My Former Company Bought a Company. I’m Pissed.

Not sure where I first saw the announcement. I think it may have been on my LinkedIn newsfeed. Through the wonder that is Google, however, I found the actual press release.

My former company, the one that didn’t have enough revenues to support my ginormous salary, acquired another company. Picture me slapping my right palm on forehead.

I immediately shared the news with two former colleagues given the boot the same day I was. They were similarly disgusted.

No purchase price was disclosed (private companies don’t have to release that kind of information), but surely simply cutting the salaries of five mid- to low-level employees didn’t equate to what they paid for their shiny new toy of an acquisition.

Which begs the questions: Where did they find the money to buy another company when they clearly stated that they didn’t have enough funds to pay our salaries? So where did that money come from?

Oh, yeah, now I remember. During my “you’re laid off” session, the corporate tool said it was because they wanted to put money into more “profitable” areas. Well, that may be the company’s stinky justification for their callous behavior toward its employees. Yet there are several problems with their fetid logic.

First, will this new acquisition rain down manna from heaven to their bottom line? At this point, any business plan and projections are just words and numbers on paper that may or may not come to fruition in the form of actual profits. How long will it take before profits are realized and how significant? From I could glean from the press reports, this was not a huge, transformative acquisition. More of meh from my reading.

It reminds, sadly, of my beloved New York Mets, who seem to be ever undergoing a "rebuilding phase," only to crash and burn into one losing season after another. All the best laid plans...

Worth pointing out that my former former workplace once undertook a much-ballyhooed merger. Yet not even a year after the merger, the economy tanked, and the acquiring company had a serious case of buyer’s remorse when it realized it had widely overpaid for my sinkhole former former workplace. The parties “de-merged” as they say in business. The newly installed head of my former former workplace took a hatchet to the division in which I worked…and well, what happened next is the basis for this blog.

The lesson learned from that horrible experience, and one I think every business executive should be cognizant of, is that sometimes business mergers, like marriages, don’t work out, and all the optimistic spreadsheet projections can’t put it back together again. This shiny new toy may amount to nothing more than shifting deck chairs on the Titanic. As far as I'm concerned, there's a moist, dark place they can insert their ballyhooed new acquisition.

What of the workers, like me, who were sacrificed to make this grand scheme happen? Reading the announcement, I felt worthless and foolish—stupid to have worked so hard for a company that saw me as nothing more than a line item that had to be discarded so they could pursue some nebulous business strategy that has no guarantee of being successful. Obviously, the corporation is more worthy than any one person. Despicable. Oh how I wish these corporate gunslingers would realize how destructive their “business strategies” can sometimes be to real people trying to make a living. Fat chance.

What of the people at the acquired company as well? They have every reason to be scared. Because there is nothing that gives wannabe corporate cowboys a hard-on faster than to scour for redundant positions in both companies and then decide who gets to stay, who gets the boot. It makes them feel strong, like a big man. Hey, they can’t be a superhero or a star athlete, but they can sure feel the power in laying people off. Look out below!, is all I can say to the people working for the company just bought by my former company. It's bub-bye, here's your severance check, please pack up and leave...

In one sense, I can understand why the CEO at my former workplace made the merger. He came on board three years ago when the company was in deep financial straits. Since then, he has outsourced whole departments and hacked away staff in what seemed like regular intervals. At some point, he had to make a positive move, one that might bring the company some honest-to-goodness revenues, rather than just a slice-and-dice swath through the expense side of the ledger.

It’s not like he’s the new guy anymore, either. He’s been at the job for nearly three years. More than enough time to turn the company around—if it can be. He’s dispensed with the easy moves, like cutting staff. Now, he has to book some real-world profits for the company, not just conjure up some hoity-toity business plan to impress the board. That’s a bit harder to do.

Make no mistake, he’s on the clock now. If he doesn’t succeed, he’ll be out of a job, just like all the people he’s laid off in the past three years.

Of course, he’ll have the cushion of his golden parachute. Meanwhile, several of us have run out of unemployment benefits, still have no job, and are staring at homelessness.

Pays to be a CEO, even if you an incompetent one who runs companies into the ground and gets to lay off and destroy the lives of so many people. Nice work if you can get it.

Hopes & Dreams

One of my favorite movies is “The Shawshank Redemption.” It’s a bit corny, old-fashioned, sentimental and formulaic, but, boy, I dare you not to fall for its emotional wallop in the end. One scene in particular hovers in my mind, especially now.

