"There Is No Shame"

by hilzoy

The NYT has an interesting story about executives who have been laid off, and have had to take lower-paying, lower-status jobs to make ends meet:

"Mark Cooper started his work day on a recent morning cleaning the door handles of an office building with a rag, vigorously shaking out a rug at a back entrance and pushing a dust mop down a long hallway.

Nine months ago he lost his job as the security manager for the western United States for a Fortune 500 company, overseeing a budget of $1.2 million and earning about $70,000 a year. Now he is grateful for the $12 an hour he makes in what is known in unemployment circles as a "survival job" at a friend's janitorial services company. But that does not make the work any easier.

"You're fighting despair, discouragement, depression every day," Mr. Cooper said. (...)

Interviews with more than two dozen laid-off professionals across the country, including architects, former sales managers and executives who have taken on lower-paying, stop-gap jobs to help make ends meet, found that they were working for places like U.P.S., a Verizon Wireless call center and a liquor store. For many of the workers, the psychological adjustment was just as difficult as the financial one, with their sense of identity and self-worth upended.

"It has been like peeling back the layers of a bad onion," said Ame Arlt, 53, who recently accepted a position as a customer-service representative at an online insurance-leads referral service in Franklin, Tenn., after 20 years of working in executive jobs. "With every layer you peel back, you discover something else about yourself. You have to make an adjustment.""

This must be very, very tough. Being laid off is no fun under the best of circumstances: even when it's absolutely clear that the reason you're being laid off has nothing to do and everything to do with large-scale corporate decisions, it's almost impossible not to take it personally and think it somehow reflects on you. Being unable to do as much as you'd like to support your family is no fun either. I imagine second-guessing all my past financial decisions -- the mortgage I took out that was responsible on the assumption that I'd continue to make what was then my present salary, or something like it, but that now costs more than I make every month; every vacation my family and I decided to take while the money was good; every luxury I bought when I could have been putting the money away. 

But also, as Yves Smith notes:

"What is sad about this is not just the desperate shape some are in, but here, people who are comparatively fortunate (they have found new work) are troubled because the work is low status. 

These individuals are mourning the loss of their former lives. That loss is compounded by the fact that the US is so stratified along income and class lines. A loss of a job tests one's friendships."

I can easily see how losing your job would cost you some part of your social circle. At every job I've ever had, I've known people with whom I socialized, but who I knew I would not remain friends with when I left that job. The job was the substance of our friendship: we talked about the people we worked with, the issues that came up, the small daily dramas of our workplace. And even though I genuinely liked them, I knew that if that substance disappeared, there would not be enough left over to keep a friendship alive. 

On the other hand, the people in the story have found new jobs, and new jobs bring new social circles. Moreover, taking a job you never thought you'd take can mean having friends you never imagined getting to know, and that can be really interesting and wonderful. (Trust me on this. I used to work in a biker bar.)

But besides that, you'd hope that people would have some friends who weren't just the kind of work friends with whom you lose touch when you lose your job. These, you'd hope, would be people's real friends: the ones they expect to stick by them, and whom they would be willing to stick by in turn. Losing those friends because you've taken lower-status work would be horrifying, though there might be some point, maybe decades later, after the pain had faded into memory, when you'd look back and ask yourself: was any person who would drop me for this of all reasons really my friend to start with?

The answer might be: in a way, yes. Perhaps that's the best your friend is capable of: friendship that is conditional on your maintaining a certain social status. But that would be a terrible thing to find out about your friends, and doubly so if you have to find out about it at a moment when you are already vulnerable.

The problem, at bottom, is the idea that there is something wrong with low-status work. Janitors work hard, and they do good and useful work -- a lot more useful than financial engineers who deploy theorems in ways that ruin the economy or mortgage brokers whose livelihood depends on convincing people to take out mortgages they cannot afford. If you should happen to become a janitor, that should not be cause for shame, and it should absolutely not be a reason for any decent friend to drop you. Far better to have friends like Mr. Cooper's:

"In addition to giving Mr. Cooper a job as a janitor, his friend agreed to pay for the couple’s benefits through Cobra. Maintaining health care coverage was paramount for the family because Mrs. Macias-Cooper recently had breast cancer.

