Tuesday, September 22, 2009

WEATHERING HEIGHTS

Director,

Department of the Weather

Washington, D.C.

Dear Sir or Madam


I am writing you to volunteer my services. Seeing as how I am one of the 30 billion still hopelessly unemployed Americans, I can begin immediately or possibly even sooner.

I've been told by the people down at the unemployment office that one of the best ways to get hired in the new millennium is to get attention of a prospective employer by doing volunteer work---i.e. “...work for free for awhile, Mr. Cantrell and let them see what you've got.” I also saw one of those TV pundits, Suze Something-or-other, who seems to think that she knows know everything say it too, so I guess it must be true. Seems like a counter-intuitive way of paying one's bills if you ask me, but then again, what do I know? When the next threatening bill collector calls demanding immediate payment and I tell him that I am working for free in hopes of “getting noticed”, I hope that he will be as enthusiastic about the whole idea as Suze Something-or-other seems to be. ( Of course, given the broad swath of the recession, maybe the is the oft chance that the bill collector himself or herself, is also volunteering for the collection agency although I am not counting on it.)


This 'work for free' business seems kind of a hair brained idea thought up by somebody who's probably never been unemployed a day I their life. Wouldn't you think that the best “How to get a Job” advice would come from people who were formerly unemployed and who have just recently been hired. Unfortunately it seems as if that cross-section of people doesn't exist. I think that they were killed off long, long ago by that same asteroid that knocked off the dinosaurs. But having tried damn near everything else under the sun including sending out thousands of resume's, attending dozens of job fairs, re-inventing myself and even considering, for a few terrifying brief moments, becoming a Republican in order to get a job. Alas, I remain unemployed in this dumb ass recession and thus, I am volunteering my service, and trying Suze's Something-or-other's approach to finding gainful employment.


In the spirit of full disclosure, I will admit that I am not an expert on weather although I know that we seem to have a lot of it. I picked the Weather Department as the place to volunteer as it seems like a fun place, you have a lot of neat equipment with flas

hing lights----I really like those fancy charts and storm tracking equipment----and you weather people seem to have an awful lot of enthusiasm.


I like the way that as soon as there is even the hint of a light breeze in the Azores, you once again talk a whole crew of men climbing into a old rickety airplane, flying directly into the storm and gathering data. I've always wondered how you got these Hurricane Hunters to actually go up in the plane. I figure that if one just had to get involved with a hurricane the best way was to let it find you as opposed to actually going to the trouble of actually tracking one down. (Isn't this is like teasing an angry bull with a red cape.) I can understand the first guy who did it. I figure that he was actually lost and because given the track of most hurricanes that he'd gotten himself lost inside of the Bermuda Triangle----maybe had even been briefly abducted and then released by aliens.


I have no idea of why the second Hurricane Hunter took off but it wouldn't surprise me if drugs, liquor, or hot women were involved. I would ask what kind of drugs and or liquor were involved but there is absolutely nothing that I would want to ingest that would make me even want to think about becoming a hurricane hunter. In the meantime, if I just have to hunt something, I'll stick to hunting for my missing left shoe, glove or something of that kind. Anyway, it seems to me that hurricane hunting is just asking for it! In a way, it reminds me of those guys on cable TV do who go out into those jungle rivers, play “chicken” with the crocodiles in the pursuit of science.


I also like the enthusiasm shown when your guys wander outside during a Category 5 hurricane to show the TV audience just how bad the weather conditions are and then almost get blown out to sea. When you do this I have often wondered whether or not you were married, had a mother, or in fact knew any females. Females usually have better sense than we males about certain things and will say, at the drop of a hat, or even the first sight of a hurricane.”Are you nuts? Get your ass back inside. Don't you have damn sense?”


Those Weather Satellite pictures from space are pretty cool too. I especially like the ones showing

say Hurricane Hattie, engulfing the entire planet. I understand that with the satellite camera that you can read the license plate on a car from 300 miles put in space. I wonder what else the guy in the space station is spying on? For instance, I wonder if he can see Melanie, my hot next door neighbor, out on the back deck? It is rumored that she sunbathes in the nude although I have not been able to confirm this. Do you think that the guy in the space station knows?


Speaking of Melanie, that's the other reason that I am writing you. I am specifically asking that you stop using Melanie's name, or anybody else's name, for that matter in the naming of hurricanes.

It seems to me that the use of people's names is also counter productive. Hurricanes are ferocious, powerful storms that oftentimes cause massive destruction. Most of the time you need people to get out of the way of the storm, maybe even evacuate their homes (i.e. “...get the hell out of Dodge or Miami or Norfolk or wherever else the storm may choose to stagger). Naming a hurricane “Bob”, or “Mindy” or “Barbara” or “Suzette' does not motivate anyone to evacuate. It encourages them to stick around for a party. What self-respecting hurricane wants to go around with a name like say “Jimmy”? No hurricane that I know would be caught dead with that name. The name “Mindy” for example, does not say “You better get the hell outta my way”, but rather, “Please, please stay for dinner. I'll make quiche and we'll have a fine ol' time”. How many mean, obnoxious people do you know whose name is Bob? Or Suzette? Or Robin? Right. Me neither. Instead of using these mild mannered “names”, I think that you should use nouns and adjectives such as “Crazy” or “Vicious” or maybe “Planet-eater” Another good name for one of these hurricanes is “Satan”, “Beelzebub”, or “Psycho”. That'll get people to evacuate. Hell, everyone has had a psycho ex-girlfriend, ex-boyfriend, or ex-spouse that you NEVER want to see again as long as you live. Names like “Joaquin” , “Odette”, “Mil house” just don't get people scared enough. You might as well name the storm “Sunny” or “Happy”.


You will find immediately below the list of the names that you have already chosen for 2009. Below are some better names chosen by me.


2009 Actual List of Names from National Hurricane Service

Ana, Bill, Claudette, Danny, Erika, Fred, Grace, Henri, Ida, Joaquin, Kate, Larry, Mindy, Nicholas, Odette, Peter, Rose, Sam, Teresa, Victor, Wanda


Better Names for Hurricanes

Atrocious, Bonkers, Crazy, Dizzy, Evil, Ferocious, Goofy, Heinous, Insane, Jackass, Kooky, Loco, Malicious, Nut-so, Onerous, Psycho, Quinetta1, Reprehensible, Satan. Treacherous, Ugly, Vendetta,

Wrong, eXtreme, Yelp, Zany.


You can bet your ass that you can get all of Florida to evacuate if need be with a name such as Hurricane Psycho, Hurricane Jackass, or any of the names on the “Better Names” list. Yeah, I know that we'll need names for the second and subsequent years. No problem. Just hire me. I'm available.


Best regards,

Will “JustPlainWIll”Cantrell


1 O.K., you've caught me speeding a little. Do you have any idea how hard it is to come up with a synonym for “terrible” that starts with “Q”? It wasn't easy. I was forced to use my cousin, Quinetta's name as a suggestion. It's all right though, because most people who actually know Quinetta think that she is psycho.

