The Most Wanted Morning Wake-Up Call…

Danny Rosenthal was having a crappy everything. He found out via email at 11:59 pm that the digital newspaper he was working for was folding up. There had been a drive to unionize and Danny was disliked by his co-workers because he kept warning that the newspaper's owners would fold things up before they accepted a union. He was scoffed at and treated with disdain but his prophecy had come true, and now he was out on the street. He would wake up in the morning without a job which during a pandemic really sucked.

The thing that saved his soul and his psyche was the call that came in at around six-thirty every morning. The call came from Jenny. She checked in to see how he was and wish him a good day. The conversations were never long but they were always uplifting, even if they sometimes only lasted for two or three minutes.

Danny spent the day making calls to friends and associates about possible job openings and it was an exercise in futility. Nobody knew anything about anything. He spoke to a not-so-close friend he went to University with who headed up a digital marketing agency. His frenemy Norm explained that his company was doing extremely well but there was a hiring freeze. He also made mention that they were looking for ‘’bright, young, energetic talent on his team.’’ His exact words to Danny were ‘’You’re shit out of luck if you think you’re going to find a decent job in this climate. You have a lot of things going against you, a lot of people don’t like hiring seasoned types. ’’ It was extremely discouraging and felt very ageist, which was funny because Norm was older than him.

Bills never stopped coming, so Danny knew he had to figure things out quickly. He had been living paycheck to paycheck and now that he was out of work he was worried. It wouldn’t take long or be hard to fall behind on things like credit card bills, he wondered if the banks would give him a break during the pandemic if he explained his story.

The next morning when Jenny called the first thing she told Danny was that she loved him and he was going to have a good day and then she hung up. Danny took this as a sign and got back to thinking about work. He remembered that one of the people he used to work at the paper had moved over to a new digital streaming service, ‘’Seriously’’ so he gave her a call.