"My Job Is To Watch Dreams Die"

[Hissyspit]

http://www.businessinsider.com/my-job-is-to-watch-dreams-die-2011-9

Original Link: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/k3zrz/by_request_from_the_jobs_thread_why_my_job_is_to

"My Job Is To Watch Dreams Die"

What's it like to be the guy that literally has to go into people's houses, and tell them that they've been foreclosed on, and that they need to leave? A commenter on Reddit (via Alberto Nardelli) gave his first-hand description of his job with the title: "Why My Job Is To Watch Dreams Die."

- snip -

I open every drawer and cupboard making sure the house is clean and doesn't have old engines, toxic chemicals or dead dogs lingering anywhere. Sometimes the kids are there, maybe waiting in the car, maybe not. I see the marks on the wall showing how the kids grew over the years. I see the anguished poetry scribbled on the wall by stoned teenagers and the occasional hole punched in the wall. One woman handed me the key to her reinforced bedroom door - during the divorce her now ex-husband was still living in the house and she had to barricade herself in at night. Another said "right there is where I found my son - he couldn't handle losing the house".

- snip -

And so I listen. I feign dispassion but I'm not fooling anybody. Somehow they can tell that I care and thank me even as they admit that it isn't my fault, that it isn't my responsibility to listen. I've stood inside another's dream for an hour as they spoke, not really to be heard but to say goodbye - to leave the ghosts behind.

They go to the car and return with the openers.

MORE

[Liberal_in_LA]

1. sad job.

:-(

[HereSince1628]

2. Stopping by foreclosures on a quiet evening

With Apologies to Robert Frost.

Whose house this was I think I know
His job was in automotives, though.
He will not see me stopping here
To watch old lawn weeds overgrow.

My analyst doesn’t think it queer
To sit without a mortgage near,
Between bankruptcies and underwater loans
On the darker side of a recession year.

She’d give my shoulder a hearty shake
and tell me this is no mistake.
There is no sound but a hammer's pound
as the “Bank Owned” sign is firmly staked.

This cul-de-sac is lovely, quiet and deep
But I have promises to keep,
And evictions to serve before I sleep,
And evictions to serve before I sleep.

[peacetalksforall]

3. +1 and hugs - to both you and Hissy