Bait and Switch (2 page)

4 Jonathan Mahler, "Commute to Nowhere," New York Times Magazine, April 2 National Ctr for Educational Statistics, http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2004/ 2004018.pdf.

13,2003.

3 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women are only slightly more likely 5 I was particularly enlightened by Jill Andresky Fraser's White Collar Sweatshop: than men to be unemployed-6.1 percent compared to 5.7 percent—and white The Deterioration of Work and Its Rewards in Corporate America (New York: women, like myself, are about half as likely as black women to be unemployed Norton, 2001) and Richard Sennett's The Corrosion of Character: The Personal (www.bls.gov).

Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (New York: Norton, 1998).

first few years of the twenty-first century, the "cheese"—meaning a those late night episodes when it just won't make sense to head home stable, rewarding, job—has indeed been moved. A 2004 survey of for a quick snooze."
7
She quotes an Intel employee: executives found 95 percent expecting to move on, voluntarily or otherwise, from their current jobs, and 68 percent concerned about If you make the choice to have a home life, you will be ranked and rated at the bottom. I was willing to work the endless hours, come in on weekends, unexpected firings and layoffs.
6
You don't, in other words, have to travel to the ends of the earth. I had no hobbies, no outside interests. If I lose a job to feel the anxiety and despair of the unemployed.

wasn't involved with the company, I wasn't anything.
8

A second sign of trouble could be called "overemployment."

I knew, from my reading, that mid- and high-level corporate Something, evidently, is going seriously wrong within a executives and professionals today often face the same punishing socioeconomic group I had indeed neglected as too comfortable and demands on their time as low-paid wage earners who must work too powerful to merit my concern. Where I had imagined comfort, two jobs in order to make ends meet. Economist Juliet Schor, who there is now growing distress, and I determined to investigate. I chose wrote The Overworked American, and business journalist Jill the same strategy I had employed in
Nickel and Dimed
: to enter this Andresky Fraser, author of White Collar Sweatshop, describe new world myself, as an undercover reporter, and see what I could stressed-out white-collar employees who put in ten- to twelve-hour-learn about the problems firsthand. Were people being driven out of long days at the office, continue to work on their laptops in the their corporate jobs? What did it take to find a new one? And, if evening at home, and remain tethered to the office by cell phone things were as bad as some reports suggested, why was there so little even on vacations and holidays. "On Wall Street, for example,"

protest?

Fraser reports, "it is common for a supervisor to instruct new hires The plan was straightforward enough: to find a job, a "good"

to keep a spare set of clothes and toothbrush in the office for all job, which I defined minimally as a white-collar position that would 6 Harvey Mackay, We Got Fired! And It's the Best Thing That Ever Happened to 7 Fraser, White Collar Sweatshop, p. 23.

Us (New York: Ballantine, 2004), p. 94.

8 Fraser, White Collar Sweatshop, p. 158.

provide health insurance and an income of about $50,000 a year, seventies, on the corporations that were coming to dominate the enough to land me solidly in the middle class. The job itself would health-care system: pharmaceutical companies, hospital chains, give me a rare firsthand glimpse into the midlevel corporate world, insurance companies. Then, sometime in the eighties, I shifted my and the effort to find it would of course place me among the most attention to the treatment of blue-and pink-collar employees, blaming hard-pressed white-collar corporate workers—the ones who don't America's intractable level of poverty-12.5 percent by the federal have jobs.

government's official count, 25 percent by more up-to-date Since I wanted to do this as anonymously as possible, measures—on the chronically low wages offered to nonprofessional certain areas of endeavor had to be excluded, such as higher workers. In the last few years, I seized on the wave of financial education, publishing (magazines, newspapers, and books), and scandals—from Enron through, at the time of this writing, nonprofit liberal organizations. In any of these, I would have run the HealthSouth and Hollingers International—as evidence of growing risk of being recognized and perhaps treated differently—more corruption within the corporate world, a pattern of internal looting favorably, one hopes—than the average job seeker. But these without regard for employees, consumers, or even, in some cases, restrictions did not significantly narrow the field, since of course stockholders.