Monday, March 23, 2009

CHAPTER 7: ZOMBIE AND THE EIGHTH DEADLY SIN

Dear Reader:

Let's face it, when confronted with the prospect of economic peril (i.e "being broke"), most of us “cave-in" , choke, or otherwise bow down to the pressure. Under "financial duress", we behave much differently than we do when "times are good". The divorce rate, the suicide rate and the crime rate -----all go “kaflooey” when the economic gun is put to our head or our back is up against a
brick wall. We commit sins, sometimes crimes, and do things that that we, ordinarily, would never dream of doing in easy times. It's just human nature, I guess. These actions also refer to taking jobs. During rough economic times we will even perform jobs that we would NEVER consider during better times. As an example, I seen hard working mothers taking on the foulest of paid tasks such as emptying bedpans at the local hospital or cleaning up after the elephants at the zoo. I’ve even seen God-fearing women become strippers or prostitutes in order to make ends meet during tough or recessionary times. Once, a couple of years ago, I even witnessed a few women taking really drastic measures and becoming contestants on Flavor Flav’s reality TV show. (One of them even reputedly ---not “repeatedly”--- had sex with Flav). When money is tight, I’ve also seen men---good men----- turn to burglary, cocaine trafficking, armed robbery, white slavery------or even doing the worst job that a human being can possibly do: automobile sales. Even I, for a brief time was an automobile salesman. Below, in a flashback to last summer, I confess the whole sorry episode. (Reader, as Monsignor Pat [see footnote below] says, there is just a "...wee bit of blarney" in Chapter 7, but it is mainly all true----although I have changed the names of the characters and firms in order to protect the innocent ---mainly me.)

The guy on the phone was manic....and insistent. He was Zombie Collection Company’s heaviest hitter, Zombie himself. He took on the collection cases when the low-level rookies had failed and their second tier, “reasonable man” approach had not worked. It did not matter to Zombie that my previous employer had gone "belly up" over a year ago and despite my best efforts to find another job had had no luck. It did not matter to Zombie that I was living like a caveman with no heat, gas, or water at the house because I was "dead-ass broke" and "couldn't pay attention" let alone "pay a bill" of any kind. Zombie wanted his client's money and he wanted it now. He didn’t officially threaten me (the guy knew the law), but did ask me a ‘rhetorical question’. “Do you know", he asked, "that most people find it extremely difficult to walk around on top of the planet with two broken kneecaps?” Zombie had asked me the question twice. I guess he was trying to be sure that "I'd gotten the message".

While Zombie was the most threatening of my callers, he wasn’t the only bill collector who had contacted me lately. After having lost my job about two years ago, my Land Rover had been repossessed----right after my 401-K had crashed and my remaining meager savings had dwindled to nothing. The power company had also ‘temporarily’ disconnected the electricity just yesterday morning. (Do you have any idea of how hard it is to get dressed in the dark or not be able to watch Letterman at 11:34?) Even the eighty–year old Sicilian woman who lived next door, who’d lent me $20 three months ago, was badgering me for repayment ---repeatedly asking me ‘how was my family’.
While I had been really busy, sending out thousands of resumes trying to find work during the recession, going to job fairs, networking, and literally begging employers for jobs, I had had no luck. Now, Zombie said that I HAD BETTER pay him ---or learn to walk with crutches. Fast. I NOW HAD to make a decision between the only two alternatives currently “on the table”: either start robbing liquor stores or take the job recently offered me at a new car dealership whose management was known to be ‘morally challenged.

So despite requests from family members not to besmirch the name and legacy of our ancestors, an intervention staged by a few of my closest friends, a plea from the Monsignor Patrick at Our Lady of the Pines[1], I became an automobile salesman. (Reader, it should be noted that none of the above people were forthcoming with any cash to make my decision easier---or to spare my kneecaps.)

*********************************************************************************

On my first day at Family Imports, I met Mr. Hurley, the General Manager. Hurley told me that he'd teach me everything that I needed to know about the car 'bidness', so that I'd make a lot of money the very first month of employment.
I did learn a lot that first day at Family Imports , but hardly any of the stuff that I learned was good news, however. For example, I learned that the 70/30 commission splits heavily favored ‘the Family’. I also quickly learned that although the 70 hour work weeks were mandatory, we only got paid for 36 hours and that was at minimum wage. I also learned that the distance between my house and the “store” (as Hurley called the dealership) could best be measured in light years. (At the same time, gas was $4.00 a gallon, and the auto industry was in such a deep slump at the time that even Og Mandino would’ve had have trouble making his sales quota.)


No matter, I needed money---fast and now.

The dealership was undergoing some renovations in the area known as the salesman’s “bullpen”, so at least temporarily, what was to be my desk had been relocated to just outside Hurley's office. It’s not like I purposely eavesdropped. The thing was that there were so few people coming in to “not buy” cars, sometimes one had little else to do.

Here are some of the things that I heard from Hurley's office over the next several weeks. Sometimes he was speaking to me but mostly he was speaking on the telephone:

1. “Just because your so-called pre-employment research said that this dealership had 573 complaints last year on freakin’ Rip-Off Report.com doesn’t mean a goddamn thing. A lot of customers are just whiners----especially the old ladies. They bitch about everything."

2. " Customers enjoy being treated like shit. They expect the negoiations to take hours. They expect to be lied to. It’s the American way of buying a car. “

3. “Goddammit, didn’t I tell you last week, the ‘K’ on those VIN Numbers does not stand for Katrina. Only 20 of the cars in the lot came from New Orleans this month. Besides we cleaned ‘em up as good as we could.”

4. “Yeah, I don’t care what you say, it is statistically possible that every single one of the possible trade-ins that we evaluated last month had been in a serious accident. Not only are they whiners but a lot of these customers are real bad drivers. Besides, the guy who originally made that crack about the whole thing defying common sense is "...no longer with us."

5. “Just because we've have had a 95% salesman turnover ratio for the past ten years, does not mean that this is a bad place to work. Be thankful that you have a freakin' job, ya hump."

6. “I’m going to fire the next goddamn person that I hear use the word “rundown”. We are in a transitional neighborhood. Just because this dealership is the last one of the six that used to be in this transitional neighborhood doesn’t mean that things won’t turnaround and people will be coming in here in droves.”

7. “ It’s not price gouging…it’s your job, ya hump. Customers expect that you are going to charge them a lot more than they could buy the car somewhere else. It’s a status symbol to pay a lot more money than its worth. It's kinda like stayin' at one of them swank hotels when you would be just as fine at a Holiday Inn Express. Besides its the way that you get paid. The more you charge, the more you make."


8. “We don’t care what the customer wants. Make them drive what we got on the lot. Yeah, I know that the customer said he wanted a green car. Look, we only have red in that model. It costs us too much money to order a car special for some hump. When you take him on the back lot to look at the car make him wear these color filter glasses. The car will look green to him. If you sell him the car, and if you know what's good for you, you will---sell him the glasses too."

9. "You need to get your friends to come in and buy a car. If they won’t pay our prices for these cars, they are not really friends anyway."

10. "It’s not every dealership that will even hire people who all live 75 miles from the store. We do this for the protection of the salesmen. You don’t want the customers to know where you live."


About a month after I started working at Family Imports, I heard the following:

“Yep, we hid the car keys from Will Cantrell’s customer. Now the woman had to stay here and buy a car or at least talk to us about it. Sure, Cantrell was pissed off. I don’t he’s got what it takes to work for Family Imports. I mean hiding the car keys is just one of the more harmless tricks that we use to keep prospects hanging around the dealership. If you let them leave, they ain't comin' back. Of course, Cantrell got a little upset a couple of days ago when he found that dead body in the trunk of that used car. He asked too many questions. Yep, the guys were going to bury it later that night.”

I left Family Imports for good after that. Finding the bodies in the trunk was unnerving but also confirmed soome suspicions I'd had----- and I had been paid just enough that morning to get Zombie paid off. Hurley was right, I just didn’t have what it took to work at Family Imports or maybe any other automobile dealership. I wonder if anybody does. As I left Family Imports for the last time, I surmised that even although Monsignor Pat was almost senile, he might have been right about the automobile sales business. Of course, I was officially unemployed again -----but with a cleaner conscience.