It’s a conversion between Andy, the Tim Robbins character, and Red, the Morgan Freeman character, both inmates at prison in Maine in the 1950s. To summarize, Andy says that a person must have hope. Red is having none of that, essentially saying that hope is a dangerous thing.

I’m with Red on this one. I’ve pretty much given up any hope of getting a full-time job ever again. You see, I’ve passed that damning signpost of being out of work for six months. Once again, I’ve become of a member of the “LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYED” club. (Cue the horror-movie scream here.)

That means, to HR drones and potential employers, I have regressed to an infantile state in which I have lost all ability to function, reason, play well with others, or master new tasks. I have lost any capacity to learn new technology (okay, they may have me on that one). Despite more than 25 years in my profession, I’m viewed as a drooling moron because I’m now a LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYED WORKER. (Cue the horror-movie scream here.) Add to this scenario my advanced age and I’ve got two massive debits against me in my futile quest to find gainful employment.

I’ve been here before. In fact, since 2009, I’ve been out of a job for nearly two years. It’s amazing I have any savings left at all.

Oh, and did I mention my unemployment benefits have run out? (Cue the horror-movie scream here.)

So perhaps you can understand why I feel hopeless. I really don’t know what to do. It’s obvious that in the minds of potential employers, I’m well past employable age and it’s obvious they believe that because I’m A LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYED WORKER I’ve lost any intellectual competence.

I’ve picked up some freelance assignments with middling success. (I fear I’m going to get fired from one pretty soon. Serves me right for taking on a job for which I really didn’t have the proper background.) In my current state of mind, I believe I’ll fail at any job I try to do.

But the payments (when they come in) are not going to support me. I’ve gone to a cheaper car insurance and switched over to Obamacare (fingers crossed it works for me) to cut my health-care premiums.

I have to pay rent and utilities. I need cable to do or find work via the Internet. I can cancel my newspaper subscriptions. I don’t shop for clothes anymore, just food and gas. I live rather modestly so I don’t think there’s much else I can cut. I’ve already accepted handouts from my cousins (they’re rich and can afford it), but still, it’s a blow to my self-esteem to be seen as a charity case. I don't want charity, I want a job!

I may not have gotten married and had kids, I may not have been amazingly successful in my career, but I could always take pride in the fact that I put myself through school and supported myself. Now even that has been taken away from me by some corporate bean counter.

I can’t begin to describe how disgusted, angry, anxious and dejected I feel at this point. But who would care? Certainly not any potential employers. It’s not that I expect to get a job out of pity (no employer does "pity" hires anyhow), but could they at least understand I haven’t lost my skills, that I can still be a good worker, and that my jobless status was not of my own making?

And it irks me to no end when I hear people say, “You know, at your age it would be hard to get a job.” I always feel like they are leaving off the next sentence. You know, something like, “Glad I’m not you, Loser. I got a job.” What does that mean exactly? Do I stop looking for work and live in poverty? Apparently that may be the only option.

Though my best friend tells me I shouldn’t blame myself for my unemployed status, that it was the economy and the companies’ fault, I can’t help thinking in some way it was my fault. I also think some people (like my own sister and all HR drones) believe that as well.

It’s hard not to think that way. I cannot ignore the fact that in the past four years, when the company I worked for had to slash its budget, I was let go, that I wasn’t good enough to keep on staff while others were.

And when you are taken into a room and told the company is having financial problems and it has to cut your position, it’s hard not to internalize (sorry to use a hackneyed psychobabble phrase) that devastating blow. To feel somehow I was to blame for the company’s shortfall. I actually feel guilty for dragging the company downward. I mean, the implication is gut-wrenchingly clear: Your ginormous salary is dragging down the company (HA!) and you are worthless to us now.

Yeah, I know. That’s silly. But that’s how I feel. Friends tell me to fight it, but with what? I have no self-confidence left. It’s been destroyed by two layoffs in four years. By once again becoming a LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYED WORKER. (Cue the horror-movie scream here.)

Except for this blog and some conversations with my best friend, I really don’t express these feelings. People only care about themselves anyway, certainly not some unemployed loser. U.S. companies certainly don’t care; they can always smugly justify their massive layoffs as just another business decision.

