June 27, 2003
Posted on 06/28/2003 11:23:30 AM PDT by sten
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June 27, 2003
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In little time I found that both my options and expectations tumbled into freefall.... Finally, I was hired for the deli job - for $8 an hour.
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Tonight I'll mop the floor in the deli. It is not really my job - it's Gary's. But Gary can do little with his right arm due to a devastating North Vietnamese rocket attack at an airbase outside of Saigon some 30 years ago. The attack left him severely injured, and he nearly bled to death. But military surgeons made saving the young captain's life and his badly-mangled arm a priority. Years of physical therapy, however, have left him with little use of it. Most of the time it hangs limply at his side at an unnatural angle. His injury, in fact, is remarkably similar to that of another war veteran whom Gary admires - former Kansas Senator and presidential candidate Bob Dole.
Gary and I work the same late shift at a grocery store deli in a suburb outside of Seattle. When we're not slicing sandwich meats or cheeses or brewing mochas for impatient customers, we clean and restock. The pace is fast - and there is always work to do. There is also a good deal of reaching and carrying that Gary has difficulty doing. During rare moments when we have time to talk to each other, we sometimes reflect about how life's vagaries led us to this place.
I used to be a technical writer. Most of the last decade I spent ensconced in a windowless office at Microsoft's main corporate campus, where I wrote online Help files or sections for user manuals. During my tenure there I worked as either a full-time employee or as "contingent staff,"; where I was employed by a temporary employment agency rather than the company itself. In June 2001, after my last assignment on the Windows XP team, I decided to take a break after having worked several months on an exhausting release schedule. Microsoft requires members of its "contingent staff" to take 100 days off after having worked at the company for a calendar year. I felt fortunate to be able to time my break with the summer. My required "break" ended Sept. 8, a Saturday. That meant I was eligible to take another Microsoft assignment Sept. 10, 2001. The timing turned out to be monumentally bad. I have not worked as a technical writer since.
I began looking for other jobs. In little time I found that both my options and expectations tumbled into freefall. I responded to job ads for a security guard, barista, carpet cleaner, airport shuttle driver. I rarely even got an interview. Other job seekers responded to the same help wanted classifieds by the hundreds, sometimes even thousands. My unemployment benefits ran out last November, soon after Congress and the Bush administration nixed Democratic proposals to extend them. I began to pound the pavement, canvassing blocks of businesses at a time, filling out job applications. Finally, I was hired for the deli job - for $8 an hour.
After returning from Vietnam, Gary retired from the U.S. Air Force and returned to school, where he earned a master's degree in aeronautical engineering and was subsequently hired by the Boeing Co. Like me, Gary came from a working middle-class background, where we were taught that with hard work, education, and determination, we could achieve the comfortable, even affluent lives we sought. For Gary, a disabled right arm - although a hardship - was little more than an inconvenience in his work. He trained himself to write with his left hand. Unlike his father, a German immigrant who ran his own delicatessen, Gary was able to earn his living solely with his intellect. With a head for science and numbers, he excelled at weights and measures. He built his career on teams that designed some of Boeing's latest and best examples of military and passenger aircraft. Along the way he bought a home, raised a family, saved for a secure retirement. He believed in Boeing's future, and he invested much of his retirement savings in the company, as well as with Microsoft, another stalwart of the Northwest's - indeed the nation's - economy.
Often, however, events occur that derail the best laid plans: Stock market corrections. The events of September 11, 2001, and the ensuing recession. Both Gary and I understand this, and we've done the best we can to cope. Not long after 9-11, Gary lost his career due to layoffs, when Boeing sent much of its work to contractors overseas or eliminated jobs altogether. His stock portfolio and retirement savings were savaged when the market went south. Along the way, his wife was diagnosed with cancer. His military and company medical plans aren't what they used to be, so he sold his home and most of his assets to pay his wife's medical bills. At age 61, he is forced to live in a rented two-bedroom apartment, where he also raises a 4-year-old grandchild. His military retirement pay and what is left of his retirement savings at Boeing won't pay the bills. He was forced to turn to the only other thing he knows that he could make a living at - working in a deli. It is union work, so he is eligible for medical benefits. Both he and I now make less in an entire six-hour shift than we once earned in an hour.
