On October 2, my best friend Katy posted this item to Facebook:
“Katy Lynn Todd is feeling thankful.
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October 2 at 5:25 PM
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Well sadly I was laid off from my job yesterday. I will miss everyone, and miss the routine of work. But I will have a new job soon, whether it be in production at the same place or somewhere else, I will be looking. Thanks to all my former co-workers in all departments. I enjoyed working with you and learning new things from how to run an entire program, to how to do different things in production. I wouldn’t have those skills without you guys. And I have made some awesome friends!”
Nine days later, Katy posted this item to Facebook:
“Katy Lynn Todd is feeling hopeful.
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October 11 at 5:24 PM
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Well I get one more week off before I’m back at work where I started. Hahaha just proves life is pretty crazy sometimes. The good news is I’ll now have lots of reading time while I’m sitting in production! And I do enjoy working with my hands. Not what I expected, but I am very glad I will have a job and who knows what will come next.”
Let me aluminate the in-between moments for y’all. Katy was laid off from her position at the Seattle Lighthouse for the Blind on October 1. 20 days from that time (tomorrow), she will be returning to the Seattle Lighthouse for the Blind to take the entry level job that she had when she first arrived there.
Katy was very magnanimous in her first FB post. A lot of the hurt and sorrow she expressed to me privately was not reflected in her public-facing comments. This is understandable. After she was laid off, she instantly understood that she would have to return to the SLB if she wanted to be employed any time soon.
I, of course, was livid. I was enraged, not only at the fact that she was laid off, but at how it was done. As Katy explained it to me, a rep from HR came into her office after lunch and told her that she was being laid off, along with 21 other employees. Her direct supervisor was also in attendance via Zoom. She was taken completely by surprise. She had no idea the layoff was coming. She was ordered to collect her personal items. Then, she was hurriedly shepherded from the building, put into a cab, and sent directly home. She was not allowed to say goodbye to any of her coworkers, many of whom learned about her termination later on social media.
Let me reiterate that Katy was laid off. She was not fired due to behavioral issues. The termination happened through no fault of her own. As Katy put it, “I was treated like a criminal when I left.” Katy further stated, “I don’t understand why they didn’t just demote me and let me stay. I would’ve rather taken the cut in pay and gone right back to work.”
Let me further explain that Katy gave up a perfectly good life in Denver to move to Seattle to take a job at the SLB. She is not a career ladder climber. As she said in her post, she enjoys production work and was generally content on the production floor. She did not seek advancement or promotion. She was sought out by three upper level staffers and was urged to apply for a job that paid better, a job that was created just for her, so that she could make more money. She was often asked to perform extra tasks, such as braille production, without being properly compensated for them. When she raised the question of being paid for her efforts, she was told to, “Be a team player.” When the company’s bottom line took a turn for the worse, Katy’s job was slashed from the budget to save money.
I don’t think I’m engaging in hyperbole or misstating the facts when I say that Katy was plucked from the production floor, pushed up the ladder by her superiors, and then conveniently kicked out of an upper story window when it served the company’s purposes.
Tomorrow, Katy is going back to the place where she was unceremoniously terminated three weeks ago. She has no choice. Like most adults, Katy needs to pay her bills, maintain a roof over her head and keep Coke in her fridge. Unlike most sighted adults, Katy cannot take a temporary job driving for Uber, working at McDonald’s or stocking shelves at Safeway. Blind people don’t have access to the vast array of entry level jobs that the sighted have. So, she’s going back to work at SLB.
Sidebar: I use Uber a lot and I often ask the drivers if Uber is their primary job. Most of them say no. A few have told me that Uber is merely temporary, because they are in between jobs. Some have told me they were unexpectedly laid off and they have to make ends meet. Good for them.
Perhaps you can better understand why I’m so infuriated. You can also understand why Katy’s temporary farewell post displayed a level of graciousness that, frankly, the upper management at the SLB don’t deserve.
Her story is not a new one. After she was put on the street, I was reminded of an episode that I call, Bloody Christmas. It happened in December of 2019, when 13 employees of Outlook Nebraska were also laid off. Some of them came back to Outlook, but many did not. One of them, who was a competent and well-loved tech trainer, still works at the Marriott call center here in Omaha. Others, like my pal Rachel, left Outlook voluntarily to advance her career, only to find herself back on the bottom rung of the Outlook ladder when circumstances turned against her. Rachel is a supremely overqualified woman packing toilet paper in a segregated job so that she can put food on the table for her family and fix the plumbing in her house.
I can anticipate the obvious rebuttals. “Ryan, there are a lot of overqualified sighted people working in entry level jobs.” Yes, but how many of them have had to suffer the indignity of returning to a place where they were maltreated with a big smile on their face and a thank-you on their lips? How many of them have been rejected for a job merely because of a physical characteristic? How many of them face the desperation of waiting weeks, months or even years for a job, all while collecting social security and unemployment? I dare say that if fully able-bodied people were laid off in the insensitive manner that Katy was, they would run the checkout line at Walmart before working at such a place.
Some will also defend the SLB by saying, “It’s a nonprofit, for God sake! Their budget is variable. They can’t help it when they are plagued by negative external factors, such as the recent misfortunes of the Boeing Corporation.”