most white-collar professionals work in other sectors of the for-But for the purposes of this project, these criticisms and profit, corporate world—from banking to business services, reservations had to be set aside or shoved as far back in my mind as pharmaceuticals to finance.

possible. Like it or not, the corporation is the dominant unit of the The decision to enter corporate life—and an unfamiliar global economy and the form of enterprise that our lives depend on in sector of it, at that—required that I abandon, or at least set aside, a day-to-day sense. I write this on an IBM laptop while sipping deeply embedded attitudes and views, including my longstanding Lipton tea and wearing clothes from the Gap—all major firms or critique of American corporations and the people who lead them. I elements thereof. It's corporations that make the planes run (though had cut my teeth, as a fledgling investigative journalist in the not necessarily on time), bring us (and increasingly grow) our food, and generally "make it happen." I'd been on the outside of the performance, the methods of evaluation, the lines and even the modes corporate world, often complaining bitterly, and now I wanted in.

of communication. But I'm a quick study, as you have to be in journalism, and counted on this to get me by.

The first step was to acquire a new identity and personal THIS WOULD NOT, I knew, be an altogether fair test of the job history to go with it, meaning, in this case, a resume. It is easier to market, if only because I had some built-in disadvantages as a job change your identity than you might think. Go to Alavarado and seeker. For one thing, I am well into middle age, and since age Seventh Street in Los Angeles, for example, and you will be discrimination is a recognized problem in the corporate world even approached by men whispering, "ID, ID." I, however, took the legal at the tender age of forty, I was certainly vulnerable to it myself.

route, because I wanted my documents to be entirely in order when This defect, however, is by no means unique to me. Many people—the job offers started coming in. My fear, perhaps exaggerated, was from displaced homemakers to downsized executives—now find that my current name might be recognized, or would at least turn up themselves searching for jobs at an age that was once associated with an embarrassing abundance of Google entries. So in November 2003 I a restful retirement.

legally changed back to my maiden name, Barbara Alexander, and Furthermore, I had the disadvantage of never having held a acquired a Social Security card to go with it.

white-collar job with a corporation. My one professional-level office As for the resume: although it had to be faked, I wanted it as job, which lasted for about seven months, was in the public sector, much as possible to represent my actual skills, which, I firmly at the New York City Bureau of the Budget. It had involved such believed, would enrich whatever company I went to work for. I am a typical white-collar activities as attending meetings, digesting writer—author of thousands of published articles and about twelve reports, and writing memos; but that was a long time ago, before nonfiction books, counting the coauthored ones—and I know that cell phones, PowerPoint, and e-mail. In the corporate world I now

"writing" translates, in the corporate world, into public relations or sought to enter, everything would be new to me: the standards of

"communications" generally. Many journalism schools teach PR too, which may be fitting, since PR is really journalism's evil twin.

sessions, arranging the press coverage, and planning the follow-up Whereas a journalist seeks the truth, a PR person may be called events.

upon to disguise it or even to advance an untruth. If your employer, Even as a rough draft, the resume took days of preparation. I a pharmaceutical company, claims its new drug cures both cancer had to line up people willing to lie for me, should they be called by a and erectile dysfunction, your job is to promote it, not to investigate potential employer, and attest to the fine work I had done for them.

the grounds for these claims.

