On Loss: Steven Slater: I Get You. I Really Do.

If the name Steven Slater doesn't ring a bell, you've probably not been following the news reports about him these past few days. He's the Jet Blue Flight Attendant who got fed up with the conditions on the plane he had routinely boarded for work one day last week and got into it with a passenger over a carry on bag. The rest is a story for generations of disgruntled workers for years to come. He grabbed the intercom on the plane, said a few choice words, grabbed a beer and left via the emergency exit down the slide in a huff. And oh what a huff it was. He didn't hurt anyone. He didn't shoot anyone. He didn't threaten anyone. He just made a grand exit. Okay, he didn't put in a two week notice. But what fun would that have been? He's a celebrity now, at least for fifteen minutes, and I for one am a fan of his stunt.

Why? Well, I feel his pain, that's why. And apparently so does have the nation. Those who have lost their job (how do you do) and those who are stuck in jobs where they are mistreated and abused (you know who you are) can indeed relate to Slater's unique exit strategy.

The comedians are having a field day with the story. And why shouldn't they? This one had a happy ending compared to the disgruntled employee stories we usually read about. The employee gets canned and comes back in an hour with a handgun and you know the rest.

The thing that makes Steven Slater a hero in my book is that he didn't take out any innocent bystanders and yet his actions spoke louder than any shotgun blast ever could.

I've had enough.

Only recently did I speak to an acquaintance of mine who works for a popular airline and she was telling me how horrible flight attendants are treated by management. I can't imagine a job like that being too glamorous in the first place. Cramped quarters, serving mediocre food to passengers already pissed off and tired from a long flight in coach and the snobs up in first class can't get waited on fast enough. They got to pour those drinks during mild turbulence without spilling them on anybody. They're on their feet for pretty much the entire flight and they have to listen to everyone's complaint, big or small. If the plane goes through a rough patch of bad weather, nobody is yelling at the pilot. They yell at the flight attendant. And she or he is supposed to convey the complaint to the pilot after the plane has landed because these days the pilot is segregated from everyone else until the plane is no longer airborne.

These are just a few of the things my acquaintance shared with me when talking to me about her job as a flight attendant. Her famous last words before our conversation ended? "They don't care how they treat us. They know we need the job. Why would they care about how we feel?"

Sadly, this is the case with most run of the mill companies these days. I worked for a company that let me go after eight years of service for no other reason than they wanted to save money, cut costs and get rid of the old timers. Naturally I will not reveal the company's name here, but is it really necessary? The more I talk to people since I lost my job the more I'm hearing the same stories from others who have lost their livelihoods as well. They have experienced the same kind of loss I experience. It's a popular kind of loss these days. The loss of a job. Nothing hits you in the gut like a clumsily tossed grenade quite like the words "We are terminating you from the company."

I could see the writing on the wall for a while with my company. They had lowered their standards where respect toward their employees goes for a couple years prior. The writing was indeed on the wall.
Was what happened to me fair? I don't think so. Did I deserve to lose my livelihood because some junior upstart decided I was old and in the way? Hell no. And when I got let go that fateful day did I have the inclination to show myself out, walk to my car, get in it and then wait for my boss to walk out to his car  at the end of his day so I could run over him a half a dozen times with mine?  Sure. Did I act on that inclination? No. You didn't hear about it on the news. It didn't happen. I went home right after it happened and texted a few close friends and told them what had happened. Then I ordered a pizza and watched some back to back episodes of "I Love Lucy" on DVD. That's how I coped. That's how I coped that day, the day that it happened.

It was not a dramatic Steven Slater exit from my place of employment. I got let go. Steven Slater quit. Other than that, it sounds like the stress of our respective jobs was getting to both of us for awhile. Now that I am no longer with that company, that particular stress is gone. If you've ever had to go to work a nervous wreck every day wondering when you'd get the axe and then got it, you know what I'm talking about.  But that didn't mean it was over after I ate my double cheese pizza and watched some classic comedy to take off the edge.

The worse was yet to come. The sense of loss was so fresh, so great, so new, so horrible that the first thing I noticed was that I couldn't sleep and when I did I kept dreaming the scenario as it happened over and over again. "We are terminating you from the company." The words kept ringing in my ears. And what made it worse was just a month earlier I had suffered an even greater loss. The loss of my mom.

In my mind, the sonofabitch boss was kicking me when I was down and didn't care. What a douchebag he was. What a douchebag he probably still is. People like that do not change. They just get bigger egos and bigger heads to store them in.

