Day 83 - Crisis of Faith

          I called Stew this morning and told him thanks, but no thanks. I wished him good luck, and I meant it. Looking back over my history with Henry and his family I suppose there are lots of good reasons for me to relish their flaming out, but knowing what it’s like to face an uncertain future without prospects and suffused with self-doubt, I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.

Besides the futures of many more people than just Henry and his family are at stake. Henry and Stew employ a lot of hard working and industrious people who depend on the success of the business every day. They’ll all be facing that uncertain future, and not because of anything they did or Henry did or didn’t do, but because a banker somewhere saw too much risk in a loan portfolio and decided to get rid of some of it. It hardly matters that the banker bought into the risk in the first place—that the bank is heavily invested in securitized sub-prime mortgages or over the counter interest rate swaps. It only matters what the numbers look like today and damn the lives and the hopes and dreams of real people represented by that risk.

We are, all of us to some degree, at the mercy of the computer models of speculators, MBAs, and math wizards—smart sumbitches ‘fiddlefucking’ around as Henry would say—who bring no value to the game. Rather they game the value of the poor dumb bastards who are doing actual work.

          I’m already past the point of working this setback to my advantage. It’s obvious to me that I’m not going to get a job soon enough to be able to bank my severance as surplus. Under the best of circumstances it will be January before I get a job and February before I start work. By then my severance will have run out, but even that less than rosy scenario grows more and more unlikely with each passing day.

If I don’t get a job in January I’m going to have to move out of this house, this lovely neighborhood, by February 1st. That means I need to start thinking about where I’m going to live now. I don’t want to do that. It seems so defeatist. I’m trying to stay optimistic, but there comes a point where cultivating the optimistic attitude that helps you get a job just leads you down the path to disaster. Prayerful, trustful surrender—the Christian ideal—seems foolish under the circumstances.

          I’m a devout Catholic. I pay attention to the homilies at Mass. I read Scripture. I read and study theology. I have taught a survey of sacramental theology to teenagers preparing to be Confirmed in the Faith for six years. I know stuff. I don’t pretend to know everything, but I know more than most at least about what constitutes a proper Christian attitude in times of distress. ‘Let go and let God’ is the phrase that captures its essence. That is what I know I’m supposed to do. Unfortunately that sound theological advice is diametrically opposed to every bit of advice available from secular sources for the job seeker. The job boards and career coaches don’t want you to sit around in blissful hope waiting for God to show up with a basket of blessings. They want you to take a more proactive approach. They want you to set goals, to network, to circulate, to think outside of the box, to differentiate yourself, and to broadcast the message of your suitability to the widest possible audience.

          I have tried to reconcile these points of view with another well known platitude: “God helps those who help themselves.” As platitudes go this is a good attempt, but somehow it fails to satisfy the thoughtful Christian. The obvious snag is that the more you help yourself the less trust you are putting in God to provide for your needs. The less trust you put in God the less generous are you likely to find His bounty. The platitude simply cannot be true. God does not help those who help themselves. Why would he? Those who help themselves help themselves. They don’t put their trust in God, else they wouldn’t be working so hard to make their own destiny. They just give God lip service. They are in fact lacking in sufficient faith to warrant much of God’s munificence. It’s a trick bag, a Catch 22.

Every shred of advice available to you and most of the anecdotal evidence suggests that succeeding or failing in this world is up to you. If you don’t do anything because you are waiting for God to do it and you fail, it’s your fault. You didn’t believe strongly enough, or you put what faith you have in a practice that has no validity, a god who does not exist—depends on your outlook, doesn’t it? If you don’t do anything and you succeed, you have to give God all the credit. That’s okay from the believer’s perspective, but all the non-believers rankle at the injustice of it—that you succeeded without any effort. If you don’t do anything to deserve success, well then you don’t deserve success. That’s the path to diminishing self worth. Let’s face it—it is hard as hell to trust in heaven. That’s why no one ever suggests that you actually do it…except in church…on Sunday…when God is listening. Any other time, it’s just not American, or practical, or sane.

          The problem is even deeper than this, deeper than just having to decide at one point if you are going to trust God or trust your gut as it were, your instinct for self preservation. You have to decide constantly, and every decision you make undermines the essence of the sensibilities that support the other choice, the one you didn’t make. So you vacillate, first one way and then the other. The result is that you end up whipsawing yourself into a constant state of tension between personal crises of low self esteem and faith, between not believing in yourself and not believing in a caring God. You never see the positive side of either a life of spiritual peace or personal actualization.

I see myself at the end of this in tatters, one shoe sole flapping a syncopated jazz riff, the percussive accompaniment to an iconic, blues-infused, street life of poverty, meanness, addiction, and uselessness…and that’s the romantic outcome, at least provided there’s an occasional Aston Martin with a windshield I can wash. The more likely outcome, the one with all the hardship but without the romance and the sound track, is too depressing to contemplate.

Day 63 - Re-branding

          I felt compelled today to tell my landlady that I had lost my job. It seemed only fair. If I don’t get a new job soon I’m going to have to move out. If I do get a new job that is out of the area, I’m going to have to move out. Either way she needs adequate time to find another tenant. I like her well enough that I wouldn’t want to leave her in a financial bind. It’s interesting how the effects of unemployment begin to trickle down and affect people and businesses around us. I guess we’re seeing plenty of evidence of that all over.