Ex-automotive salesman,


JustPlainWill





[1] Monsignor Patrick, an old Irish Catholic priest is the Pastor Emeritus at Our Lady of the Pines where I have been a member since I was a small child. The Msgr. told me that despite my financial situation and my recent and severe reversal of fortune that I should be aware that automobile sales was really the eighth deadly sin in addition to pride, envy, anger, greed, gluttony, lust, and sloth. Didn’t I realize, he asked, that becoming a car salesman was going to magnify by a factor of at least a thousand, my chances of going straight to hell when I died? He'd said: “Willy, I’ve known ya most of yer life and yer already on thin ice me boy. I remember that episode with that Jones woman of whom we’ll speak no more. But, why take any more chances with yer soul? Hell is full of car salesmen. Chock full me boy. Why you would have an easier chance of getting into heaven after having slept with Pamela Anderson or Paris Hilton---both of them at the same time---- than having been a car salesman.” After he told me this, I thought fleetingly for a moment that sleeping with either one of them was a far better alternative to my problem than becoming a car salesman. But somehow I didn’t think that either Pam or Paris was going to be coming over anytime soon. And besides, that wouldn't solve my problem with Zombie. (Besides, JustPlainWilma would kill me, the Monsignor, as well as Paris and Pam if she found out.)

Sunday, March 15, 2009

CHAPTER 6: JOB FAIRS, HOOKERS, AND REPO MEN

Dear Reader:

Admittedly, I haven’t posted here for the last several weeks. To be honest, I have been extremely occupied looking for work. I MAY even be one the verge of actually getting a real job. Say some prayers, keep your fingers and toes crossed for me------ and for some good news. As crazy as it sounds, I don’t want to blog about the possible job until it happens. I don’t want to screw up the karma. I’ll keep you posted.

Earlier this week, I attended a job fair. This particular one had been promoted in the local news media for more than a month and was being billed as the largest and “best-est” job fair ever offered in this part of the country. With seemingly almost everyone in America having been laid-off from work, job fairs are popping up everywhere---- churches, hotels, restaurants, government offices, companies, and surprisingly, even unemployment offices. I've heard on the street that there are even some job fairs being held at landfills as well as a f ew houses of ill-repute. It seems as if wherever four or more unemployed people get together, there is a potential for a job fair to take place. (I've even heard about a job fair that took place on a bus last week!)

If you are new to the unemployment arena, job fairs are events where employers and would-be employees meet each other for the very first time---kind of like singles bars except that you meet employers instead of a member who is necessarily of the opposite–sex. A similarity is that as a job-seeker, you hope that your new "friend" will take you back to their place. Having hopes that your new acquaintance will still call you "in the morning", you also exchange phone numbers. Of course, these phone numbers have your resume attached. (If you are new to the job fair scene, you should be warned that although job fairs are, in their own fashion, a lot like singles bars, you probably won’t get laid at a job fair-----unless you really get lucky or unless you are exceptionally charming.)

Having been “on the job market” for a while now, I must confess that I have my suspicions about job fairs …about some of them anyway and who they really benefit. For one thing, I have never met someone who was actually hired as a result of going to a job fair. I am sure that some people have been hired in this manner ---- it's just that I’ve just never met one. (I guess its kinda like people that you see on the local TV news as an eyewitness to a plane crash, or a murder, or a fire etc. You see them on TV once, but you never ever run into those same people on the street. Never. Seems to me that you should occasionally run into that “…fat woman with the bad hairdo who told the local news reporter all about how the fire at the neighbor’s house actually started.” Once you see these eyewitnesses on TV though, you NEVER see them in person. I figure that some of them must go into an eyewitness protection program or something.) All of the people that I've ever known were hired in their jobs because of someone that they knew at a company or was a friend of a friend of a friend who worked for the same company. It's the all-American way. But in the spirit of “trying something new” ---as well as being desperate----I decided to give job fairs a chance.)

The job fair that I attended this past week was held in an airplane hanger-sized building located near, oddly enough near Atlanta’s airport which, when you think about it is where an airplane hangar ought to be located. This building was brand new and reputed to be the size of twenty football fields laid end to end! It was HUGE. I think that you could've actually flown a Cessna around in this building. (I’ve noticed over the years that the owners of big buildings often describe the building in terms of the number of football fields that it could contain. This seems a little strange to me unless you’re actually going to play football in these buildings. It seems to me that you should describe it in terms of the number of people that it can contain as opposed to the number of football fields that you could put on it.) This building could obviously hold a lot of people, which was a good thing since it appeared that every single one of the 13,500,000 unemployed Americans was in attendance. Every damn one of us! The only time, I’ve ever seen more people in one place was the time that American Idol was in town to audition (or embarrass) all of the bad singers in Atlanta, who actually think that they can sing. But, I digress…

This was truly a crowded affair, and although it lived up to its billing in terms of size and attendance, everyone was on their best behavior and dressed in their Sunday finest even though this was clearly a Tuesday. (Acute unemployment will bring out the best behavior in almost anyone…sort of like sitting next to your mother in church when you were a little kid.) Even though a number of the open jobs were for positions such as like landscapers, fry cooks, janitors, and security guards, most of the men were dressed in dark suits, white shirts, and their best guess at what a “power tie” was. Women were dressed in two piece business suits, although there were a couple of women who were dressed in very short mini-skirts. I figured that they were either hookers or were auditioning to be back up singers for an R&B Group. Quite frankly, I was glad to see the odd dress of the two women in what could only be disappointingly described as a vast sea of conformity. You’d think that at least a few more of the other people, desperate to set themselves apart from the pack of conformists would have dressed in a cowboy suit, a clown suit or perhaps worn some of those floppy clown shoes. I was really rooting for this reader, but there was no such luck. Everyone there was dressed like they were a member of the Republican Party (including myself). Drat!!!!!

While job fairs are generally free---at least, officially----- you have to give the management of the “Tuesday Job Fair” credit, they knew a money making opportunity when they saw one. For although the vast majority of the attendees were unemployed and presumable as broke as I was, they charged $5.00 for parking. They even had a bunch of concession stands opened for your convenience while you waited all day to see the employer of your choice. (Maybe the management was confused and set up for one of those 20 simultaneous football events.) They charged $3.00 for a small glass of coke and $2.00 for a bottle of water. Hot dogs were $3.50.

After I demurred on any kind of refreshment, I glanced out of one of the huge glass walls on the side of the building and noticed a eerily familiar site----a man driving a tow truck, circling the parking lot and checking license plates. I recognized the same repo-man, an ex-linebacker type, whose name was Rupert. I have been playing cat and mouse with him for several months now. I then saw two other tow trucks driven by two other big, burly white guys come into the lot. These repo men apparently knew that a big job fair would likely be the site of probably at least several dozen of the cars that they had been looking to repossess in the past couple of weeks. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of the "hooker or back up singers" run out of the building cursing a blue streak and questioning whether or not Rupert’s parents had ever been married. Suddenly I was glad that I had taken the bus...and wondering who really benefited the most from such a large gathering of the unemployed.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

CHAPTER 5: FREEZER BURN

Dear Reader:

"It's freezer burn, dammit! I got it at my afternoon job interview on Friday", I told Fred, after he'd asked me for the second time, about the purplish mark on my left forearm that vaguely looked like Australia. He was helping me to bleed air from the brake-line on my ten year old Kia. Even after I told him, he had this quizzical look on his face, as if he didn't really understand. Thus, I was compelled to explain:

I had four job interviews this week, and this was in addition to two job fairs. I figure that four interviews in a week must be some kind of record---for me anyway. Of late, just making it past the security guard shack in the parking lot and into the reception area in HR without being turned away is a real feat especially when it seems that EVERYBODY in America is getting laid off. Heck, it seems that exit interviews for "just laid-off employees" outnumber interviews for new employees by a zillion to one.

