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Under the Sun Cynthia Oi |
If job defines you,
what happens
when it’s lost?AS A hundred or so people milled around a table of pupus at a reception recently, I was introduced to a woman whose first question was "What are you?" Vague as it was, I knew what she was asking. She wanted to know what I did for a living.
After I told her, she nodded like she had me pegged. When I sent the same question back at her, she replied between crunches on a carrot stick that she "was retired," but didn't elaborate.
"No fair," I thought. She had a handle on me, but all I knew about her was that she -- like George Costanza in "Seinfeld" -- was a double dipper, dunking that carrot stick into the communal bowl of dressing several times before popping the last bit into her mouth. Other than her appearance and unsanitary eating habits, I had no way to define her, no category in which to place her.
For many of us, what we do to earn money shapes at least part of our identity and we use the same yardstick in how we regard others. As a matter of fact, like the double dipper, the first thing most people ask when meeting someone new is where the person works or variations of that.
It must be difficult then for the nearly 9 million Americans who have lost their jobs in the last couple of years to deal with that question because the answer starts with the word "unemployed." Besides those who can't find work, about 4.7 million people who want full-time jobs have settled for part-time positions, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Since George W. became president, close to 3 million jobs have disappeared as businesses cut payrolls in an unsteady economy or moved jobs to other countries where workers are paid as little as a 10th of what Americans would earn.
I've been fortunate to avoid being a government labor statistic most of my adult life. But a few years back when the survival of this newspaper teetered, I worried that I would not be able to find work in a one-newspaper town oversupplied with journalists.
I reviewed skills I'd acquired in non-newspaper jobs, but they were really lame. I spent several summers packing pineapples in cans, a job that was horrible not just because the acid from the fruit ate through your skin, but because of the company's psychological abuse, playing over the din of machinery one recording -- a vapid song called "Cherish" -- repeatedly through the 12-hour shift. I'd also been a baby sitter, a grocery store clerk and an Easter basket assembler. In other words, I qualified for very few of the jobs listed in the classified ads.
Even though I was still employed, still collecting a paycheck, that period was stressful. But my anxiety pales in comparison to the distress of the 2 million people who have been without work for more than 6 months. I can imagine how terrible it must be to hunt fruitlessly for a job, to scoot to interview after interview with little hope, stand helplessly as bills go unpaid and families do without, endure foreclosures and evictions and suffer embarrassment and loss of self-worth.
I wonder how the unemployed feel when the president, costumed in jeans, rodeo belt buckles and cowboy boots, swaggers from his Texas ranch where he's taking a monthlong vacation to rest and make campaign fund-raising forays to declare that his tax cut for the richest 1 percent of Americans -- a cut that will reap them a 17 percent decrease by 2010 -- is boosting the economy and creating new jobs. I wonder how they feel when he sends his economic team on a road trip to boast of the benefits of his policies, promising them that happy days will soon be here again, fo' real.
I'm no expert on the economy, but it seems to me that if people can't find jobs, the economy won't improve. If it doesn't, the president next year may lose his. But I bet if he does, he won't have to worry about the rent check or the electricity bill. And should someone ask him then what he does, he can, in laconic, cowboy style, say he's retired.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Cynthia Oi has been on the staff of the Star-Bulletin since 1976. She can be reached at: coi@starbulletin.com.
