Why Retirees are Flocking to Peterborough

Why Retirees are Flocking to Peterborough

Related to my post below, you must see this…

Letter to Mr. Flaherty

“Any Job is a Good Job”

“I was brought up in a certain way,” Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said last week. “There is no bad job, the only bad job is not having a job. I drove a taxi, I refereed hockey. You do what you have to do to make a living.”  I read Mr. Flaherty’s proclamation some days ago and my head blew off.   I was beyond incensed when I read his words.  Take any job. 

So I decided to do the math: If I am to contribute to the family purse, after almost two decades in the professional world but after over a year of looking, I have to, according to good old Jim, at least consider a job that is not in my field.  When I looked around my geographical locale, I found a range of highly skilled (read: engineering, aeronautics and the like) jobs and a boatload of minimum wage retail / seasonal jobs available.  Well, it’s too late to be an engineer, so I skipped those and decided to work out what it would cost me to work a minimum wage job.

At $10.25 / hour, if I can get full time hours at 40 hours a week, I would earn $820 per 2 week pay period.  There would be federal income tax withhold of $109.54, provincial withhold of $43.68, CPP deduction of $34.17 and Employment Insurance deduction of $15.01.  This would leave me with a bi-weekly take home pay of $617.60, or a weekly budget of $308.80.

Registered and licensed daycare, even in an area likePeterborough, averages out at $35/day.  If I can find a suitable one and that is not allowing for early care, after care, or evening care, but thankfully I have a husband with flexible hours.  So a week of daycare is $175 (which is cheap – try living inToronto, where the average price is more like $300/week).  I would have $133.80 left for everything else: food, housing, etc…

Now someone is going to point out to me that I chose to have a child and that therefore, it’s more or less my problem.  Wrong again.  StatisticsCanada released their 2011 numbers this week: in 1971, 8% of the population was over the age of 65.  In 2011, that number has jumped to 14.8%.  So out of a population of 33.5 million Canadians, that’s almost 5 million seniors.  If we younger folks stop having kids, who do you think is going to pay for all this in the future?  Government is cutting back OAS pensions (or at least delaying when seniors can access it), which is delaying many from retiring.  Furthermore, the trend on the aging population is set to continue to increase over the next two decades. 

This is also assuming someone would hire me for one of these jobs.  A friend of mine, who is a teacher by profession and long experience, recently found herself out of work.  She applied at various minimum wage jobs with a ‘trimmed down’ resume and was turned down at every one.  Most did not bother with an excuse but one did and it was basically intimating that she was overqualified and would leave at the first opportunity, so why should they bother?  Well, Mr. Flaherty?  How do you respond to that?

None of these ‘costs’ factor in the very real cost to my ego.  Is that relevant, you ask, in the face of eating and keeping a roof over one’s head?  Yes, I do think it is very relevant.  It’s an unbelievably hard thing to go from being a contract consultant and a business owner to a barista.  I am not saying there is anything wrong with being a barista, or a clerk or a sales person, but why did I get the education I did and pursue the long hours of work I have worked to achieve the skills that I did if it was only to turn around and, as Andrew Coyne noted in his piece, “sling fries”* for a living?  What is the point in that?

As a self-employed person for the last decade, I haven’t paid in to EI and so am not entitled to any retraining opportunities, or any other help of any kind, so really the whole EI argument doesn’t apply to me.  But the ever changing economy versus the obvious trend in our demographics does apply to me, and to everyone else.  We need more than false rhetoric and inflammatory statements, Mr. Flaherty. 

*http://www.timescolonist.com/needs+reform+reform+what/6643172/story.html

I Read: “Why I’m Like This” by Cynthia Kaplan

There are a lot of books out there that I can relate to.

The Hours by Michael Cunningham resonates in a new way, every time I re-read it.

Pride and Prejudice is my “get me out of my reality” book.

The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx is my “life beyond my current reality is possible” book.

These aren’t ‘light’ reading. They’re not Dostoyevsky either, but they have a certain gravitas.