I really don’t go out much or socialize a lot. I’m too embarrassed and ashamed. It’s hard to go out and see people enjoying themselves, eating at a restaurant. I don’t begrudge them, but it’s just another reminder of something else I can’t afford, like pedicures and hair cuts.

Just as hard is hearing people talk about vacations or seeing beach photos posted by friends on Facebook. Can’t say I’m a world traveler, but I wonder if I’ll ever go on vacation again. Heck, I can't even afford a tank of gas to drive to the mall!

So, what now? Sure, I could apply for a retail job, but would I get hired? That’s how low my self-confidence had sunk. Training? With what money? I’ll be lucky if I don’t end up homeless in six months. There is no help for unemployed workers like me. Corporate America has cast us out, and our nation’s social safety net has no provision for us.

I wish I could stop having these unsettling dreams, dreams in which I’m lost within labyrinth-like city streets darkened by towering skyscrapers, trying frantically to find the door I have to go through. I never find that door. Or the dreams where I’m running after a bus and it keeps going and going and going, ever faster beyond me, never stopping to let me board.

Already I’ve begun to clear my apartment of unwanted papers and items, to get rid of stuff I no longer need or want. (Better to have less stuff when I move to the homeless shelter, right?) Every time I do it, though, I also feel like I’m receding from the world bit by bit, a world that apparently no longer has a place for me.

Whenever I think I could be hired for a job, I quickly stop myself. Like Red, I can’t allow myself to believe in the ethereal myth of hope. It hurts too much when I’m rejected or I fail.

I’m sorry for the downcast tone of this post. But unlike “The Shawshank Redemption,” I don’t see a happy ending.

Rejection Fatigue

AAAARRRRGGGHHH! I got one this morning.

OH NO! Another one came in the afternoon! Two in one day!

Twice, less than 12 hours apart, I had to endure what every job seeker dreads: the rejection email, just another paper cut to my self-confidence.

Sometimes you get rejection emails from a company for which you didn’t actually interview with in person. These robo-rejection emails are generated by the digital HR program that spits out qualified résumés the way you spit out watermelon seeds.

Sometimes you get rejection emails from a company you interviewed with in person. In my experience, however, that’s a pretty rare occurrence. Most of the time companies don’t even extend you the courtesy of informing you were, well, rejected.

I think that’s a bit rude, don’t you? I mean, if I’ve taken the time to come to your office (which sometimes has meant an hour commute or more) and have even taken a test, I believe I deserve to know if I were chosen or not. But what do I know? My feelings apparently don’t matter to HR. I’m just an overage, laid-off job seeker who doesn’t deserve basic human courtesy.

Though to be honest, if you haven’t heard back from an employer within say, two weeks, you can assume you were rejected. No email needed.

And to be fair, sometimes I get emails asking me to come in for an interview. Yet so far, that has only led to what seems to be the inevitable rejection email or nothing at all...sounds of crickets chirping...

The wording of the rejection emails is typically the same: Thank you for applying…after careful consideration we’ve decided to go with other candidates…good luck in your future endeavors. Blah…Blah…Blah….

The last part always irks me. These companies care nary a rat’s patootie for me or any other applicant. They know they’ve probably just screwed scores of applicants out of a job all are qualified to do. So why go through the pretense of wishing us luck? It’s right up there with the lie that they keep our résumés on file. Yeah, I’ll believe that the day the New York Mets trade for Giancarlo Stanton.

Someday, I'd like to ask a HR person why they don't respond to applicants, even if the applicant came in for an interview. Too many applicants? Don't want to hurt anyone's feelings? Can't be bothered? Knowing HR people, it's unlikely I'd get an honest answer. These are people who routinely lie to workers and are mere tools of upper management.

Yet I’m of two minds about rejection emails. Sometimes I think it’s better not to know if you were rejected. Or why. If I knew why I was rejected, I’m not sure my rapidly dwindling self-confidence could withstand it.

Because each time I read one of those rejection emails, doubt and negativity seeps into my psyche: I’m not good enough. Everybody is better than me. They picked someone who went to a better school. I’m incompetent. I’m stupid. I’ll never be hired for a job again. I know I shouldn’t feel that way, that I should fight those damaging feelings. But it’s getting harder and harder with every rejection email.

Honestly, I’m tired, soul weary of applying for jobs, going on interviews, taking tests…and ultimately getting rejected. I have rejection fatigue. Not sure I can bear...one...more...rejection...email. It's understood that rejection is part of any job hunt, but at some point, there has to be some positive reinforcement, like an actual job offer.

