Early impressions

I met two men at the hotel (one was on the shuttle from the airport, the other was at the front desk) who both seemed in the same situation. One was a long haul truck driver whose rig was in the shop. He was very nervous about this because he was losing work days. The other man was telling the desk clerk that the iron in his room didn’t work. He was trying to iron his uniform and the iron blew up. Both men looked like they were in their early 60s and both looked like they were struggling to get by.

This morning I took the GoBus from Columbus to Parkersburg. There was another man in his early 60s on the bus sitting behind the bus driver, who was telling him what it was like to work for GoBus. How many hours you got, which expenses were covered, how many hours notice you got before a 3-day bus trip, and so on.

I get the feeling in America that many workers are so vulnerable, so powerless, so on the brink of financial disaster. I know retail is bad, but I think there are a lot of sectors where workers have no control over which days they work, how many hours they work, and so on. I can’t imagine the stress.
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