitable, as if those who have, have nothing to do with another’s deprivation and suffering.
Don’t we?
And if, as social, philosophical and even some economic scholars report — the ‘haves’ DO very much have something to do with why others ‘have not’ — How do we need to change what we do?
contemplatively yours,
ms. spincycle
