Not Contesting Unemployment Claim. I may have done my former firm a slight injustice. Or not.
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Today, the firm that fired me for this blog and other websites, participated in a conference call with New Jersey Unemployment to determine the grounds for my dismissal. The office manager repeated the claim that I "associated the firm" with my views by linking to the firm thru my blog, and I both told the interviewer that there was NO link from my blog to the firm and no mention of the firm anywhere in it, and gave her the URL to this blog so she might herself do a search of the archives, which contain every single message ever posted (except a temporary message testing whether the blog was updating, which I deleted once I determined that it was working after all) so Unemployment can see for themselves that the firm's name NEVER appeared.
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The office manager (I think she prefers the term "administrator", so, fine) was reduced to making vague assertions such as that I mentioned that I worked for "a major Newark law firm" and told of a secretarial luncheon the firm hosted and showed pictures taken from that event, but the venue for that event was the Newark Club, which hosts many events, and anyone attending the Newark Club could have taken pictures from its windows.
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I was actually pleased to hear the office administrator's voice because we had had, before this rupture, a very cordial relationship, and I will miss the people I used to associate with. But it's time to move on.
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The office administrator made the point, expressly, that the firm is NOT contesting my application for unemployment benefits, and I hope the interviewer made note of that fact. I will grant the firm the benefit of the doubt, that they genuinely did not intend to contest my receiving benefits — but why did Unemployment feel such an interview was necessary? — and not that my entry to this blog yesterday made them aware of how shaky their position is.
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Still, I was done an injustice, am confronted with financial difficulties if I do not find work at a comparable pay level in these last few years before I retire (Social Security's payout is determined more heavily by one's income in the last few years of work than in earlier years), so I must still consider my legal options vis-a-vis human rights commissions, etc.
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Still, I had, before my firing, spoken with a couple of my (former) co-workers about wanting to make a change. One of them had asked herself the same question I had, whether there was anything else we could do that would bring in as much money, and concluded that given our skills and inclinations, working for lawyers brought in the most money.
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I don't want to work for lawyers again. I've worked in law for some 30 years (I don't know the exact figure, since the file-cabinet drawer that contains my resume has rusted shut; I'll have to pry it open to revise — I hadn't sent out any resumes in all the time I worked at my former firm because I had no desire to work elsewhere). And I don't want some other attorney asserting the right to punish me for my views expressed on the Internet. I don't want to be looking over my shoulder when I'm taking a principled stand, asking whether this can get me fired. I don't want anyone ever to have that kind of power over me. It's time for a change.
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It's actually sort of exciting to contemplate a new career after decades of doing the same thing. I was stunned at being fired, and realized in watching television last nite that perhaps one reason it was so surprising, other than that people you expect to have great respect for freedom of speech turned out not to, is that I had been fired ('I consider that you have quit') only once before in my entire life, in 1963, from my first job, at McDonald's. I then looked for work outside my immediate area, in New York, and found a job as a clerk-messenger in a documentary unit of ABC News, which set me on the road to moving to New York and all the other changes I made in my life. Now it's time to make yet other changes.
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Maybe I could get a real-estate license and try to get more gay men to move to Newark from New York, to enjoy a more relaxed lifestyle at much lower cost, as might as well help in Newark's revival. Maybe I could do website design. Between two such part-time careers, I might make enuf money to ensure I get a good payout from Social Security after retirement.
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But to be maximally effective, I should improve my command of the three 'foreign' languages I can read, Spanish, French, and Portuguese, so I can actually converse in them with potential customers. All this will take time and some additional education. I don't know what Unemployment says about seeking education/retraining rather than taking a new job right away, but, then, I won't know for seven days whether I will be awarded Unemployment benefits at all.
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With or without them, life goes on, and I will keep on fiting the good fite until the world is perfect!
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:36 AM