When I first conceived this blog post, I thought about equating my job hunting/rejection experience with my days in junior high and high school when I was truly one of the most unpopular, sickly kids in school. (Yeah, I know. Navel gazing at its most self-indulgent, right? Remember, I have a lot of time on my hands.) Then I thought better of it. Nobody wants to read (much more) about how my classmates cruelly mocked, excluded, and ignored me. How my pathetic attempts to be popular only engendered more scorn from my peers. It was horrible.

Suffice to say that nothing beams me back to those desolate days in the seventh grade lunchroom when I was the sad-eyed, lonely little girl no one apparently wanted to befriend than getting a job rejection email.

The Lady in the Green Dress

I saw you on Thursday, as I was coming in from my morning jog. You were wearing a sleeveless green dress in a fit-and-flair style (fitted in the bodice, then flowing out into an A-line skirt). Green is my favorite color, so it caught my eye.

You were striding so purposefully to work on a blissfully warn but not humid summer morning. At least, I think you were going to work. Why else would you be dressed so nicely, and at an hour when most employed people are heading off to their job? Though these days, with relaxed office dress codes, it’s hard sometimes to tell if someone is going to work or a backyard barbecue. (Ripped jeans to work? Really?)

I wasn’t sure if you were walking to your car to drive to work, or to the bus stop to wait for that lumbering transport that herky-jerks into the city. Yet I could tell by your path you were walking in the direction of the bus stop that stands along the main drag in town.

Ah, then I saw you were wearing running shoes. You were definitely going into the city. When I worked in the city, I’d often wear comfortable shoes for the long walks to and from the bus station to my office or to the subway that carried me to my office and then back home again.

I used to keep a nicer pair of shoes in my desk. Once I arrived at my office, I’d take off my walking shoes and slip on the fancier ones. After I was told I was laid off, I packed up those shoes, took them home, and deposited them in my closet. Don’t need to wear them much anymore.

Don’t have much of a need for work clothes now, either (though I was never much of a dress wearer). My designated work clothes hang forlornly in my closet, taken out only for the occasional job interview. Rare events that have so far failed to net me a job.

I used to take pride in having a relatively presentable work wardrobe. Now, I’m not sure I’ll ever wear such clothes again.

Or that I’ll ever again be like the lady in the green dress, striding purposefully to work in the morning.

Buddy, You’re Next

If you haven’t seen the movie Logan’s Run, a sci-fi film released in 1976, I suggest you rent it. It’s a hoot.

It stars one of my favorite English actors, Michael York. It was also billed as Farrah Fawcett’s first major film role. Though as I recall, she had about three lines before she and her hairdo were blown to bits.

Many are the reasons to watch it: it’s awesomely cheesy special effects (compared to today’s CGI extravaganzas), drapey, barely there ‘70s-era fashions, and prescient messages.

In what way was it prescient? Well, for starters, it presaged Tinder. (The movie is set in the 23rd century.) Specifically, the Michael York character meets his leading lady via some sort of hook-up service in which if a person were feeling a bit lonely or horny he or she just dialed up a partner (a stranger) for the evening. Don’t remember clearly how this happened, but it was something like when one of the Star Trek characters was beamed down to another planet. All very convenient, like having takeout delivered to your door.

That isn’t what makes this movie relevant to today, however. What does is the movie’s basic plot, which is that all people in this futuristic society must die by age 30. They are exterminated, in fact. Some people rebel, and they are chased and caught.

Why do I cite this movie? What relevance does it have to today’s society? Because every time I read an article about how older workers are disappearing from the workforce, whenever I hear former colleagues my age tell me no company will hire them; each time I get a rejection email, I’m reminded of Logan’s Run.

Oh, no, we’re not killing people over age 55, at least not overtly. Instead, companies are terminating older workers through layoffs, indirectly and slowly killing them by denying them access to employer-sponsored or affordable health care. How many unemployed workers who have exhausted unemployment benefits can pay for COBRA or even premiums (and those high deductibles—ouch!) under Obamacare? Not many. I should know; I’ll be one of them soon.

Without health care, older, unemployed workers forgo routine tests that could possibly detect and treat a serious illness at an early stage. So I do believe that by laying off older workers in droves, companies are condemning them to a premature death. But don’t take my word for it; it’s been proven.

