Bait and Switch (7 page)

that I stress "the time management skills you developed while hits a large metal bell, making him a "bell ringer." I take a step managing children."

backward through the door frame, but Pamela is directly behind me, Yeah, right, like I'm going to have resume entries like "ne-blocking the way. "You're losing your name tag," she whispers to gotiated complex preteen transportation issues" and "pro-me. I smooth it down obligingly, if only because I am beginning to vided in-home leadership to highly creative team of three"? I lose confidence in the physical possibility of egress. If I were to think of all the recent articles about upper-middle-class, pro-take another step toward freedom, I might get jumped by some of fessional mothers who opt to stay home with their children the beefier cult members.

during the early years, fully expecting to pick up their careers at Because that's how it's beginning to look to me. If profit is not full stride later on. One of the Gen-X moms interviewed in a the aim, and it can't be, since everyone in charge is a volunteer,
Time
article "desperately hopes that she won't be penalized for then what could it matter if one potential recruit leaks away after her years at home."
20
But the Mommy Track appears to end the formal proceedings? I get the paranoid sense that I have right here, in a support group for the long-term unemployed.

fallen into the Cult of Merle, and what happens next only At precisely 11:00, Joe winds up to hearty applause, and I choose seems to confirm this. New people like myself—there are this break to start edging toward the door. I have just reached it only six of us—are to repair into a side room for a special when Merle, who is now presiding over a little ritual honoring a session of their own, suggesting that the reason for Pamela's boot-camp graduate who has actually found a job, calls out, concern about my name tag had to do with the ease of sorting out

"Barbara, it's not time to go yet!" Stunned that she can read my who is new.

name tag at this distance and mortified to have been singled The special gathering for new people turns out to be a out, I stand there and watch as a fortysomething Asian-heavy sell for the boot camp, which costs close to $600 for American—he is today's lucky job finder—takes a mallet and three weeks of eight-hour days. Ted and Pamela officiate, beginning with some videotaped testimonies to the effectiveness of the boot 20 Claudia Wallis, "The Case for Staying Home,"
Time,
March 22, 2004.

camp, while we new people sit in frozen expectation. It will with Ted or whether Merle, our charismatic leader, is a saint or a be an intense experience, Ted advises, ranging from resume demon. No doubt there's nothing cultish going on, and the development to body language and elevator speeches.

only reason the volunteers push the boot camp so insistently is Among other things, we will each star in a three-minute that it gives them something to do: better to immerse yourself in videotape sales pitch for ourselves, which will be revised until Forty-Plus activities than to sit home alone waiting for the phone perfect. He is standing next to where I am sitting, going over a to ring. But Ted's breakdown does reinforce the impression that, poster describing the boot camp's syllabus, when suddenly he bursts whatever is going on in the corporate world today, whatever wild into tears.

process is chewing up men and women and spitting them out late My mind had wandered during his presentation, so I have in life, damage is definitely done.

to do a quick rewind to recall the emotional subtext of what he had been saying at the moment of breakdown—something about a neighbor of his who had been laid off and not said anything to Ted about it for months. A broken friendship? Or just a AT MY NEXT session with Kimberly, I report that I've been successfully reminder to him of how lonely the first months of unemployment networking. "So did you make some contacts?" she wants to know.

were? And how did he get the black eye anyway?

"Just the people I networked with," I admit, explaining the context I have to restrain myself from reaching out and putting my of the Forty-Plus Club.

hand on his arm, but Pamela is impatiently insisting that she

"But they're unemployed! There's no point to networking with take over the poster presentation. Thus rebuked, Ted struggles unemployed people unless they have contacts in companies you and pulls himself together, although the tears are still running want to work for!"

down his cheeks.

So much for my people, then, the great army of the white-collar I finally get up to leave, resigned to never knowing what was up unemployed. They're not worth the time of day. You are encouraged to go to networking events, only to be told that you've been

"Does she have a receptionist?"

wasting your time.