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I've sold nearly everything I had of value, and my 401(k) and IRA have been eviscerated. I have very little debt. Still, I can barely pay the bills. I haven't seen a doctor or a dentist in nearly three years.
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I consider myself luckier than Gary. I don't have a family, so medical insurance has not been a paramount concern (so far). True, the lifestyle that included a Porsche and a waterfront house on Whidbey Island is gone. I've sold nearly everything I had of value, and my 401(k) and IRA have been eviscerated. I have very little debt. Still, I can barely pay the bills. I haven't seen a doctor or a dentist in nearly three years. Once companies bid for my services. Now I'm in my late 40s and a veteran of software technical documentation. Apparently, those are not very marketable commodities. In virtually every case I'm aware of where I interviewed for a job, the person who eventually got the job was both younger and less experienced than me.
Of course, now there are significantly fewer technical writing jobs available for which to apply. Certainly there is technical documentation to be done. IT experts from META Group believe companies are holding off for now, but when conditions improve a lot of pent-up demand is expected. But the hot trend in IT is offshore outsourcing. Forrester Research reports that millions of the IT jobs lost will never return and have been - or will be - outsourced to outsourcing giants like India. I've been told by other American technical writers of Indian origin - also unemployed - that they could have all the work they wanted if they would return to India and accept the equivalent of $12 per hour, which they tell me is a very good wage there.
At least I have a job. For that I am grateful, although it relegates me to the ranks of the so-called "working poor." The irony is that while Indian workers make $12 an hour (the equivalent, an Indian tech worker tells me, to about $40 U.S. dollars) and considers that a living wage, Gary and I make only $8 an hour and are struggling to make ends meet. It leaves me to ponder what this says about the priorities of American big business and the lack of concern, or even understanding, of our elected officials.
Often customers who wear the infamous T-shirt or jacket brandishing a Microsoft logo come in to purchase sandwich meat and cheese or fried chicken and a salad - something easy to prepare for a late dinner. I once told one such customer that I had also worked at Microsoft. He just shot me an odd look for a moment, and then he grasped the pound of roast beef I had just sliced for him and hurried off in the direction of the grocery department. I often wonder what he must have been thinking. Did he find it hard to believe what had happened to me? Was he afraid that what had happened to me, Gary, and a growing number of others could also happen to him?
I also wonder what will happen to the U.S economy as the number of members of the so-called middle class continues to grow smaller. Under our current circumstances, neither Gary nor I can afford to buy homes, large appliances, or new cars. We don't go on shopping expeditions to Bellevue Square or to Costco. Buying a $3 latte is an uncommon treat. We are the dropouts of the American consumer economy, and more join our ranks every day as jobs disappear in the U.S., many of which reappear in places such as India, Indonesia or the Philippines.
How will Boeing executives sell planes to U.S. carriers when the number of Americans who can afford to fly dwindles? What plan do Microsoft's leaders have to maintain their company's revenues as the number of those who can no longer afford to purchase new operating systems or Xboxes grows? What becomes of the United States as a world leader as other countries surpass our expertise in aerospace and computer technology? These are questions Gary and I sometimes ask one another as we scrub down the deli at the end of the day when we have a few moments to ponder.
Since leaving technical writing, David Beckman has returned to his journalism roots and is a regular contributor to TechsUnite -when he is not working in the deli.
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHA!!! You got a few hundred jobs to offer and the governors will still wet themselves giving away the store in terms of tax credits, subsidies, and eminent-domain proceedings for property.
Just how out of touch are you?
There is also an accelerant -- the executives and bankers have learned to chase this fiat money differential very well, and the elephants of peer-group competition are now in stampede of so doing. The number doing so seems to have hit a critical mass or something some dozen or more months ago. It's now a rapidly accelerating reaction. What dampers are there on it?
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