Some unemployed professionals said they decided not to seek even part-time work because it might interfere with their job searches. But Mr. Cooper rises every day at 4 a.m. and, after a time of prayer, devotes two hours to his job hunt on the computer. He prints out a detailed call list of prospective employers to take with him, squeezing in phone conversations during breaks throughout the day from his pickup truck, which he calls his "office."

"There were times I broke down," Mr. Cooper said. "I broke down thinking, 'This is what I've become.'"

But Mrs. Macias-Cooper, who admitted that she was initially embarrassed about her husband’s new job, says she is now grateful.

"There is no shame," said Mrs. Macias-Cooper, who grew teary during an interview at their home. "I am very proud of my husband that he will go to any lengths, do whatever it takes, to keep his family afloat, if it means mopping floors, cleaning urinals.""

I do not mean to deny Mr. Cooper's pain for a moment. I have not lost my job, and I do not wish to diminish what this means for someone who has. However: I do not think that he is right to think that there is anything wrong with what he has become. 

He was always a person who would have been willing to do what it took to keep his family afloat, even if it was very tough. And he was always a person who had friends who would stick by him, and a wife who is proud of him for the right reasons. He might not have known this about himself or about them before. He might have wondered: if I lost my job, would I just give in to despair? Would my friends drop me? Even if I got some job or other, would my wife look at me and wonder: is this really what I signed up for? Couldn't I have done better?

Now he knows these things. He probably also knows some things about janitors that he didn't know before. I do not mean to suggest that this knowledge somehow makes losing his job worth it. But it is not nothing.

Comments

[Angellight]

Millions of people pay Federal taxes weekly or bi-weekly from their payroll taxes. They expect Government to institute policies which will help enrich their lives -- not reduce monies for school programs such as drivers' ed, shop, home economics, drama, gym, school lunches, books, and even toilet paper. Anyone over 40 had the advantages of these good school programs which have now become defunct. This is not how good Government should treat their young people while spending billions of dollars on killing machines and wars. These Federal taxes individuals pay into should be then given back to them by investing in good roads, bridges, sewer and water systems, schools, clean air, something which has been lacking the last 8 years and futhermore lacking whenever a Republican has control over the government -- it becomes non-existant yet a place for a pretty good salary, great medical for the GOP Party who come daily to work to obstruct and be the Party of No! It's the people's money they are saying No with, the people will get their turn to say No in 2010 and 2012!

[jrudkis]

The struggle with downward mobility is probably knowing whether your previous skillset is truly useless now, or whether you are digging yourself into a deeper professional hole by accepting a job that is not part of your industry--Assuming that the economy turns around and your skillset is suddenly useful again, are you better off having stuck with looking for a similar position, or working in a completely different area?

I would imagine the hardest part is admitting that your skillset, which you probably invested a lot of time, hard work, and money to develop, suddenly has no value. Taking the janitor job after this reckoning would probably not be that hard.

[A.J.]

...financial engineers who deploy theorems in ways that ruin the economy...

Mathematical peeve: theorems didn't ruin the economy. Leverage did. The investment banks and insurance companies beached themselves by making bets they couldn't cover. The illusion of mathematical certainty made it easier for them to do this, by making it easier for these companies to make bets without actually knowing the odds, but the scientist in me balks at calling that "theorem deployment". It's not mathematics if you ignore all the assumptions that underly your model.

In any case, I think I can safely argue that complicated mathematics wasn't the only factor -- nor even the dominant one. Joe Nocera's article on AIG in the NY Times today makes this rather clear, by stripping away the gloss and explaining
in plain terms what AIG was up to. The key problem seems to have been lack of regulation: there were no rules governing what sorts of bets finance companies could make with the instruments their wizards provided.

