Nearly three years ago, I was fired from my job; a casualty of the post-9/11 economic downturn. After 18 months of looking for work without success, I sat down to write a book, entitled, "Blown Job: an unemployment odyssey." Here's an excerpt from Chapter Ten. (See "Past Posts of Note" for earlier chapters )
Chapter 10 - Dinner at Eight A.M.
Being axed permanently disrupts your daily pattern of living. No longer do you have to wake up with the birds and jump into a shower and blow dry your hair and grab a Power Bar and dash to the train and wait on the subway platform at the exact spot where the doors will open, and sit in your favorite seat in the corner and read your book until you reach your stop, where you jump out right at the stairway leading to the street and walk to the deli where you grab your coffee and go next door to your building, where you flash your employee ID to the security guard and make small talk with your co-workers in the elevator, and get off on your floor and turn on your computer and read your e-mail and begin another day at work.
This routine is now meaningless. Even if you wanted to do this one more time, you’d be turned away at the door. Sure, you’ll still arise at daybreak, because the part of your brain that’s programmed to wake up at the same time every morning regardless of whether the alarm’s gone off hasn’t heard yet from that other part of your brain that knows damned well you probably won’t have to wake up this early ever again.
If you’re smart, you’ll quickly establish a new routine. You’ll wake up early-ish and have your breakfast and hit the computer and search the ’Net for jobs and send out résumés and call your networking contacts and get out of the house and meet those contacts for lunch and keep on looking until you find that new job.
Ideally, finding a job shouldn’t take you very long. But when the days stretch into weeks, and the weeks into months, and you are still unemployed, your enthusiasm begins to wane. So, you sleep an hour or two later than usual and you spend less time on the computer looking for work and more time reading the gossip columns and checking out the latest games and instant-messaging your friends who are still lucky enough to have jobs.
Or maybe you take a different tack and, slowly but surely, make looking for work your whole new career. You spend hours typing keywords into search engines for jobs you’ve always dreamed of having but were afraid to tackle in the past. You look for work in cities you’d like to live in. You join unemployment support groups or start one of your own. You put on your business suit every morning, buy a paper, haul ass down to Starbucks and sit there for two hours, reading the want ads and circling likely prospects. You go to the library and read trade journals for industry news that might give you an edge. You take classes to improve your skills or acquire new ones. You attend employment seminars and job fairs. You do volunteer work in the hope that you might make a serendipitous networking connection or that some project you contribute your talents to may lead to a paying job.
It’s unlikely that any of this will lead to what you’re really after, but keeping yourself occupied can keep you from going insane.
I traveled each of these routes in the past year and a half. At first, I was enthusiastic and optimistic. I wasn’t going to let this setback hold me down. I did everything I was supposed to do and you know, by now, how it’s all turned out.
I don’t want you to think that I haven’t worked at all. I spent two entire days typing mailing labels and stuffing envelopes for a friend. And one day, I participated in a focus group for three hours. This brings my total annual income to $180. But I’m psyched because the year isn’t over yet.
Once I bought my computer, I began to spend more time at home. I dutifully checked the job sites every day and followed up on promising leads, but after a few hours, I needed a mental break. I would read ’Net periodicals and my e-mails and then I’d check out the my Favorites and then click on some links and find new sites and click on some new links and add to my Favorites and before I knew it, the sun had gone down.
I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t turn on the television during the day, but, pretty soon, I was timing my lunch to coincide with reruns of NYPD Blue and in fairly short order, I couldn’t wait to see what SpongeBob SquarePants and Jimmy Neutron were up to each day.
My routines pretty much disappeared. I’ve always been a night person trapped in a 9-to-5 world. Now that I had nowhere to be, I pushed back my bedtime further and further. Television became my new best friend. I watched everything, day and night. I saw King of the Hill at 1:30 AM and Tom and Jerry at 2:00 and Coach at 2:30. I watched infomercials for mattresses and acne treatments and time-shares. I watched Spanish-language talk shows. I understood about every tenth word, but I loved that everyone talked at the same time, really fast and really loud, and that people in the audience dressed like aliens. The only theme show I understood without benefit of translation was “Toda mi familia es prostituta y yo soy virgen.”
I watched reruns of shows I never cared for in prime time. I watched Rikki Lake and Dr. Phil and Oprah. I watched Lifetime movies, all of which appeared to be about the same thing. One night (I think it was night), I came upon a channel I didn’t even know I had, and there was an uncut version of Jerry Springer, and let me tell you, it was so out there that it made his daytime syndicated show look like The 700 Club. People never stopped saying motherfucker and they pulled out all kinds of body parts and it was so horrifying and violent that I had to turn it off after 59 minutes.
Another night, I spent a half-hour watching one of the shopping channels as they hawked a display case for the new series of state quarters. The announcer knew all kinds of facts about the coins – where they were minted and what the state symbols meant and the composition of the metals, and lots more. It was better than The Learning Channel.
