ShareThisDear Dr. Fournier:
I just was "pink -slipped." I have a college degree and two masters degrees. I have worked for the same company for 16 years with excellent performance reviews, having done everything the world said would give me job security. I have taught these values to my children since they were able to listen and talk. Now I have to tell my children that everything I said to them about getting a good education is as worthless as the garbage I have been treated like. Where did I go wrong and what do I do now?
ASSESSMENT:
The news is bleak at best and the reports are for more companies and corporations to lay off more people.
Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Co., first used a pink slip. At the end of the workweek, assembly-line employees received a white slip indicating a satisfactory job or a pink slip for unsatisfactory work and "the boot."
Now, Ford and the other American vehicle manufacturers have not done their jobs well enough to be competitive and with foresight to "plan for a rainy day." They should be getting "pink-slipped." Instead, they are groveling for bailouts from the American taxpayer, along with company leaders in the housing and finance industry and what for? So they can continue flying around in million-dollar corporate jets and partying like rock stars leading bling-bling lifestyles that leave God, ethics and obligations to employees, vendors and the American public out of the equation all together.
It appears to many that having the proper education, being good at your job, and teaching your children ethics is useless because this country's leadership in business and government has a "I personally deserve a bling-bling life" mentality with no regard to others.
The desire for bling (flashy or elaborate jewelry, ornamented cell phones, plasma TVs, vacations at clubs in exotic locations, expensive import cars, excessively large houses, and mistresses) is to have more of it than your neighbor or co-worker so you cannot only "appear" but also feel more powerful and successful as if you have earned the right to break the laws when in reality, they have morphed into idol worshippers of avarice and greed.
We are so close to a Godless society, it is scary.
WHAT TO DO:
First, do not abandon teaching your children that education is important. They must learn now to plan and organize and become responsible for their own outcomes. Explain to them that school is their first job. They may not be paid in money yet they will be paid in the dividend of learning and how to take advantage of the opportunities presented to them. Explain that if they learn how to do this, they will fare much better as adults when they have to face adversities such as the one you are facing. They will be the ones that will be able to reinvent themselves and save the country from lechers. I believe that you are in for a life change from employee to leader and possibly entrepreneur.
Also take this opportunity to explain to your children what greed does to a person and to society and instruct them that as adults they are to care for friends, family and strangers in a way that will not bring pain and suffering as your former employer has done.
Regardless of this, explain to your children that while there will always be bad people they must make the most of their education now, which will help them prepare and change what is patently unfair in the world. Remind them that birth did not come with the guarantee that we'll never have problems, suffer hardships or be free from all strife.
As for you, if you received the proper education, you learned how to plan, organize, and develop strategies that will help you in just such a time as this. You must now build a new you by not taking time out to wallow in pity for "poor me." While my heart goes out to you, my head says, get with it and get or create for yourself another job and demonstrate resilience to your children. If you are as good as you say you were at this old job, you'll find someone that will appreciate your talent, even in a difficult economy and you will bring a loving God back into your children's lives.
(Write Dr. Yvonne Fournier, Fournier Learning Strategies Inc., 5900 Poplar, Memphis, Tenn. 38119. E-mail her at drfournier(at)hfhw.net)
HASSLE-FREE HOMEWORK
