Monday, June 17, 2013

Undermine

undermine
verb, transitive. To erode the base or foundation of a rock formation. To dig or excavate beneath a building or fortification so as to make it collapse. To damage or weaken someone or something, especially gradually or insidiously.

Glumly, he watched the web page load on his laptop. He shouldn't have come to the coffee shop to do this: the internet connection was faster at home. But, he reminded himself, looking around and inhaling the aroma of fresh coffee, he needed a change of scene. If he spent one more afternoon in his empty house applying for jobs online, he feared his wife would come home and find him in the throes of a crying jag.

Eleven weeks. That was how long he had been out of work. Eleven weeks since that morning when he had been told his services were no longer needed. His qualification for unemployment benefits was not an issue. He had worked at the company for years--had been a valued employee. Had been until the work dried up.

For the first few weeks he had tramped the sidewalks, putting in applications and leaving résumés at every business that might use someone with his skills, to no avail. Now, he was only doing the minimum necessary to keep the benefit checks coming, uneasily watching the running total, worrying about what he would do when that safety net expired.

That wasn't the only thing he worried about. There didn't seem to be any work anywhere, not just at the pay level he wanted. Every office he visited seemed to be cutting back: he frequently saw dust bunnies beneath desks and tables, and the lighting was invariably more dim than he found comfortable. None of the businesses were paying a cleaning crew, and when light bulbs burned out, they were replacing them with lower-wattage bulbs. These were bad signs. He resented the fact that these portents undermined his already-eroded self-confidence. What worried him was the fact that marking these details could plunge him into despair so easily. He had never been subject to erratic mood swings before he was laid off. Why was it happening to him now, when his health insurance had lapsed?

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.

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