Dear Coldwater Creek: I want justice NOW
It’s been about a month since I’ve blogged. My academic program has been requiring an immense amount of time and dedication in the form of rigorous literary analysis – which, I’ll admit, I am thoroughly enjoying – and, in lieu of a rising skepticism over any form of progressive liberalism, I have been considering my purpose as an activist.
But now I sit in my mother‘s apartment and reality has found a way to disturb my current devotion to Tolstoy.
The manager of the Coldwater Creek store where my mother has been working has just been fired. My mother told me the story: that after her manager was summoned behind a closed office door and informed that she would no longer have her job, she went to Panera Bread and just sat for two hours – shocked. After 6 years as the store manager, she has just been fired with no warning or reason, and she may not receive unemployment. She, as a single mom, is currently fighting for her unemployment benefits.
I am so confused, upset, and just genuinely frustrated, that I don’t know where to begin.
Maybe I could write to the Coldwater Creek company, and tell them about all the times I sat at that same Panera Bread alone on my lunch break with a bowl a soup that cost me about an hour of my labor – but I didn’t care because I was simply tired and wanted something warm to eat.
Maybe I could laugh at them and their stupid regulations and derisively inform them that the manager hired me when I was only 17, but despite the fact that she broke their rules, I earned just enough money to pay off what I owed from my first trip to Europe – the trip where, after riding on metros and trains, looking at all kinds of art, I decided that I would finish learning French and get the fuck out of the mall-ridden, control-the-masses through consumption culture. Maybe I should tell them that their rules are just conventions, and sometimes, really good things come from subverting really bad conventions.
Maybe I could tell them what my mom told me: that “everyone at the store is sad and we would all quit if we didn’t need the money.” I wonder, with their 6 + figure incomes, if they know what it’s like to need just a couple hundred more dollars for rent. Maybe I should tell them how much effort it takes to earn a bowl of soup.
Maybe I could threaten them with slander and boycott. I could tell them that I write for a blog with lots of readers – that I’ll rally my friends, allies, and sympathetic strangers against their stupid system. Maybe I should tell them how much shit-talking I can do.
Maybe I could tell them how fucked it is, that a woman, divorced and isolated, is left high and dry by a company built upon the economy of women. I’m sure there are a number of “isms” that can communicate this frustration. Maybe I should tell them that they are nothing but a tool for the Patriarchy.
Maybe I could write to them and tell them about the time when another stock worker and I unwrapped a pair of super-stretchy, ENORMOUS, black twillcotton pants and, laughing, we climbed in them, each of us fitting our entire body in one leg. We jumped around and stretched those fucking pants, giggling uncontrollably, until one of us tripped and we both fell. Maybe I should tell them that story. Maybe I should tell them just how much Ugly is in their clothes.
Fucking assholes.
My mom informed me that company policy requires a raise in employee’s wages after a year. She said this, and then lowered her eyes, and said that no one got raises last year because of “the economy.” I still don’t know why my mom’s wages are so low considering her level of education. I still don’t know why my mother might not be able to afford the cost of taking care of herself if something bad happens to her. I don’t understand it, but I can’t, and I refuse, to just accept this as reality. I want to see change, and I want to fucking see it now.
I don’t know if this means boycotting Coldwater Creek. I don’t know if this really is the fault of them as a company, society, the patriarchy, or any sort of abstract human entity or if it’s just the gross accumulation of thoughtlessness and arbitrary decisions under the circumstances of arbitrary accidents. I don’t know if this means even more radical social action. I just know that there is something Ugly about those clothes.
Honestly, I would feel more satisfied with a riot: with some sort of social alleviation of all this fucking tension. I would feel more satisfied knowing that these fucking companies are out of our community. These companies who exploit cheap, sweatshop labor, who expend immense amounts of fuel in transportation, who waste millions of tons of packaging as landfill, who force unfair competition with local small businesses and who fuck with the lives of their own hard-working employees. I would feel more satisfied if these fucking companies would just go away. It would be immensely satisfying to watch a stack of knit-top sweaters burn.