Boo freakin’ hoo! I get it. Layoffs happen. But this is a vulnerable population who, frankly, allows these folks at the top of the pyramid to make their bread. I’m a capitalist, but this smacks of predatory capitalism. Don’t tell me that the way Katy was enticed up the ladder and then summarily terminated isn’t worthy of contempt.
It’s been my observation that people in the blindness community come in three buckets. Bucket one contains people who are made to care about the blind. Bucket two contains people who are paid to care about the blind. Bucket three (the largest) contain those who don’t care about the blind.
Bucket one contains those who are themselves blind. Some of us were born with it. Others experience blindness later in life. Sometimes the blindness is total. Other times, it is partial. Like any culture, there is a hierarchy of power and deference based upon how much vision an individual may possess, but everyone is affected by it.
In the same bucket, though on a lower tier, are those who are in the orbit of someone who is blind. Parents of the blind are the most obvious example. My friend Jane probably wouldn’t give a damn about blind people, but her son is blind. Thus, Jane spends a good deal of her time and energy in support of the blind. Like her son, Jane didn’t ask for it, but she’s got it. Other family members are on the same tier, though they typically hold less emotional investment than parents.
A small, select group of people choose to care about the blind. These would be friends of blind people, romantic partners and business associates.
In the second bucket, you find people who are paid to care about the blind. These are sighted people in the rehab field, in industries and agencies for the blind and in the niche marketplace that caters to the blind. Think about your state agency for the blind, the purveyor of segregated employment in your city, the companies that manufacture and market aids, gadgets and software to the blind, and the industries such as the Business Enterprise Program that prioritize employment for the blind.
People in bucket two can leave the world of the blind at the door when they clock off. This doesn’t mean that they are all creatures of conditional sensitivity. My friend Nancy worked for decades for the Nebraska Commission for the Blind before she retired. She still spends a lot of her time helping us out where she can. But the simple truth is that Nancy is not blind. She can take a road trip in her car into the gorgeous Rocky Mountains and admire the exquisite view whenever she wishes.
I hasten to add that sometimes, buckets one and two can overlap, but they are mostly separate. This is particularly true when blind people work in management and directorial levels in the industries that claim to benefit them.
The third bucket (the largest) is the easiest with which to contend. They contain people who don’t care about the blind. From a population standpoint, the blind comprise an infinitesimally small number in the world. It is statistically likely that most people will go through life never having met or interacted with a blind person. The age of the internet has reduced that number a little, but only a little. These are also people who are terrified of blindness. They fear going blind and thus, they fear and feel uncomfortable around those whom they inherently view as broken, weak and incompetent. Due to lack of exposure, this great mass in bucket three are unaware of the varied capabilities of the blind.
One of the primary missions of those inhabiting buckets number one and two is to move people from bucket three to buckets one and two. This is where the insidious nature of segregated workshops comes into play. On the surface, they appear to be factories of good will and tolerance. They claim to work on behalf of the blind to help them better themselves through employment, training and opportunity. But ask yourself if the evidence supports their claims. How easy is it for blind people to advance within the organization? How are the blind people at the bottom of the ladder treated by their superiors? Is discipline enforced, and are rewards bestowed in equal measure, particularly among those of varying visual acuity? How many blind people serve in the supervisory structure?” How many blind people are represented on the board of directors of these companies?
This is the part where I should break into rich, sparkling prose about how the blind should do it all for themselves. That would inevitably lead to the National Federation of the Blind. If you scroll back through my blog, you’ll see that the NFB has a very mixed record when it comes to the treatment of their employees. This is the organization that encourages convention attendees to applaud when its president lays off 19 employees. This is the organization that allows senior members to prey upon more vulnerable members for the sake of the greater good.
We all shit in different buckets, but it stinks just the same.
The next time that you donate to a fundraiser from one of these nonprofits, just know that you are in bucket three, and you’re getting a window into bucket two, not bucket one. To quote Boyd Crowder from Justified, “The world is a tree, and I’m just a squirrel trying to get a nut.”
So during your next impulse when you are inspired to be generous with your credit card or checkbook on behalf of the blind, be cognizant of where your dollars are going. They may be doing a lot of good, but they also might be feeding a callous, rapacious machine that achieves financial and social status on the backs of a lot of desperate and vulnerable people.
When you’re donating your time and money, I’d like you to think about my friend Katy. Understand, as best you can, where she’s been and where she is going. Don’t use her genuinely charitable nature as an excuse to let the Seattle Lighthouse for the Blind off the hook. You may say to yourself, “See? It all worked out for sweet Katy. She took lemons and made lemonade.” This is fluffy happy talk. Katy got handed a shit sandwich, and she is now walking back into the place that fed it to her with minty fresh breath. Meanwhile, there are a lot of blind people out there in the cold who don’t even own a toothbrush.
Think about Katy’s magnanimity after she was ejected from a workplace that asked much of her, then kicked her out when she was of no further use to them. Think about the hurt and betrayal she dared not express because she was forced to calculate her future employment prospects. Don’t make any mistake about her reasons for returning to the people who treated her in a subhuman fashion when it suited them.
Ask yourself why an employee like this should be treated in such a fashion. And ask yourself why a system that rewards such behavior is allowed to perpetuate itself unchecked.
As for me, I love my friggin’ job! Bekah and Cami are in bucket number two, but they do their jobs very, very well.
I know a lot of you blind folks will read this and you won’t share it. I get it. Many of you work at the very institutions that I’ve just excoriated. I understand. It’s okay. No hard feelings.