[xanax]

Other than the job polishing doorknobs (which, if it really paid twelve bucks an hour I'd jump at), this post describes the last 8 months of my life perfectly. Former business owner (sold the company), then employee/marketing executive, now laid off (company in chapter 11) and looking. The hardest part is how the kids look at me with their question-mark eyes and wonder what's going to happen. It's chilling, burning through savings to survive, having watched 401K get halved in value at the worst possible time.

Oh yeah, and my truck was totaled by an 82-year-old tourist from Iowa who apparently thought the stop sign was merely ornamental. No health insurance, no income... etc. etc.

But now I'm just whining...

[wonkie]

I wonder how Bedtime for Bonzo is. This is not a good time to be a car salesperson.

I sort of went through this. I quit my white collar professional job and went blue collar because I didn't want to work as hard. I love my new job, but it is true that people treat me differently. People assume that I am semi-literate, uneducated and untrained.

We do have a class system in this country and a complex structure of snobbery that goes with it. It is not a straightforward kind of snobbery, not a clear case of the wealthy and educated being snobbish toward the not wealthy and not educated. As a matter of fact I think that some of the biggest snobs in America are small town red staters who think quite literally that they are better people and better Americans than those latte drinking Volvo driving tree hugging city folk. But there is a kind of snobbery toward working class jobs and the poeple who do them. And it is sort of demoralizing to be on the receiving end of it.

[beowoof]

"The struggle with downward mobility is probably knowing whether your previous skillset is truly useless now, or whether you are digging yourself into a deeper professional hole by accepting a job that is not part of your industry--Assuming that the economy turns around and your skillset is suddenly useful again, are you better off having stuck with looking for a similar position, or working in a completely different area?

I would imagine the hardest part is admitting that your skillset, which you probably invested a lot of time, hard work, and money to develop, suddenly has no value. Taking the janitor job after this reckoning would probably not be that hard."

Well said! That pretty much sums of the last nine months of my life. It describes the dilemma I face as people second-guess why I am not working at McDonald's 5 minutes after leaving what I thought was a career. It's a process.

I almost got a $12 an hour tech support job but they have decided to wait to hire.

Gotta just keep moving, this too shall pass...

[burritoboy]

Hilzoy,

As one of your former students, I think your essay here is a bit too superficial to the phenomenon - having large amounts of downward mobility is a great way to engender massive levels of dissatisfaction with the current political regime. It's perhaps the best and surest way to go from a reasonably decent political regime to some of the worst tyrannies known to man.

It's a design problem inherent within the Lockean republic - if you sell the Lockean regime (the liberal capitalist republic) to the populance on the basis that "we will make you richer", then that regime's popular basis collapses when the regime's economy declines.

This design flaw was papered over by the insistence of the classical and neoclassical economists (generally good followers of Locke) that capitalist economies do not severely decline over the long-term.

The problem with that is we empirically know that economies do decline and not just secularly (i.e., not decline due to business cycles, but permanently decline over the long-term). We've seen long periods of economic declines in the Netherlands (1670-1850), Great Britain (1890- present), Spain (1650-1970), Florence (1510- roughly 1900), Japan (1992-present) and, more arguably, the United States (1972-present).

Of course, every type of regime will be weaker when stressed by economic decline. But, the promise of the Lockean regime was that it would moderate those stresses and also moderate the population's politics so that successor regimes would be comparatively also moderate (i.e., quick returns back to Lockean regimes).

Empirically, that promise was essentially not true. The Lockean regime did not moderate the population's politics. Instead, when faced with economic decline, Lockean regimes have sometimes imploded into the worst regimes ever seen on earth. Further, in those regimes who haven't overtly imploded, they moved towards softer versions of right authoritarianism (the US and UK in the post-1972 era, Weimar Germany between 1930-1933, Italy's continued addiction to Berlusconi, Russian under Putin, the continued non-democracy of post-war Japan, etc.)