I watched every true crime show there was. I’m pretty confident now that, if asked, I can perform an autopsy, question a suspect, and test for chemicals that cannot be traced in blood or tissues.
I watched every crappy infotainment special – 60 Minutes II, Dateline, Primetime, 48 Hours. Anyone who was famous for at least 15 minutes got my full attention. I watched VH1 specials about musicians whose work I never heard. I spent an hour watching a biography on E! of an actress whose entire claim to fame was that she had a supporting role on a sitcom from 15 years ago. They gave her an entire hour. A supporting role. 15 years ago. An entire hour.
I watched the cooking shows. Iron Chef. Emeril. Anthony Bourdain. Mario Batali. Lidia Bastianich. I watched painting shows. The guy that died about 10 years ago, whose shows are more popular than ever. A woman who almost inspired me to order her video, before I remembered that I have no artistic ability. But she made it look so easy. I even watched a sewing show, which is ironic since, you may remember, I can’t sew and now, since my near vision isn’t worth a crap, I can’t even thread a needle.
I did have a line beyond which I would not cross. No reality shows. No Howard Stern. No Anna Nicole Smith. No Joan Rivers. ’Nuff said.
My unwavering commitment to television meant that I usually went to sleep as the sun was coming up. I woke midday, and had breakfast around 4:00 PM, lunch around 7:00, and dinner near 11:00. In between, I’d nosh on things I never used to eat – potato chips, Devil Dogs, mini-muffins. At 2:00 AM, I’d have a snack of whatever ice cream was left in the freezer, in whatever quantity that was left from my last binge. I can’t imagine why my weight has fluctuated so, since I’ve stopped working.
It’s so much easier to dress now. No longer do I have to coordinate an outfit. As long as my jeans and T-shirts are clean, my wardrobe problems are solved. That’s on the days that I bother to go out of the house.
I don’t have to battle any more to use the washing machines in my building’s basement. There aren’t too many neighbors to contend with at 10:00 PM.
It’s so much easier to go food shopping. No long lines at 4:00. And I don’t mind waiting on lines at the bank or the Post Office anymore, because I’m not in a hurry to get back to work – or anywhere at all.
When I go to sleep, I don’t toss and turn, thinking about some project that I have to complete tomorrow. I don’t have to prepare a mental checklist of agenda items to discuss with my boss. I don’t have to envision a presentation I’m slated to give.
And boy, am I glad that I don’t have to attend any more holiday parties or office retreats or company picnics, where you have to socialize with people who screwed you over the day before. No more having to stay late or go in on a weekend. No more standing on a crowded train for an hour every evening. No more union dues. No more secret Santa. No more nasty, bitchy bosses. No more pesky annual visits to H&R Block.
No more paychecks. No more paid vacation. No more health benefits. No more payroll savings. No more Transitcheks. No more bonuses. No more paid tuition.
Sorry, I got off track. That’s what happens when you wake up at 3:00 PM. What I find most disconcerting about this new lifestyle is when I make myself presentable and go to the city and I’m surrounded by people who still have jobs. Every one of them has now become my mortal enemy, because I’m so envious. When I see a woman in heels carrying a briefcase, or two people standing in front of their office building having a smoke, or if I’m seated in a restaurant next to a table of folks talking about what went on in the office earlier that morning, I want to scream, what can I do to be like you? How can I get back into the race? Sadly, I haven’t a clue and it’s driving me nuts.
*
Recently, I was writing a business letter and I was trying to come up with a phrase to describe something that had been resurrected after a long period of dormancy, and I couldn’t come up with a thing. I stared at my monitor for ten minutes before, “rekindle the flame” occurred to me, but that wasn’t really the phrase I was searching for.
This happens to me more and more often now. I can attribute part of it to the aging process, the same aging process that causes me to forget why I came into a room, but more likely, it is because my brain has been hibernating for so long. Yet, I can recall in an instant that Chandler Bing’s TV Guide comes to him under the name of “Ms. Chanandelar Bong.” And when I can’t sleep, I have no trouble naming all of the characters in The Simpsons; including Bleeding Gums Murphy and Snowball #1.
I also find that I’m spending inordinate amounts of time on things I wouldn’t have considered at all, if I was working. For example, I think that a mole on my left breast is growing incrementally, like 1/1000 of a millimeter a day. And the crack in my bathroom wall is beginning to look like a profile of Martin Short as Ed Grimley. Clearly, I have too much time on my hands.
I would gladly give up my addictions to TV and the Internet and my heightened interest in domesticity if I could find a job. I’d learn to go to sleep by midnight and wake up with the sun. I’d eat three meals a day again, at roughly the same time as everyone else does. I’d dress for success, instead of wearing whatever’s not in the hamper. I’d devote myself to my new job and be the firm’s #1 employee.
I’ve decided that, if I don’t find a well-paying job commensurate with my many years of employment experience soon, then I’m going to become the best damned clerical in the business.