Despite my luck in getting four interviews in just one week, none of them had resulted in a job although the receptionist at the last company, a Ms. Angster, told me that she really needed a dog-sitter next weekend for her two year- old pit bull, Poindexter ...and would I be interested? She volunteered that the dog was no longer “acting out”, that the sitter from two weeks ago was healing quite nicely, and was even having the rest of the stitches removed later that very afternoon. She also informed me that the plastic surgeon had indicated that the long scar on the right side of the previous sitter’s face might not be permanent.

"Aloe, applied directly on the skin works wonders", she said.

But with a puzzled look on her face, she said that she just couldn’t understand why she was having so much trouble finding another sitter for Poindexter and that after all “…the job pays $50.00 for the entire weekend.”

About that time, the phone buzzed and she took another phone call. I went back to waiting to see if I had made it to the next step in the HR process. I had already completed a stack of forms (including a twelve-page Application Form, the Credit Authorization Form, the Background Check Authorization Form, the Urine, Blood, Saliva, Hair and Toenail Clippings Test Authorization Form, the Whom To Notify In Case You Die of Thirst While Waiting Another Ten Hours for your Interview Form, the Authorization to Release Your Transcripts from College, High School, Elementary School and Kindergarten as well as my SAT scores Form.)

While waiting, I looked over the magazines in the reception area. You can tell a lot about a company from their choice of reading materials in the reception area. For example, if they have a lot of magazines, you can expect your wait in HR to be a long one---thus the large quantity of magazines to keep you occupied and to keep you from amusing yourself by say, dismantling the office furniture and building a bonfire. If the company has only a few magazines in the reception area, then the company maybe cheap or not smart enough to steal magazines from the other company's in the same building. Expect to work with a bunch of dummies in this scenario---if you get the job. But I digress...

On Friday, the company had really old magazines. Looking at some of the cover stories, Bill Clinton has just been re-elected President, The Florida Marlins are the Major League Baseball Champions, Newt Gingrich is the Speaker of the House, and O.J. Simpson is still running, unfettered, through airports and jumping all over car rental counters. All of these magazines were from the 1990's which made me think that this company was either having financial problems or that the management was involved in a thinly veiled plot to get jobseekers to think that it is really twenty years ago that they can pay less than today’s going wage for the job.

I must admit, dear reader, that I kinda like reading some of the older magazines, especially Good Housekeeping. They had some really old editions of GH on Friday. In each edition of the editor ran a article entitled “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” I remember these articles that ran as a long running series in the Good Hosuekeeping magazines of the sixties and seventies. These magazines were typical coffee table and waiting room "fare" in the doctors and dentist offices at the time. The Can This Marraige Be Saved articles described a problematical marriage where the husband and wife just couldn't stand each other. The wife might have been frigid or an inveterate drinker. Maybe she also always burned the eggs and was also a really bad driver. The husband either snored real loud, insisted upon clipping his toenails at the dinner table, or maybe didn’t come home for weeks at a time. (I figure because of her bad cooking.)

Anyway, these articles described these (invariably suburban) marriages and at the end posed the question:” Can This Marriage Be Saved?” I guess that the magazine editors meant for the marriage to be discussed by good housekeepers in open forums all over America. And on occasion, I found that the question has prompted great discussion in the reception areas of HR deparments, in the event you can find another jobseeker in the room who can actually read. Of course, the answer to the question is a ‘slam dunk’. I figure that if a big time magazine, circulated widely throughout America (as well as the western Hemisphere) is exposing all the intimate details of one couple’s personal lives, then the marriage is already about as dead as a bunch of mackerels and the couple is just putting all of their business out on ‘front street’ so that they can make one last money haul before going to divorce court.

About the time that I had come to the conclusion that Mr. and Mrs. Blackheart's marraige had about as much chance for rejuvenation as a bunch of dead carp, I glanced up to see a young woman headed in my direction. I could tell that she would be the one to tell me the next step in the HR (i.e. what Personnel is called these days) process. Let me tell you reader, the woman was not engaged in what I would call a "good news" kinda walk. Her walk was similar to the kind that a State Trooper has when he moseys over to your car after pulling you over. Since I have seen this walk before, especially, of late, I can tell already that she’s going to give me Job Rejection #5----- The hiring freeze:

“Will, we thank you for coming in today, but we currently have a company wide hiring freeze. However we would be happy to keep your application on file for six months. We’ll call you if any positions come open. Thanks again for thinking of us.”


Reader, this is politically correct corporate lingo for:

“ Look, you idiot, I was just talking to everybody in the back and we can’t believe that you drove your dumb ass way the hell out here to see us----- even though we called you on yesterday and told you that we really liked your resume. It’s just that your resume was the one that I hit on the dart board yesterday after a couple of lunch time cocktails. Don’t call us, we’ll call you assuming that we’re still in business six months from now, which I doubt. Good luck and I hope that you make it back home before dawn tomorrow. And yeah, eveybody in the back is snickering at you. Sucker!”


As the woman got closer to me, I still could not quite make out her features, but I’ve seen her before ---at a bunch of companies. Usually the person giving spiel #5 is a fresh faced young white woman named Jennifer or Amanda or Melissa (or one of the other popular names for white females born in the late 80's), and who’s about twenty years old. Jennifer or Amanda or Melissa has been selected to handle this particular chore because she has been working at the company for a whopping six whole months and she is a true believer in God, the American Way and the 'religion' and the Acme Products way of life. She’s dressed in an appropriately colored outfit replete with company logo and she handles you so enthusiastically that you almost want to believe her -----and in the fact that there really is more than a remote possibility that some day, the Great Employment Ice Age will actually be over.

Anyway, as I awaited Jennifer or Amanda or Melissa, who, before her emergence from the maze of HR offices, had no doubt been working at a glacial pace in keeping with her company's world wide hiring freeze. I figure that slow approach to handling prospective job seekers is a ploy that some companies use to thin out the ranks of jobseekers in the reception area. Maybe its a sneaky part of the company's aptitude test to see how much patience you have. Well, they were messing with the wrong guy. I can out wait anybody. ANYBODY! I’ve even been known to bring a backpack with a sleeping bag and toiletries to the interview----just in case I have to wait overnight. I once waited three days to be interviewed only to be told that my interviewer had died at their desk on yesterday.

As it turned out, I was right about the hiring freeze. This time it was "an Amanda" giving me the news the bad news. I have heard the term ‘hiring freeze” so much that I now have a 'freezer burn' spot on my left arm. (It's the mark that I was telling Fred about). Now when I go on an interview, I half expect to see icicles hanging from the ceiling, the employees dressed in parkas and polar bears roaming aimlessly about the building and outside environs.
I left the company's reception area right after Amanda administered the coup de grace. However, I also called Ms. Angster about the dog sitting job. Fifty dollars looks awfully good right now. She also said that give me shin guards, arm shields and a face mask to wear for my weekend with Poindexter.

Still jobless in Atlanta,
JustPlainWill

Thursday, February 5, 2009

CHAPTER 4: NOT YOU TOO, MICK ?????

