Mitigating My Damages

At the end of the movie Pretty Woman, prostitute Vivian (as portrayed by a youthful Julia Roberts) cleans up and is whisked away by Richard Gere where she will presumably marry or cohabit with him, but at the very least will no longer have to 'turn tricks' to earn her bread. Her roommate and fellow 'lady of the evening' inspired by her former 'co-worker' exhorts her new 'roommate' fellow 'lady of the evening' that she will have to charge her an increased rent owing to the fact that she too doesn't want to 'turn tricks' forever and may take night school classes, etc, because as she giddily states, "Ya gotta have a plan!" , "Do ya have a plan?" she exhorts her new minion.

Do you have a plan? Indeed.

I, in fact had (have) a plan. It's very simple. The plan has ALWAYS been to GET. A. JOB.
I've gone through all the usual suspects, Craigslist, Careerbuilder, Monster, HotJobs..Cold Jobs, Good Jobs, Indifferent Jobs, Mediocre Jobs...ok...you get the idea...
My resume has passed through more hands than a NY Subway token. Placement Agencies, Temporary Agents, Staffing Agents, (Casting Agents?). 

Since my plan hasn't been completely realized, contingencies WERE necessary, somewhat humiliating and degrading, but still necessary! Especially given the fact that I liked to eat and the bills WILL keep coming in spite of the fact that employment has not. So of course, I tapped on the great State of Florida's shoulder and said, "I'd like to have some of those tax dollars back that I and my former employer(s) paid into your unemployment coffers".  And at first the State of Florida obligingly complied.

To my great surprise though, I found some weeks later that a former employer quite vociferously objected to my request for her portion of those aforementioned dollars and had viscously petitioned every department of the Florida State unemployment office up to and including Governor Scott himself to prevent me from doing so.

Her reasoning was that I wasn't mitigating my damages, simply put that I hadn't made the necessary effort to find a job. As she saw it, all these months, I've been sitting around in a feathered peignoir and slippers watching the soaps while gorging myself on bon-bons.

After I cried and screamed, then cried and screamed a little more, I did what any reactionary type A personality would do. First I burned with indignation, recalling every menial task I'd ever performed for her up to and including making her lunch, dropping off postage and buying stamps for which I was never reimbursed nor for the mileage it took for me to go and purchase them, petitioning members of my family to provide her with advertising products at cost for which they and the company never received one penny in profit, taking a part-time position at a substantially lower wage while she replaced me with someone else in order to avoid being altogether unemployed. The temporary assignment I took which paid me 50% less in wages than a similar position I'd held 4 years earlier, because I was so desperate NOT to be unemployed, to NOT have to take unemployment compensation.

Then I overdosed on job-hunting. It hasn't been uncommon for me to be scouring Craigslist or Careerbuilder at midnight on a Saturday double-checking, being sure that there wasn't something I'd missed earlier in the week. Then being panicked at finding something, only to find as I checked my list of sent resumes that I'd already contacted them.

 All of the interviews, kowtowing to every hiring manager, every receptionist, every single person who might have had the ability to make or break me.  Hearing so often the phrases I dread, "Well, we have a few more people to see this week." Or... "We are going to email you a personality evaluation and then we'll see where we are."  "We'll be in touch soon..."  And responding to my query, "Will I hear from you either way?"   "Oh sure, we'll definitely be in touch!" All of the ways people handle you, all of the ways they tell you without ever saying it, without ever giving you the chance to prove them wrong, that you are too old, too young, too ugly, too pretty, too thin, too fat, too blond, too not-blond, too not asian, too not hispanic, not spanish-speaking, too qualified, too underqualified for them to bother with being polite to or treating you like a human being.

And you go home and beg the phone to ring. Praying that they'll give you the chance to prove them wrong.

Trying so damn hard to mitigate my damages. To prove that I am not a bum, a burden on society, shiftless, lazy, good for nothing...not a failure.