Fortunately, I have friends who were willing to do this, some of them I could do this, on a temporary basis anyway, and have even located at recognizable companies. Although I did not dare claim done many of the things PR people routinely do: I've written press actual employment at these firms, since a call to their Human releases, pitched stories to editors and reporters, prepared press Resources departments would immediately expose the lie, I felt I packets, and helped arrange press conferences. As an author, I have could safely pretend to have "consulted" to them over the years.

also worked closely with my publisher's PR people and have always Suffice it to say that I gave Barbara Alexander an exemplary history in found them to be intelligent and in every way congenial.

public relations, sometimes with a little event planning thrown in, and I have also been an activist in a variety of causes over the that the dissimulation involved in crafting my new resume was further years, and this experience too must translate into something valuable preparation for any morally challenging projects I should be called to any firm willing to hire me. I have planned meetings and chaired upon to undertake as a PR person.

them; I have worked in dozens of diverse groups and often played a I did not, however, embellish my new identity with an affect leadership role in them; I am at ease as a public speaker, whether or mannerisms different from my own. I am not an actor and would giving a lengthy speech or a brief presentation on a panel—all of not have been able to do this even if I had wanted to. "Barbara which amounts to the "leadership" skills that should be an asset to Alexander" was only a cover for Barbara Ehrenreich; her behavior any company. At the very least, I could claim to be an "event would, for better or worse, always be my own. In fact, in a practical planner," capable of dividing gatherings into plenaries and break-out sense I was simply changing my occupational status from "self-

employed/writer" to unemployed"— a distinction that might be anywhere in the United States to get a job and then live there for imperceptible to the casual observer. I would still stay home most several months if I found one. Nor would I shun any industry—other days at my computer, only now, instead of researching and writing than those where I might be recognized—as unglamorous or morally articles, I would be researching and contacting companies that repugnant. My third rule was that I would have to take the first job I might employ me. The new name and fake resume were only my was offered that met my requirements as to income and benefits.

ticket into the ranks of the unemployed white-collar Americans who I knew that the project would take a considerable investment spend their days searching for a decent-paying job.

of time and money, so I set aside ten months
9
and the sum of $5,000

The project required some minimal structure; since I was for travel and other expenses that might arise in the course of job stepping into the unknown, I needed to devise some guidelines for searching. My expectation was that I would make the money back myself. My first rule was that I would do everything possible to land once I got a job and probably come out far ahead. As for the time, I a job, which meant being open to every form of help that presented budgeted roughly four to six months for the search—five months itself: utilizing whatever books, web sites, and businesses, for being the average for unemployed people in 2004
10
—and another example, that I could find offering guidance to job seekers. I would three to four months of employment. I would have plenty of time endeavor to behave as I was expected to, insofar as I could decipher both to sample the life of the white-collar unemployed and to explore the expectations. I did not know exactly what forms of effort would the corporate world they sought to reenter.

be required of successful job seekers, only that I would, as humbly From the outset, I pictured this abstraction, the corporate and diligently as possible, give it my best try.

world, as a castle on a hill—well fortified, surrounded by difficult Second, I would be prepared to go anywhere for a job or checkpoints, with its glass walls gleaming invitingly from on high. I even an interview, and would advertise this geographic flexibility in my contacts with potential employers. I was based in Charlottesville, 9 From December 2003 to October 2004, with the exception of most of July, when I Virginia, throughout this project, but I was prepared to travel had a brief real-life job writing biweekly columns for the
New York Times
.

10 John Leland, “For Unemployed, Wait for New Work Grows Longer,”
New York
Times
, January 9, 2005.

knew that it would be a long hard climb just to get to the door. But I also started with the expectation that this project would be I've made my way into remote and lofty places before—college and far less demanding than the work I had undertaken for
Nickel and
graduate school, for example. I'm patient and crafty; I have stamina
Dimed
. Physically, it would be a piece of cake—no scrubbing, no and resolve; and I believed that I could do this too.

heavy lifting, no walking or running for hours on end. As for behavior, In fact, the project, as I planned it, seemed less challenging I imagined that I would be immune from the constant subservience than I might have liked. As an undercover reporter, I would of and obedience demanded of low-wage blue-collar workers, that I course be insulated from the real terrors of the white-collar work would be far freer to be, and express, myself. As it turns out, I was world, if only because I was independent of it for my income and wrong on all counts.