Well...it's Thursday. What can I say? Another week nearly spent. For those of you grinding the days in an office - Friday is going to be a welcome visitor. For those of us without such offices...it's just another day to wake up to.
Wow. Did that sound as bleak to you as it did to me? Hmmm....guess when you've done this a year or two, it does come down to being a little bleak.
Set up here: I've been out of work exactly two years three days ago. I get up in the morning...hug the dog, don my bathrobe...shuffle to my office and open up the computer to see what marvelous opportunities have sprung into being the night before. Sometimes - there's a lot of them...sparkling like a Las Vegas slot machine. Sometimes, there are a few and sometimes...there aren't any.
Next step: start opening up job boards. Select, apply, create the dazzling cover letters that will knock somebody's socks clean off of their feet...an hour goes by, two, maybe three. Noon...get myself up...eat some breakfast (yeah...it comes late these days), feed the dog and let her out (it's ok, she's been sleeping this whole time...she's an old dog with a magnificently well structured bladder!) brush my teeth and find something to put in my stomach. Then I get myself dressed. Get back into my office and start looking at the other job sites and opps. OR...start packing up the rest of the house. After two years, the house must now become a commodity and stop being a home. Yup - gonna rent it out and hope it can start paying for itself because - I sure as hell can't continue to feed it on Uncle Sam's dime. Especially when I'm not at all sure Uncle Sam is going to continue to pay me!
Love this bottle of wine! It's great! (if you read my blog and ask me, I'll tell you what it is... :)
I know there are a lot of us out there. People like me, going through the same motions that I'm going through. The savings are gone, the equity in the house shot..and all of us reduced to cyber mooing right along with the rest of the herd desperately jockying for place in a job market gone mental.
You know...this isn't the first dance I've been on. I've had more experience with being laid off and hired and laid off and hired than almost anyone I know. I get into a job....do my stuff - everyone thinks I walk on water and then...someone comes in, declares that it's concrete, not a lake and would I please pack my stuff and hit the road...we need to downsize. Nothing personal, you've done a GREAT job...we'll sure miss you but....don't let the screen hit your fanny on the way out, ok? And, I know what to do when it happens. You get your resume in order, your references listed and you call your agencies. You put the word out to your friends and you get on the computer and do your stuff. In a few months, a few good interviews, you're rehired. Maybe some place else but, you're rehired.
Ok...that was May of 2008. This is June 2010. What in hell is going on?
Well, for one thing, there's that dirty little secret that companies don't want you to figure out if you happen to be of a certain generation: grandma's need not apply. Yup - it's the truth folks. There's a whole generation out there with more experience and more savvy than God looking for work and the companies that ARE hiring...don't want to deal with Grandma...or Mom. And how do they figure this out, you ask? It's not hard...how do you not become 'Grandma' when you've got over twenty years experience doing what you do? How do you hide that? Those years of experience are your 'product'...your reason for thinking that you just might be the right person for the job....(I happen to be an Admin...an Executive Admin at that. Yeah, you've got the next point already I'm sure....Not the right eye candy for someone's front desk.)
I'm good at what I do. In fact, I'm better than good at what I do. But I don't want to go live with Mommy while I figure out what I'm going to end up being when I grow up (even though that's EXACTLY what I'm about to do...) I'm worth a decent living wage but, nobody's going to offer it to me when they can get young, eager and willing to work for less to do the job for them AND provide the scenery while they're at it.
Twenty-six years learning my job. Twenty six years learning to handle whatever comes up without someone telling me how to do it or giving me permission to blow my own nose. As one friend of mine put it: 'it's not your experience that's in demand anymore.'
She should know, she works in HR.
What I want to know is this: the people who run the companies that pushed the economy to the point of tearing...are the people of MY generation who fought tooth and nail against their fathers and grandfathers for how they did business and how ruthlessly they handled the people who made the money for them. WHAT IN THE HELL HAPPENED???!!!
Get ready Corporate America. Unions have pretty much had their teeth pulled. Graft and greed have taken the fight and the bite out of them. But if this situation continues much longer, I'm predicting that a new age of union is about to appear. And they won't be the blue collar people without the education and experience to back them up. They're going to be an entirely new animal who will know what you've made, what you're projecting to make and make sure that the working population who makes that money FOR you doesn't end up screwed blue and tattooed as this one has.
I'm too old to be young and too young to be old. I've got at least another fifteen to twenty years of working in me. How stupid is this society to waste it's time on untried students and shove people like me aside? Frankly, it really doesn't make much fiscal sense. I can be up and running in a week...it takes someone with less experience six months to learn what I already know.
Good news is: the wine's great. I don't have to get up tomorrow morning. I don't have a boss to secretly give the finger to and I don't have to fantasize about all the things I could do if I only had the time to do them. I've got all the time in the world. Well, until the rest of the money runs out and they take the house and declare me bankrupt.
Maybe that's not all bad. When you've got nothing left, there really IS nothing left to lose. Maybe your sense of self worth, your sense of who you are and where you fit in the scheme of things...maybe your sense of why you're here in the first place.
Who knew that a meaningful, productive occupation impacted all that? I sure didn't.
Do now.
Them's mah thotz.
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