Posted on 12/26/2018 9:30:48 AM PST by Incorrigible
Austin Murphy
Author and longtime Sports Illustrated senior writer
Holiday parties were right around the corner, and I needed a cover story. I didn't feel like admitting to casual acquaintances, or even to some good friends, that I drive a van for Amazon...
...Let's face it, when you're a college-educated 57-year-old slinging parcels for a living, something in your life has not gone according to plan. That said, my moments of chagrin are far outnumbered by the upsides of the job. There's a certain novelty, after decades at a legacy media company, Time Inc, in playing for the team that's winning big, even if that team is paying me $17 an hour (plus OT!). It's been healthy for me, a fair-haired Anglo-Saxon to be a minority in my workplace, and in some of the neighborhoods where I deliver. As Amazon reaches maximum ubiquity in our lives, as online shopping turns malls into mausoleums, it's been illuminating to see exactly how a package makes the final leg of its journey.
There's also a bracing feeling of independence that attends piloting my own van, a tingle of anticipation before finding out my route for the day. Will I be in the hills above El Cerrito with astounding views of the bay, but narrow roads, difficult parking, and lots of steps? Or will my itinerary take me to gritty Richmond, which, despite its profusion of pit bulls, I'm starting to prefer to the oppressive traffic of Berkeley, where I deliver to the brightest young people in the state, some of whom may wonder, if they give me even a passing thought: What hard luck has befallen this man, who appears to be my father's age but is performing this menial task?
Thanks for asking!
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
I never understood the “job” thing unless you have very specialized skills. I just worked for myself starting at age 26.
Had a degree in Sociology, went into music, then real estate. Mostly retired at 60, but investing is too much fun to give up entirely.
I have many friends of all types. The ones who ran businesses or worked for the government have ended up in the best positions in general.
30 years in the industry, 20 years in the same company, and then...
Thankfully there are still some companies in the tech industry who are willing to extend the career of a graybeard for a few more years!
If you are a competent journalist there is LOTS of demand for you at trade publications. This guy felt like he was too good for anything but “the SI” which is why ESPN, Bleacher Report, Barstool Sports and tons of other outlets made their snide publication irrelevant in the first place.
I’m 65 and make quite a bit more than this fellow even while only workig 24 hrs a week....but I would love to do something different in my life....like driving new cars to different states for delivery....
I am coming out of an experience extremely similar to this gent, and so I empathize.
However, I came away with a completely different set of lessons. I reinvented myself as a Salesforce Admin and developer. He’s still a journalist, and an arrogant one at that.
I had several jobs not unlike this gents, and it was definitely humiliating. I recommend it to everyone, however, because at this point I am grateful for everything, and am completely committed to lifetime reinvention.
So sad to try and put myself into the place of a journalist. The useful idiot; the very definition of it. Now he’s subsumed by part of the beast he tried his best to serve.
That’s the subtext here. He’s thinking about all those liberal academics who found refuge and sinecure in all of those effete institutions (and likely vehicles for money laundering) and wondering to himself, “Where’s mine? How was I passed over?”
So he writes an article for the Atlantic, who pays him whatever they can spare because they’re hurting, and says to the liberal machine, “Hey! Over here? Where’s my English professor gig?”
Or maybe he's a limo driver. Lots of sad stories among those guys.
Found a stack of SI in parents attic years ago, Mags dated back to 70’s and 80’s. It was a good magazine, articles on fishing, hunting. Fast forward to today, latest study on lbqt trannie trying to play football , or climate change is a problem for runners. No thanks
He's a SPORTS WRITER, the only 'TRADE' he knows about is between baseball and football teams....................
some of the best writers anywhere in that era
Ya gotta cut him some slack. He's inadvertently exposing the racism of the left. Many degreed white liberals view such jobs as the domain of the underclass with darker skin tones. But are happy to call white, working class males racists.
Any sort of job involving repetitive tasks like moving boxes from one place to another will be automated. Sure there are trials going on but it will be a while before package delivery is fully automated. So these jobs will be around a while longer.
I was also the only one spending my off days going to college. Coincidence? :)
The best sports writer was Oscar Madison.
true! But read the piece...gotta make a real plan to deal with the call of nature! LOL
it’s a really good article, thanks for posting.
I have a half-brother that had a Master’s Degree in History.
He became a Big Rig truck driver, Long Haul.
He loved it...................
Serious journalism is in steep decline (and it’s not just in the political sphere.) Magazines have been going under at an alarming rate over the last 5 to 10 years. Armies of journalists have been dumped into a market with few openings.
When a genuine job opens up in the world of journalism, hundreds of people apply for that job and at prestige organizations perhaps thousands.
The websites that have replaced magazines are looking for “content providers” - not journalists. The job is to make crap sound interesting rather than doing the hard work of uncovering an interesting story. They want young people who are not conflicted about the fact that what they are doing is just another form of marketing. And young people are cheap these days.
Website want people with SEO skills. SEO stands for search engine optimization. That means the website writers use keyword manipulation to draw people to the website. When the vistors land on the website because of some SEO manipulation, they are disappointed because the story they thought was there is just a lot of puffery. But as long as the website gets hits the owners don’t care. The advertisers are happy and that’s all that matters these days.
Older journalists are like the buggy and whip manufacturers after the automtobile was introduced. They have become increasingly irrelevant and unemployable. For those who were genuine journalists, it is a rough world.
Quality in writing is a thing of the past for the most part. Even when writing about non-political matters. Quality does not pay like it used to with magazines. Whole libraries of trade magazines have bitten the dust as a result.
Same here, except I get to work in an AMZ sort center. But I have just started my journey into the 60’s decade, and expect that after a few years I won't need to work so hard, if I work hard now.
But I will be slimmer.
One thing my father taught me was to never look down on the “hired help”, since that is how he started working in the 1930s.
Living in New England amongst the Kennedy-esque taught him some strong truths. About how many may be rich in greenbacks but absolutely poor in class and spirit. And be complete jerks as well.
Looks like human nature hasn't changed very much over the years.
My thought as well. But he is probably so PC Whipped by years of being immersed in it that he simply cannot bring himself to say so.
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