Safety for Eugene and Lilly

I'm Lilly, Eugene's mom! I was just fired from BGOV because I have to pick Eugene up from the bus 2.5 days a week. This is my joint custody arrangement. I have no remaining family to help me, so I had no choice but to leave early on those days and WFH the remainder.

- My Firing

I begged for help as soon as I knew, but Luke told me there are no accommodations like this at Bloomberg, unless I were to somehow win them in court. I can't even afford to file for divorce, and I think you can guess I don't expect that sort of justice anyway. I had been suffering major chronic weight loss and GI distress (anxiety related), but neither my nor Eugene's health problems mattered to Bloomberg HR.

I left Eugene's other mom under conditions of overt financial and other abuse in fall 2023 and was briefly made homeless. I used all my PTO but returned and kept up my work at BGOV. My work was never in dispute -- only in-office days. A few months after I *succeeded* at meeting the RTO metrics given to me, I was nevertheless given a "first and final warning" about them, even though I was finally in compliance. All my PTO went to days when I simply could not travel due to childcare (but could otherwise work). Appointments became impossible. But I made the in-office days metric! I was now >80%, like everyone else. This was about a month before my firing.

My firing occurred after I took one WFH day after using my last accrued sick day due to fever (a WFH day I calculated I could afford). But when they sprung the firing meeting the reason for my firing was changed to "in-office hours of the day", a metric that was not presented to me for dispute at all, and for which there was no goalpost or baseline for comparison, but which (if actually defined) must be hard to meet if I have to drop off and meet Eugene at the schoolbus.

Maybe if they actually set that metric people would be pretty upset, since attention to it would compromise their own hours flexibility (which i think many people in less dangerous situations than my own use partly to work in comfort and rest and recover, but which I could only use out of necessity, and with constant anxiety and fear for my job, much like my annual PTO).

-Eugene

Eugene is 6 and loves everything to do with puppets, especially Jim Henson, and Sesame Street. At home he talks about and quotes Sesame Street characters in English, Spanish (hablamos en español conjuntos), Dutch, Hebrew and Arabic. We like to read Shel Silversteen.

Eugene doesn't have traditional after-school options because he has major communication and developmental delays, because, like me, Eugene is autistic. Eugene needs help to be safe, help to talk to others, and help to go to the bathroom. That's not everyone with autism at 6, but it's not completely new to my family. He may be an engineer, or I may have to support him as an adult. That's not how I think about him at all but it's how I have to describe him to you.

He gets sick a lot, and when he goes to school and has a bad autism day or a bad skin allergies day, he comes home sick then too. I've taken that nurse's office call as soon as I got to work and knew he was miserable and I had to go home to get him. On an ideal day, either way, I had to get home by 2:30 for the bus, or it would take him back to his school and he wouldn't know why I wasn't there to see him.

I can't afford intensive aftercare services for Eugene because I am still maintaining the cost of two rentals, my apartment and the moldy old house (both cheap and buggy--not cheap enough). My ex just finished nursing school, and is now looking for work - but for now, my children live in both homes, so I support them. I support her too, because I know being without money and medical care is life threatening. I grew up knowing that.

Even if I could afford and (with my work schedule) single handedly navigate care for Eugene, I have a moral obligation to protect him from the few that offer care but do so in the form of inhumane ABA autistic conversion therapies. I know: Beggars can't be choosers, just like poor weirdos with history degrees shouldn't get to jump up and make BGOV money. If you want a family here, it had better be a nuclear Mad Men family, or balanced pretty close to it. I wonder what kind of office culture that grows.

$$ Needs $$

MEDICAL OOP - $$

Our insurance just got a whole lot worse and I don't even know what my situation will be. Copays are going way up and I'm going to have to navigate access issues.

Sesame Place - $

Eugene would like to go to Sesame Place (Philly) this year. That's an understatement, he wants to live there. It's a pretty cheap trip, but it's a hotel. I swore I'll find some way to do it either way -- but any help here will ease the fears I have of cutting our survival months shorter by spending.

Car - $$$$

Coolant puddling and boiling on the engine, is that good? 2008 mazda 5 with an odo fault. KBB $-0. I already couldn't afford to replace it. Some money will go toward a down payment on another used junker.

A bed, furniture - $

I have been going rough and sleeping on a $100 bed and $100 mattress this year. It's too hard. My back hurts. Eugene has furniture, I prioritized him - except a dresser. I can freegan up some other furniture now that I have time but I need a mattress.

Taxes

It's how they got Al Capone! I don't want to owe the US money right now because I'd like to limit unneccessary risk surface under a Nazi regime when I've already got like 3-4 different demographic reasons to have their attention. Child deduction withholding was at 2 part of the year but I claim 1 with joint custody. ( nice job, bozo)