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A Day in the Life
By David Glenn Cox
“I read the news today, oh boy, about a lucky man who made the grade.” I received this in my e-mail early Monday morning: “We have received your application for the position of Fleet Manager - Area-10238. We regret to inform you that you have not been selected for this position.”
Under normal circumstances it wouldn’t bother me, but in this case it’s like being rejected by a girl that you didn’t want to go out with in the first place. For fifteen years I managed a full-service engine overhaul and repair shop. During the first Gulf war we were rebuilding engines for the navy that left our shop and were headed for aircraft carriers in the Gulf.
The job that I was turned down for was a fleet manager for a fleet of garbage trucks. I feel pretty confident that if I could mange the overhaul of Navy arrestor gear engines that I could probably manage to keep the hydraulic filters and oil changed on a fleet of garbage trucks. The arrestor gear is the cable that catches the jets as they land and if it fails to function people are going to get hurt and a lot of money is going swimming.
The problem is my resume, it says that I’m fifty-three years old. It is hard to get around that point but to an employer it says that you are far too old to be trusted with a fleet of garbage trucks. Of course they wouldn’t come right out and say that it was my age, but with literally hundreds of candidates to choose from on any given job why not choose a newer more pliable model?
I saw a want ad for a manager trainee for a tire store with a blimp. One of my first jobs out of high school was at a tire store. In a year and a half I was the store manager, but then we didn’t have a blimp; all we had was a dune buggy. The blimp tire store wants a bachelor’s degree to be a manager trainee. Again, that didn’t bother me. I’m familiar with the way the blimp folks operate from my time in the parts business when they sold what they called a free safety inspection. Then they charged for the fluids and gaskets that were lost during the inspection.
They took differential covers off of two-year-old cars to inspect differentials that weren’t making any noise. They operated differently than I was used to. We sold tires and batteries to people that needed them. They sold something to everybody and managers and assistant managers all worked on commission.
This is the dilemma that millions of the unemployed face, over-qualified, over-educated or over the hill. I quote my own situation only because it is the one I’m most familiar with, but I hear the same again and again. I wonder about the poor schmo they do hire as a manager trainee. Four years of student loans and four years of eating Ramen noodles, all to be a tire store manager trainee. In this economy any job is a good job, but I know from experience that this is a production job so I wouldn’t advise making any major purchases.
I saw a news article entitled “Job Fair for Employees over Fifty.” The fair was sponsored by the AARP and their premier employer was CVS Pharmacy. Yes, CVS is looking for workers over fifty who understand bad backs and hemorrhoids and incontinence. Excuse me for being impudent but that’s not a fair, that’s a sentence! Let’s set aside the fact that a job at CVS wouldn’t pay me enough to support myself; then let's get down to the meat of the matter, I expect more than that in employment.
I spent twenty-five years at increasing levels of responsibility and did so successfully and now my career choices are drug store clerk, Wal-Mart greeter or home healthcare aide? A while back I wrote about an acquaintance of mine that worked for the factory that I represented. He was a guy named Elmer and he had worked for the company for twenty-five odd years, and as the company downsized they bounced Elmer from job to job finally giving him the sack. One day when I asked about Elmer the phone grew quiet. Then finally, “Didn’t you hear? Elmer shot himself.”
Jobs are about more than just paychecks; they give us roots and purpose. A friend of mine from Alabama was the night superintendent for a small municipal water plant. He left for work each night with his head held high. “You want to take a bath tonight? You want your toilet to flush? It’s on me, baby!” Of course, short of a catastrophe nothing like that would ever happen, but he felt good about what he did for a living. His testing of the water supply every four hours was a formality but he did it for the public good and it made him feel good about himself.
I had a buddy with a welding business. He built towers for billboards and businesses and he told me one day, “You see that sign? I lost that job over a hundred bucks! He might have got a good price on it but when it blows over in a windstorm and crushes a few cars, it won’t be on my conscience.” His reputation for quality meant more to him than doing more work. When his work grew slack I suggested doing homeowner repairs.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “I’m a builder and erector. I’m a craftsman, I don’t fix grandma’s handrail or wrought iron furniture.” His skills were his identity and his source of self-esteem; he could do less but wouldn’t accept that even if it meant that he made less money. Nor had he ever signed on to the cheaper-is-better philosophy. No sign that he put up would fall down in a storm, even if it meant the work would go to a lowest bidder.
Today we have this incredibly talented and well-educated workforce and no work. Account managers without accounts, sales managers without sales people, good employees who would walk through walls for good employers, but there are none. How could there be?
April 13 (Bloomberg) -- "The trade deficit in the U.S. widened in February more than anticipated as Americans snapped up foreign-made televisions and computers, illustrating the rebound in economic growth.
"The gap increased 7.4 percent to $39.7 billion from a revised $37 billion the prior month, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Imports climbed 1.7 percent, outpacing a gain in exports that pushed sales abroad to the highest level since October 2008.”
Imports climbed 1.7 percent and exports rose .2 percent, because when you export raw materials and import finished goods you have to sell a lot more coal or grain to equal a boatload of computers. Ask yourself this, who owns those computer companies? I wonder where they pay taxes?
President Obama has been discussing economies with Chinese Premier Hu and Obama said, “The U.S. considers China’s currency to be undervalued and that currencies should roughly track the market so that no country has an advantage in trade.”
That sounds fair to bankers and bondsmen in international trade, and that is the way every other country besides China operates. But Obama received this answer: Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai said in Washington yesterday that outside pressure on the yuan is “not justified,” and that China will proceed with currency reform in accordance with its own needs.
Wow, I like that, a country that acts in its own best interests. We should try that policy. I bet it would do wonders for our own self-esteem, having policies that actually assist our own people. Policies to put our people to work, and besides, it's painfully obvious that we have to do something. The current policy clearly isn’t working and can’t continue for much longer.
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