“Why I’m Like This” by Cynthia Kaplan is not heavy and it’s not fluff. It’s me.

Other than the chapter that focuses on her love for her grandmother (I didn’t really know either of mine), I felt a connection with Cynthia. She is me. I am her. Except I’m a gentile, but that’s just incidental to our humanity.

Her love for her son and the strain that emotion, and her episiotomy, put on her marriage resonated strongly with me. As did a line on page 62, referring to her 30th birthday dinner with a few friends: “The man whom I was vaguely dating stood me up, and I was forced to add another layer of false jollity on top of what was already a mille-feuille of pretense.” I love that line. I love people who admit that life isn’t always a barrel of monkeys and sometimes it just plain sucks.

Not inordinately popular, nor part of the pert and perky crowd, she lives her life. With all of the fears and falters in self confidence that I am fairly sure we all have at times, unless we are utterly fooling ourselves (and you know who you are).

When her son got very sick – pneumonia – and she described the fear she felt, I was there with her.

It’s a rare thing when someone can write about very real issues without any trace of malice or maudlin feelings. It’s a rare thing indeed. Thank you, Cynthia.

Can a Company Really Change?

I went to a corporate learning event recently: they invited members of the local business community and I was given the opportunity to participate. It was about a change the company made to alter the corporate culture around communication, which is very much my area of interest. They did a process evaluation and found that they were manufacturing their products in silos of function instead of a cross-functional creative process, the latter being far more effective in terms of use of time, resources and frankly, money. I used to be a business process consultant, in my previous life, and the unwillingness of business groups to share was the root problem I encountered at EVERY company I ever went in to to perform a process evaluation on, so it wasn’t any great surprise for me to hear that. People inherently want to guard their knowledge, for fear that they will be dispensable if they share.

Here’s what was surprising: the man leading the seminar said that with this kind of cultural change, there were 20% who were on board and happy to make the changes. There were 60% who were skeptical or ambivalent but went along with it because they didn’t want to rock the boat. (Up to this point, I was nodding my head in agreement, having witnessed this many times in the past). Then there were 20% who didn’t want to play ball but and I quote: “but who cares because they don’t produce much anyway”.

20% of your staff doesn’t matter because they don’t produce much anyway? I couldn’t decide if he meant it the way it sounded. Probably not, but it left me wondering: is corporate culture change just another evaluation point for the HR department or is it being viewed as a legitimate necessity by the executive for the company’s growth and financials?

The seminar leader did say that the executive was part of the 20% on board group, which is essential for this kind of change to work. If the leaders don’t buy it, it won’t sell. But his attitude towards the bottom 20% concerned me. He alluded to them as older workers, which he defined as 50+ and set in their ways. Of the “we’ve been doing it this way for 20 years and it has worked” variety. I guess what bothered me was the frank indifference to their position. Change is frightening. That’s why they call it “Change Management” and not “Like it or Lump it Management”. They claimed to be addressing the fact that people can’t be forced into change with the methodology they were using, but if 80% of your workforce is either going along with it grudgingly or not at all, it’s not really effective change management, is it?

Is there a better way? I think so. I think it’s better to create the change in one small place first, with strong executive and management support. Show the rest of the staff that there is an ACTUAL return on investment and how that same change could help them do their jobs better. Like I said before, people tend to want to guard their knowledge, and I understand that. Being known as something of an expert in a specific area is gratifying. It makes the long days and sometimes long nights worthwhile. The speaker was absolutely right when he said that you can’t force change. You have to show people the light, literally. But people are visual. Just because you say it will help them doesn’t mean they will believe you. For many, it’s one more thing to deal with on their already overburdened work schedules. It’s one more HR requirement to get that bonus or to be considered for promotion. It’s a tick box on the to do list.

Change needs to be more than that. People need to be inspired and motivated to change. People need to feel that their worth is not in their specific knowledge but in the sharing of that knowledge for the greater good of the organization. Not an easy sell, I grant you, but worthwhile for the companies that can get it right.

300 Word Challenge Dog House

It’s not easy being green.

