Welcome to...Is that All I'm Good For?

Evening, Fam…

So, tonight’s episode of Speechless, Kenneth hooked J.J. up with a job at his side job at the store.  It was a nice gesture in theory, because he’s supposed to redirect shoppers away from the broken self-checkout.  He knows it’s a menial job and he’s better than that, but’s a job nonetheless…until he finds the talking cardboard cutout he replaced.  It gets replaced back and does a better job than J.J., because it’s apparently motion detector-driven, therefore, they pay attention to it since J.J. has to use a word board they have to read first.

J.J., being resourceful, pushes the talking cardboard cutout to the trash compactor…until he gets busted…and, fired.  Of course, he and Kenneth have a moment of understanding, where J.J. understands Kenneth was trying to help him land a job while he tells Kenneth where he went wrong getting J.J. a menial job just because he’s a crip.  When Kenneth leaves, he leaves the self-checkout manual that J.J. gets and learns.

The next day, Kenneth finds J.J. working the self-checkout manually for customers.  J.J. makes himself useful and lands himself a job.

Now, we’re appreciative when people try to help, but when it comes to getting a job, it’s normally greeter, because they see “the chair”…even if they know we’re capable of more.  It’s a nice slap in the face if there could be called one.  Like a crip, we know we can’t go out on the field in most jobs, but we’re excellent in secretarial work.  Most of us know computers like the back of our hand, so in addition to secretarial work, we can also do the office IT.

In my case, I could do any system the office with training, of course.  I could also use any version of Office, thanks to my first job at the college computer lab, where we were required to know all the programs to be able to help any student.  I was always told when I was learning computers to not be afraid to screw up, because whatever I did, could be fixed.  I’ve carried that when I train people on computers.

We used to check insurances by making long ass calls.  I figured there had to be a better way, so I spent two weeks systematically going through all the insurances and getting us online through their portals to save time.  I made myself useful, nobody taught me that bit.

Moral of the story:  Getting help’s nice but give us more benefit of the doubt to be more than crip employee.  We’re than what peeps see.

Be good to each other.

-J-