On Sunday the New York Times ran a profile of a 58-year-old man who was laid off 18 months ago from a $225,000 job in the loan industry. Expecting "a glut of interviews," he bought two new suits with his severance pay but has never used them, because he hasn't had an interview yet, despite applying for 600 jobs.
It's hard to feel very sorry for somebody who made that kind of money and who also got $188,000 in severance. But there are two parts of the article that I found very sad.
First is this self-evaluation:
My problem is, I have no credential. I'm not a lawyer or doctor, not in pharmaceuticals, not an expert in women’s fashion. I have no broker's license or insurance certificate.
But he has an MBA -- and apparently that's utterly useless in today's job market. Somebody should tell that to all the unemployed people taking out student loans to burnish their resumes with an MBA.
Second, and even more sad: he has nothing to do. According to the article:
He can walk to shopping, but often drives his secondhand S.U.V. to a grocery store two towns away just to have someplace to go. "If I walk to the store, I'm back in 10 minutes, and then what?" ...
Filling the days is a chore. He goes for the $2.99 breakfast special at a nearby diner every morning, just to get out and be around people. A few times a week, he rides the train into Manhattan, to a museum or street fair, just to be out. "I'll walk from Union Square to the Upper East Side, walk through Central Park and just get lost and see where I come out."
It's impossible for me to understand how someone can grow up in American society and have no interests, no hobbies, nothing they'd rather do than work. To be utterly at a loss as to what to do with his time. But it helps me understand why he's alone in the first place. Of the marriage he walked out of soon before being laid off, he says:
"We'd just grown apart, we had a different opinion on mostly everything," he says. "Life is short -- you got to do what makes you happy."
Really? Given that he has absolutely no interests, I wonder what he had a differing opinion on. I have the feeling he did nothing but work, and that his wife had grown away from him simply by having a life. She must be ecstatic to be rid of him.
Oh, wait, he has done something:
With so much time on his hands, he decided to take a stab at writing novels. He’s finished a thriller about a consumer loan officer and is working on making contacts in the writing world. "I have befriended publishers, published authors, agents, taking certain people to lunch," he says.
A thriller about a consumer loan officer. You don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Actually, this guy's story is made for a thriller. Utterly bored and desperate for excitement, he's just asking for a dashing secret agent to come into his life, a la "The In-Laws," and turn things upside down. At least I hope that's what his novel is about, and not, you know, the consumer loan industry.
The thing is, I'm not so different from this guy. I'm white and I'm a few years younger than him. I don't have an MBA, and I didn't leave my wife out of boredom. I am also trying to get some novels published, and the one I'm working on now is set, in part, in the software industry that employs me. But if God forbid I lose my job, I don't think I'm going to be quite as helpless as that guy.
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Martha Nichols
mypsyche
DktrShe
ambiacademic
Ersatz Reader
O'Really?
Salon.com
Comments
rated.
But I'm feeling his pain too. Its been three months of unemployment for me now, a month longer than I've ever had, and I'm feeling the malaise. I need a deadline to write, and without one, I'm afraid the muse has gone on vacation for a time.
Hang in there!
That might work for some people who really love their jobs - but it doesn't work for the rest of people who simply love *having* a job and aren't living and breathing their office every moment of the day.
There is no end to things the guy could do. He obviously should have a healthy nest egg set aside with that sort of income. Volunteer work at a soup kitchen or working with the homeless would broaden his horizons and get rid of some of that self pity. Hell, he could go back to school if he wanted to, but I suspect that he may end up hanging in a closet somewhere.
Seriously, the guy should be elated. I feel sorry for the poor schlub who actually needs money to survive and gets laid off. I know first hand what that's like, yet I haven't an ounce of self pity. I must be missing something.
sounds about as fun as an ulcer.
does make ya wonder though
about the mindset of certain people...
or lack thereof.
mark, this is a great post. i have about 3/4 of an MBA -- i call it the Much Bigger Assholes degree. i came out of that in 1983 when the economy was a disaster so i ended up in accounting and some finance, which is why i'm now a Recovering Accountant. i'm with SL on this guy doing some community service. i mean, shit, it's sad that this doesn't even occur to this fellow, to give something back. what pisses me off is that he probably will get an agent and find a publisher because of this publicity. a guy with no interests at all.
love love lvoe and gratitude!
I suppose he could become a 'life coach'. He can help other out of work office drones how to stretch a shopping errand into an afternoon.
