Like many (most?) employees, I was ordered to take the vaccine. I resisted. I’m not naïve. I know nobody cares about an employee. I’m probably toast.
Here’s why I didn’t comply:
If there’s a line… a needle in your vein crosses it.
I don’t care what other people do, that’s their choice. I also won’t split hairs about the exact legal definition of “coercion” or “consent”. There are degrees in all things but none of this is on the part of the spectrum labeled “willing” or “voluntary”.
I wound up drawing a line in the sand. It’s almost as if I witnessed a braver, more confident version of myself doing what I knew to be right.
Like many others, I requested a Religious Exemption. “I won’t comply. Here’s why.”
I don’t know the odds of keeping my job. Each day I wait for the other shoe to drop; a carefully phrased legalistic response: “Pursuant to policy XYZ, your heartfelt request was ignored and shredded the hour we received it. You’re denied. You’re fired.”
Like everyone, I don’t have a magical “prepper plan” that’ll save my bacon. (Though things could be worse.) Nobody is adequately prepared to lose their livelihood.
Yet I have no regrets. Society went off the rails at the spiritual level but I didn’t. Your soul comes before your paycheck. Each person is different so if it doesn’t affect you in the same way, that’s fine. As for me, it was a spiritual fork in the road. When you know what’s right, all that remains is being man enough to do it.
In the last month what has happened in my workplace? Nothing.
I’m still not fired. I’m still not vaxxed.
I’m not yet impoverished. I have not died of covid.
There has been no word. Each day is a mystery. I may be fired tomorrow. Maybe next week. Maybe after Christmas. (They’d have to be nuts to fire dozens or thousands the month before Christmas. Folks fired in the shadow of a Christmas tree will not forget that moment!)
I wonder if management is in a corner looking at paint in all directions? It feels like nobody expected things to go this far. They didn’t expect it. I didn’t expect it. Now that they’re committed to a mandate and their workforce isn’t fully compliant do they really want to fire a zillion people? You can wonder if management is bluffing but unvaxxed workers are not. They’ve already demonstrated supreme commitment. When their job was seriously threatened they said “what part of ‘I will not comply’ confuses you?” That’s not a group about to change their mind. They’ve had most of a year getting browbeaten daily. They are not “hesitant”. They are hardened.
The dam is going to break, we just don’t know how. You feel it too. The whole economy is frozen up; everyone in every workplace is waiting for… something.
Everything is uncertain but nothing has changed… save I.
What has happened to me? Something wonderful.
When I was forced to take a stand, I lost the option of evasion. Fate removed my “go to” choice. I’m all about predicting where dramatic things will happen and being somewhere else. I’ll scamper away from conflict like a little bitch. I only want to be left alone. For the last two years as cities went mad, Karens patrolled mask zones, freedoms were curtailed, and whole city blocks were burned to the ground I was safely “pre-bugged out”.
I expected to stay that way indefinitely.
Things changed on September 9th. The President made a speech which specifically targeted me for “correction”! I’ve never before heard any president of either party speak that way about Americans! I wouldn’t speak that way to an errant child! Any man who talks like that in a bar will wind up bloodied in the parking lot. We all just know that! His tantrum lit a fuse when he should have been trying to smooth things out.
The bastard made it personal. He came for my livelihood. Why target my job? I’m pretty sure it’s because that’s the greatest damage he can do. If Biden had enough power to drag me out of my own home in handcuffs he would. (Ask Australia about that.)
After the speech (outburst?), I was forced to accept what is and what is not. Any conciliatory middle ground had been burned flat. I was forced to take a side… clearly. I sent my Religious justification to a callous and uncaring HR. What a goat rodeo! HR spent decades bitching at anyone who mentions God in the workplace. Now they demand I and countless others expound about God’s role in their life? They wanted it. They got it. Someone in HR is probably getting PTSD reading my religious views.
I was forced into it. I wrote it all down. I signed my name on the dotted line. Then something interesting happened. It felt like God smiled; “About time you did that Curmudgeon! You needed it.” A wave of peace came to me.
What a gift! Maybe that was the plan. Biden’s little hissy fit coaxed my reticent self to reaffirm and solidify the spiritual focus I might very well need in the coming winter.
Writing it all out made all the difference. If I once wrestled with doubt, I do no more. I made a choice. My choice is done. The die is cast, the Rubicon crossed; it feels good!
Does this mean I’m free and clear? Heck no! I still don’t know if I’ll keep my job or not. I might be fiscally screwed.
Strangely, it’s hard to care. I don’t control the job situation; which means I bear no responsibility. They will do what they will. I don’t care if they burn the whole economy down; it’s not my fault.
What a relief! It’s one thing to sail the seas of whatever happens. I can do that. It’s another to feel responsible for the gale. That was too much. I didn’t realize how much weight had settled on me until it was lifted from my shoulders.
All things have a purpose. Fate, or God, or chance; or whatever you want to call it, got me to take the next step. I have freewill. I had the opportunity to wimp out. I could choose subjugation. It would have been easy. I would have been applauded.
What would have been my reward for wimping out? A steady paycheck that’s a personal jail cell. A trap where the walls would move in by increments. A short break but then another moment of spiritual degradation. There’s always another step on the path to hell. If two shots aren’t enough to break a man, how about three? Four is already on the horizon. If a third or fourth shot doesn’t do it, then what? Submit my DNA to HR? Blood tests at work? Tattoo my employee number on my ass? Mandatory transfer to Newark? Daily affirmation that my boss is the one true God? Who knows?
Better to do the right thing today when it’s clear and obvious and spiritually right for me than endure a lifetime of wondering what new stupid unworkable degrading mandate they’ll shove up my ass next week. I picked this hill for my career to die on. I’m almost happy about it.
I don’t know if this whole mandate thing was for the best but it might have been a necessary step for me. The world told me to fold… and I remembered this isn’t the only world. It felt good.
If our mad world is getting to you, just do the right thing. The rest will follow. After that you’ll feel lighter. You’ll be able to smile for the ones still in the scrum and say this:
Not my circus, not my monkeys.
I wish you all the best. Always remember; even if you’re the last person standing, you’re never alone.