All in the Family?

It’s no secret that my employment history is a bit –as they say, checkered. And that’s one of the reasons I got so excited when the world’s largest corporation recently made me an offer...
It wasn’t a job offer, not exactly: even better, they offered to treat me like one of the family.
Instead of $47,503 for their Andes Vista-Cruiser SUV with full Red-State Option Package (protruding chromed grille, ski-rack, tow-package and over-sized fluorescent ‘W” sticker) my ‘employee price’ would be $41,222.
I don’t know where you come from, but around here when somebody offers to give you $6,000, that deserves a hug!
I went down to my local Massive Auto Company dealership and –except for a few skittish guys from the service department, managed to give every one of their actual employees a big squeeze.
I had to pass on the vehicle though.
Despite all the love my checking account still can’t absorb another $500 a month in auto payments, plus the $100 or so more in insurance costs, or even the cost of fueling that baby up for a trip to the gas station and back.
But in the glow of an emotional high I started to think that maybe there was something here that we could all share in –whatever our automotive needs or financial wherewithal.
Why can’t we all get employee prices, on everything?

Cars are, for better or worse, an inescapable part of our lives. In Plymouth most especially, transportation is always an issue. So the idea of being treated as one of the family by an auto manufacturer really hits home.
But there are other things that hit home too, and in the wallet. Take electricity for example.
We are one of those modern Plymouth families who moved in to a home that old Thomas Alva would have loved: it’s 100% electric.
Our heat is electric, our stove is electric, and our electricity is electric. When the lines go down –from weather or accident, nothing works, not even the toilets (the well water is pumped up by an electric motor). Imagine that: every time I flush the toilet I am literally flushing nickels and dimes down the drain.

What, I wonder, is the employee price for electricity? What do Mr. and Mrs. NStar and their family of employees pay for each of their kilowatts?
A little love from that power-couple would go a long way.

And speaking of power couples, what’s up with Mr. and Mrs. Exxon-Mobil?
I sent them a nice card when they first announced their engagement a few years back, but I never got as much as a thank-you.
Now that they’re officially a couple they’re sending me cards and letters too, and calling night and day.
If anyone can afford to share the love, it’s the Exxon-Mobil family.
I’m not asking for my gas free, just at the price that good friends of the family pay.
At the store where I work they give employees a 25% discount. If you took 25% off my gasoline bill each month and I could almost afford to pay my electricity bill!

I have a little more empathy for the Adelphia family: they’ve had their own financial troubles of late. Things got so bad a few years back that even they had to take advantage of the family discount themselves –only they chose the wrong family.
According to the authorities they were acting as if they were the Royal House of Windsor, using a few hundred million of the company’s money like it was their own.
Still, gas and electricity are one thing –access to the internet, email, or cable television are quite another. One is a necessity, the other supposedly a luxury.
But with electricity bills going up, gas bills higher than ever, and a host of other rising costs cable television is –for many, a necessary refuge from the harsh financial realities.
Not that I need a refuge from reality –but others might.

By the way, if you can already afford the Andes Vista Cruiser with Optional Red-State Option Package than you already have a refuge from reality, don’t you?

I don’t know: maybe I am being unrealistic if I expect Mr. And Mrs. Exxon-Mobil, the NStar family, and the Duke and Duchess of Adelphia to share the wealth.
If every one of us got the ‘family’ price on electricity, the employee price on cars, a barrel or two of gift gasoline, a Royal freebie of cable television and other perks, than those corporations sharing the love probably couldn’t afford the lobbyists they need to convince the politicians we elect to keep the regulators off their backs.
And where would be then?