Fast foward a few months and then, the other week,  Interview #...oh forget it, a guy, the owner in fact, shows up to interview me...in shorts. I try to overlook the fact that I am perspiring, SWEATING in hosiery, having sat up the night before swathed in blue clay to be sure my skin was supple, bleaching my teeth white using a device that is reminiscent of the mouthguard Rocky Balboa used while sparring with Apollo Creed, (come to think of it, it kind of makes me sound a bit like Rocky too..'Yo Adrian!'), the hours I spent that night researching interview questions, trying to be prepared for any eventuality.

But nothing could have prepared me for the question he posed 15 minutes into the interview when he says, "So unemployed for how many months...how come you haven't had any offers?" 

I blink hard to stop the rush of emotion, my throat raw with the sob that is never far from the surface. For a split second, I want to punch him square on the jaw. I want to break the windows. I want to scream, "Why indeed, your guess is as good as mine, you inconsiderate jerk?"

I think, 'I can't believe I have to answer the question of a man who five minutes ago stopped me mid-sentence to take a cell phone call from his wife about some matter relating to home improvement, and whose trousers are hanging on the door of his office, who IS WEARING SHORTS!'

I answer, of course, I answer. I know that I have as much chance of getting this job as my cat Jamie ever has of catching that moth on the other side of the sliding glass door.

But I answer...above all...my dignity doesn't matter, my pride doesn't even factor in, I have to mitigate my damages.

An Epidemic of Meaness

A recent hit single by the country artist Taylor Swift asks the ultimate $10,000 question in a breathtakingly simple way as she wryly queries, "Why you gotta be so mean?"  I freely admit the song hit me in visceral way. It's quite a catchy tune as well, say what you like about Taylor Swift, but it cannot be denied that she is a gifted singer/songwriter with her finger squarely on the pulse of tween America and in this case, an emotional 30-something. Seemingly Ms. Swift had some kind of forehand knowledge of the daily frustration that I encounter when confronted by the continual breakdown of polite society.

For instance, the other day when entering Hwy 417 via SR 434, I had to quickly merge into oncoming traffic causing me to inadvertantly 'cut off' a fellow driver. Mind you, it's a two lane road so he could have just as effortlessly come up adjacent to me in the 'slow lane'. In my situation, from the way I was approaching, it was the left/'fast lane' or risk missing my exit entirely. It wasn't actually 'cutting him off' but just forcing him to take the slower lane initally. Apparently, this wasn't to this 'gentleman's' (and I use that term loosely) liking for he immediately pulled in the left lane behind me and proceeded to aggressively tailgate me all the way down the highway. And I do mean tailgate, as close as he tailed me, I could make out his eye color and whether or not he was wearing contact lenses! Then as I signalled to exit left he suddenly sped out behind me and then pulled right over in front of me, missing my vehicle by inches, squealing his tires and giving me the international one finger salute while shouting epithets out the window. All because I pulled into a lane a fraction of a few sections earlier than him.

Some of the first stirrings that I was dealing with something more societal than just being inconvenienced by people talking on cell phones blocking the aisles in grocery stores came as a result of the behavior of spectators here in Orlando during and in the days after the Casey Anthony Trial and the antics of the media and trial attorneys themselves. There were the fist fights breaking out in lines as people queued up trying to stake out their seats in the 'Media Trial Event of the Decade', the sarcastic posturing of prosecutorial attorney, Jeff Ashton during Defense Attorney Baez's closing remarks, the removal of one female spectator ranting at Ms. Anthony during the Voir Dire proceedings, and the further removal of a male spectator 'giving the finger' to Mr. Ashton during the actual trial. At one particularly shameful point in the proceedings, Judge Perry had to threaten to hold both Mr. Ashton and Mr. Baez in contempt after Mr. Ashton laughed at him during closing arguments and Mr. Baez called him out. After the trial, it got much worse with people ranting on line in the most bloodthirsty and vitrolic postings I have ever seen.  So acrimonious were the invectives that people hurled on Ms. Anthony's jurors that Judge Belvin Perry was forced to seal their names (the jurors) for 4 months in an effort to let the public anger die down and keep them safe after several death threats were reported. It was in hearing media pundits like Nancy Grace excoriating the jury for failing to come through with the verdict she felt was just and correct.