Okay, not relevant.

Yet more procrastination.

I haven’t written my 300 words in three days. But I’ve been sick. And then we went to Toronto. Really.

So back to it tomorrow. Promise.

300 Word Challenge – Day 3 – Talking up a Storm

So when I started this 300 word a day challenge, I figured out pretty quickly that I was going to have to find a new way to write. I find it the stream of consciousness cadence and flow doesn’t lend itself to using a keyboard.

And then my new friend Kim suggested something amazing! She showed me the Dragon app. This app allows me to dictate my words, which it then processes and outputs into text that I can e-mail, tweet, or simply keep as a note.

This is going to be a lifesaver! (Thanks Kim!)

P.S. This post was created with Dragon

Job Trek IV ~ Understanding a Good Fit is a Two Way Street

Recently, I was invited to an interview for a job that I felt I was not fully qualified for.

Why did I apply? On a recent Tweet Chat on Twitter about jobs and job seeking, an HR tweeter advised readers that if you even meet 50% of the requirements / job specifications, apply: odds are that the company had put more qualifications than they were realistically expecting to get, in an attempt to weed out the very unqualified and find the candidate that most closely met their needs.

So, I applied.

The interview was… Short. And one of the highlights was meeting the resident Golden Lab. I knew almost right away that this wasn’t going to be a good fit. I had sudden memories of a previous job, where I worked for two young men who breathed techno fire. They truly believed that the medium WAS the message (sorry Marshall McLuhan, but that isn’t always true). I didn’t and in most instances, I still don’t believe that.

“Never the twain shall meet” should have been my mantra, then and now.

I would love to work for this organization, in another capacity, so I sent an email thank you note, as I always do. In the note, I alluded to the fact that it was clear that they needed a different person, someone who could hit the ground running with a specific skill set but that if they needed someone with my skill set, even on a part time basis, I would love to be considered.

Shoot myself in the foot? Maybe, but I feel comfortable that I recognized that this job wasn’t the right fit for me and that I wasn’t the right fit for the job. Knowing what you can and can’t do is half the battle these days, or is it just showing up? I’ll have to ask Woody Allen, if I ever meet him.

300 Word Challenge to Myself

I’ve been thinking about writing a book.

A book about buying and running a community newspaper, in small town Ontario.

A book that includes so many of the characters and interesting encounters we’ve had in the last decade.

What has stopped me? Every time I would think about it, I would feel overwhelmed by the prospect of writing a BOOK. A WHOLE BOOK. Really?

Then I read this:

“I think the most important thing I learned from Stephen King I learned as a teenager, reading King’s book of essays on horror and on writing, Danse Macabre. In there he points out that if you just write a page a day, just 300 words, at the end of a year you’d have a novel. It was immensely reassuring – suddenly something huge and impossible became strangely easy. As an adult, it’s how I’ve written books I haven’t had the time to write, like my children’s novel Coraline.”

From: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2012/04/popular-writers-stephen-king-interview.html

So today, I am starting my own 300 word challenge. 300 words a day. Can I do it? We’ll see. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: I’m revising my challenge (yes, already). I’m writing 300 words but not necessarily on the book. The 300 words can include posts to my blog and articles for other publications. After all, there are only so many hours in the day when I’m not playing the role of human jungle gym, chef, maid, chief hugger and bath giver.

On Turning 40

New Year’s Eve is a great time to reflect on life and the world, in general. Birthday’s are when I reflect on MY life.

And this is a big birthday. 40.

So I am reflecting a little.

I haven’t come up with much collected wisdom in my 40 years. Except this: regrets come from decisions made in fear.

Every decision I have ever made out of fear has resulted in a regret in my life.

When I was MUCH younger, I hurt someone I loved very badly. Out of fear that a third party would hurt both of us, physically. I have always regretted the pain that I caused and most particularly because that pain was caused because I was scared. Too scared to deal with the situation.

I regret the two and a half years I spent working for a certain company, a job I didn’t want but that I took out of fear. Fear of going broke. Fear of losing our home. When I had the job, I was afraid to leave it despite horrendous circumstances. I was afraid of being unemployed again.