Dear Reader:

Ever hear a song whose lyrics and rhythms express your exact life experience of the moment? Maybe its “Could It Be I’m Falling In Love”? or “Breaking Up is Hard To Do”, or "Just Ask the Lonely", or anything else that’s relevant to “life as we know” it---- at the moment? Yeah, me too.

Anyway, the other day, as I took a few minutes respite from sending out about three hundred resumes (i.e. yep, I am still looking hard for gainful employment) and waited for 300 companies not to acknowledge receipt (more on this in a later post), I ran across this video of a live performance of Simply Red’s “Money’s Too Tight to Mention” on YouTube. (See video bar to the right; second window from the top.) I was enthralled which I usually find it hard to be when I am dead broke and the gas gauge is past empty. Mick Hucknall must’ve been following me around, because the song’s lyrics describe my situation EXACTLY!

Wikipedia says that the song was first written and performed circa 1980 and speaks of the economic problems of that era. It specifically mentions Reaganomics. No matter what its specific history might be, it certainly speaks to the problems of today -------and mine in particular, dear reader. (Maybe there really is a business cycle although this recession feels worse than ANY other that I can remember.)

Often times live performances don’t always carry the rich sounds and tones of the original studio mix. This 2007 live rendition of “Money’s Too Tight” might be better than the studio version. This was bravo performance by the band and in particular Mick Hucknall, Simply Red’s front man. Give it a listen. If you’re like me you’ll end up listening to it twice ----maybe even thrice. Even if you’re dead broke and don’t really want to be reminded of this fact, you’ll still appreciate their performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London. It’s that good. If you’re flush with cash you might still listen to it several times if only to remind yourself how things used to be. Lucky you.


By the way, I used to think that Lionel Ritchie was the absolute best at working a live audience. I think Mick Hucknall might even be better. Lastly, check out the saxophone and trumpet players about half way thru the performance. They really 'get down'. (I love the sax. Sometimes I think that the really good saxophone players are in a world of their own ---and it ai't the same world that the rest of us are from.)

While 2009 will supposedly be the last year of Simply Red (i.e. they are doing a farewell tour), I hope that Hucknall keeps the song in his solo repertoire. Even his way of delivering bad news is a great respite from the real life blues and a current day ANTHEM for many of us. Great Performance, Mick! Great song!

Simply broke,
JustPlainWill

Friday, January 30, 2009

CHAPTER 3: PLEADING WITH STEVIE WONDER

Dear Reader:

As I write, Caterpillar just announced that they were laying off 20,000 employees. To be honest, I didn't think that they even had that many total employees. Late last week Microsoft announced 5,000 lay-offs ----and that company was profitable last year! It seems as if the rate of layoffs is beginning to approach warp speed, Mr. Sulu. No joke, this 'thing' has gotten to be scary and I wonder if there is anybody in America other than Oprah who is not at least a little apprehensive about their employment outlook?I am beginning to think that President Obama and the government might need to take really drastic measures to help all of us get jobs..and soon too!
Last night I had this dream that the government had instituted something called job rationing---sorta like how things were done during World War II with the rationing of sugar and rubber, etc. In this dream of mine, each American could, by law, only have one job at a time ----at least until every American who wanted a job had a job. When I awoke from REM Sleep, the dream was still on my mind and I thought abut the the idea of job rationing. Of course, one of the problems is that there a bunch of people who have about ten jobs apiece.

Take that Ryan Seacrest, for example. Last I heard, this guy has a radio show, a restaurant or two, owns several TV programs and he’s the host of that American Idol Show where they make the viewer work by forcing you to call in and vote (at your own expense too!) so the producers can figure out who they should throw off the show next. Seems to me that ought to be the producers job, but I digress.Anyway, I think Seacrest has even won an Emmy for hosting a parade on TV---with Regis for godsakes! C’mon Seacrest, let someone else have some work.
Or take Martha Stewart. Seems like whenever I turn on the TV---day or night----if Ryan Seacrest is not on the TV screen looking back at me, Martha Stewart is. She’s everywhere reader, selling something or showing you how to do some really silly stuff like making doillies or candles. Reader, who really needs to make candles? Probably only the Amish people and they don't even have television so that see Martha. Hasn’t Martha ever heard of Walgreen’s. Personally, I think that if she really wanted to be helpful to the average American, she would be showing people how to fix the transmission on the car, how to make a good cup of coffee at home for less than $4.00 a pop or maybe how to steal your neighbor's cable-TV feed or at least how to glom off of their Internet.

The point is that there are bunch of chronic overachievers and workaholics out there like Seacrest and Stewart who are hogging up all of the jobs. I bet that if they even gave up a couple of their jobs they even wouldn’t miss the dough and they’d probably be able to get some rest. Maybe even take a vacation. They have jobs that you ---or especially me ---could do. (Hell, I could learn to make candles on TV if I just had the opportunity.)

Stevie Wonder and Will Smith are two guys who could also share a little of the wealth----- or at least one of their jobs:

Pleading with Stevie Wonder

Don’t get me wrong, reader. I am a BIG fan of Stevie Wonder----- ever since Fingertips, Part II wayyyyyy back in the Sixties, when he was a kid running around as "Little" Stevie Wonder. I even liked Fingertips, Part I. I own practically every album that Stevie’s ever made:Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness First Finale, Songs in the Key of Life You, etc. etc. You name a Stevie Wonder album, I have it. When I was a kid, I even watched those godawful Beach Movies with (the ex-Mouseketeer) Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon just so that I could see Stevie and hear him play the harmonica.

Remarkably, I even share the same birth day, May 13, with Stevie----a little known fact (known mainly to me). There even a few people who say that Stevie and I look alike though I don’t necessarily buy it.

Anyway, Stevie already has a bunch of jobs---singer, songwriter, harmonica player, record-producer and playing apparently every musical instrument ever invented. He ’s sold scads of records, made a ton of money, and won most of the Grammy’s ever manufactured back in the 70's and 80's. (In those days, it seemed as if every time that Stevie fell out of bed, he must've stayed on the floor and while he was down there, wrote a new album----- and won all of the Grammy’s for that year.

Now Stevie apparently is thinking of dancing---on that program Dancing with the Stars. (At this writing, he reportedly is in serious negotiations with the producers of the show about joining the list of competitors for its upcoming spring season.)
Enough already, Stevie. Back off! I'm pleading with you. Let someone who needs a job be on Dancing with the Stars instead. Like me!

Now, I have no doubt that Stevie can dance and will do well on the show. For one thing, he’s has to be better than Master P, who was on a couple of years ago. He was awful, reader. Just awful. Stevie is probably also a better dancer than Cloris Leachman, who is a great actress but a really lousy ballroom dancer. Last fall, her partner had to drag her old butt all over the floor just to keep her on show for a couple of weeks. In fact, my grandmother would have been better than either Cloris Leachman or Master P…and Nana was in a wheel chair.

