‘Thank You for Freeing Me from My ‘Job Lock’ President Obama!’
by Larry Carver, former UPS Employee,
Dear President Obama and Congress,
As of 3:22 PM, last Friday, I ceased being an employee of the United Parcel Service.
My mornings used to begin at 4:45 AM. I’d wake up, pour coffee, have my orange juice, bagel and eggs, leave cereal out for my wife and kids, and head in to my job at the United Parcel Service (UPS). I kissed my wife and kids goodbye at 6:00 AM, sometimes as they were waking up for school, or still asleep. Then I drove 15 miles to board a UPS truck that would determine my route in a 30-mile radius for the rest of the morning, beginning at 6:45 AM. At 1:30 in the afternoon I would return to the UPS office, my truck empty. Then I would change clothes for my coaching job at my son’s high school. I was (and am) paid very little to coach high school soccer. Now, thanks to you, President Obama, I am relying on that scant amount of “soccer payment” to pay my family’s bills.
The United Parcel Service “let go of me” last month, Mr. Obama, claiming that government mandated increases in healthcare benefits and coverage were forcing them to force out established, long-term employees like me, and that I was not able to be “held on to” anymore now that the Affordable Care Act was taking affect. I was fired. Fired from a job I loved, was dedicated to, and loyal to. Your “Obamacare” cost me my job, Mr. President. …But on that, surprisingly, I say this: Hallelujah!
Throughout the last few weeks I’ve heard you and fellow Democrats talk about something called “job lock.” Basically, “job lock” is when a person is “locked” into a job they hate or do not want because of the healthcare benefits it provides. The growing mantra is that Obamacare’s implementation, which according to the Congressional Budget Office, will cost over 2.3 million American jobs (minus the hundreds of thousands it has cost already), will “free people” to do what they finally want, all because they now have nationalized healthcare and won’t have to be held as a virtual slave to the job that had provided them healthcare insurance coverage.
And come to find out, Mr. Obama, being “freed” from my “job lock” at UPS has actually done what you, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the rest of your all said! I’m finally allowed the freedom to do what I really, really want in life (unlike work that degrading UPS job that once supported it!). Why, just the other morning I walked out of my house after my wife and kids, and went down to the local music store and bought that guitar (cost me $499.99 –no way in the world I could afford it now) I always wanted. I spent the rest of the day attempting to play “Stairway to Heaven” on the street outside of my local Starbucks. I walked home with all of $9.55, about 1/3rd in a day than what I made at UPS in an hour, with half the day left to coach my kids’ team AND help make dinner. Oh, and about couching my younger son’s softball team? Screw that! I don’t want to do that anymore, either! So why should I? Being a responsible parent is a sort of “job lock”, too! So, forget that!
But thanks to my lack of “job lock” you and your party have liberated me from, Mr. Obama, I now know what spending my days looking for four-leafed clovers in my local community playground feels like. I haven’t found a four-leaf clover yet, or have made a penny doing it. But HEY!…at least I’m finally free to do what I really want.
The other day the electricity and car insurance bills were due, and guess what? They weren’t paid. Ha! It was great, President Obama, Senator Schumer, Rep. Pelosi…! Oh, yeah, we now are driving our cars illegally and will have to start breaking apart family furniture for the fireplace that hasn’t been used in ten years next month….but hey, I’m not stuck in JOB LOCK!!!
The other day I checked our refrigerator and my bank account…ha, both empty. So being the new “liberated”, unshackled man that Obamacare has allowed me to be, I did the thing I’ve always wanted to do: dumpster-dived!! And hey, Obama, ain’t nothing more satisfying than the taste of six three-quarter-eaten Big Macs (for the whole family, no less!). Hey, we’d go with Ramen noodles, but we’re very sodium-conscious. Besides that, a little case of salmonella would help the wife and I lose weight, which we’ve needed to do for a while.
I also never knew the joy I’d get from sleeping in. I used to have to go to bed between 9 and 10 PM. Now the wife and kids are asleep, and I’m on my son’s Xbox. I was always partial to gaming, but these games today are such a far cry from the ATARI I grew up with. Did you know all these games now have a point of view, or what they call “POV” ability, and that I can play complete strangers around the country and talk to them while we battle each other? Wow! While the kids sleep for school, we newly liberated from “job lock” moms and dads get on line and play our hearts out (and me especially, since I have that power generator out back giving us electricity now). Man, but have I always wanted to shoot some mutant, zombie British Revolutionary War soldier in the face with a machine-gun-rocket-thing!
And that’s my point, Mr. President, Mr. Vice President and Mr. Pelosi: being laid-off due to your ACA/Obamacare has freed me from the slavish job that once paid my bills, but that I didn’t really like. From laying on benches in the park, to planting spy cams in women’s public bathrooms, to playing a guitar all day for only a few bucks, video gaming, sleeping, sleeping and more sleeping, stealing my son’s pot for myself, and digging for food in dumpsters, I must say, being “liberated” from job lock is something that has changed my life. But at least I still have health insurance.
It’s changing my whole family’s life, too, as my wife has filed for divorce. Don’t worry, honey, once you’re out of this “marital lock”, you’ll be a free as a bird. …I mean, poor, humiliated and destitute as ass, but still free to do whatever you want, whenever you want. That’s what’s really important in today’s America.
