The Current Face of America

We reached the customer service counter at the same time last Sunday at Trader Joe's. I was there to return a basil plant that I'd bought as a gift for someone a few days earlier that was half-wilted from lack of water and got squished in my cart after I'd forgotten about it and loaded groceries on top of it.

I sensed an aggressiveness in her as she called out to the clerk first.

"Can I have a job application?" she asked him.

She was no kid and must have been years older than the average person working at that store.

"I have to do something," she told me as the customer service rep scouted around for an application. "I'll take anything."

Suddenly, she didn't seem so aggressive anymore, just desperate to eat and pay for a roof over her head and maybe buy a few nice things for herself.

I told her that the Census Bureau was looking for workers and if she didn't have a computer at home, then she could always go the library to take their online test that I had heard had fifteen or twenty questions. Her face brightened somewhat as she thanked me.

After she left, I went to the parking lot to look for her because I wanted to give her my card. I know what it's like to pound the pavement looking for a job and come up empty handed, and I would have been willing to look at some search engines for her, but it was too late. She was nowhere to be found.

Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernacke, said that the economy is improving but that joblessness would skid and grind for some time. This, unfortunately, is all too true.