RoboNomics

Chapter 20 - 2016

It's been a week since I lost the tutoring gig and I'm at the employment center. 

Austin insisted that it would help to come here and so I'm back in front of my career counselor, Becky. She's a stout, sagging brunette in her mid-fifties. She fills up the cheap metal desk chair behind her shoddy pine desk.

"What about providing corporate training?" I ask. "Or writing curriculum for corporation education? Couldn't I do something like that?"

She pokes at her laptop screen. It's an aging, boxy rectangle with a first generation touch screen. 

"I'm afraid you don't have the right skill set. Not quite," she replies. "But I think I have the information somewhere here..." 

She nudges at the screen a few more times. It casts a blue light onto her face. 

"Yes, here it is. There's a course that you could take to upgrade your skills."

"How much?" I ask flatly.

"Well, let me just..." she trails off. "Here is it. Seven thousand, nine hundred ninety seven."

"How much?" I've gone temporarily deaf.

"Seven thousand, nine hundred ninety seven dollars. Oh, and ninety nine cents."

I blink rapidly. 

I studied so hard to be a teacher. I took out loans to get through school. Six years of training: four undergrad, two in teacher's college. 

I worked three part-time jobs, one of them was always a tutoring gig. They made up the deficit left by the loans I am still paying off.

And after I finally got my dream job? I diligently continued my professional learning as my professors told me I should. 

At fifteen hundred dollars each, I'd taken six week courses in literacy learning, special education, even French instruction. It was an investment in my career. There was nothing I wouldn't do to be a good teacher. 

And then the rug had been pulled out from under me for lower taxes and for profitability's sake. For the children and the future they can look forward to. The one I can't envision.

I can feel the emotion within me about to bubble over. I sigh long and deep in an attempt to cool it.

"You're kidding?" I ask at last.

"I'm afraid not," Becky looks at me from over her bifocals.

"Okay." I decide to play along. "And what will that get me?"

"It will be an opening into the world of corporate training. It could mean another career for you."

"What if I don't want another career?"

"I'm afraid you don't have much of a choice." 

Her tone is like that of a mother to a willful child. I look around the office. 

The paint on the cinder block walls was once white but now it's grey. The room is crammed with cubicles and filled with aging furniture. 

Some of the offices are separated by rusting metal filing cabinets that are probably empty. The carpets are a mid-twentieth century orange and are stained with circles of brown.

"Would you want a different career?" I ask Becky.

The stern look falls from her face. 

"We're not here to talk about me, are we?"

"Yeah. But really, would you want to just leave everything and start all over?"

"You're young. It won't be hard for you." 

My hand rests on her desk and she reaches to pat it. I rip my hand from the desk and slide it onto my lap uneasily.

"I'm not that young. What if I had children?"

I feel myself growing hysterical. I need to leave.

"It could happen to you. You sit there thinking it couldn't. That's what I was like. Then one day you'll have to come back here and get advice about a second career from a machine!" 

I am shouting as I leave my chair. People are standing and looking over the tops of their cubicles at me. I grab my bulky winter coat from the back of the chair. Becky gestures for me to wait.

"Andrea --"

"You're going to be replaced." 

I look around the room, at the fluorescent lights arranged in long rows across the ceiling. 

"You're all going to be replaced!" I scream at everyone in the shabby room as I rush for the door.

(Continued in Chapter 21...)

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