To this day, one need only to glance through the 'Rants and Raves' (R-N-R) section of Craigslist to read the comments of people libeling and slandering Ms. Anthony, Mr. Baez, Mr. Ashton, Ms. Drane-Burdick and Judge Perry depending on what side of the argument they are encamped on.  For that matter Craigslist's R-N-R section is, in of itself, an epic piece of mean-ness where the angry hordes (posters) gather to pick on the weak, disenfranchised, racist, gay, or physically challenged like vultures swarming over a particularly choice piece of carrion.  To read it, is to despair that we've regressed from a polite society so alarmingly that nothing short of a counter-revolution would restore us back to our former selves.

Then there is of course, the debt debate earlier this summer which offered up the more seamier side of Washington party politics but served as another reminder of the angry partisanship on both sides.
While he had his faults and certainly his critics, (mostly angry liberal revisionist history types) one of the great things about President Ronald Reagan was his ability to 'cross the aisle' in an effort to meet the needs of the American people. He gave a little and they gave a little and they were able to find common ground and places the needs of the citizens above party politics. But now all you have is finger pointing and scapegoating on both sides and nothing gets accomplished. It's all about which PAC is coming across with how much money for the next political campaign. And the ends justify the means. If it means slandering another congressman's (Paul Ryan) plan and questioning their very intelligence, so be it. If it means distorting the facts, calling him/her names, alleging he/she is a radical, if I have to crawl over their very bones to reach the office, then that's what I'll do and no amount of mean-ness of behavior is an obstacle provided I reach my ultimate goal.

All of this got me to wondering if I am alone in my thinking? Is it merely a side effect of the depression I've been dealing with? A symptom of the feelings of isolation and disconnect from society which results from not being 'out there' every day through the medium of employment? So, as is my want I set out to research this topic. When I queried my good 'friend' Google, the question "Are we becoming meaner as a society?", it responded with no less than 792,000 hits. Clearly others like me are also pondering this question in our numbers. Some of the stories I read in my research were heartbreaking, incidences of bullying like the story from a Fox News affiliate last month detailing how Nadin Khoury who was brought to the US 10 years ago to escape the Liberian Civil War, was left suspended by his coat from a seven foot high fence after being punched, kicked, beaten and dragged to the fence in a Philadelphia suburb. The ultimate irony in this is that his mother brought him here to the US to escape the violence being wrought in his own country.

What have we come to in this country? And my unanswered question, my greatest fear is...where will it end?

Gen X Retro Flashback: Rubiks Cube 1980

Your Gen X'er will be back with a new posting soon. In the meantime, enjoy these retro commercials for Rubiks Cube games from the 1980's. (I dare you not to laugh)

Love in a Plastic Bag

My last few posts have focused mainly on Generation X as a whole, on what's happening to us in the media, economically and sociologically.

This one gets a little personal, a little touchy-feely so if you are looking for another bitter diatribe against the press, et. al or society as a whole, I fear you will be disappointed.

I'm a Generation X'er certainly and I wear my day-glo badge with pride, I turn the radio up loud on 80's Friday nights, I'm a denzien of You Tube scouring the retro ads and TV shows of my youth. I remember exactly where I was when Challenger exploded on that frigid Florida morning in 1986, (Ms. Gilbreath's 6th grade math class)  when President Reagan admonished Mr. Gorbachev to "Tear down that wall!" and that miraculous night in 1990 when that wall ACTUALLY DID come down!  And in the last few months, I've also attained a new Gen X badge, my Gen X Unemployment badge. Yep, there, I've said it, I'm unemployed.

I am very aware that like so many of us, I'm just a statistic, another name on one of the thousands and thousands of resumes that whiz to and fro throughout cyberspace, resumes that carry our education, accomplishments, statistics and our hopes that maybe, just maybe, this will be THE ONE that defies the odds, lands us the job, and for the first time in a long time we can finally breathe. The ONE that will release us from the torment of haunting Craigslist, Careerbuilder, Monster, Hot Jobs, etc like Mr. Leroux's phantom prowling the dungeons under the Paris Opera House.

