I was listening to the radio while driving to dinner a couple of weeks ago. The host was Tom Leykis, a Los Angeles radio veteran on Monday through Friday from 3 to 8pm on 97.1 KLSX. 95% of the time, Leykis discusses “issues” that focus mainly on men, such as how to get “laid” more, how to spend only $40 on a date, or how to “dump that bitch” the moment she starts talking about a relationship. Very highbrow.
Lately, however, Leykis has been focusing on the economy. It seems as though whenever I tune in, the topic has changed from “signing racks” to “how has the economy affected you?” On this particular Thursday evening, he had on a caller, a young man it sounded like, who just a few days earlier had lost his job working for Wachovia somewhere in Southern California. Apparently, he had called in the week prior and was talking to Tom about how thankful he was that he was working for a beleaguered bank and still had a job. Speaking too soon is an understatement.
He proceeded to tell Tom how he had been working diligently at the bank for the past couple of years, and then all of a sudden, he was let go. He was awarded no severance (which I assume means he was hourly) and had to leave the office that day. He went on to explain how he also had a roommate in his apartment with whom he split the rent. Unfortunately, the roommate had decided to return to school in San Francisco and had bailed on him a month earlier.
At this point, the tone of the call shifted dramatically, because this man completely broke down.
Within just one month, he had gone from working for a bank, doing a job that was helping him pay for his college tuition and living with a roommate in an apartment, to living in his car. He explained that he could not stay with his parents at the time because he they had no room due to his other siblings, and that he was, in fact, helping them pay for their mortgage. He was going to cancel his cellphone next and was using some of his remaining minutes to call Tom and ask for advice. Throughout all of this, he was sobbing, saying what a “failure” he was and that he did not make himself more indispensable at his job.
“I never knew how good I had it,” he said.
He also explained that, since he did not have an address, he had been rejected by other businesses for a lack of residence. And forget trying to get another bank job.
Tom, for his part, did the right thing by first suggesting that the guy go get a P.O. box for a couple of bucks at the nearest UPS Store. Then he told the guy to do what most listeners were probably thinking he should do: bite the bullet, tell his parents, and start sleeping on the couch. The guy realized he would not be able to continue school, but the important thing was that he stop living in his car.
I could go on a rant here about how this guy probably could have kept his job had executives in his company been smarter about their business practices or not taken huge salaries with perk-addled bonuses, but the bottom line is that by the time the call was over, listeners, including myself, were faced with one of the many hard truths of these times: people out there are not losing their jobs strictly due to laziness or ineptitude. Hard-working people are being given the heave-ho simply because there is no more money to pay them with.
I imagine myself back at that age (pretty easy since it was only around eight years ago), and I think about how I would have reacted had that happened to me. I was fortunate enough to have parents who had found success, thus I was taken care of. If I had suddenly lost both my job and my home within the same month, there was always a bed for me at home, and in fact I have had to use it at times.
I have never been laid off or fired from a job, and I count my blessings everyday; ten times more in the last six months, but one of the caller’s comments really stuck with me, and probably will for a very long time. He mentioned that a good many of the previous callers that were on before him were commenting on how the current state of the economy was essentially “cleaning house” for the rest of the hard-working people in the country. To put it bluntly: the people losing their jobs were losing them because they were useless jobs to begin with, occupied by lazy people who never realized how easy they had it.
I beg to differ.
I realize that there have to be some jobs in the millions lost that should not have existed in the first place for the sake of proper budgeting, but that does not give anyone the right to judge another person’s work or occupation from a distance. Those that immediately jump to the conclusion that all of these lost jobs were useless in the first place, should stop and take a closer look at the walls of their glass houses and make sure of how thick they are.
This economy, while far from a depression (it’s not a depression if they’re still throwing away food at restaurants), is turning on those who felt protected, safe and completely invulnerable. We cannot start believing that everyone is at risk, because that is taking a stance of fear. That is working against, not for.
Instead, we should take this opportunity to look closely at what it is we do, what we offer, and if we are truly passionate about it. To really examine what we are after: Money or Happiness. The Money route helped to land us here, so that might not be the best course of action. I have learned the hard way, through boring office jobs, undertaking work I couldn’t care less about, to finally trying to strike out on my own, with my own company, my own work. And I can tell you right now, it is far better now to wake up every morning and look forward to my day, even if the paychecks come every six weeks instead of every 2. Working without passion shows. When you see someone performing a duty they don’t absolutely love, it is clear, and odds are they are going to be out-worked by someone more passionate. I understand it can get tough, especially with mortgages, kids and bills, bills, bills, but it does not take 20-20 vision to see that the clearest way make those things labors of love rather than just labors, is to go after your passions. Even if it’s in your off-time.
There were people being laid off long before this economy tanked and long before the bailouts and the Iraq invasion and the housing slump, and there will continue to be layoffs even when the country is in boom times. Think of how those people must feel, the ones who were pink-slipped when the country was sky-high.
So let’s take a cue from the Leykis caller and think about how good we do have it, or how good we could have it, by trying to do what we love.
Am I wrong?
www.BrianThomasClark.com
