one month's rent desperatelly needed

[lori johnson]

I was terminated from my job after 8 years of stellar employment. My boss began to....let's just say that she wasn't "all there" anymore. It's a very long story, but she became delusional, paranoid and just down right mean. She denied me unemployment (the appeals failed), destroyed my portfolio, as well as all of the memos I had sent to human resources and to her boss, blocked my emails and phone calls to every person in the office, and has seen to it that I am essentially unemployable in this town. 

Here's a copy of just one of my reviews. They were all stellar...every one. The only crime I committed was to forget to fill out my time sheet properly a couple of times. The information she provided to the "higher ups" in the company was absolutely and unequivocally false. I'm also owed money for unpaid overtime. I've been trying to obtain an attorney, but haven't found an appropriate representative as of yet.

Four other employees in my department made many, many complaints about my boss's increasingly insane behavior, but nothing was ever done about it.

I have lived in my apartment for 9 years and have excellent personal and professional references. I don't think that there is anyone who would have anything bad to say about me.

ANNUAL REVIEW FOR LORI JOHNSON (I have removed any identifying names)

Note: Unfortunately, this is the only review I have access to at the present. 

Over the last twelve months Lori has become a highly valued member of our team. She has also made time in her regular weekly schedule to provide other departments with support (copy editing, headline writing, layout, editing and designing supplemental publications and magazines.

Lori is reliable, sensible and unrelentingly upbeat. She has a terrific sense of humor and despite a substantial weekly workload, she never treats her work like a chore. She brings a broad creative palette with her each day and can always be counted on to fashion something unique to underscore the sensibilities of a story.

Lori brings an impressive background in page design combined with skills in illustration. She’s a strong self-starter and more than ably manages projects from conception to print. Her technical proficiency is very high, and she’s a natural multi-tasker. In designing a magazine, there’s the ideal: an amalgam of words and visuals that is stronger than the individual parts. Then there’s the reality: page creation on deadline. Lori’s collaborative approach to making stories work for the reader is remarkable, as is her unrelenting focus on getting the job done … both, crucial elements in her mix of talents.

Magazines commonly suffer from a clash of design, and journalistic/literary culture, as if the disciplines themselves demand conflict. Lori, however, does not view writers and editors as the enemy. She realizes that magazine design is not a fine-art form, but neither is it an exercise in slavish subordination to the written word. The ideal, of course, is an amalgam of the two, stronger than each individual element.

Our writers are responsible for obtaining images from each story’s subjects, but because not all writers are visually oriented, and not all photographers are mind readers, it follows that we do not always capture visually the essence of a story. Lori has offered to take a more active role in acquiring the visual counterpart to each story and to act as liaison between the writers and the subjects (with the objective of making the magazine more interesting and visually dynamic for our readers.

It’s important that we get to know the people in the arts community we cover. Because Lori works with the visual material that reflects the happenings in our town, she should find opportunities to attend public events and meet with artists, gallery owners and museum professionals with whom we work. End.

Seriously, I will be homeless in a little over a month. I have enough money for December's rent, but that's it. I'm on Medicaid and Food Stamps and that helps, but I can not find a job of any kind. I'm grossly overqualified for minimum wage positions and the people I have applied with assume that I will only be around long enough to find another position in my professional field. 

My boss has seen to it that I will not work in my field in this town (where I planned to spend the rest of my life after living all over the U.S.).

Any monetary help would be greatly appreciated. I intend to pay it back. Every cent.

Advice wouldn't hurt either.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this. I really appreciate it.

Lori