I acknowledge this too.

"Look," she says, trying a new tack. "What companies
do
you

"So network with her!"

want to work for?"

I don't tell her, and I'm not proud of this, but I find the sug-I've had a new insight into this, so I tell her, "I've been gestion insulting. Here I am, a "seasoned professional" ac-thinking . . . I've done a lot in the health field, maybe I should cording to my resume, and I'm supposed to be pestering the emphasize that more. Maybe like a drug company."

clinic receptionist for job leads? Not to mention the fact that the

"A drug company—good! And what else?"

receptionist appears to be even more distracted and rushed than the

"A medical supply company?"

doctor. Meanwhile, Kimberly is going on about the need to

"And what else?"

network
everywhere,
like with the person I'm sitting next to on a

"Uh, I don't know."

plane. Almost anyone seems to be worth my smiling attentions

"A hospital! What about a hospital?"

except my brothers and sisters in the job-searching business.

I have to admit that I didn't know or had forgotten that Session over, I refill my iced tea and sit down to reflect on my hospitals maintain PR staffs—another reason for resentment when aversion to Kimberly, which seems completely out of proportion to perusing the medical bills. So how would I network with hospital the circumstances. I hired her; she was my choice; she's supposed people?

to be helping me. Beyond that, of course, this is only a journalistic

"You have a doctor, don't you?"

venture anyway, in which I have no real-life emotional stake. Yet I acknowledge that I do.

the dislike is reaching hatelike dimensions, and it seems to me

"So network with him!"

that if I could get to the bottom of it. I would be a leg up on the

"But she barely has time to tell me my blood pressure, whole job-search process. She represents something about the much less talk about my career."

corporate world that repels me. some deep coldness masked as relentless cheerfulness. In fact the "mask" theme has come up my job search in some joblike fashion. I determine that my daily several times in my background reading. Richard Sennett, for plan will be as follows:

example, in
The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of
7:30 A.M.: Get up, eat breakfast, read the paper, check CNN for
Work in the New Capitalism,
and Robert Jackall, in
Moral
major disasters—terrorist attacks, asteroid hits, et cetera—that
Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers,
refer repeatedly to the may foreclose the possibility of finding a job for the immediate

"masks" that corporate functionaries are required to wear, like future or at least call for a revision of the daily plan. I refuse, actors in an ancient Greek drama. According to Jackall, however, to dress up as if heading for a real office, clinging to my corporate managers stress the need to exercise iron self-control usual preclothes, meaning a cross between the T-shirt I wore to bed and to mask all emotion and intention behind bland, smiling, and and the gym clothes I will need in the afternoon.

agreeable public faces.
21

9:00-12:30: Proceed to desk for the bulk of the day's Kimberly seems to have perfected the requisite phoniness.

work—read e-mail, revise resume, visit the various national job and even as I dislike her, my whole aim is to be welcomed into the boards, and whatever else I can think of to do. Thanks to the same corporate culture that she seems to have mastered, meaning Atlanta Job Search Network I have signed up for, which showers that I need to "get in the face" of my revulsion and overcome it.

me with several dozen job possibilities a week, e-mail alone can take But until I reach that transcendent point, I seem to be stuck in up to twenty minutes. Why Atlanta? Because it's a happening an emotional space left over from my midteen years: I hate you; place, job-wise anyway, with an unemployment rate of only about please love me.

4 percent—far lower than Boston, for example, or New York. That and the fact that it's one plane ride away from home qualify it as an appealing target for me. Unfortunately, the job tips that come to me ALL RIGHT, DISTASTEFUL as the idea may be, I do have to structure by e-mail from the Atlanta Job Search Network are almost always 21

in irrelevant fields like "systems management" and Robert Jackal!,
Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p.47.

