The first two words that sprung to mind after reading this story, especially after the last bit, were "Guilty conscience." But, frankly, I've got to disagree with previous posters here ... I don't think Cindy has anything to feel guilty about. Yes, it would suck to be the people foreclosed upon, and yes, I think it would suck to do the post-foreclosure maintenance work Cindy has been doing. Seriously, though, Cindy's not doing the foreclosures, she simply works for a cleaning service specializing in high risk cleaning jobs which could take place just as easily after someone else has bought the foreclosed upon property ... would you be calling her such a scum if the clean-up happened later in the process ... probably not. Cindy's not the problem folks. She's just using firsthand experience with a fringe element of society as a hook for a story as many other writers have done. Problem is, she lacks both sympathy and meanness and becomes an unsympathetic character in her own story relating the woes of others. Anyway, blah, blah, blah. This stuff has been going on for time immemorial ... this is just the current version for our times. For a good read in a similar vein, read George Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London" sometime. Pretty compelling reading from a young Orwell.

Anyway, Cindy, the point of my writing here was to simply offer up a possible Hollywood ending to the screenplay you probably have in mind for this story. At one of your jobs, you find a young mother in one of her disheveled, foreclosed rooms, but this time, you, instead of Joe, are the one who strikes up a rapport with her. She strikes a chord with you, and subsequently Joe, and she ends up actually working with you for Joe. She's the focus of the story, ultimately, but you grow in the process too with a nice emotional story arc which brings you and Joe closer by the end. Anyway, she obviously has to confront a lot both in her life and in the course of her new job with you cleaning up after folks who share her fate, but by the end, either [a] she and her kid(s) triumph over adversity and maybe there's a new love interest for her or [b] she's killed by a foreclosed-upon junkie and you and Joe take in the kid(s). However it ends, it might be good to include somewhere near the end a really well-paying, poetic-justice clean-up job, in which you're assigned the foreclosed upon estate of a former bank executive ... even if that never happens in the real world.

Good luck. I hope it doesn't go straight to DVD.

I just don't get it. During the Dubya era, it was standard practice to ram legislation through in a matter of weeks, if not days, on some pretense of dire consequences should everyone not get on board. (Which the Democrats were more than happy to oblige.) We already have, in the last calendar year, the example of handing over gobs of the national treasure to the very folks who screwed everything up and were paid more than handsomely to do it, and to continue to do it. So, why on earth can't we just dispense with all of the theatre and just out and out give the insurance industry several trillion dollars and hope for the best in the same way that we solved Wall Street's problems. Let's just cut to the chase, since essentially, that's what we're going to end up with anyway if there's no meaningful public option. Maybe eventually, some of that cash will trickle down from the coffers of the insurance companies into actual healthcare or at least insurance-company-sponsored sports stadiums, race tracks, or golf tournaments. Or not ... who cares anymore? Please pass the Soylent Green.

The real moral of the story is that corporate control of our media dictates the message and our politicians are responding to THAT message ... not the REALITY of what the majority of their constituents believe or support ... or what is moral and right.

The can't-beat-'em-then-join-'em time may have come for us to just stamp our babies' butts at birth with a corporate parent's logo and that's their family identity from there on out (subject to merger, takeover, or Chapter 11 re-organization, of course).