Every time the phone rings my heart leaps into my throat and like Pavlov's dog, my pupils dilate and my mouth waters with anticipation of what I'll say...what they'll say. Perhaps this time will be THE ONE, or at the very least I'll net an interview. Even an interview says that they kind of...want me.

After months of this process, interviews for positions that never materialize, the stress of analzying and scrutinizing every word I say, every word they say, worrying over things like "was there lint on my trousers ?", "did I sweat too much?" "is there any lipstick on my teeth?","did I answer that question properly?", am I too old, too young, underqualified, overqualified", I broke down. In a scary way. No, not suicidial or anything like that. I can't become an alcoholic, I can't afford to drink! Can't smoke, can't afford cigarettes (plus the smell of cigarette smoke makes me nauseous, there is that) In a way it became almost worse. The longest and most protracted period of depression I have ever known, in short depression has become a state of being for me. I never knew or could have imagined the hell that true depression really is.  The chronic insomnia (on the plus side I have greatly increased my knowledge of old movies, Time Life music offerings, and episodes of Married with Children), the weird almost flu-like body aches and pains, the total lack of appetite, lack of interest in anything.  Thinking back to how glibly I would toss off the phrase, "I am so depressed!" when faced with trivial things like a relationship not coming to fruition, a bad haircut or not finding a pair of shoes to match an outfit, makes me grimace in shame.

On this past weekend though, I had an opportunity to be the recipient of something so remarkable, a respite of sorts from the depressive state I live in, which came to me in the most unusual way. To celebrate the wedding anniversary of my mother and stepfather, members of our family took a day cruise. I have to admit, while wanting to be there for my parents, I equally DIDN'T want to be there. I wanted to be holed up in my cocoon, not facing the questioning stares of other family members, "does she have a job yet?", being irrationally angry at them for having jobs, having loving spouses, children, disposable income. I put on my happy face though and for a time I WAS actually happy enjoying the company of my family and their children.  My sadness though was never far from the surface no matter how hard I tried to ignore it. Something in me has been broken and I've been at a loss to discover how to 'fix the hole (whole)'.

The game changer came in the form of a green plastic bag. My mother throughout these weeks and months has been my lifeline, patiently listening to me as I poured out my fear, my worries, listening as I vented my spleen over the colossal unfairness of life, the abandonment I felt by the government, former employers, friends, and even God Himself. She listened and I selfishly thought, "She doesn't really get it... I mean she's got a job, she's not suffering like I am...". I cringe even I type these selfish thoughts.

Before I left the docks that day, my mother handed me a green plastic bag, the kind that newspapers come in, and as I waited for the car to cool down before driving home, I opened the sack. What I found there were weeks of newspaper articles covering every topic from depression to interviewing tips, books to encourage me, books that she'd picked up for me knowing the kinds of subjects I like to read about, a favorite movie on DVD. In short, love. Right there in a plastic newspaper sleeve. She WAS listening to me all the time. I cried, all the way home. In fact, I cried as I wrote this.

But, some tiny shoots appeared today in the barren sands of my heart. And today, for the first time in a long while, I remembered to eat breakfast...

The Preferred Risk- Generation Y

One of the other galvanizing forces that compelled me to begin writing and sharing my thoughts as a member of a disenfranchised generation was an article that appeared on the MSN Money section a few
days ago http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43976881/ns/business-eye_on_the_economy/.