"construction oversight," but there are sometimes more WANT TO TALK WITH ' DOWN' PEOPLE OR

interesting things to read—brief waves, or cries for help, from my THOSE WHO LIFT YOU UP?"

fellow seekers. Trinita, for example, writes sadly (to me and For weeks, the core of my day's work consists of revising my everyone else in the network):

resume to meet Joanne's exacting standards. We agree

eventually on the opening, which, after every comma has been vetted, I have finally found a position, but again it is temporary with no benefits . . . I reads:

lost my apartment in Atlanta and had to move home with my mother at the age of 26 after being laid off and unable to pay my bills. I owe everybody and their SUMMARY: Seasoned consultant with experience in Event Planning, mama's but I guess I am back on the right track to daylight.

Public Relations, and Speechwriting is prepared to provide leadership advancing company brand and image. Special expertise in health Some of the homespun advice from fellow seekers is equally policy and health-related issues, with a track record of high-level national suggestive of desperation. Mark, whose subject line is "What exposure.

To DO After You Stop Crying!," lists thirteen activities begin-To my chagrin, she informs me that my education is a little ning with "1. Hug your significant other. (Family Must be scanty. I've listed a BA in chemistry, which I in fact possess, First! ! !)" and ending with:

and earned in my maiden name, Alexander. But this is not 13. LAST BUT NOT LEAST—Hug your significant other AND

enough. Surely I have at least audited some relevant courses along KIDS. (REMEMBER—Family MUST be FIRST! ! !)

the way? So I make up a list of courses I have taken, hoping that In between, there's the usual enjoinder to network "WITH

they resemble plausible educational offerings, with the idea that I EVERYONE," including "Aunts, Brothers, Sisters, Cousins, can revise them to suit the situation:

Classmates . . . Accountant, Hair Dresser, Barber, Etc., Etc."

and "KEEP A POSITIVE ATTITUDE. DO YOU

•

"Marketing Social Change" (Progressive Media Project, 1991)

•

"The Media and New Technology" (New York University, 1995)

•

"Writing to Persuade" (New School for Social Research, 1998) offerings—there are usually more than a dozen a week—and

•

"Women's Health Issues and the Media" (Long Island University, 1999) send along my résumé-in-progress. I can also apply directly to a

•

"The Social Psychology of Event Management" (University of California at company by going to its web site, clicking on "careers," searching Berkeley, 2001)

for PR job listings, and then submitting my application online. I'll More vexingly, Joanne wants my resume to get longer; hers oc-go for anything except the jobs that require technical knowledge—cupies a remarkable four pages. But this is beyond my fictional computer networking or video production—or lengthy capacity, so I argue that, no, the resumes posted on the Public experience in a particular industry. If all the company seems to want Relations Society of America's web site, which I visit daily, are all is the ability to think and write, backed by five years of experience, a terse single page, and that this seems to be the industry standard.

I consider myself a highly qualified candidate, whether the The resume is still far from perfect, a condition which may emphasis is on internal communications, publicity, or public take several more weeks of costly coaching to achieve, since affairs. And of course I am admirably flexible, applying at one both Joanne and Kimberly keep coming up with minor permu-point for a job as PR director of the American Diabetes tations of the latest draft, dithering at length, for example, over Association and then switching sides and offering myself to what "volunteer community activities" to list. I am beginning Hershey's. In most cases, I have the satisfaction of receiving an eto suspect that the process is being artificially prolonged for mail automatically confirming my application, and giving me a purely commercial reasons: each half-hour session, which can focus multidigit number to refer to the job by, should I care to continue entirely on issues of punctuation and format, earns the coach the correspondence.

$100.

Even with an imperfect resume, as judged by my coaches, I can't 12:30-1:00: Lunch and further newspaper reading, justified by resist applying for some of the jobs that pop up on the PRSA my need, as a PR person, to stay on top of trends, new technologies, web site. It's easy enough: I just scroll through the PR job business scandals, and the like.

1:00-3:00: Back at the desk for more leisurely or more reflective large ones, no longer bother to read resumes at all; they scan forms of labor, such as learning more about my chosen fields—PR