I’m also reminded of Logan’s Run whenever I enter an office for a job interview; when I’m greeted by a sea of dewy faces yet to crack their 35th birthday. Seriously, if a recent college grad cannot find a job, it’s because he or she isn’t really trying, prefers to work part-time, or has a trust fund.

The reasons are pretty obvious: Employers covet young people for their (supposed) tech skills and low salaries.

It’s not only obvious in companies’ hiring practices, but their lay-off policies as well. At my former former workplace, anyone who had been there 10 years or more was laid off. At my former workplace, five of us were laid off; four were over 50. What does that tell you?

It tells you that when upper management decides to cut salaries and expenses, they target older, veteran employees who are mostly likely pulling down a fairly high salary (or whatever they deem a too-high salary). Therefore, it’s out with the “expensive” old and in with the “cheap” new.

I not only saw this happen to former colleagues, but I was personally a victim of this shameful practice. When I was let go from my former former workplace after 16-plus years, I was essentially replaced by a younger colleague (who later plagiarized my work).

Even more recently, a former boss at my former former workplace was laid off after being with the company for over 25 years. Now, I didn’t like the guy; he was a total douchebag who was personally behind a lot of layoffs (including mine). Personal feelings aside, however, this was a man who worked for that godforsaken place for over 25 years. He conceived and launched the best and most successful product in the company’s history (though that’s not saying much considering the mediocre output of that horrid place). Like me, he was maneuvered out of the company by a younger colleague (a nasty boozy bitch) who wanted him gone.

So anyone who doesn’t think U.S. companies are dumping older workers is simply not paying attention.

Know who else should really be paying attention? It’s the 40- or 50-something middle managers that interview me for jobs. Every time they walk into the room, I can see it in their faces: “Oh, no, we can’t hire her. She’s too old. She’ll want too much money.”

I’m not angry with them for thinking this way. But I am a bit bemused and befuddled by their attitude.

What makes them think they are immune to the same fate as so many others? Oh, no, they are too competent and smart, they smirk to themselves. They’ve been with the company for so long. They are too vital to its operations. “I would never be laid off,” they must smugly think to themselves.

Oh, you think that, do you? Well, I’m here to tell you are wrong, wrong, wrong! Only a delusional fool or a class A narcissist would think like that.

What makes you think you are so special? When a company decides it must cut expenses, the first place it looks at is salaries. No matter how good an employee you are, no matter how many years you have toiled for a company, if you have a higher salary, you will be cut and replaced by a younger, cheaper worker. Just like that. With no warning. It has nothing to do with you; it’s all about the bottom line. Shockingly swift is your descent from valued employee to corporate refuse.

What makes me even angrier is that this is clearly and blatantly age discrimination. Companies are not even trying to hide it. Why should they? What do they have to fear? No government agency is doing anything to stop it, and it’s rarely mentioned except in a few news articles. Companies can always argue that an older worker’s production is no longer up to snuff, or that an older applicant didn’t have the right skills. Age discrimination suits are notoriously hard to prove.

What of the young people? To them I say this: Enjoy your career while you can. Stuff your 401(k) or IRA with as much coin as you can, while you can. Because you see, your work life has an expiration date. It’s about, I’d say, age 55, or thereabouts. Oh, sure, you'll live to 89, but your work life ends at 55. Good luck funding that retirement.

Your employer may adore you and your cut-rate salary now. But what happens when you start to move up the corporate ladder and demand a higher wage so you can get married, buy a house, start a family, and finally pay off those student loans for chrissakes. Or when you want enough earnings so you can send your kids to college. Just when all your hard work and experience is paying off, when you finally know what you are doing in your chosen profession, and maybe, just maybe you can enjoy a comfortable life…you will be taken into a room and told to clean out your desk and leave. You will be trashed to the dustbin and replaced by the next wave of 22-year-olds that have the tech skills employers covet and who are willing to work for a measly salary.

So to all those young people who are taking jobs I could easily do with a hand tied behind my back, or those middle-aged middle managers that routinely reject me for employment, I say this:

Buddy, you’re next.

There Are No Second Chances in Job Hunting

Searching for a job after a layoff can be frustrating, demeaning, depressing and downright frightening. It can also be outright wacky.

This bizarreness was in full bloom when I received a call from a recruiter this week. He left a message on my phone saying he had seen my resume on Monster (yeah, I know, too desperate, right?) and thought I would be a good fit for a job for which he was recruiting candidates.

