Since today was so long and tiring, I don't feel much up to writing, but I want to, so I'll give it a shot.
We went to the court hearing today. What happens is, there's a lot of chairs, which the tenants and the board representatives sit at. Then there's two table, where whichever tenant and representative's turn it is to present their case. Then there's another, separate table in front of those two where the judge sits. So essentially, you've got to go over all this stuff in front of an audience.
The directions they gave to get there were wrong, too. The address was right, but they said it was the Remada, when it was the Best Western.
There were a few options that were given to us. One was free legal advice, and another was mediation. Mediation is where you talk to your representative privately and see if you can work something out. If you can't, you can still bring it before the judge. Basically, it gives you two chances instead of one, and it allows you to talk things over without and audience.
Mom took that offer, and she was the first person to do so.
Our representative didn't show up, but some other guy stepped up and took the role. Mediation didn't go too well... They don't really care how sympathetic your case is. They just want to know how likely it is that you can pay your bill. And we don't have much going on. Somehow, though, we got an extra five days. Normally, people get eleven days, but we've got sixteen. The other person that talked with him got an extra five days. I guess going through all that extra legal stuff gets you a bit of a reward.
When we were waiting in the lobby while our lawyer tried to find out why the person who was supposed to be our lawyer didn't show up (she was hospitalized!) some guy walked in and asked what was happening. When Mom told him, he wanted to know why people were falling behind on their rent. When Mom offered that people might lose their jobs, he said that you can always get a new job and that everyone needs to take responsibility for themselves.
U of G brat! He was wearing a U of G sweater, and the school is right next to this place. Well, I started broiling with an uncontainable rage, but before we could respond more than half a sentence, whoever it was he was waiting for showed up, and he whisked her straight out the door at a speed that seems difficult to believe, in retrospect.
GRRRR!!! GRRRR!!! You need a job to get money to go to school to get a job to get money. I know that's not my exact situation, but it's kind of an unjust system, am I right? I know I'm probably not shocking anyone here, but I'm burning mad to think the ones that get ahead are privileged brats that don't understand their advantage.
*Sigh*... But yeah, back in high school, I thought the world was a place where you only needed to find where you fit in. Now I understand that the foundation of our economy is based on broken dreams. I used to think that, if you did the right things, good things would happen to you. If you believe this, then obviously, people who have bad things happen to them must be doing the wrong things.
Otherwise, Melissa, who is a friend of Mom's, gave us a bunch of groceries. And Karen and Louise plan on giving us a bunch of groceries and a freezer. Louise always worries about us being offended by giving us help.
I kind of understand. In a World Issues class back in high school, when explaining why impoverished societies resent getting aid from other countries, my teacher said it was like, if somebody gave you a really nice Christmas present, who feels better, the person getting the nice gift, or the person giving it? The answer is, the person giving it. The person giving feels proud to have done a good deed, while the person receiving feels incompetent or selfish.
Sooo.... you have to understand that, when a person freely gives a gift, it's a gift to themselves as much as you, and the best thing you can do for them, and for yourself, is to enjoy it.
So yeah! I actually feel pretty good about receiving charity!
Me and Duncan worked at Louise's again, afterward. Duncan pitchforked open a trash bin, which I even failed at. Louise wanted holes to be formed in the bottom so that, when it rains, the water moves through. It's not really a trash bin, more of a storage bin, and before you ask, you can't put a lid on it. You'd understand if you saw it...
Didn't play my MMO today.
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There will always be jerks who believe that all you need to do to get a job is look. Most of the time, this is simply ignorance; sometimes it's also colored by their own experience. (After all, there are always people who can get a job simply by looking. No matter how bad it is for the average person, there will always be people who watch out for their own little group.)
ReplyDeleteYou can't really explain how it works to these people because they already have made up their minds. This isn't too much of a problem, unless you have the misfortune to be accosted by one (as you all were), or unless they happen to infiltrate government and decide that the part about "promot[ing] the general walfare" (or your national equivalent) was just rhetoric.
Bruce Hornsby: "As the man in the silk suit hurries by, he catches the poor old lady's eye. Just for fun he says, 'Get a job'."
Some of those people will never taste misfortune; that's how life goes. But some of them will, and they will be woefully unprepared for it. When they are actually forced to accept consequences, and perhaps even thrown out of their clique, they will realize most painfully what they never knew: a lot of people can never earn what had been handed to them, and they blew it.
That's a pretty good lesson you were taught about charity. I read it over a few times, and I like it.