What kills me is that he was making a quarter of a million bucks a year, and he has no savings? At 58, with that kind of earning power in his career, he should be able to retire early, on less than he expected, not looking for work as a dog walker/ sandwhich artist.
Good lord. Go walk a dog. Volunteer at a community garden. Join a book club. Work on a health reform campaign. Help someone out.
Ok, now I'm getting mad at him.
When I got to the part where he explained his divorce, I thought, "Oh shit, I don't like where this is going." I mean his reasoning was so, I don't know, 70's? Like he didn't know that Plato's Retreat closed down?
I had the impression that he is just a rich drifter. He seems to have little contact with his children or any other family. He goes to Florida, then New York, he writes a lame novel, he wanders the city.
What he doesn't do is retrain himself for any sort of job that might pay for his downsized lifestyle, or use his severance to start a business, or volunteer his time. So yeah, he's probably depressed, no surprise there, and totally frozen in time.
http://open.salon.com/blog/songweasel/2009/08/31/response_to_the_jobless_mba
To me, the moral of the story is this: the guy with the hot job today might well be the well-dressed guy in the unemployment line tomorrow. Our economy is brutally and ruthlessly efficient, and any one of us can be rendered irrelevant in the blink of an eye.
You'll be 58 someday, too. Don't laugh too hard.
With years of an income like that, he also has no savings? If he does, couldn't he start his own business?
Oh, I forgot... nothing interests him enough.
I guess I never realized just how fortunate I really am. I do envy him his walks through Central Park though.
Although I'm a few years younger and contemplating an early retirement, one of the reasons I want to leave now is exactly to avoid this guy's fate: better to be an moderately-paid, employed worker-bee than a well-paid and easily-dispensable exec.
Sadder still is that, as other posters have noted, this guy seems to have NOTHING beyond his work. I can't imagine making my job my entire life; no job is worth that sacrifice.
Great article and congrats for the Editor´s Pick!
Marcela
I worked in the consumer loan biz years ago, so I know: I'm laughing.
Your thoughts on how empty this guy is are spot-on. Many people don't have any interest beyond work and creature comforts. Sad.
(maybe i need to start work on a thriller based in the cuthroat world of non-profits? :)
MBA or not, unemployment is not a happy time. He does need to get a hobby or volunteer, I agree with you all on that.
I have an MBA from a top school, which at some point meant something for the job market, but apparently not anymore. I have been unemployed for six months now without many prospects of returning to the workforce.
I have a couple new suits, jackets and pants that have seen little action, despite having applied / networked for a large number of jobs (well into the hundreds). And prospects look grim as the end of the year approaches again and we expect all the companies get lethargic and stop any hiring until at least the new year.
I don't want anybody to feel sorry for me, I was busting my rear and working very hard to provide for me and my family but I was pulling six figures and having a good life overall. I wasn't part of the loan industry, my industry didn't cause the economic doom, it rather suffer it and I found myself out of a job.
I have a wonderful wife and a son, two pets and a house where I have tons of things to do. I have at least two hobbies I'm crazy about, and another two or three (like writing or reading) which I practice as much as I can. I have a huge backyard that needs maintenance and I also do volunteer work with a local community organization. On top of all that, I'm taking online classes to get another certification.
Yet... with all that, being out of work somehow messes with you and makes your days feel empty.
Maybe it's just a male thing, but being out of work for a long time messes with our self-esteem and days become harder to fill.
As for the backyard project, the house projects, hobbies, etc, pretty much everything revolves around money. Yes, I have some of my severance left (it was never $188K to begin with, think 10% of that) and we're saving everything we can, thus I don't feel like spending $600 in paint at Home Depot to re-paint the dining room.
Same goes with the hobbies, everything you do costs money. Well, what about some of the "free" hobbies, such as running? Heck, I'm even afraid of going running, twisting an ankle and having to pay medical expenses (now higher under my new, crappy health plan replacing the corporate plan I lost).
I haven't had my annual checkup this year, my pets have missed their shots and their vet visits, my cars have missed all their maintenance and I just keep them running for as little as I can, my house needs maintenance and my health is probably suffering from the stress and the change in my diet as I replace good quality foods for cheaper ones.
All I can think right now is how to save money to keep my house and provide for my family if this situation continues to a year or more. While I don't feel sympathy for the guy in the article, I can somehow understand what he's going through.
My final point (and the reason for this long story) is that no matter how many other things you do, unemployment is never a happy time and you can't take it as a vacation because it is not.
FC