This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 13, 2009 - With the economy in a nosedive and more layoffs being announced daily, why would someone who wants to work quit a job they like?
In two words -- transit cuts.
When Metro institutes massive cuts -- 44 percent of its MetroLink and bus operations -- later this month, among those who will find themselves left at the curb are many people who depend on the agency to get them to work every day.
Take Laura Buxton of Belleville, whose daily commute is a long one by anybody's standard. Every workday she arises by 4:30 a.m. to ensure she's out of the house by 5 to get to work by 7.
Buxton takes a Metro bus to the Fairview Heights MetroLink station, where she boards a train for Lambert St. Louis International Airport. There she catches the 91 Olive bus that takes her to Garden View Care Center in Chesterfield, where she is a cook. When the bus drops her at Chesterfield Pointe Parkway, Buxton still has a long hike down from Olive to the center.
That's a two-hour trip one way -- on a good day.
On holidays and Sundays, her bus is on a different schedule so Buxton has to get up and leave home earlier. "On Sunday my bus doesn't run in time so I have to walk from my house to the MetroLink station," she said. "It takes like 45 minutes. I have to leave the house at 4 o'clock to get there by 5:15."
Buxton reverses the trip when her workday is over, usually at 3:30 p.m. If she makes all the connections, she makes it home "a little after 6."
The trip would be daunting to many, but it's one Buxton endures cheerfully because she likes her job and because, she says, it pays more than a comparable job would in Illinois -- if she could find even one that she could get to on public transportation.
Buxton doesn't own a car. In fact, she never learned to drive, so her only option is public transportation. She passes the transit time by reading or talking on her cell phone or catching up on her sleep. "It's a long way -- like going out of town."
Amazingly, Buxton has been making her commute for 10 years. Why not move closer to work?
"I like Illinois better," she said. "If I move or not, it's still really the same -- the amount of time. They're trying to stop the 91 Olive bus so it wouldn't really make any difference anyway."
Buxton fell into cooking for a living accidentally about 15 years ago when she worked as a server at another Chesterfield nursing home. "I never had cooked a day before in my life," she said.
The morning cook was often late and she would end up doing his work, she said. Eventually, she was offered the job of cook. "I've been cooking ever since," she said.
Rhonda Uhlenbrock, administrator at Garden View, doesn't want to lose Buxton, whom she considers a valued employee. "Laura is as good as gold," she said. "She's a tremendous employee.
"I could probably find another cook," Uhlenbrock said. But finding a cook and finding a cook who interacts well with the facility's residents are two different things, she said. "People just don't understand. We're not just talking, in health care anyway, about transportation. We're talking about relationships."
Garden View specializes in care for those with Alzheimer's disease and dementia, and having staff that knows the residents and their food preferences is important, she said.
"All of my residents have special diets and require certain textures," Uhlenbrock said. "Laura doesn't even have to look at a diet card. She knows who gets what which is very important. I get somebody new in there and they're going to have to look at every single card because they're not going know these people.
"Laura knows the long-term residents and their likes or dislikes so if they're not eating, she can go an make them a turkey sandwich if she knows they like that and can eat it."
Buxton is enthusiastic about her job, and her affection for her work and the facility's residents must show. They recently voted her "most favorite employee."
"All of them, like, love me," she said. "They say I have respect for them. Even if you're having a bad day, you never take it out on the residents."
Buxton doesn't want to leave her job, but when Metro cutbacks kick in later this month, she'll have no way to get to Garden View.
"I have no choice," she said. "If the buses stop running and they don't come up with another solution, I'm going to have to leave."
Kathie Sutin is a freelance writer.