But I don’t know if that will ever happen. And if something radical happened would it be a good thing – would my former manager still have a job? Would my mom gain the support she needs? I don’t know how things get better. I’m tired of waiting and I want change, but I just don’t know if I have enough time in my life to see what real change looks like. Even Moses couldn’t live long enough to see his people die in the Promised Land.
My mom, my brother and I are going to have lunch with our former manager tomorrow. We bought her a birthday card and got the other workers to sign it for her with our best wishes. My mom typed a short, simple letter to send to the company, telling them that their former employee is a kind, honest, hard-working woman. I wonder who from the Coldwater Creek human services department will open the letter. There are no accusations or demands for justifications in my mother’s letter. Just six sentences. Just six simple, honest, sentences of admiration for another person’s spirit. All the acquiescence of injustice in a few words of gratitude.
I wonder if they recycle shredded paper.
The post stuns, stings and moves. It evokes propaganda images from my totalitarian(ish) childhood, of the American ruling class ‘having it’ at the expense of the oppressed workers. My own country’s ruling class was not doubt ‘having it’ too, and big time, but you’d need to literally start up a riot against them to lose your job.
That was, like, 30 years ago. The world’s been going through readjustments: regimes unfair to their people have been falling or transforming, generally in the direction that balances economic and social forces. Look at Brazil & Argentina; look at Europe; look at China; look at South Africa. My own country’s people lost a great deal of perks associated with living in the economic bubble but before that society found itself on the wrong side of the ILO black list (and in a social bubble) it paused – ok, not completely settled just yet – in a place it calls ‘fair’.
I am no longer sure what bubble has your society been living, and whether it can be effectively dealt with through extremes (riots vs. letters). Your post however gave me hope that 30 years on, your generation won’t give up on righting the wrongs.
Dimi
November 21, 2010
America has a long history of pretending to be better – more just, more egalitarian – than it is :) It might not have fooled many people abroad, but it’s the dominant myth here.
The best book I’ve read (as far as deconstructing the bubble) was Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States – and it might give you an extra ounce of hope to know that I have a friend whose high school actually used that as their history textbook.
qout
November 21, 2010
That book has been recommended to me by a number of different sources. Though my current professor – for whom, in terms of references to academic scholarships I hold much respect – has expressed considerable dislike for it.
yourgueule
November 22, 2010
I’ve heard good and bad from reputable academic sources. Makes me want to read it to see what the deal is.
kangent
November 22, 2010
I’ve heard the section on the Vietnam War is good, and the book covers parts of American history that are normally glossed over – but for a serious historian, the book is pretty poorly constructed, with an over-emphasis on Marxist-esque perspectives and secondary sources.
I’m afraid to read it, to be honest, because I have this stupid habit to believe what I read, even if I am skeptical of its authenticity. I’m also trying to understand Marxism better, and until I have time to go to the sources of reception and interpretation of German ideology, I worry I might not perceive the anachronisms that tend to permeate modern discourse on class history.
yourgueule
November 22, 2010
Yeah. What I appreciated was that he spelled out his approach in the first chapter. He’s very upfront about his ideology. IMO the “reliance on secondary sources” criticism – fully justified, but not worth dismissing him over (it makes him a time-saver, because not all of us have the time to READ multiple primary sources, and an overview works fine ..); and the “over-emphasis on Marxist-esque perspective” criticism is kind of “yes …??” because (a) he DOES disclose it; and (b) it’s quite a refreshing alternative to the interminable babble about capitalism, libertarianism and ayn-randianism that I’ve been subjected to from so many other fronts.
That’s my 2 cents. It was a worthwhile read, albeit not the Final Word on American History©.
qout
November 22, 2010
I’ve been boycotting Coldwater Creek for several years now. A few years ago I was furloughed from my job. I was desperate and Coldwater Creek had just moved into my town so I applied for a job…I got the job and was ready to start. Two days before my start date I received a call saying they could not offer me employment because of my credit score. My score was bad because of medical bills. Talk about kicking someone when they’re down.
Anika (@Dunberberberlee)
November 8, 2011
that’s fucking disgusting…
Anonymous
December 24, 2011