The other day Eddie came to see me. He is a local merchant who comes in every now and then for his chocolate fix and a cup of coffee. We call him Eddie because as long as I remember he has been a fan of the old time actor, Eddie Constantine.
A couple of days ago, an AT&T rep goes to Eddie’s store to try to sell him more of her company’s services. When he refused to sign up, she starts to cry right there in front him. Eddie being a nice guy gets her a hot drink and some cookies and asks her what was going on with her that had caused her to cry. She tells him that she had been in real estate sales until six month earlier and now she was working for AT&T. Because of bad economy she could not sell real estate back then and now for the same reason she can not sell telecommunication services. She was under tremendous pressure to sell and no one was buying. She then asked Eddie where the nearest bar was and when he told her, she left Eddie walking in that direction.
Eddie also told me another similar story. This time the stressed out person was a poll taker. In general, storekeepers do not like poll takers to hang around their shops since they tend to distract potential customers from looking at their windows and also many people hurry to past them and miss the store altogether. So Eddie went to this poll taker and asked her to move away from the front of his store and no sooner he had said this that she starts to cry like a baby. Eddie being a nice guy had immediately given her a hot drink and some cookies. She told him that she was under a lot of pressure to collect signatures and she too asks Eddie to show her the way to the nearest bar.
It is very scary and alarming to read that most people living in this country are only two or three monthly paychecks away from becoming homeless.
It seems to me that we are all living to work and not working to live. Even our children are under more and more pressure from their parents and teachers to produce As and Bs. This has caused a lot of the kids to seek escape in alcohol and other drugs. The world has become one huge pressure cooker causing some of us who can stand the pressure to go on living but to have a warped lifestyle with nervous tendencies and those of us who can not, just to explode or get destroyed.