[John Miller]

There is something else that hasn’t been mentioned yet. A lot of people are willing to downgrade job-wise and accept less money. Unfortunately, a lot of employers won’t hire them because they are “overqualified” and liable to leave them at a moments notice.
There are plenty of people looking at each available opening, so these employers are more likely to hire people that won’t leave.
I have been very lucky. Laid off in 2005, it took me a little over 6 months to find a job. Fortunately my severance held out almost that long. The job I got was at a lot less than I was making but I was able to find another job 6 months later and am now where I was when I was first laid off, income wise. But there had been several openings I would have been willing to take but the “overqualified” label was placed on me.
Agreed that there should be no shame involved. I do know many people that would not “stoop” so low as to do janitorial work. That kind of mind set might come close to disappearing soon.

[now_what]

The NY Times has made a business model out of finding the least sympathetic people it can for its sympathy-begging stories.

$12 an hour jobs? A family where two people have $12 an hour jobs plus paid health care is a family making the median household income in one of the richest countries in the world.

Yes, many look down on those in certain professions and assume that anyone practicing that profession is lazy, unintelligent and incompetent. So what. Friendships that dissolve over a change in class were not friendships, they were acquaintanceships. These are good things to learn.

[Shinobi]

Y'know my boyfriend has been unemployed for a little over a year and a half now. He's been looking for jobs doing just about anything, but without a bachelor's degree you can't even get a job as a janitor (see above.) Now that all these once well educted buisness people are out of work as well it is getting even worse.

Frankly, this article just really pissed me off. (Not you Hilzoy.) If these people are working less that desireable jobs, what happens to all the people who would be excited about making 12/hr?

Now they are just even more screwed than they were before.

[AYC]

During the recession and construction bust in Denver during the '80's, my dad went through layoffs and closings of two large construction companies. He was a bricklayer who was fantastic with numbers and spatial reasoning and had progressed through the ranks to an estimate/project administrator position. He had made that leap from blue-collar to white. With no education past a high school degree. He was 52 years old at the time. When the economy recovered, because of his age and his lack of education, despite his terrific references, he couldn't even get an interview with a large construction firm. For the rest of his working life, he did by the hour remodeling and mentored a younger man who he also worked for.

The day I graduated with a degree from our state school, he wept.

He and my mom didn't lose friends, but my dad lost a sense of 'making it'.

[J. Michael Neal]

There is something else that hasn’t been mentioned yet. A lot of people are willing to downgrade job-wise and accept less money. Unfortunately, a lot of employers won’t hire them because they are “overqualified” and liable to leave them at a moments notice.

This, plus the fact that working these jobs actually decreases your marketability for jobs in your field if you can find them. Putting a janitorial job on your resume looking for work as an accountant would be the kiss of death. Possibly the only thing worse is a gap when there is nothing on your resume. Employers want someone who has either been continuously employed in the field, or is a recent college graduate. Only college graduates in their early 20s need apply.

[stevelaudig]

I wonder if he ever voted Republican. If so then look in the mirror for as long as it takes. But that may be unkind. His situation is evidence not crime. One of the best things that ever happend to me was being laid off early very young. It gets one's attention focused on what is important. The one lesson is do not rely on others and live frugal.... all the time. Not just when you have to.

[Louise Lewis, author]

Job loss...Been there. Done that. Yep, still 'there'.

Losing a job is one of those defining moments in life. We can choose to lose our way (our mind), or we can rise to the challenge and follow what our Spirit tells us to do.

Remember: We are more than a statistic on the news.

I'll share with you what I was told the day I got "set free" (laid off) from my job: "This is a new chapter in your life. WRITE ONE HELL OF A CHAPTER!" (And I did just that!)

Need a break from the doom and gloom? Get your FREE (no strings) book download at: http://www.noexpertsneeded.com

Simply my way of 'giving back'!

take care,
Louise Lewis, author
No Experts Needed: The Meaning of Life According to You!

[woody]

I think we should be thinking not whether there will be a world-government, but what it should look like.

And start taking steps to prepare the ground.

[Tom]

Hilzoy, I loved this post. It's the latest example of why this is the best blog I know of. Not just intelligent but nuanced, fair-minded, and kind too. Peace.