Of course, I returned his call and left a message for him to call me back. What did I have to lose? However, that same day, while scanning a job board, I noticed a job ad placed by that same recruiter. I looked at the job description. Hmmm…it looked very similar to a job I had applied for back in April through another recruiter. It was the same job I had interviewed for but then was told the company was going with two other stronger candidates.

The recruiter called me back. He started to explain the job to me and I quickly interrupted. “Is this_______________?” I asked. Yes, he answered.

I then told him of my experience back in April. How I had gone through another recruiter; was told the hiring manager was “excited” about my background; and even met with my prospective boss for an interview. It ended when I was told I wasn’t even a finalist for the job. Hey, companies have the right to select their employees.

I admit, I was upset for about a week, but got over it. So why is the company still looking to fill the position?

According to the second recruiter, he actually presented the two finalists. One of them was offered the job, but declined it when he took a higher paying offer. Hey, that’s his right. (I love it when companies get all hissy when a candidate rejects their offer or employees leave the fold. How often do companies hurl employees out of work en masse? Workers have rights, too, but companies want complete control over their employees.)

The company then declined to offer the job to the second finalist, which left the recruiter scratching his head.

Since I have nothing to lose at this point, I told the recruiter to put my name in the ring, though it’s extremely unlikely I would be considered as a candidate a second time. It's a Hail Mary Pass. Yet I figured, at the very least, I might find out why I was rejected for the job. The recruiter was sympathetic and told me not to doubt myself. Even he was mystified as to why the company spurned the second finalist.

I haven’t heard back from the second recruiter; doubtful I will. It’s time, as the song says to let it go, and move on.

From what the recruiter told me, the candidate the company decided to offer the job to did have more “analogous” experience, but it wasn’t that much greater than mine. If there were an advantage, it was razor thin.

After all, I was recruited the first time and went in for an interview. So I obviously had the background they sought for this job. The second recruiter wouldn’t have called me about the job unless he thought I was a suitable candidate. Remember, he gets paid when he successfully places a candidate. Frankly, I’m sick of being jerked around by this company. Told one minute I’m an attractive candidate, and then tossed aside with no explanation the next.

This happens more often than you’d think. A company offers a job to a candidate, who declines. Recently, I noticed an ad for a job I had applied for back in February. I even went in for a prized second interview, only to get the dreaded “we’ve decided to go with another candidate” email. Now they are looking to fill the same position once again. I can only surmise the candidate they originally offered the job to took a higher paying offer. That doesn’t surprise me; this particular company is notorious for only hiring recent college grads who think being paid $25,000 a year and living with five roommates is awesome. Oh, they would literally die…if Mom and Dad weren’t footing half their bills.

As I said in the beginning, hiring decisions can be wacky. Why was the company so hot to hire someone who was obviously using them to leverage a better payday while ignoring other just-as-qualified candidates who wanted to work for them? I guess it’s human nature, even in HR, to always want what we can’t have. Apparently, the blithering idiots who run this company only want to hire people who don't want to work for them.

I’m also left to wonder if my laid-off status had anything to do with the company discounting my candidacy. At the depth of the employment recession of 2010, numerous articles were written detailing how companies were rejecting laid-off workers outright even if they had the right qualifications. Is this despicable policy still in vogue?

Which is really hurtful, not only to the prospective employee but also to the company. Somebody who has been laid off is unlikely to use one job offer as maneuver to get another, better paying position. Indeed, we’re likely to take a cut in pay from our previous job. (I did.) I can only speak for myself, but I would take the first job offered to me at this point. Plus, laid-off workers can start work immediately. So there are advantages to hiring the long-term unemployed; not that companies think that way.

But should you reapply to a company that rejected you?

Perhaps it’s my rejection fatigue talking, but I wouldn’t reapply to a company that spurned me. It makes no sense. Whatever the reasons that propelled them to reject you in the first place — too high salary demands, too old, not the right qualifications, poor interview — are not going to magically revert in mere weeks and make the HR person change his or her mind.

There are no second chances in job hunting.

Trying to be Positive in a Negative Time

I was chatting with a good friend a few weeks ago, and of course, the subject of my unemployed status came up. Tedious, I know. I wish it weren’t so.

In essence, she told me to remember that I’m more than any job I do; that I’m a good person whether employed or not. Life is good! Be happy! You’re never fully dressed without a smile!

