When I saw your "
Out of Work" article (March 11), with its huge, awesome photograph and a title and subject I could relate to, I immediately picked up the paper.
Losing my job was one of the most serious and dreadful experiences I have ever had, so I felt relieved by the connection to your story. But after the writer described how "a court employee hand-delivers a foreclosure notice to my door," I wondered about his previous year's financial decisions. As I continued reading, my husband came home from his job, where he's worked 12 hours a day for the past three months, making about the same as he did collecting unemployment.
The writer is a reflection of a truly inept human being who feels entitled and is incredibly insensitive.
As for my side of the street, we once made six figures. As I did my taxes for 2010, however, I cried. We made less together in our fifties than I did alone in my early twenties. Money I saved for retirement was cut in half by incompetent money managers and banks who ripped everybody off.
We learned a lot, though: how to save, to shop at the Dollar Store, to stop drinking anything besides water, to eat at home and feel fortunate that we still made the mortgage and paid all the utility bills. We lost a stove, a refrigerator, and a washing machine. Oh, we also lost weight.
There are so many of us who have a story. What made you pick a person with such a total lack of insight, and an inability to accept what we all did? He couldn't be a census worker because he was so fat that he couldn't work? He was fat because he had no job?
This guy has fried eggs for brains. If his wife was actually a nurse, she could support the family, sore neck and all.
Kelan Putnam
Woonsocket, RI