Anyway, I think that Stevie will do a better job on the show than most people might think. The reason for this reader is that as much as I admire his creative talent and as much as I admire Stevie himself, I’ve always had the suspicion that maybe his 'visual acuity' might be better than he has been leading us to believe. There are a couple of reasons for this theory of mine:

For one, Otis Williams, the founder and boss of the legendary R&B group, The Temptations has related some stories about Stevie, when he was just a kid. It seems that in the early years of Motown, Stevie was about 12 years old and was ALWAYS hanging around the offices and studios of Motown playing the damn harmonica, playing with all of knobs on the moog-synthesizer and popping his fingers. According to Otis, Stevie loved being around the music studio---just loved it. Just loved being around the Motown offices and studios. They couldn’t make Stevie go home. They'd actually have to call, his mother, Mrs. Wonder, and say "Please come get this kid. He's good but he's getting on everybody's nerves with the finger poppin and all. Please come get him and take him home until tomorrow." Anyway, apparently, Little Stevie was constantly underfoot and according to Otis, when he or one of the other Temptations would silently come into the room (I figure they were trying to sneak up on him and maybe give him a hot foot or something), Stevie knew exactly which one of the Temptations had just walked in. He’d say, “Hello Otis”, or “Hello David”, or “Hello Paul”, “Hello Eddie”, or “Hello Melvin”------and he'd be accurate! For the most part, all of Tempts were more or less about the same height, weight and had similar facial features. Hell, it was kinda hard for a sighted person to tell them apart, sometimes. But Stevie could tell them apart...supposedly by sound of their footfall. Yeah right, Stevie.

The other reason that I figure that maybe Stevie has been skinnin' us is that "back in the day" , there were many visually impaired people who sometimes used their hands to 'feel' other peoples faces ---and if they were really sneaky, sometimes their bodies----- so they could 'sense' or feel how the entire person looked. It wouldn’t surprise me one little bit if 'a' 12 year old Little Stevie Wonder used the visual impairment scam to 'cop a feel' on Diana Ross and The Supremes, Mary Wells, Martha and the Vandellas, and a few of the other female stars too. It’s exactly the kind of scam that a young, precocious 14 year old boy pull. I figure that maybe Stevie started this whole thing when he was younger and it just kinda mushroomed.

Another reason that I have my doubts about Stevie is that I myself, “....as a precocious 14 year old boy” carried out a similar caper at All Saints and Sinners Catholic School. For the first month that I attended the school in Philadelphia, I wore sunglasses and made it my business to 'accidentally walk into' a couple of walls about every other day. This whole act helped my social life immeasurably and I got to know a couple of attractive but sympathetic girls in a more', er...biblical' way. This act worked pretty well until Sister Ursula caught me determining just how much a girl named Darlene's chest had developed over the previous summer.

If Stevie wins Dancing with the Stars it will be, at least in my opinion, verification that my inklings about him have been correct for all these years. Of course, being unemployed myself and badly needing a job, I am hoping that he’ll demur (i.e. a fancy word for “ saying no”) and let some one else who really needs the gig---me, for instance---- have it. Come on Stevie, I'm pleasding with you. Don't take the Dancing with the Stars gig. Let me have some work.

Will Smith

Will Smith is another overachiever who has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to jobs. Will has been in a ton of movies over the years. The guy is box office magic and even his bad movies make gazillions of dollars. Seems like he’s always making a movie. His wife, Jada Pinkett, is also a movie star and lately these people have even gotten their kids into the, er "act". In these tough economic times, when we all need to work, I say “Will, baby, let somebody else---- like me---- have some of that work.

A perfect opportunity, had Will been a proponent of job rationing, would have been the movie, The Pursuit of Happiness. In this movie, he and his son played Christopher Gardner and his son. Gardner was a real life guy, mind you, who had been really down on his luck. At one time, he had been a homeless, single parent, living in the bathroom of a subway station. (Through sheer persistence, drive and talent, Gardner "pulled himself by his bootstraps", to become the owner of an investment company and also become "ridiculously" wealthy. (His is a uniquely American story, sort of like Barack’s , except that Chris is extremely wealthy, single, and can go home with a lot of really good looking babes.)

Anyway, it would have been nice if Will Smith had given the job to me. For several reasons:

1. We have the same first name. The movie company would not have needed to buy any additional billboard space for my name than they did for his.
2. I actually met Chris Gardner after he was wealthy and I look a lot more like him than Will Smith ever did.

3. I could have at least played Chris Gardner’s 'down' years and it would not have been acting.
Heck, the producers wouldn't have need to pay for a script for that part.

Anyway reader, call me crazy, but I think that this job rationing thing might have some potential. Maybe I should try and send Barack and e-mail and suggest it to him. It would definitley get him the unemployed vote.

Once again, reader, I gotta run. I can hear the wolves gathering at the door.

Still jobless in Atlanta...but hoping
JustPlainWill

Thursday, January 29, 2009

CHAPTER 2: THE O WORD

Dear Reader:

The good news is that when I awoke this morning and stumbled into the bathroom to relieve myself, I didn’t piss any blood. Not that I was really expecting any, its just that given my current woes---unemployment, impoverishment, insolvency, and the worry that Barack is seriously considering bringing a Labradoodle into The White House, it would be just one more of a million possible things that have gone recently awry. I am not complaining mind you, its just that given recent events, I count myself lucky when I can exit the car, and go to the front door of the house without being hit by a falling meteorite.

On a serious note, “…without being hit by a falling ex-employee” is perhaps more like it. It seems like American companies are laying off and discarding employees in droves. See
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm. The bad news is that last count, there were more than 11.1 million Americans who were unemployed---and that’s not counting the millions who have gotten discouraged from even looking for work and just said “screw it! The number seems to growing exponentially, with every passing day. In the past month or so, Caterpillar, Microsoft, Bank of America, Sony, and Boeing have all added themselves to an already long and frightening list of companies who have laid off employees like there's no tomorrow. http://www.forbes.com/2008/11/17/layoff-tracker-unemployement-lead-cx_kk_1118tracker.html. This whole situation is getting to be seriously scary. At this rate, I am beginning to wonder if anyone in America will still be working a couple of months rom now.

The worse news ---at least for me -----is that I still am one of the 11.1 million great unwashed.

THE “O” WORD

I got a phone call early this morning from the Acme Products Company. (That's not really their name, reader. But in order to protect them from ridicule and the millions of cards, letters, and e-mails with which I KNOW that you would bombard them I used their real name, I figure I'd better give them an alias. It's just the considerate thing to do.)

It was a little unnerving to receive an incoming cell phone call at exactly 9:11 a.m. I’m not really superstitious or anything, its just that I figure that nothing good can come out of phone call that comes at exactly that time of day. (It’s almost like looking upon the scene of a drunken sailor, one who has been at sea for six months, both arms draped around two 22 year old morally challenged blondes, hundred dollar bills hanging out of his pocket, and its only 8:00p.m. You know that nothing ‘good’ can come out of that situation. Nothing! But I digress…)

“Good morning, Will, this is Margaret Shirkman at Acme Products. We were delighted to have you come in yesterday and spend the day interviewing and getting to know us.”
“ Ms. Shirkman, it was my pleasure”, I said.
“Will, everyone that you interviewed on yesterday was very impressed. You have a great personality, your aptitude test scores were off the charts, you have great skills, a great resume, a really good education, and you are probably the most articulate person that we’ve interviewed in the entire history of Acme Products. Quite frankly Will, the president of the Acme, Mr. Crankly said that he wishes that his own sons were more like you.”

At this point, dear reader, my chest was sticking out with pride and there was a bright smile on my face that would have lit up the Atlanta night, had it not been just after nine o’clock in the morning. I figured that finally(!) here was one company who had the good sense to recognize great talent and that I was the best executive that they could hire. I had finally won the "job lotto" in this god awful recession.... and that Margaret Shirkman was going to offer me the job that I had been longing for…for months. The job drought was over!!!

