Yes.

So they failed to deliver on a lot of the stuff they promised, he's the only guy in the entire factories QA department which means everyone hates, him, and the cost of living means hes making as much money as he had been before the promotion in pracitcal terms.

He also was supposed to have a team he was managing that never got delivered on.

To spare the blow by blow he had a mental break down, quit his job, and moved hard left.

Now at the same time. I was working for a unionized hotel.

I don't much care for unions, but the union rep lady was friendly enough, and the hotel was constantly claming to not have any money.

It's a mutbillion dollar international corporation that is owned by *another* multibillion dollar corporation

So i'm not a fand of the pleading poverty and me and the union lady kind of bond on that point.

I end up going to their meetings volunteering for stuff, and long story short I become a shop steward.

Which is an unpaid union rep that has an atual job on site.

Ah OK. I was going to ask what that was

once again sparing a lot of details I get fired from my job because of my union involvement. Which is highly illegal.

union steps up, and gets me reinstated with back pay. Which is good.

Unfortunatly, that was all they did.

I continued working there for five years or so after this. And I can most liken it to being a zombie. Managment treatement as an essentially dead entity that was still shuffling around the property.

The HR person took to calling people into her office and telling people how terrible I was.

Managment also made it known that staying in my work area and talking to me was not acceptable.

Wow, I'm so sorry that happened to you.

When I called my union rep and asked if this was some kind of harassment they told me in no uncertian terms that because I was a white a straight male there were no laws protecting me about workplace harassment.

I should also clarify that over the years the entire staff of the union changed, this included a non english speaking latina (despite the stereotpye of the hispanic housekeeper, most of the houskeepers around her speak primarily Russian), and a genderqueer guy.

How long ago was this? I thought that excuse is a current thing.

No it isn't. This was around four years ago now.

Why did you stay?

Well at this point i'd been working there seven years. So habit mostly.

Also the economy was still recovering.

And your brother?

He had a hard burn out

The pay was garbage, but the benefits package was pretty great. Union didn't have a thing to do with that.

Yeah it was really bad.

I had one too it was more gradual than his. I quit there to try to become a school bus driver.

But I failed out of that program, then lost another job. Then worked seasonally at a gift basaket place for six months.

But I was moving left politically because of the union stuff. Until it became clear they weren't going to follow up, and just kind of left me swinging in the breeze.

Bosses were coming after me for any infraction. It was a mess.

That jammed me further right than I have ever been.

Has your brother recovered from that?

Not really. He hasn't worked in a couple years now. It was really, really bad.

What was his reason for staying?

Him. Well. I think it was a gradual thing. He thought he was doing everything right. Up until he got promoted and things started falling apart.

Sometimes I feel like walking out of my place too. You get all women working together, you get drama.

And I'm guessing the union also pushed him left but he's still stuck there.

Also, back to our dad. He was the first member of our family to graduate from college. Up until his generation nobody even finished high school. So he was very insistant that we be persistant. All throughout our childhoods he didn't like us giving up on things.