In this piece the writer, a Ms. Anika Anand giddily argues that Generation Y is the best chance the USA has to 'fix' this depressed economy. Yes, I take a liberty in stating depressed but I have always heard that an economy is in recession when your neighbor is unemployed and that depression is when you yourself are unemployed.  Getting back to this piece, which it should be mentioned, is a money article that most definitely falls under the heading of an op ed piece; for me it was another of those moments when my blood pressure soared and my hackles rose for once again it was seemingly another opportunity for the press to take an underhanded swipe at X'ers. On the surface this article is a masterpiece of rose-tinted optimism that any good ol' red-blooded patriotic American loves to read, the artistically tatooed hipster riding in on his eco-friendly Prius (steed) to save Mom, Apple Pie and Chevrolet (Volt of course). But if you delve deeper into the theory, far more sinister for me was the feeling that once again all the efforts of the previous generation, my generation, were forgotten and worse than that, that they failed to learn from us.

Wasn't our generation with its dot-com startups and killer apps the original modern day entrepeneurs? Where would Gen Y be if not for the efforts of X'ers like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs? There would be no Mark Zuckerberg -Winklevoss Feud to litigate if they hadn't had the shoulders of Sergey Brin and Larry Page to stand on. Who needs Jack Dorsey, et al (Twitter) if Jerry Yang and David Filo hadn't paved the road with Yahoo back at the inception of Internet 2.0?

To read Ms. Anand's piece is to flirt with the idea that since no one else, we're looking at you Generation X, because the Boomers have all retired to Florida to spend their social security and pensions drinking Ensure poolside, is willing to take up the task. (Sigh), "We'll have to shoulder that burden and save the world". I can't help thinking it calls to mind the world-weariness of Bruce Willis'
admonishing of the crew in Armageddon, "The United States Government just asked us to save the world. Anybody want to say no?"

She further goes on to cite a Kool-Aid drinking journalist tipsy on the promise of the messiah generation coming into it's own,

"This is a generation of serial entrepreneurs," said Donna Fenn, a journalist who wrote "Upstarts!," one of the first books identifying the Gen Y entrepreneur trend. "A lot of them start businesses in their 20s and many of them don't think that their first business will be their last. They're addicted to creating things, to the startup phase. By the time they reach their 40s, they will have started three, four or five companies."
She said the so-called Millennial generation is inclined toward entrepreneurship partly because they saw their parents lose corporate jobs in the downsizing movement of the era. They also witnessed a wave of ugly corporate scandals followed by the meltdown of the financial industry. The result is that they tend to have a lot less faith in large institutions like companies or government, she said.

And yet in a stunning but not wholly unexpected piece of journalistic hypocrisy, we are told that these same millenials who 'tend to have a lot less faith in large institutions like companies or government' are apparently looking to the who else but the federal government and corporation venture capitalists to fund these civilization-saving initiatives.

Aaron Smith, co-founder of another young advocacy organization Young Invincibles, is also working with Gerber on the Youth Entrepreneurship Act. He acknowledges that now is a tough time to get anything passed in Congress, but contends that a bill helping young entrepreneurs would give the government a good return on investment.

"Increasingly, Congress is looking at ways to create jobs at a relatively low cost," the 29-year-old said. "One of the interesting things about young people is that their barrier to starting a business is small, in terms of the monetary amount. We're talking only a few thousand dollars."
Matthew Segal, founder of a nonprofit that promotes entrepreneurs under 30, has a slightly different focus. He thinks getting consumers to support young business startups should complement any potential legislation.

Have none of these people taken a good hard look at the government, the Federal Reserve, the goings on the US Treasury? Have not the 1st Stimulus, the 2nd Stimulus, TARP, bailouts of supposedly too-large-to fail AIG, GM, Chrysler, Cash for Clunkers, all been cloaked in failure?  What about our recent politically charged debt ceiling debacle, our S & P credit downgrade?  Uncle Sam has his pocket linings hanging out, we're writing IOU's for debt we'll probably never be repay at the rate we are spending and China is knocking on our door with their hands out.

For that matter, does no one remember the dot-com bubble burst in 2001-2002? As a matter fact, yes. And I'll tell you who...the Gen X dot.com startups who were millionaires one day and wiped out the next. The people who woke up at Enron in the fall of 2001 to find the 'smartest guys in the room' had just gambled away their jobs, insurance, retirement and their hope. We learned our lessons well that day, trust no one...and most especially the government.