“Ms. Shirkman, I can start work tomorrow morning...this afternoon, if you'd prefer. Should I come in a few minutes early in order to complete all of the HR forms?”
“Will, there is a problem”, she said.
“Problem? “But I thought you just said that…”
“Will, we discussed it. Yesterday. After you left.”
“ Do you want me to take less money? I've learned to live on very little money this last year". In
fact, I can live on practically nothing.
“No, Will, that’s not the problem. We can afford to pay you.”
“Do you want me to move to corporate headquarters in Boise? Just say the word. I hear that
there’s great trout fishing in Idaho.”
“No, Will, that’s not the problem. The problem is that you’re over- qualified. You’ve got too much education, too much experience.”
“Quite frankly, Will, you’re very smart and you're clearly too good for Acme Products.”
“But, Ms. Shirkman…”

I tried to get Margaret Shirkman to change her mind by telling her that I wasn’t nearly as qualified or as good as I appeared and that I just happened to ‘interview’ well---sorta like those underachieving kids in school who just happened to ‘test’ well----- and that I was really quite mediocre when you got right down to it.

Margaret Shirkman wasn’t buying it. I guess that my talent and vast experience just seeped through my pores and despite my best efforts to cover it up, had given me away.

“No, Will, you’re good. Real Good. We’ve discussed it. Mr. Crankly has a sixth sense about these kind of things. He knows a real smart person when he sees one.

I wanted to say, "Ms. Shirkman, I’ve been unemployed for what seems like an eternity and I really need this job and I’m sure that when all is said is done you will really find me to really need some room for improvement. I can really come up lacking, if you’ll just give me a chance."
That's what I wanted to say. I didn't, of course, but before, I could say anything, she cut me off.
“Will, I heard that Stew's Used Car Emporium is hiring and quite frankly, they have a better pension plan than we do. More holidays too. Call Stew. Their number is in the book. Good luck in your future career endeavors.” The next thing that I heard was a dial tone. Margaret Shirkman was gone from the phone.


I’ve heard the “O” word before… too many times. Overqualified! Quite frankly, reader, I thought we’d gotten past such epithets in this country. It’s a good thing that Margaret Shirkman had been on the phone when she was miles away and talking on the phone . I betcha she wouldn’t have said the "O" word to my face, dammit! There was a time in this country where just the mention of the "O" word to the wrong person would get the person uttering the word a serious thrashing---- or at the very least a real good cussing out.

That's what I felt like doing ---calling her back and giving her a cussing her out. But I didn't because I guess that Ms. Shrikman was only doing what she was told to do. She was just a pawn in this whole thing. But it is frustrating to be constantly told that you're overqualified...especially when you're starving to death. It’s like telling Hallie Berry that you don’t want to date her because she’s too beautiful. Or that you don’t want to be Bill Gates’ friend because he has too much money. Overqualified. The very nerve…

After the phone call and a couple of hours of fuming, I went back to the business of finding gainful employment, secretly wishing that Margaret Shirkman and her friends at the Acme would be hit by that falling meteorite that I, so far have eluded, and looked up the telephone number of Stew's Used Car Emporium.

Reader, I gotta sign off again. There's another wolf at the door. Looks like he's brought a couple of friends.

Overqualified but starving in Atlanta, USA,

JustPlainWill

Saturday, January 24, 2009

CHAPTER 1: THE UNWANTED ADVENTURE

Dear Reader:

Welcome to the inaugural post of "Notes from the Recession".
The naked truth is that I’ve always wanted to be a writer. A published writer, that is. (Hell, I figure that just about anybody can write a few words on any old piece of paper and not be published. I think that such things are commonly called 'grocery lists'!) Before the recession however I just did not have enough free time to embark upon a serious writing project. My time had been devoted to other wholesome American pursuits such as 'family', career, seeing if Phil Mickelson was ever going to win another major golf tournament (especially if Tiger were playing), waiting in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles as well as trying to figure out just who had invented such things as the box lunch as well as who came up with the idea for granola. As I begin the fourth quarter of life, however, I figure that if I'm ever going to be a writer, I'd damn well better get started-----especially since, as a result of unemployment and the recession, I now have more a lot more free time than I ever wanted.

It seems as if most all of the books on the subject of writing as well professional writing instructors advise inexperienced and still impressionable young authors to get started by "...writing about stuff that you already know about." Unlike some of the other subjects that teachers often lecture on (such as say, calculus, existentialism, or Einstein's Theory of Relativity), this concept makes complete sense to me. It is a much easier approach and you don’t have to waste a lot of unnecessary time learning how to be an expert on something such as say thermodynamics, “The Sex Life of the Tsetse Fly”, "Understanding the Mind of Your Ex-Wife (or Husband)", or "How to Cure Cholera for Fun and Profit". And while I have had formal training and even, for a while, a modicum of success in real estate finance (having actually been employed in this industry for decades) it seems that the topics that I really know about these days ----and in which I have unfortunately become too well versed --- are (1) coping with unemployment, (2) living on next to nothing, (3) living on actual nothing, (4) avoiding Rupert, the repo man, (5) dodging bill collectors, (6)forced dieting, and (7)explaining to close family members, friends, and the landlord for the umpteenth time why I am chronically as well as acutely broke -----and of course, (8)trying to find gainful employment. All of this knowledge has been garnered---- painfully and without the benefit of any anesthesia or even a single Tylenol.

I also recall having read in one of those same books for fledgling writers and budding novelists (I think that it was either "Writing Books for Dummies" or "How to Make Untold Billion$ as a Hollywood Writer") that most of the great works of literature involved some kind of journey upon which the author or narrator had, at some point in his life, embarked upon-----like Melville in Moby Dick. In researching this concept, I found that many of the great journeys in literature did involve actual trips such as crossing the Pacific Ocean in a rowboat or "road trips" to exotic places like Paris, Borneo or Waycross, Georgia. (In the pre-trip planning, most of the same writing books advise would-be authors to travel a sufficient number of miles from home----say,at least ten. It seems as if there is more allure, suspense, and invariably, adventure in places that are a greater distance from one's home as opposed to a half-mile trip down to the local Wal-Mart.)

At other times, the writing books advise that the literary journey can be the emotional or the spiritual kind on which the protagonist (that's writer talk for "hero" of the story) goes on a journey of self-discovery in an effort to, er... "find himself" ---- thus building character and/or "coming to terms with the universe." (I think that this phrase "coming to terms with the universe" is the average English Lit teacher's code phrase for the failure of the hero to make it back home due to death, romance or just getting lost. Sometimes its all three, but I digress...)

In this case, your protagonist (i.e. me) currently finds himself out of work and my daily journey is one of actually trying to find the recession's Holy Grail ----- i.e. paid employment. My journey is definitely one of more than ten miles especially since any job interview or job fair is invariably on the other side of town. If the interview takes place on one of the top floors of a tall enough building, you can look out of any window with a Southerly exposure and generally see the curvature of the Earth between my house and the location of interview. (I'm pretty sure that the inverse relationship between one's need to minimize the travel expense and the actual travel distance to said job interview is one of the Immutable Laws of the Universe.) On an interview that I recenly had it would have been easier -----and cheaper---- to actually take the Space Shuttle to the interviewer's office.