[Debra]

I agree with Tom. I love this post. And I hope to nuance it further, with your patience.
First off, one or two little points about friendship.
Friendship takes time. You have to make time to see people in order to maintain friendships that are not in a work setting.
And many of us are running around too much to have/make that time. And when we get home in the evening, we are just too exhausted to entertain (particularly as we get older).
Now, for the harder part.
My mother continually told me a little story that made a big impression on her.
In 1929, when she was nine years old, she told a neighbor boy who continously taunted her about her glasses, calling her four-eyes : "I may be four eyes, but if I were a boy, you would never catch me doing women's work". That, to a boy who was sweeping the porch in a gesture to help his probably already working mother in a small rural community.
The problem is that we may have got women out of the home, but we have not yet got rid of women's work, and the stigma attached to it. (Logical, when you throw something out the door, it has a tendency to come back through the window.)
Scrubbing floors, cleaning in any and all forms,raising children, wiping butts, fixing meals, all of that stuff is women's work. And just because it's going on outside of the home, and being done by men doesn't make it any less women's work, does it ?
And our societies basically still HATE women, as a result of generations and generations of the perversion of a judeo-christian ideal that found women to be the source of all evil.
Personally I have a dream.
Of a society where there would be no cleaning women (or men, but you don't see many of those anyway, do you ?) (yeah, I know that that would put a lot of people out of work these days, but if it got US down on our knees, scrubbing, etc, that would be an excellent thing and would bring obesity down a little bit...)
Where the first person to wipe the kid's butt or change a diaper would be the first AVAILABLE person to do it.
Where we would all be able to use our minds without inhibition.
But also, our hands : to scrub, to knit, to paint pictures, to write poems, or mathematical theorems, or letters. Or garden, even.
I have a dream...

[Angellight]

WHY did the CONSERVATIVES under BUSH spend like there’s no tomorrow and wreck the economy, and now the US is producing less than ever. With the lowest tax rates on the wealthy in history, why did the economy collapse? CNBC’s hypocritic stance by ignoring what they helped create through their supporting the GOP and BUSH’s insane spending has caused a depression! Remember the 2 Fools on the Hill? Bush: It must be a budget, see there’s numbers on it. — Cheney, “Deficits don’t matter.” Sometimes its not HOW much you spend that wrecks an economy, it’s WHERE you spend it! You spend a million on a bridge in the US, the accounting is balanced. You don’t have a million dollars but you have a million dollar bridge, hence balanced accounting. If you spend a half million to blow up a bridge then spend a million to rebuild it in a foreign country, you are immediately in the red!

Suddenly the GOP CNBC pundits are feigning worry about the middle class?, blue collar workers? UNIONS? They certainly have been the enemies of the middle class since Reagan, as the middle class is disappearing before our eyes, and the poverty classes growing faster than ever under CONservative failed ideologies! Industrial production is plunging, and partly due to CONservative corporations fleeing the USA to build factories where they can pollute unrestrained. These corporations under a common sense government should never be allowed to do business in or with the United States ever again! The current lame efforts diluted by the GOP have only allowed pollution to increase. The answer to industrial production and corporations is clean up your act, here and abroad, to continue doing business in the United States.

http://hiddenmysteries.net/geeklog/article.php?story=20090301131215108

[Tom]

In response to Debra's dream, my version of the dream is that one day we get sufficiently close to full employment so that people are able to demand high salaries in exchange for cleaning buildings and wiping butts. And we make education so widely available that lawyers, managers, executives, and investment bankers can no longer demand high salaries because there are tons of people around who can do their jobs and would like to.

But, um, yeah, let's all try to survive this oncoming depression first, with our friendships and our kindness intact.

[someotherdude]

Just for the record, “Judeo-Christian” was a term popularized by liberal Protestants, who were feeling guilty over the treatment of Jews by German Christians and the history of anti-Jewish bigotry by Christians in Europe.

During the 1960s-1970s, Right-Wing Christians began to use it to prove that they were not anti-Jewish and were attempting to keep much of the Old Testament laws the Resurrection did not wash away. And many who were “End-Timers” began to employ it, since the formation of Israel and the conversion of the Jews (and the destruction of those who do not convert) was hitting full steam.

