First the bad news: Jake Lea was recently laid off from the
TransGlobal LLC plant, which installs customer options like spoilers onto Ford vehicles fresh off the Claycomo assembly line.
Now the good news: Lea is just 19.
He's got his whole life ahead of him! A groggy but amiable Lea, who was still in bed when he answered his phone, discussed topics ranging from his newly acquired unemployed status to his packed schedule of
chillaxin'.
At TransGlobal, "I was in shipping and receiving. Ford vehicles," Lea says. "I was the only one who worked the actual job on the lot outside."
A few days before he was let go, Lea says he and his boss had discussed the layoffs that everyone knew were coming after the Claycomo plant began instituting
periodic plant closures. "The really fucked up thing about it was, four days before I got laid off, my boss was outside talking to me, and he said, 'I gotta say you're probably the best man we've ever had on this lot. I don't think you're going anywhere,'" Lea says.
But a few days later, Lea got the axe. Lea was lucky to have the job at TransGlobal in the first place, having skipped ahead of a waiting list for the position thanks to a well-connected friend, Lea says.
Getting laid off from TransGlobal was just one more blow in a succession of nut-kickings that life has dealt Lea in the past six months. "Before this, I was fitting and hanging pipe for sprinkler systems in Excelsior Springs," Lea says. "That was a big mess, because I was, like, dating my boss's daughter, and then we broke up, and I had to see that man everyday."
Before that, last July 4th, Lea got a DUI after partying in Smithville. And before
that, Lea left the Metropolitan Community College at
Maple Woods in Liberty, having screwed up his second-semester grades sufficiently for academic probation, which compromises Lea's
Pell grant. "Right now, I'm at a complete standstill," Lea says. "It sucks. It's been a huge mess trying to get a job to save up for school so I can get back into it. I had to sell my car so I'm catching rides with friends. It's rough but you gotta fucking smile. Or whatever."
How does he keep smiling? "Fruity Pebbles," he says cheerfully. "The occasional brewski."
For now, Lea's got a line on a job spraying on tans at a salon in Parkville, thanks to a friend. He laughs at the thought. "If she (the friend) can do that, I'll be grateful," he says. He's filled out another 25 applications while under the impatient eye of his probation officer from the DUI incident. "He's like, 'Get a job,'" Lea says. He knows. But it's rough out there.
All this, plus 10 bills in the mail and a breakup with another, more recent
girlfriend (whose face is blurred out in the photo above) -- it's
enough to turn Lea into a weepy country crooner. Fortunately, he's a musician, too. "I was actually thinking of going to the Plaza and playing my guitar with the case open, if worse comes to worst," Lea says. "I'm trying to get this band together right now, called Ladies. I think it's a great idea. Kind of indie/folk, like Pixies style. It's kinda rough, though, because everybody's busy all the time and so flaky. But I'm just writing my little heart out."
Lea's agenda for today is a relaxed one. "As you can see, I'm waking up at 11:30," he says. "I'm probably gonna watch some Don't Be a Menace. I'll walk the yard and pick up some trash from the party we had here the other night. My computer crashed, so I'll probably try to fix that. It is Friday, so I'll probably go to my friends' house, get a little wasted. Kinda sucks, but that's life." He takes a ponderous pause. "Maybe I won't walk the yard, maybe I'll do some laundry, take a shower." He laughs at his own indecisiveness. "I'll take it second by second."
Got a layoff story? Email me.
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