So I'm another jobs story, yet again. When you've seen it before, whether it's some of the bigots you have to work with, the pettiness of the workplace or the products it produces, you learn both to reflect and react. The Media makes the most of those who react, those who "go postal". Others react by writing blogs which get read by past and future employers. This kind of writing is theraputic at best, self-pitying at worst but hopefully some place for reflection albeit more public.
WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?
Come bring your story, laborious or otherwise below the employed squiggle and don't throw yourself under any buses...
But who was the first person to squawk about throwing someone under the bus, or being thrown under themselves? In an interview with NEWSWEEK, William Safire, the author of "Safire's Political Dictionary," traced the popularization of the phrase back to Cyndi Lauper, who jauntily tossed her critics "under the bus" after the release of her debut album "She's So Unusual" in 1983, says Safire. But he suspects that the phrase has deeper roots in minor-league baseball, where players are almost always bused to away games. In fact, its original meaning could be have been quite literal: be on time for the bus, or you will be thrown underneath it, into the storage bays. He says the metaphor has also been used as a way to say "get with it, or get lost," as in "you're either on the bus, or you're under it." He isn't quite sure when the meaning of the phrase crystallized into the act of "summarily and decisively rejecting someone." link
So I went though those five stages of grief for the job loss:
Denial — they can't be serious... the jealous assholes caused this; they'll get fired first surely
Anger — those bastards, just wait until I collect enough plutonium and figure out how to build the trigger
Bargaining — maybe if I speak to the two management assholes who validated this mess since the system is ineffectual at best
Depression — shit - who the fuck cares if I ever get another job
Acceptance — oh well another job, another set of personal failures; on to the next job, maybe, but how many reflection and resilience pep talks can I give myself?
The past decade has been pretty miserable but I suppose it started much earlier. The patterns have been hard to alter: wanting to change social status, get a commensurate income, try to live a happy life and construct a decent domestic situation. I’ve been offered three actual full-time jobs this past decade and have held so many part-time ones that might be considered the equivalent except they never really were because of the usual costly reasons: paying for my own health care when it was available and deferring some desires to try for others.
The first job in my lost decade was one I never got to do. The ambivalent HR office that couldn’t resolve the situation where I was promised a job but at the meeting that the Board of Directors were supposed to approve it, they decided that their first meeting agenda item was to fire the CEO, thereby putting all hires on hold. HR claimed for many months that they would resolve this problem for me and I would be able to start work “next month”. One half year later, 9/11 changed everything and while I could blame terrorists for my loss of a position I might still hold today, I tried to move on with part-time jobs and full-time schooling to try to retrain. That didn’t work so well because each part-time job I took thinking that it would develop into a full-time position, I wound up with an eventual affirmation that I was meant to stay marginalized as a temporary casual worker. These part-time jobs weren’t like standing in a crowd near the Home Depot in the morning waiting for employers to pick me up like a sex worker, but the compromises have been similar and are emblematic of this decade’s economic situation.
The second job was working for a member of the 1% in their boutique indulgence: a small firm with international reach but mainly operated as a fancy tax shelter for the profits of hedge funds. I encountered what seems now to be endemic: senior management who should be “golden parachuted” likes to keep their positions and salaries even though they’re increasingly less productive and are willing to destroy companies to ensure their level of comfort/income. As a 99%er, I know how to behave around the 1% in a civil society and even interact well, but to me the most interesting event was during a meeting with the company’s owner over lunch at his club featuring the enforcement of dress codes (not on me) and even behavior codes (no notepads on the table, you’re not here to appear to discuss “business”). That job didn’t last long because it was during the recent economic bubble and crash and I essentially left in a Reduction In Force (RIF) action.
The third job is the one I left this week. It only lasted for five months and I was marginalized for two of them during yet another change in management; I worked with some great people but also with a couple of what the literature calls “difficult” co-workers. The latter tried to discredit my work primarily for discriminatory reasons that might even be actionable. During most of this decade, I held second, third or even fourth part-time jobs to stay afloat but expenses have risen as the opportunities have shrunk; I write on average seven applications a day every day and have done that for the past four years.
The common pattern of the three is that every full-time position since I decided I wanted to become a manager in the 1990s has featured annual changes in my superiors or the CEOs and it is symptomatic of each that I had to leave because of cascading restructuring or reorganization in the company. And technically I’ve only held two full-time jobs in this past decade.
A friend used to comment on how those folks in Lower Manhattan who spread an assortment of used objects on the street were “liquidity seekers”. Those who go postal choose a more terminal solution to liquidate their liabilities. I’m going to liquidate many of my material assets instead, in order to pay off the current threat from a tax return of several years ago when I thought I should still file as self-employed while working part-time. I will claim that I am now unemployed because I am, and I certainly know I don’t want my family to have their “property” seized by the government. And getting sick? I can't afford to get sick unless I simply die quickly.
‘Baggers might say: “Now you know how we feel”. No I don’t; I screwed up the payment schedule and will deal with it because of the stressful pressure of the recent job and not making enough salary to cover the monthly payments. I expect to be taking out retirement money to the point where I’ll be living at the poverty level when I reach retirement age if I don’t turn this situation around. And you might wonder why I vote Democratic? This past decade is the best reason to hope that in 2012 I can get back on the bus.
That’s my FP. WYFP?