At one time, you could find articles in Commentary questioning the notion of a “Judeo-Christian” tradition, since it was used to promote Christian values at Jewish expense.

Since the culture wars (and the right-wing Jews who joined in) and then 9-11, Judeo-Christian has come to stand in for European and/or white.

I have never seen a class offered, in any of my Western History courses that were called “The Judeo-Christian Tradition,” it’s a recent construct meant to tie two monotheistic traditions which dominate the US and European cultures against another religion, while covering up the fact that Euro-Christian still call the shots.

[david kilmer]

My version of the dream is that we become wise enough to stop seeking perpetual economic growth, and begin to view our economy according to a metaphor of health instead. Things that grow perpetually are essentially suicidal.

[Jesurgislac]

someotherdude: Just for the record, “Judeo-Christian” was a term popularized by liberal Protestants, who were feeling guilty over the treatment of Jews by German Christians and the history of anti-Jewish bigotry by Christians in Europe.

Also, trying to link together traditional-Jewish and traditional-Christian morality about sex and women is never going to play very well: the Christian ideal is that sex is bad and wrong but just about acceptable if you're doing it with your spouse to procreate: the Jewish and Muslim ideal is that sex is wonderful and it's the responsibility and obligation of married couples to make sure that sex with each other is satisfying.

And our societies basically still HATE women, as a result of generations and generations of the perversion of a judeo-christian ideal that found women to be the source of all evil.

Christian ideal. While neither Judaism nor Islam is exactly free from misogynist sentiment, the ideal that Debra refers to is very much a Christian one.

[hairshirthedonist]

My version of the dream is that we become wise enough to stop seeking perpetual economic growth, and begin to view our economy according to a metaphor of health instead. Things that grow perpetually are essentially suicidal.

I'm with you, dk. Less stuff, more fulfillment - prioritize and simplify. I'm sure that means different things to different people, but I'd like to hope there's significant overlap.

[russell]

"There is no shame," said Mrs. Macias-Cooper, who grew teary during an interview at their home.

The Macias-Coopers appear to be folks who will weather whatever life throws at them and remain intact as people. It's hard, and you never really know if you will be one of those kinds of folks or not until the crap hits the fan.

So yes, they will come out of this episode with something that noone and no set of events can take away from them.

The investment banks and insurance companies beached themselves by making bets they couldn't cover.

The global financial crisis in one sentence.

The NY Times has made a business model out of finding the least sympathetic people it can for its sympathy-begging stories.

Yes, two folks making $12/hour will be right about the median wage for greater Phoenix AZ.

The folks in the article went from making significantly more than median on one salary, to median at most on two. A middle-aged guy went from a position of some responsibility and (presumably) some respect, to doing work that, unfortunately, doesn't really get much respect, and making about a third of what he used to make.

Depending upon your point of view, you'll either find him a sympathetic character or you won't.

I quit my white collar professional job and went blue collar because I didn't want to work as hard. I love my new job, but it is true that people treat me differently.

I've been a software engineer and a janitor. What wonkie says here is true.

[wonkie]

I should have said that I didn't want to work at the same kind of hard. I went from I job I had to live 24/7 to one that is over when I head home. I went from a job that was stressful to me to one that is not stressful to me. On the other hand, lots of people could not do my current job: how many folks can wipe an old lady's butt, clean a cath line and change a colonoscopy bag, while chatting amiably with the client? How many people could clean a house that is soiled daily by eleven cats (eleven at last count.)I am good at what I do and my clients like me. But, for me, this job is infinately easier than my previous one.

However, it is a considered a low skill job and, if it wasn't for my excellent state-subsidized health insurance, it would also be a very low pay one.

There is a tendency, a very strong tendency, to equate quality with money. The more a job pays, the more prestige it has regardless of the nature of the work itself.

One of my objections to No Child Left Bbehnd is the assumption that a child who chooses to be a hairdresser or a carpenter or a long haul truck driver has been left behind because the only successful outcome of public school education is college education and the only appropriate type of public education is college track. It's a kind of snobbery to assume that it is a failure to be something other than a white collar college educated professional.