So before you go out there Gen Y, shaking your heads at us, bent on doing what we slackers, abdicators of our country's financial future seemingly are NOT doing, you might do well to learn from us. We have our reasons for being quiet and electing to not rush in to save what might not be sound in the first place.

Gen X Retro Flashback: The Great Space Coaster

A Moment of Epiphany

You've probably heard all the expressions by now...all the convenient definitions, 'Generation X', the 'Slacker Generation', 'Mall Rats', all of the ways in which sociologists, population experts, politicians, statisticians, etc try to pigeonhole and define what our generation is.

Until very recently, it never occurred to me to mind. Then, approximately 2 weeks ago I found myself sitting in a nicely appointed office in a surburban office park in Central Florida being interviewed for a position, in fact the very same type of position I had actually performed in a different capacity for another employer just a few years ago. All was going well with the first interview until the owner asked that I might 'spend a little time' with the employee whom I was interviewing to replace. (a bit of back story, employee was leaving voluntarily to move out of state) "Of course ," I said, "it would be a great opportunity to get a feel for the day to day operations of the position." She (the owner) went on giddily about how sorry they were to be losing this employee, (let's call her Leslie) they were so incredibly fond of her and she'd worked for them for 5 whole...months (have to say that I was inwardly stunned thinking surely she meant 5 years). Before I even met her, I have to admit thinking "I am going to interview with a person who is barely past the 90 day probation period!"

Leslie comes in dressed in hipster chic with modishly cropped coppery hair, highlighted with bright red and pink streaks and a huge celtic cross tatooed on her wrist, and like every other self-respecting Gen Y Millenial, her head bent down over her I-Phone-Droid-Blackberry device until she is inches from me whereupon she gives one final swipe to her gadget and sits down in the chair next to me. Her eyes appraise me in my conservative black trousers and blouse with discreet jewelry, my bobbed blonde hair, my filofax planner and finally my stocking clad feet in dark pumps. The contrast between us from that first moment could not be more pronounced.

 Her first question is the standard, "So tell me a little about yourself" and as I begin telling her about beginning in insurance in 1993, about the problems after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and the residuals markets, the life insurance bailouts in the mid 90's, all the way up to 1999 when my employer at the time, a small health plan was seized by the Dept of Insurance and I went to work briefly for the state sorting out months of back claims, her eyes glaze over and I realise we have no common ground because while I was out working in the 'real world' ACTUALLY working in insurance, she was probably in middle school. We have nothing to talk about, no commonality of experience, in short we have a 'generation gap' that cannot be bridged. She knows nothing about rushing to get quotes from a fax machine that is beeping from lack of paper, or doing data entry on computers that have a green type on a black screen, the wonder of getting to work in office that had just upgraded to Windows 95, or having your company announce to you in a printed memo (not an email, mind you) that it has just taken steps to establish a non-smokers break room, and from now on Fridays will have a new title called "Casual Friday" where you can wear casual shirts and jeans if you like and on that day you are not required to wear stockings and heels!

My suspicions are confirmed when she asks me, "Just how old are you anyway?" Now, I know what you are thinking, she can't ask that, by law, she can't. But what would you do? If you do answer, you might be passed over (which I was, by the way) due to not being young enough and if you refuse, they are going to wonder what you have to hide. When I tell her she giggles and says, "Oh wow, I am 24!"

This was my moment of epiphany. For the first time in my life, I realised that I was no longer the younger generation. I mean, yes, there was evidence of this happening, the establishment of local radio station that specializes in 'oldies' from the 70's and 80's, reading an article the other day where Debbie Gibson was listed as age 40 and on a 'nostalgia tour' with Tiffany. (by the way if you are reading this and those names are unfamiliar, you probably have no business reading this in the first place)

But for the first time I could tell that for this office, my time had come and gone, that somehow I, and the information, the education, the experience I possessed were somehow no longer relevant.   That is why I have started this blog. I want a voice for this overlooked, undervalued, and marginalised generation. A voice that refuses to be silenced....