The Great Divide

A month and a half ago I lost my job. Fears of a recession and the resultant put me on the chopping block, even though my boss, a senior vice president promised to find a way to keep me working and/or make phone calls on my behalf. Nothing came of it. I expected as much, he is a great guy but let's face it when you are a senior vice president of a major Hollywood studio, trying to secure work for someone you used to employ doesn't rank in your top million priorities.

Keep in mind the pandemic and almost a year of unpaid furloughs combined with a downturn in the stock market slapped my 401K around like a college kid whose 16-year-old girlfriend's father caught him feeling up his daughter. I wasn't overly concerned. I had planned to work for at LEAST another ten years and I never had any trouble finding a job. I really thought I had plenty of time to rebuild my nest egg.

I applied for unemployment which meant that my inbox exploded with offers of work. I have been accused of stretching the truth now and again, but I swear before all that is Holy that I was getting 70–100 emails a day from people (who are we kidding? these were computer programs). Each email started with "Hi Philip, we saw your profile on (fill in the job website) and you look like an ideal candidate for (fill in the job title for which I am ridiculously unqualified). Click here to apply.

Even the most cursory glance at my résumé or LinkedIn profile would tell even the dumbest recruiter that I am not qualified to be a neurosurgeon—I did dissect a fetal pig in high school (in retrospect I shouldn't have done it in geometry) but THEY don't know that—and yet I looked like a good candidate for that position. I applied for FOUR jobs that looked as if the job descriptions had been written using my résumé as a template. One rejected me in less than 12 hours (I had to go on their website to find that out!) Two others sent me polite rejection letters. And the fourth one...well again, I found out by checking my dashboard.

I worked my network, but everyone just said, "Don't worry about it Phil, you'll be fine". That is as comforting as when you find a lump on the back of your neck the size of an egg and nonmedical acquaintances tell you not to worry about it. If I am not supposed to worry about not having a job, money, or a future WHAT AM I supposed to worry about?

A week ago I got the "You might be right for the position of a bagger", from an upscale supermarket chain. Might be?!?! Hell yeah, I would be right for the position. I would be the alpha bagger. I fantasized about bagging groceries and having some pretentious, entitled homemaker tell me not to put the gluten-free bread in the same bag as the organic eggs. "Are YOU a professional bagger?!? Because I am and if I put items in a particular (expletive) bag you can rest assured they belong in that particular (expletive) bag! You know what? Get out of my line! That's right you heard me, take your bourgeois groceries and go to a different line. And before you ask to speak to a manager you should know that SHE HATES you." But as good a bagger as I would be fantasies do keep the dogs in biscuits

I have had plenty of interest from "entrepreneurs" who want me to sell knives door-to-door (take a moment and picture yourself opening the door and finding me there grinning maniacally while carrying 20 or so knives. I wouldn't invite me back and I KNOW I'm not there to hurt anyone. I have a lot of respect for salespeople—I've done the job and it is a tough row to hoe—but I don't have any respect for con artists. If you want me to sell vacuums for $1500 a piece just say so. Don't tell me I am working as head of marketing for a pollution control device. If I am applying for the position of district manager for a pizza chain don't tell me that the training program consists of delivering pizzas for a year, cooking pizzas for a year, working the counter for a year, being the assistant manager for a year, the manager for a year and by then I should have saved enough to buy my own store. That is not what a district manager does.

Because I write, I get pitches daily, most of them another robot sending out pitches to dozens of writers from a mailing list. Clearly, most of these people don't know me or the topics I cover. Sometimes they get a polite "no thank you" and others they get the acid-tongued (acid-fingered since it is written? It's not a poison pen because I am not using a pen. Anyway, someone should work on that.

So what is the disconnect? I have received numerous survey results that tell the whole story. Employers overwhelmingly (over 90%) expect that employees will report to an office while job seekers overwhelming (again over 90%) say that the ability to work from home is the number one (even overpay) consideration when considering a job offer. Elon Musk announced this week that he is against remote work because "it doesn't work".

Mr. Musk seems to be punching above his weight class. Again numerous studies have shown that people who work from home are more productive, happier, and don't eat a coworker's lunch after stealing it out of the communal refrigerator. No one has ever eaten my lunch, mainly because of my penchant for eating rancid food, but something as egregious as eating someone else's lunch leads to bigger problems. My two coworkers are my Lab mixes and while they occasionally squabble I have yet to have to involve HR. When I did manage large teams I was barraged daily about how Hal took Judy's good pen to scratch those hard-to-reach place and didn't give it back. If I told Hal to give it back Judy would scream she didn't want it back she wanted a new pen. When I would tell her I would buy her the pen of her choosing she would be equally indignant. I don't know how to solve problems like these but Elon Musk must. At any rate, I ended up with a lot of really nice pens (after you douse them with a little hand sanitizer they are as good as new.)

I have worked from home for a decade and a half. I suspect that has more to do with the informal policy of keeping me out of the office as much as is humanly possible. I tend to be a disruption in the workplace and not only am I more productive working from home, everyone else in the office is more productive. Sure I miss out on informal opportunities that people talk about over the water cooler (and the ability to eat my coworkers' lunches—not that I would but it is nice to have options.

Another big divide is pay. My nephew is a gifted marketer he has a degree and remarkably good experience. He works odd jobs for the rich and the lazy and loves it. He sets his own hours, decides where and for whom he will work, and gets paid more than the highest job offer he has ever received. I thought that I could get a job tomorrow if I was willing to accept minimum wage but I was wrong again. I applied at a dry cleaning store with a big help wanted sign in the front window. The owner is a friend of mine and so I asked him about a part-time job (just to stay busy and to get out of the house) he asked me if I could press shirts and I told him I could so he told me to stop by. When I finally was able to talk to him about it he turned me down. He said he couldn't afford me. I told him I was just looking for minimum wage. He changed the subject and there it was, I am, like so many others out there unemployable. I want to work. I need to work. But I can't afford to pay my house payment on minimum wage.

The pandemic changed everything; well, almost everything. The pandemic proved that people could work from home and the business wouldn't collapse. In fact, it proved workers would do more, work longer, and complain less. Unfortunately, too many businesses don't care about happy and productive workers. It's like business is stuck in this 1980s hiring model where workers should feel grateful that they get to work for just a breath above minimum wage. Remember when you call customer service and you have to wait on hold for 48 minutes because of "unusually high call volume" it means that the company isn't just putting profits before their employees they are putting them before the customer, and you don't need an MBA to know where that business is headed.