And it is more than snobbish to assume that the people in those non-white collars jobs are lesser than the white collar folks. Social Darwinism lives in America.

[Mrs. Polly]

The loss of status that Americans are facing now is something that immigrants, legal and illegal, have been dealing with all along.

In my New York City neighborhood, the Lebanese newstand dealer had been a psychologist; the Korean grocery clerk, not even an owner, had been a math teacher; the Pakistani street vendor selling sunglasses had been a doctor, a nephrologist no less.

I was amazed they'd consider it worthwhile to come here, but there was significantly more to be made selling sunglasses on the street than seeing kidney patients in Pakistan. "Life is a struggle to survive," one guy said."I do what I have to. I hope my children will have a better life than mine."

Americans are just now being let in on what that struggle is like for the majority of the world.

[watchinginwonder]

Wonkie: One of my objections to No Child Left Bbehnd is the assumption that a child who chooses to be a hairdresser or a carpenter or a long haul truck driver has been left behind because the only successful outcome of public school education is college education and the only appropriate type of public education is college track. It's a kind of snobbery to assume that it is a failure to be something other than a white collar college educated professional.

This is an issue pervasive in our society. I went to training to perform proper "evaluations" of my direct reports. One of the required reading materials was an article from some Harvard Business School professor titled something like "The Man in the Mirror." Its thesis was that everyone should have the desire to aspire to be the CEO of the company for which they work, and then proceeded to elaborate on the seven or so personal traits that are necessary to succeed (When you look at the man in the mirror, you should see the CEO). It struck me as inappropriate at the time, and indeed, the course materials were geared toward marking performance down for not having the aspiration, motivation, etc. to become a "manager" and how to mentor people to become managers.

The issue there was how inappropiate it is to assume that talented professionals, software engineers, database managers, etc. (can you see I work in technology)should want to do something else than what they know and love in order to be recognized as providing "value" to the company. What you end up with is lousy managers who hate what they do, not do it very well, and leave or underperform. Whereas, if there was an understanding and "track" for professionals to advance through an orgnization as technical professionals, everyone wins.

Yet we continue with misguided "managemt theory dejure" adopted by supposed "leaders" of the organization.

What Wonkie says is so true. I happen to respect the carpenter, who can build something from a few sticks and boards that is useful and enriches someone's life. The welder, plumber, electrician, etc. Yet the upwardly moble of our society scorns them. Let the privleded sweep some floors. Perhaps the humbling experience will bring some humanity to their beings.

[Jim]

[Inadvertent (I assume) cut-and-paste of entire text of blog down to this point redacted - Slart]

" I quit my white collar professional job and went blue collar because I didn't want to work as hard. I love my new job, but it is true that people treat me differently. People assume that I am semi-literate, uneducated and untrained."

The one good thing that may come out of this, and it wiill be thanks to people like you, Wonkie, is that people get their heads out of their asses about some supposed linkage between high status jobs and high levels of intellectual accomplishment.

"(or men, but you don't see many of those anyway, do you ?)"

WTF? Maybe you don't see them, white woman.

"......Muslim ideal is that sex is wonderful and it's the responsibility and obligation of married couples to make sure that sex with each other is satisfying."

Again, WTF? Orientalism rides again! I guess that expains all that FGM away, then.

[Dave S]

This happened to me in 2002 - I went from engineering professional to working at the paint department at the local Home Depot. I had the same self-worth problems, but one thing that made them worse was they way people treated me. People who are not in low-end professions poorly treat those who are. Where you were once treated with some respect, you are now treated with disdain.

I've learned a lot from that experience. I treat the office cleaning staff the same way I treat my management colleagues. They deserve it.

[Jesurgislac]

Jim: I guess that expains all that FGM away, then.

FGM isn't an Islamic practice, any more (or any less) than castrati is a Christian practice.

[Slartibartfast]

Jim, why the giant cut-and-paste? Should I delete any of that, or all?

