As with VGs last year, Target is doing well enough nation wide, but not well enough in dumpy towns like Flint. So, our favorite store will be gone in less than two weeks. Not only is it conveniently located, Thomas and Frederick have a real affection for the place. [Thomas always intended to have it be his first job. He even applied last Summer, but too late, as all the student workers had got in ahead of him. There's another Target way across town, but he refused even to consider it. It was this store or a life of unemployment...] Many people who work there have worked there since we moved here--one security guard regularly asks after Thomas--she's always telling me she remembers him from when he was carted about in the child's seat of the shopping carts.
Last time I was there I asked a young guy who was restocking the milks what was going to happen to everyone. He said they were all offered the option to relocate and 40 people (mostly older full-timers) took that offer. That's the good news. The sad news is that they don't get to pick their relocation and are being scattered to the winds. The nearest place is the west coast of Michigan (which is where he is going) but he expressed concern that he won't earn enough to live well there. Others who have family ties to Flint can't move and so who knows what will happen to them. The part-timers, who are mostly high schoolers are, of course, not relocating so they will just be out of a job.
1 comment:
That is sad and hard to watch.. Bloody capitalism doesn't care. No wonder I live with the senior Cushing - who does care but not necessarily about the same things at the same time, with the same intensity. Hang on in there. At the moment I don't feel that the revolution is going to happen in the US very soon ( look at those mad men in Oregon). Or in the UK. But the world is bigger than us and there is a whole lot going on right across it. I hope it can work out something better.
xM
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