Accordingly, it seems to be an obvious choice that I write about "my journey through the recession" and to chronicle my efforts ---and ocassionally, those of others----to "come to terms" with it (i.e. the recession) , survive and come out alive. To be sure, the hard times that many of us are experiencing are serious, real, and urgent. You will note however that sometimes the blog will take on a seriocomic slant or the approach of a “dramedy”--- i.e. part drama, part comedy. On many recent occasions, I have had to laugh in order to keep from crying or downright sobbing uncontrollably. Hopefully though, the reader will find some useful tips or nuggets that will help in your attempts to survive the economic downturn even if those tips relate some of my false starts, misadventures, and things that I have found out that absolutely don’t work -----and that you should “not try at home”. I also hope that you’ll also get a chuckle or two. The media and President Obama tell us that things are going to get worse before they get better. Thus, if your situation is even remotely similar to mine, you’re going to need a chuckle or two.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I can’t take all of the credit for the idea of writing about my adventures in the recession or my journey through it. I really didn’t pick out this particular journey on my own. You can be sure that if had been left completely up to me, I would have picked out a completely different kind of adventure in which to participate and write about. Running the bulls in Pamplona; hurdling Class VI rapids on the Colorado River; searching for Osama bin Laden, alone and unarmed in the mountains of Afghanistan; or maybe going to a Philadelphia Eagles football game and sitting in the home stands wearing the visiting team jersey---all would have been "sufficient enough" adventure for me. I suspect that any of these escapades would have been far less stimulating, less terrifying and less perilous than constantly living on the edge of disaster, being unemployed and looking for work at near sixty years of age in the midst of a real live, honest to goodness recession.

Unfortunately, the choice was not completely up to me and was influenced greatly by the the collapse of the mortgage and housing industries, unemployment, the recession and presence of various and sundry "wolves at the door".

**********************************************************************************
THINGS I"VE LEARNED IN THE RECESSION or SOME FREE ADVICE TO NEW "MEMBERS OF THE RECESSION CLUB"

1. Do not, for one minute, try to con those people over at power company ( the telephone company, the city water department, the gas company or similar types of “for profit” institutions). I know from personal expereince that they WILL cut off your services for even the slightest of provocations such as and including not paying the monthly bill. All of these folks know exactly where you live, are relentless and they have already heard all of the excuses for non-payment that you could ever tell them, as well as a few that have not even been invented yet. Some of these folks at the utility companies are nice enough and some of them are even worried about being downsized themselves. But there are some of them who actually delight in chuckling at any and all excuses and will not accept temporary job lay-off, permanent job-loss, poverty, hangnail, volcano, avalanche, leg amputation, or even death as an excuse for non-payment. Don't even try it.

2. Do not get cocky or delusional about how well things are going a few days after your lay-off or terminiation. Sometimes new members of the recession, those that have been laid off for less than 60 days will get lulled into a false sense of security since they still have money. However you will soon find that at the most inopportune of moments, some heretofore reliably functioning piece of equipment such as your car's transmission, the refrigerator, the furnace, or a kidney will suddenly quit working…and be in immediate need of expensive repair or total overhaul or complete replacement. I’ve learned this axiom over the past year or so and while it was not postulated by Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, Neils Bohr or some other famous scientist, I know this to be true. Count on it.

The good news is that these ‘yet another crisis’ events are the mother of invention, innovation, improvisation and can be be the precursor to the learning of new skills. For example, just last weekend, the brakes went out on my car (in Atlanta traffic). Since I could already afford for ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE to break or go wrong in my life, I was forced to learn how to replace the brakes myself through a DO IT YOURSELF Manual and some guidance from my good friend, Fred Bailey. While I am mildly appreciative to fate for forcing me to learn a new skill, I do not suggest that you attempt DO IT YOURSELF kidney replacement surgery, however. (While Fred is an absolute whiz at fixing almost everything, his services are not available to the general public. He also has not yet learned how to do kidney replacement surgery.)

3. It is very easy to loose weight while being unemployed during a recession. There is a silver lining to every dark cloud. Significant, dramatic weight-loss is definitely the silver lining of the recession. I know this because I've dropped 75 pounds in the past eighteen months largely as a result of being too broke to buy food and eat on a regular basis. (Just last week, one of my former co-workers, now unemployed himself, didn't recognize the new slimmed-down "me"as we bothgreeted each other in the unemployment line. Of course, he also looked a thinner himself since the last time that I'd seem him.)

During the recession, you will no longer need to buy books and tomes such as the South Beach Diet, the Skinny Bitch Diet, the Nancy Reagan “Just Say No to Food” Diet, the Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich Diet or any of the other diet books currently on the shelves at your local booksellers. Food deprivation, starvation and hunger----i.e. not eating ------have their own “non-caloric” rewards. I know that Oprah Winfrey says that skipping meals is not a good way to shed pounds…something about your metabolism slowing down and as a result you don’t loose weight. I am sure that Oprah is a fine person and means well, but trust me, she’s dead wrong about this one. Food deprivation will definitely cause you to loose weight. I don’t think she’s really tried the “Too Broke to Buy Food Regularly” Diet. (Of course, the downside to this silver lining is that once you’ve lost all that weight, you will need to buy or steal new clothes.)

4. While you are unemployed, you will experience an exponential increase in the number of people offering you jobs in which they essentially want you to work for free, participate in an obvious Ponzi scheme or engage in some supposed income producing activity where “a small investment maybe required”.


I have found in some cases that certain people will actually propose that you engage in activity that is illegal such as car theft, burglary, or even prostitution. As these kind of activities can be unhealthy and can also involve ocassional confrontations with local law enforcement officials, I would strongly suggest that you avoid such activity.

5. No matter how hard you are trying to find gainful employment, you will experience a ten-fold increase in the amount of useless or erroneous advice received from some of your "still employed" friends, strangers, and crazy relatives.

As an example, just yesterday, as I was going to yet another job fair (this time on the bus), a guy sitting next told me that he knew for an absolute fact that Circuit City, Linen and Things as well as Lehman Brothers were hiring people just like me. All of these companies have recently gone "belly up", of course... but I guess the guy meant well.

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SAY IT AIN'T SO JOE (or “I KNEW IT, I KNEW IT, I KNEW IT!”)

You probably suspected that this was going on too:

I ran across this copyrighted story in their January 10th edition, the Atlanta Journal Constitution. It reported that “Sellers took advantage of gas shortage”. The article reports that

“Nine gas stations, including one along Buford Highway, gouged consumers when Hurricanes Gustav and Ike hit last September, the Governor’s Office of Consumer Affairs reported Friday.
The Executive Park Chevron, at 2911 Buford Highway was fined $5,000 ---the greatest amount in the Georgia---and ordered to refund the overcharges if customers if customers can prove, by showing a receipt, they were gouged. Consumer Affairs received a complaint that the Chevron charged $4.69 for a gallon of regular gas on September 15. An investigation showed that the station shouldn’t have charged more than $4.39 per gallon, according to Consumer Affairs spokesman Shawn Conroy. …Another 196 stations across Georgia continue to be investigated, including a Cobb County retailer that allegedly charged customers $8.82 a gallon. Consumer Affairs wouldn’t divulge the station’s name because the investigation isn’t complete.
…If you suspect a station of overcharging, call 404-651-8600
or 800-869-1123. On the Web: http://www.consumer.georgia.gov/.”

Dear reader, didn’t both you and I suspect that these kind of shenanigans were ----and still are---- going on all along?! It wouldn't surprise me if we found that darn Dick Cheney somewhere around that Chevron station. (I can smell the smoke from his shotgun from here.) We’ve got enough problems trying to ‘fight back’ from the recession without this kind of conspiracy going on. I am going to go find my receipt as soon as I finish this note from the recession. You just can't trust those oil companies. The government should've made them bail out the Big Three automakers! They obviously have enough of our dough to do it!

Anyway, I gotta sign off for now, there's a knock at my front door. It's probably another wolf.

Starvingly yours,
JustPlainWill