Got Jobs?

To the Editor:

Is anyone grateful here to just have a job? All I hear about are employers who don’t provide enough in salary and benefits. Anyone ever stop to think about what it means to own and run a business? What it costs us in our time, taxes, paperwork, mandates, etc? As the owners, we have to save for our own retirement, pay our loan back for the building we bought, property taxes, etc. With little to no work coming in, care to take a guess how we keep from bankruptcy — our savings and doing without vacations, buying only used vehicles, doing our own maintenance. We are so sick of hearing about how employers have it so good and the poor employees suffer. The school suffers, the town suffers because we fail to dig deeper into our pockets every budget.

All we hear from unions and government is that employees deserve more benefits. We respectfully disagree. Not all employees deserve them.

 We had a trusted employee who had his own key to our building, was trained by us, got full health care coverage, a cash bonus at Christmas, earned time and a half — all while running his own business using our utilities and supplies to work on his customers work, the same work he was getting paid to do for us, which is stealing from your employer. He went into our files, solicited our customers, claimed more experience than he really had and when he got caught, merely set up shop in his home, in violation of zoning regulations.

So when I hear about how badly the school budget is suffering, forgive me for not wanting to pay out even more for all the latest and best there is. So many people from poor communities seem to work hard, get educated and become successful with so much less. How can that be? Didn’t Bill Gates have only two years of college?

 We hear kids complain about parking spaces cost more. Well kids, that’s called spreading your wealth around. Taxpayers get called on to fork out more so why shouldn’t you? This year we don’t have any more but will be forced to.

Businesses who sell you shoes, computers, groceries, fix your cars all have to earn enough to pay for school and town employees salaries, health care, and retirement, so be careful who you don’t want in your neighborhood or nearby. All of us businesses should close our doors and give you something to really whine about.

Lee and Barbara Field

Serenity Lane, Sandy Hook                                              May 12, 2010