I almost had the biggest regret imaginable because of fear. I almost didn’t have my daughter. Out of fear of childbirth and fear of being responsible for raising a human when I couldn’t keep care of a houseplant. Luckily, biology overcame fear and she was here to celebrate with me on Saturday night:

I was re-reading George Orwell’s “Down and Out in Paris and London” the other day and he makes a good point when he says that “It is altogether curious, your first contact with poverty. You have thought so much about poverty — it is the thing you have feared all your life, the thing you knew would happen to you sooner or later; and it, is all so utterly and prosaically different. You thought it would be quite simple; it is extraordinarily complicated. You thought it would be terrible; it is merely squalid and boring. It is the peculiar lowness of poverty that you discover first; the shifts that it puts you to, the complicated meanness, the crust-wiping… For, when you are approaching poverty, you make one discovery which outweighs some of the others. You discover boredom and mean complications and the beginnings of hunger, but you also discover the great redeeming feature of poverty: the fact that it annihilates the future. Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry. When you have a hundred francs in the world you are liable to the most craven panics. When you have only three francs you are quite indifferent; for three francs will feed you till tomorrow, and you cannot think further than that. You are bored, but you are not afraid. You think vaguely, ‘I shall be starving in a day or two — shocking, isn’t it?’ And then the mind wanders to other topics. A bread and margarine diet does, to some extent, provide its own anodyne. And there is another feeling that is a great consolation in poverty. I believe everyone who has been hard up has experienced it. It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs — and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.”

Words to remember when making decisions in fear.

The decisions I have made that I don’t regret often came from a leap of faith, which is just on the flip side of the fear coin. Buying a newspaper with my husband when neither of us had any experience in the field: that could have been a total disaster. And while it has not brought us ultimate riches and piles of diamonds, it allowed us a life that we wanted. No regrets there.

Marrying my husband in the first place. He annoys the crap out of me sometimes, as much as I annoy him, I suspect. But no regrets there.

So whether today is your birthday or not, whether you are 20 or 50, don’t let fear rule your life. You’ll regret it.

OPP’s Road Watch Program is Coming to a Town Near You…

Or rather a Township.

Word has it that the Township of Smith-Ennismore-Lakefield’s Council has approved the rollout of the OPP Road Watch program, slated to start at the end of June.

What is it? Well, it’s a program where you and I and the crochety mean guy peering from behind his threadbare curtain can file a notice with the police, if we observe aggressive or dangerous driving.

Now, there has been many a day when I wished for this service to be available. Like when the late teens testosterone infused male in his “Big Wheels” monster truck decides to spin his tires, squealing down the main drag of Lakefield. Or when the slightly older gent, both hands white knuckling the steering wheel (as this is the only part of him that I can see, I assume it was a gent. My apologies if I’m wrong about that) rolls from one edge of the lane to the other, going a mighty 34KMs/hour in a 60KM/hour zone. While his driving is not aggressive per se, I can honestly say that I have seen red being stuck behind one of these characters and it is only by the grace of having a preschooler in the back seat that I don’t end up screaming at him while flipping him off and bouncing my head on the ceiling of my car. (Can you tell that I am an equal opportunity ageist?)

But there is something off-putting about the fact that a police officer can stop you, look up your record, find these ‘citizen’ reports and zero tolerance your previously unblemished record into a full priced aggressive driving ticket, with all the accompanying points removal and insurance back slap that come with it.

I am not really comfortable with the idea of individuals who have not been hired or trained by anyone, contributing to my driving fate anonymously. The ‘reporters’ are known to the OPP, but I am not allowed to know who my accuser is. That just smacks of a breach of my civil liberties to me, and before you say it, I know that driving is a privilege. But it’s one that we pay a lot of taxes to have controlled by certain people with badges and … well, training.

A quick search on the Internet came up with no stats on whether this program really makes a difference to the area, but I’m going to keep and post again! Stay tuned!