Most working people rely on a single income to sustain their lives on. They become so dependent upon this source that they go to far length to protect and maintain it. Any disruption in income for about 40% of the entire workforce will cause total ruin and disruption in life that is almost unimaginable. The one and absolutely ominous reality to being employed is that there are numerous reasons an employee can lose his income.
It can be an economic decision on the part of the company when sales plummet and amongst the first people to feel the crunch are employees. In a layoff however, the employee usually has some sort of income to fall back on, such as unemployment benefits offered by the state when such emergencies occur. The layoff may be temporary or it may be permanent. Albeit this does cause major disruption in the lives of employees putting them in positions where they must restore their income. This situation is usually beyond their control and can cause great suffering and financial hardship.
The very nature of employment in the usual sense is that when a person cannot work for some reason or another, his income also stops. This certainly doesn’t take a rocket-scientist or even a firecracker-scientist to figure out. Sickness, relationship problems, and scores of other reasons cause interruption in face time of an employee that directly affects income. So far I have mentioned the more temporary conditions here. There is one other condition anybody could figure out reading this article – termination.
More of a slang word to denote termination is being fired. As early on as I am in the publishing and writing career I’m building on, I’m still in the position where I must rely on employment to obtain most or all of my income. There are perhaps thousands of people like myself trying to set up businesses in order to achieve what it is they feel they’ve been called in life to do. Like myself, building a business is not easy when having to work around a job and having limited financial resources, etc.
Today I’m subject to termination from my minimum-wage job over a very silly incident that happened yesterday. A coworker took immediate defense when I pointed out something he did that causes a problem for others in the workplace – loading a trash compactor incorrectly, causing it to jam up. The incident led to a loud confrontation between us in the kitchen where I work which caused management to intervene.
Today I’m sitting at this computer writing this article waiting for the decision of upper management to determine whether I will have my job anymore – all for the most part, over a personality conflict. I’m not here to say who was more wrong than the other. I’m attempting to show why it is imperative not to place all your eggs in one basket, to rely only on your employment. I suggest that in doing so you are subjecting yourself to wage-slavery and vulnerability to income loss.
When you get fired from a job it has a prolonged and undesired effect on you than you may bargain for. Again this is not rocket science but something many people do not want to think about. Deep down inside the souls of employees there is always this imminent fear of being fired. This fear is usually buried in the subconscious mind, “in the back of the mind” as some would have it. It may occur over something serious they may have done or over something so pathetically silly that it would make one really wonder. Being fired also destroys your reputation and makes it that much harder to become re-employed.
One of the other pitfalls of being employed is that many times you do not have control over who your coworkers will be. You get yoked up with whoever the company feels should be there. A company is not always in the business of putting its employees in situations that provides the most comfortable condition for them. Unfortunately being so yoked means having to work with others you may not like or can even deal with. Unlike employment, you meet someone in the entrepreneurship world you do not like you simply turn your back on that person and go another direction. Try and do that to your boss and see how far you get even if the boss is in the wrong. Very fortunately having a bovine for a boss has not been a problem in my case.
Employment is essentially like being caged up with other employees and you have little control over the actions of such employees and how they can affect your standing with the company. If you find yourself in a position of unpopularity amongst certain fellow employees this can adversely work against you. A wrong move on your part with regard to how you may have handled a situation at work can also put you on the street, lose your family, spouse, home, car, and go hungry. Today I’m sitting here waiting for the telephone to ring with the answer to what my fate is concerning the disruption at my place of employment. I work around some pretty foul-mouthed and uneducated individuals who could care less what happens to me. Maybe getting fired is a blessing in disguise. There is no way at this point to know this for sure.
There are no better words to describe the feeling I have now than “lack of control.” This is most every employee’s story. My strong suggestion to you who reads this article is to begin working on alternative means of income, preferably something you have strong passion for. Relying on just one income and having to force yourself to go to your place of employment is no less than wage-slavery. There are things you can do that produces passive income – that kind of income that works for you when you do NOT work.
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