Aside from the temporary inclination to run over him with my car, I didn't think any more about exacting revenge on the guy. I wasn't interested in ending up in prison or dying in a police shootout for such an idiotic cause. But that didn't mean I didn't hurt after it happened.

The first couple days after you lose your job are the hardest. You have to file for unemployment. You have to register for work with the state. You have to post your resume online with the unemployment agency. You and a million or so other people who are jobless as well. Never let it be said that you are not in good company when you find yourself unemployed. Not even close. At first it feels like you are because the wound is so fresh and new. But after you put it all into perspective, you realize you are a part of what I called in a previous post, "The New Majority."

You start collecting unemployment and thank God that you're getting some sort of income to live on. Then you realize you can't afford COBRA, even with President Obama's generous discount in effect, and then you find yourself uninsured. You start thinking about everything that is currently wrong with you health wise and then you start wondering what else could happen while you're uninsured that could end up being potentially fatal because you can't get decent health care anymore. You shudder to think how much out of pocket treatment will be for the simplest of maladies. Is that freckle on my wrist cancer? Is that lump a tumor? Am I getting forgetful because it's the onset of Alzheimers or is it just the stress of worrying about getting Alzheimers that is making me crazy? What if my cholesterol goes through the roof now that I can't get my Lipitor? How will I afford my migraine medication? What if I break a finger, an arm, a rib or a leg? How will I get my thyroid checked? The mind is like a bad neighborhood at night. Don't go there alone. Trust me. Take a friend if you're going to go that deep into your head.

But I did go there and my thoughts ran rampant during those first few weeks without insurance. I couldn't help it. I'm human. And I had never been without health insurance before. Now I knew how the rest of the country who had a lifetime of no insurance felt.

Eventually I settled down and quit obsessing about being sick or becoming that way. I did end up getting an upper respiratory infection that was easily treated with antibiotics prescribed to me by a kind doctor at a local clinic I now go to for a nominal monthly fee. But I did miss seeing my regular physician that I always took for granted. This much I know for sure. Quality health care is not free. At least not in this country it isn't. But that's an argument for another day.

The other thing that hammered feelings of worthlessness into my psyche in the days following my termination from my job was waking up that first Monday and having no place to go in the morning. I remember waking up and instinctively knowing it wasn't Saturday or Sunday and clomping around the kitchen looking for a coffee filter and putting coffee beans in the grinder and making coffee while the tape played over and over in my head: You don't have a job to go to today. You don't have a job to go to today. You don't have a job to go to today because they let you go, you asshole.

That's right. I called myself names while I made my coffee. I stood there in the kitchen and watched the water drip through the filter basket and waited the whole five minutes for the coffee to be done. I poured myself a cup and went into the living room, sat on the sofa and turned on the TV and started surfing channels like any fool with a remote does when they're bored. The programming choices during the day are interesting, to say the least. For years I was never home during the week to watch any of it. The View. Dr. Oz. Ellen. The Today Show. The Doctors. Wendy Williams. Tyra. Maury. Jerry Springer. Somebody new named Steve Wilkos. The afternoon news. Soap Operas. And, of course, the mother of all daytime shows, Oprah. Really? I thought. Is this as good as it gets now?

I think it was at that moment that I started to cry. It had finally pinched the nerve that hadn't been irritated yet. It was like air on a decaying tooth. And when I cried I cried for a good hour or more. I cried for losing my job, my health insurance and cried for losing my mother all over again. All wounds were freshly opened again and I cried so hard I hyperventilated. Then finally, I stopped. I had to stop. I mean, you can't cry forever. If you do you don't get anything else done. Life does go on.  It goes on despite loss of a parent, a job or health insurance. It goes on despite loss of worth and dignity and feelings of being needed or being smart. Life either goes on or you just die inside. I was not ready to die inside or out. I never even thought about suicide. Not my style. Despite life's nuts and bolts and roofs falling in and walls caving in I still love my life, even when there doesn't seem to be any reason to.  Why kill myself? I'm gonna stick around and make the rest of you miserable. Or I'm gonna laugh in the face of adversity and say WTF. Might as well live.

So I salute you, Steven Slater for the way you made your exit from an employer who did you wrong. You made me laugh and relate to you all in one fell swoop. Your days as a flight attendant for any airline are probably officially over, but I have a feeling you don't mind that at all.

Where to next, Steven Slater? I don't know what your future holds. I don't know what my future holds. But here's to no more bumpy rides and carry on bags that are too damn full to go in the overhead compartment.

Prepare for take off.  Now the sky is the limit. With or without wings.

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