[Debra]

sigh...
It would be so nice if we all could learn to read intelligently, wouldn't it ?
I said the PERVERSION of a judeo-christian ideal.
I maintain that one.
That all of the three monotheisms vehiculate noble ideals basically, that are similar, but that these ideals have been perverted.
Just like any ideal that human beings have is ultimately perverted (you know, like justice, and freedom, you get the point, I don't need to hammer it, do I ? lol)
I still maintain that I don't see tons of men in public positions where they are wiping children's butts. (Not in Europe, anyway, in the U.S. they are too afraid of being targeted for pedophilia)
Like I don't see tons of male nurses, or schoolteachers either (in France, in the lower grades)
Anybody have a problem with that ? Or do they have blinders on ?
As a white woman who has managed to escape a fair amount of the hate that our societies direct towards women (you start looking for it, you start seeing it...) I think that the reasons for this hate go beyond religious ones, at this point.

[Jesurgislac]

Debra: I said the PERVERSION of a judeo-christian ideal.
I maintain that one.

Er: what "Judeo-Christian" ideal? That attempt to associate two Abrahamic religions was where this nit-pickery started out. If you mean the perversion of a Christian ideal, or the perversion of an Abrahamic religious ideal, why not use those terms instead

I still maintain that I don't see tons of men in public positions where they are wiping children's butts. (Not in Europe, anyway, in the U.S. they are too afraid of being targeted for pedophilia)
Like I don't see tons of male nurses, or schoolteachers either (in France, in the lower grades)
Anybody have a problem with that ? Or do they have blinders on ?

Yeah, I have a problem with it. There are men in nursing (in the UK at least): but male nurses tend towards more highly-paid high-status management positions like wasps towards honey.

As a white woman who has managed to escape a fair amount of the hate that our societies direct towards women (you start looking for it, you start seeing it...) I think that the reasons for this hate go beyond religious ones, at this point.

True.

[Debra]

Sorry, Jesurgislac, I don't intend to use your words.
I'm a generalist, not a nitpicker. And I'm not apologizing for it either.
I hate political correctness in any and all forms it may take.
And the expression Judeo-Christian has been around for longer than both of us. Perhaps I should have said "monotheistic". But I am uncertain of the extent of the influence of Islam on the Western European culture that produced the white ruling class in the U.S.
It would take me more time and space than I have on this blog to explain to you why I maintain my use of the expression, but your suspicion of my motives in doing so is not pretty in my eyes.
It says more about you than it does about me.
You didn't read between the lines in my statement about male nurses. I made the observation that there are few male nurses. It was an observation, and not a judgment of value, but you would have caught that had you been reading more carefully. An observation does not go away when you do not like it. Sorry.
Cheers.

[Sarah]

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Sarah

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[Jim]

Nice blog and an interesting discussion.

The irony is that Mark Cooper has since returned to the white collar world. The description of his "survival job" is what millions have done all their lives. He seems like a good guy, but the media coverage made it seem as if he were utterly humuliated.

I have lived my life doing what would be called "manual" and "menial" jobs. It is hard work as most of you know, but I never considered it demeaning. These articles about Cooper make it seem as if he landed on a another planet.

Anyway - after beng suddenly stripped of his pnstriped suit, his office, his fat salary, his necktie and his Italian shoes and stuffed into the clothes - and identity - of a janitor, he is now putting his feet back into his Armani wingtips.

However....

I wonder if those fancy Italian shoes will fit now?

Will the once-familiar necktie chafe?

Will the cufflinks, the expensive haircuts, the silk socks and the briefcase he was born to seem like the unnecessary luxuries they often are?

Will the office that was once his professional home feel confining?

Will the pinstriped suit he used to wear as a second skin and that once gave him his upper-middle-class identity now feel uncomfortable and strange?

I think part of the exec will always remain a janitor. He has cleaned toilets for a living. He cannot ever go back all the way.

The blue collar world has broken down the expesnive door and taken up residence in the once pristine and unsullied white collar fortress of the upper crust executive and cannot be removed! We've got him!