Main Street

Word on the Street: Angela and Carmen

Kimberly McMurray — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

“We have to laugh about it, you know? Because if we didn’t, we would spend all of our time crying.” The truth is, this member meeting has been full of laughter, even as their stories break my heart. I am sitting with Angela and Carmen in Angela’s apartment in suburban Pennsylvania. They are sisters. Both unemployed, both single mothers, both waiting for a break.

Angela and Carmen have always been very close. They spend afternoons (just like we are now) sitting in Angela’s kitchen, drinking homemade iced tea, and talking about the world. They lean on each other when times get tough. But what are you supposed to do when the person you lean on is struggling just as much as you are? Where are you supposed to turn?

Angela was laid off two years ago from her job in management. She sends out applications every week but has been unable to find anything. “At first, I only applied to management positions. I would list my salary requirements as the equivalent of what I was making at my last job. Now, I’ll flip burgers. I’ll make minimum wage.” After working hard for her entire adult life, Angela is struggling to survive. Because of bureaucratic red tape, she has not received unemployment benefits for months. She lost her house; she spent her daughter’s entire college savings. She worries about buying food, and in the winter, how to heat her apartment.

“I pray for a job. I cry watching television, but everywhere I turn, it seems like I am up against a brick wall.” But still, Angela serves us iced tea around her kitchen table and she and Carmen try to fight back that black cloud of unemployment and financial strain hanging over the apartment.

Carmen is a nurse. She was laid off two years ago from another job and decided to go back to school for her nursing degree to ride out the recession. Like most people, she believed that healthcare was a recession proof industry. After working hard through the entire program, she passed her boards and officially became an RN. She took a job at a nursing home but was laid off during her training period when she spoke up about the awful sanitary conditions in the facility. “There were bugs crawling on the patients during the night shift. I was trying to take care of them, but I never got the chance to do what I am supposed to do.”

Now, like her sister, she has been struggling to find a job. After investing almost $100,000 in nursing school, she can’t find anything. Every opening she finds requires 2-3 years experience. “I’ll volunteer during the training period, but no one is willing to give me a chance.” Carmen said that she panics when she thinks about the current unemployment benefits extension expiring in November. “In three months, I will have nothing.”

Not nothing, they will have each other. They have a family where everyone tries to come together. But it is hard when everyone is struggling.