I nodded in agreement, but what I really wanted to say was, “Oh, yeah, I’ll remember that when I’m homeless and living on the street in my own feces.” No, I didn’t say that to her. She was trying to be nice and meant well, so I didn’t think it was the proper time to be snarky. (And boy oh boy, can I bring on the snark when I want.)

Try as I might and after reading many self-help treatises on staying positive in negative situations, I struggle on a daily basis to overcome the negative emotions brought on by job loss, the second in four years.

Going back to what my friend said: It’s true we should never wrap out entire self-image in our job and paycheck. We’d like to think our family and friends love us because we are good, kind people. And we are, no matter what some pinheaded former boss thinks of us.

Nevertheless, it’s equally true that our self-worth derives at least in part from out ability to use our skills and training to provide for our families and ourselves. When that is taken away from us, the terra firma we thought we stood on is shaken, if not by a full-on earthquake, then by an unsettling tremor. I always took pride in my ability to do a job well and support myself. Not anymore.

It’s easy for me to tell myself that I’ll get a job tomorrow, to be positive and confident; only to get the dreaded “we’ve decided to go with another candidate” email that feels like a sucker-punch to the gut.

Occasionally, I’ll read some plausible advice; like the article that instructed on how to frame difficult situations. For example, before I go to a job interview, instead of thinking, “Oh, I’ll never get hired for this job (yeah, I know),” I should think about how this is an opportunity to get a new job, learn new skills and perfect my job interview skills. I shouldn’t make it an all-or-nothing proposition (I get the job or not), but rather an opportunity. Even if I fail, I will have learned something in the process. I can do that.

I also read much about “living in the now.” Essentially, that means to forget about the painful past, which only makes you depressed, and stop thinking about a hazy future that has yet to materialize. That only makes you anxious. All you have is now, so make the best of it.

I understand that concept, somewhat. Yes, you can take small snippets of joy in daily life, like a leisurely walk on a lovely spring day or laughing when you hear a young boy cutely sassing his mother in the grocery store. But those are mere blips in a life that is overshadowed by stress, rejection and loneliness. In other words, those peaceful “now” moments last only until I do my monthly bills and the reality of my dire financial situation stares back at me.

Please understand that I do not whine incessantly about my jobless status to friends and family. Just the opposite; I rarely talk about it. As the sign says, if I can't be positive all the time, at least I keep my mouth shut and don't talk about my increasingly hopeless life.

When I do, I keep it to a minimum and within a small, select group. Their response is the typical “You’ll find a job. Everything will be fine.” blather. What else can they say? In truth, if the roles were reversed, I would spout the same banal sentiments. Yet every time they repeat those silly platitudes I can almost read their minds and I know what they are thinking: “Phew! Thank God I have a job and I’m not as bad off as her.”

I also think it’s unrealistic to expect me or anyone who has been unemployed for a long stretch to be happy and positive all the time. Why can society at large acknowledge our precarious predicament? Why is that so hard? Instead, we’re treated with scorn and receive no help.

Just yesterday, the priest at my church gave a sermon on how we can’t expect life to always be a bed of roses; that bad things are going to happen no matter what we do or how good we may be. That living in a world were we only seek out the “positive” and completely deny the negative is a false utopia, and what we learn from bad times is resiliency.

In other words, shit happens and you have to deal with it (although Father George didn't use that exact phrase). Yet our society expects, demands, that we be happy at all times, in all circumstances. Utterly ridiculous and quite possibly psychologically damaging.

I agree with most of what the priest said, except the resiliency part. I fail to see how losing job after job, my financial security, and possibly becoming homeless makes me a better person and more resilient. All these nicks and cuts do is damage my soul.

I really don’t see a future right now. Or I don’t try to think too far ahead. But this I know: In mere weeks my unemployment benefits will end and all I’ll have to live on are my meager savings and some puny freelance assignments. How long do you think that is going to support me? I’m working on a Plan B, but it’s nothing solid and I don’t want to discuss it now. (Don’t worry. It’s nothing illegal…yet.)

As for today, I will finish this blog post, eat my lunch and take a walk. Tomorrow, I will send out resumes. I may get a call for a job interview; I may not. I may get another email informing me my candidacy for a particular job will not be pursued. That’s my “now.” What? You were expecting me to jet off to the Amalfi Coast?

I will try to be positive in my negative situation. And if anyone has any advice, I’m open to all suggestions.

The biggest positive boost I can think of? Getting a job!!!!