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How Accessing Resources Helped Anna Start Over
 “They did what?!”
“They fired me,” Anna* repeated, lowering her voice and her tired, mortified blue eyes.
They were in the privacy of the office of Sylvia, her case worker at the Samaritan Center. Even so, Anna’s tone was muted and ashamed, as if she feared the whole world would hear her humiliating news.
Anna, a single mother, had been thrilled when the local laundromat had hired her on as a sorter. The job helped her pay for her car, her house, and for the bottomless pits that her growing boys liked to call stomachs. Best of all, her job description had indicated that she would not need to lift more than ten pounds, a clause that was essential if she were to avoid aggravating her back condition.
“Things went great at first,” Anna remembered, “but then business got slower, and they started letting people go. At first I was happy that they kept me on, but before long that meant I had to start lifting heavier things…”
For a while, because she was afraid of losing her job, Anna put up with it, lifting whatever was necessary even if it meant she went home with radiating back pain every night. Eventually though, she couldn’t take it anymore.
“So I told them I could no longer lift heavy items,” Anna explained, “and then they told me I was fired.”
Upon hearing this, Sylvia felt her soul swell with compassion for her client’s need. “You have options,” she urged gently. “Making you do something beyond your job description and then firing you for not complying is unfair. If you go to the unemployment agency, they can help you make this right.”
Anna listened attentively and in the end was so encouraged that she made and won an appeal with the unemployment agency, receiving retroactive unemployment pay and removing the scarlet letter of having been “fired” from her resume. After that, she easily found a job and has been able to hold it ever since.
But she’ll never forget her case worker’s encouraging words and good advice. If it hadn’t been for Sylvia, Anna would have lost her car, her house, and all hope for the future. But instead of losing, she won her appeal and was able to start over.
*For confidentiality's sake, this individual's name has been changed.
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