A Story of Disillusionment

Many years ago, there was a young family wallowing in debt and trying to raise two daughters.  The father had recently found a good job, but they were still struggling financially.  The decision was made that the mother, also, needed to find a job, at least part-time.  After several different tries, the mother landed a position at a local bank, part-time, in their operations building.

She really enjoyed her job and most of the people she worked with. (There will always be those personalities that just can't get along well.)  As time went on, she was promoted to full-time, then trained in several other positions.  Then she was asked to begin a research department.  The young mother was really growing in her abilities.  She wrote the protocol for the research under the supervision of the security officer.  She developed the time lines that certain types of research were likely to take. 

Then one day, she was told that she was being moved to a new department that was being developed to  cope with all of the incoming phone calls.  She never applied for this job, and didn't want it, but the change happened regardless.  There was a new supervisor and he was trying to see how much work he could get out of each employee without giving them more pay, benefits, or promotions.  His job was to "streamline" every department to the minimum number of staff to complete the work in a timely fashion.  (Read streamline: to eliminate staff without firing them and causing a stink in the local area.)

After several confrontations, the once young mother, finally had had it, and told this supervisor that if he stepped foot in her cubicle again, she would make two phone calls.  One would be to Human Resources, the second would be to the police to file harrassment charges.  As soon as he left the area, the once young mother, called Human Resources anyway and requested a transfer to a branch office, any branch office, as long as Mr. Supervisor would have no jurisdiction.  Within a few weeks she was transferred as a teller to a branch that was about 10 minutes from her house.

As time went on, the not-so-young mother discovered that she really, really enjoyed being a teller.  She loved balancing things.  She loved taking care of customers.  She loved trying to get a smile out of the grumpy ones.  She loved finding ways to fix problems with peoples' accounts.  She loved being able to serve the public.

After several management changes, there came a management team that didn't appreciate the older teller's devotion to being a teller.  They didn't appreciate the 20 years of consistent service with the same employer.  They didn't appreciate the 5+ years of her serving the business customers.  As a matter of fact, they not only didn't appreciate it, they seemed determined to undermine the older teller.

With little warning, the older teller was moved out of the business window.  Despite physical restrictions that her doctor had verified with a medical excuse, they started scheduling her to work in the drive-thru area.  The management team began writing her up for every small infraction that they could come up with:  2 mins. late opening her teller window; having a public blog that referred to work (without any names); etc.

The older teller discovered that the Supervisor that she had left the Operations Building to avoid was now the VP in charge of branches.  Light began dawning as to the possible origin of the changes.

The disillusionment is growing.  Lots of prayer is going up. The end of the story has yet to be written.