In the August 29 story “A no-show for 12 years, worker in Norfolk still paid,” the Virginian-Pilot reports a baffling story of an employee who remained on the payroll – receiving benefits and regular performance raises – without a record of ever being present at the workplace.  This story made the national spotlight, being covered by CNN. 

It is incredibly tempting to put on our Analyzing Glasses: to start digging for the details, to try to figure out what happened and when, to begin assessing blame, to consider consequences.  We can throw around words like fraud and criminal and negligence.  Instead, I see a deeper story than what appears on the surface.

So far, this employee’s name has not been published, but we know that the employee is a woman.  We have seen nothing yet in the media that grants this woman personhood: no name, no hometown, no job title, no family.  And yet, we know that this woman has all of these things.  She has a mom and a dad; she may have a husband, children, grandchildren.  Maybe she has an older brother or a younger sister; maybe she has nephews and nieces.  Maybe she goes to church every Sunday without fail, wearing her best dress and her best heels and always a hat.  Maybe she knits.  Maybe she blogs.  Maybe she has laughed about this every day for the last twelve years.  Maybe it has eaten at her soul like a cancer.  We don’t know.  We have trouble seeing this woman as a person.

From what I see, moreover, the Norfolk Community Services Board has had the same trouble.  This employee was not a person there, not a woman with a mom and dad, with a home and a garden and a needlepoint sampler.  This was not a young lady just graduated from college, eager to help people, living on her own for the first time in her life.  This woman was no more than a social security number, an employee number.  She lost her personhood in bureaucracy, and will forever be known now as the Norfolk No-Show.

It becomes so easy, in the grind of quotidian business life, to become a nonperson.  You can punch the time-clock, sit quietly in your cubicle, answer calls from irritated customers, eat your bag lunch, and drive back home without a feeling that anyone at work would notice or care if you just didn’t bother to show up tomorrow.  You can be promoted to management, full of wonderful ideas, and be ground down by cut budgets and lay-offs, to the point where you’re supervising four times the employees you were a year before, you don’t know their names, and you laugh bitterly when trying to write performance reviews and dole out raises.  This can be true in both public and private sectors, and especially during a time of economic uncertainty.

After punching out at the time clock, or submitting your daily time log online, you may drive back home in a daze, wondering Did I accomplish anything today?  Is the world any better now than it was this morning?  Why am I doing this?  Is this really what I’m here for?

The teachings of the Judeo-Christian West tell us that each of us has dignity and worth, simply by virtue of being a person.  But so much of our culture in a so-called developed nation deprives us of our dignity and worth, of our very personhood, and we all suffer from it.  To express this in terms that the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. used in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, an institution that is not rooted in eternal truth and natural truth is an unjust institution. Any institution that uplifts human personality is just. Any institution that degrades human personality is unjust.  A workplace that robs us of human dignity and worth is unjust and unhealthy.  Any workplace where an absent employee can go unnoticed for twelve years is one that degrades the personhood of its employees.

This is the underlying sickness at the Norfolk Community Services Board – and at many places of work around the country.  This is an unjust institution that is willing to turn its employees into nonpersons.  As a Christian, an Episcopalian, and a Dominican Sister, I name this injustice and sickness as sin.  Because Christianity is about relationship, sin is a breach in relationship, a separation or an alienation.  By compromising the dignity and worth of this woman, by failing to accept her personhood, the relationship between employer and employee is degraded and broken, which causes a chain reaction that affects a number of relationships.  How can any man live to his potential as a nonperson?  How can a woman find and live the true vocation of her heart when her personhood is denied?  And as a nonperson, how can anyone live in authentic relationship with co-workers, friends, or family members?

To be sure, I don’t have all the facts yet.  It is entirely possible that this woman contrived to bilk the Community Services Board, and thus the taxpayers of the City of Norfolk, out of thousands of dollars over the last twelve years.  Because the Virginian-Pilot account tells us that the investigation “is nearly complete and will soon be turned over to the Norfolk police,” I surmise that this woman is probably not an innocent victim.  By no means should it be inferred that fraud or similar misdeeds are excusable based on the underlying theme I see here.

Instead, let me give you a challenge.  Tomorrow, when you go to your place of work – or stop by the DMV, or call your insurance company, or try to make heads or tails of an application for SNAP benefits – pay attention to the people around you.  Consider that each man and woman is an individual who possesses dignity and worth, who has his or her own family and home and story.  Think about your personhood.  And remember to respect the personhood of those around you.