*****

          A lot of the circumstances of individuals and companies impact the lives of those around them. This was certainly true of Quilnutz and the ways in which the unfolding romance of Fische and Alicia began to affect us all. Alicia had some strange notions of how the folks in Arkansas ought to be behaving. There was a lot of grumbling in Arkansas, and most of it had to do with the heavy handed and basically disrespectful way that their efforts were treated by executive management, especially the director of executive administration, Fische. As a rule the Arkansas boats were held to be of inferior quality and workmanship compared to the Florida boats. In fact, and certainly in the opinion of the Arkansas craftsmen, the opposite was true. There was certainly more evidence to support this conclusion than the other, but the Arkansas employees were constantly and repeatedly made to suffer Fische’s insulting and outlandish claims regarding the superiority of the Florida products. Even if he had been correct, which I submit he was not, this would have been a demoralizing and incompetent way to manage a group of proud and skilled workers. One humorous event underscores the practice and its fallout.

          The Florida unit took a boat in trade on a sale, and management decided to ship the trade-in to Arkansas to be sold there. Fische alerted the production managers that it was coming. He told them that when it arrived they should take all their employees out to look at it so they could see first hand how the Florida boats were built and the care and quality that went into their construction. When the boat arrived via flatbed trailer, everyone trooped out dutifully to view it, Fische leading the first group and happily pointing out the (to him) obvious differences between Florida and Arkansas assemblies. When he was finished someone quietly pointed out that the boat in question had actually been built in Arkansas. It had apparently been rebranded with a Florida medallion after it was traded in.

          The ramifications were obvious to everyone there except probably Fische who would not accept on face value what he had been told. The first and most obvious fact was that Fische didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. The second was that the Florida plant apparently didn’t have any problem putting their name on the boats built in Arkansas. The third was that the Arkansas workforce was going to continue to be disparaged and insulted for the simple reason that they were in Arkansas rather than Florida. This kind of thing went on forever, and the longer it went on the more disgruntled, demoralized and resentful the Arkansas workforce became. Eventually management’s opinion about Arkansas quality became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Day 48 - Joblessness, Homelessness, and Other Scary Prospects

          Today I redid my résumé and boiler-plated a couple of cover letters. I checked the job boards and updated my profiles yet again. The last time I went looking for work I used Career Builder and Monster. I still have accounts set up on both those sites. I added a new one called Indeed that somehow combines listings from multiple boards including Career Builder and Monster into one super board. This seems like the way to go to me. The more they do to make finding a job easy, the more I’m going to like it. I did a search to see what’s available. I limited the search to jobs that contain the words controller, CFO, and accounting. I further limited it to jobs paying over $100,000 annually. No sense taking a cut—at least I hope not. Who knows how bad the economy is really going to get? Still it’s early in the game to be lowering my expectations. Last year I made over $132,000 including a nice bonus. I need to do that well again to maintain my lifestyle—not that my lifestyle is very lavish.

I’ve got a huge amount of credit card debt, and just making the monthly minimums has kept me from accumulating any appreciable net worth for the last 20 years. It’s a sad tale, best saved for another time. I don’t like to talk about it or think about it. It’s depressing as hell—especially if you consider I have paid Bank of America something like $180,000 in interest over that period of time, and have nothing to show for it. 


(If you find yourself in a like situation, you may want to consider visiting Dave Ramsey's Web Site and taking advantage of the many resources he has available to help you get your financial life back in order.)

          
          The search yielded about 7 jobs worth looking at. None of them were stellar. That was kind of troubling, but even more problematic—the less than stellar jobs all wanted an MBA and/or an active CPA. I’ve only got a Bachelor’s degree, and I let my certification lapse. I shouldn’t have done that, but it’s too late now. I applied to the two best jobs, hoping that ‘former’ CPA and 30 years experience will make up for the short credentials.

I have to say this didn’t leave a very good taste in my mouth. Hopefully what I saw today was an anomaly. The last time I was looking, the job listings ran hot and cold in spurts. I’m still just testing the waters. Monday I have to get after this job search. I’ve only got 3 months of severance left. I still hope to book two incomes for a while, but if I don’t have a job by the end of January I’m going to have to move. At the current amount I’m paying for rent and utilities I’ll last about 6 weeks. Then I’m in a cardboard box under a bridge somewhere. I’m not ready for homelessness. That’s a scary damn prospect. 

Day 47 - Mini Me (or Stinky Me) and Me

          I’m feeling better and better, but I continue to medicate myself into a relative stupor at every opportunity. Get a twinge in the back, take a pill. Feel a stinging sensation when I pee, take a pill. It’s no consolation, but I’m now medicating Bad Breath Bud even more than I am myself. The vet has him on a regimen of pills that would choke a horse. That poor goofball gets an anti-inflammatory 4 times a day, an antibiotic for infection, mega vitamins with each meal, zantac to keep him from throwing up, and methadone for pain as often as needed not to exceed every four hours. Some of this stuff is bad for his liver, but we’re not worrying so much about his liver as he is not likely to live more than a couple of months. We’re just going to keep him as comfortable as possible.

          Bud’s problems with his hips—the general weakness in his hindquarters—seemed to be improving with the regular walks, but he suddenly began to favor his left shoulder. He never complained, but it was obvious that he was having a lot of pain there. Bud is not a complainer. Our other hound, Sandy, is a complainer. She will cry and whine at the least provocation. Once she got a twig caught up between the pads of one of her front paws. She screamed like she was being murdered with a dull knife. She is a big baby. Bud…not so much. He winces from the pain in his shoulder, but the discomfort doesn’t seem to diminish his enthusiasm for a walk.

          When it was obvious after a few days that Bud’s pain wasn’t getting any better, we took him to the vet. X-rays showed a lesion involving his left forearm with significant bone loss on the forward side of the humerus. The vet felt that surgery was not a good option for Bud because of the weakness in his hindquarters. If we amputated his left foreleg, he’d only have one good leg left. For Bud at least, the cure, which doesn’t offer a lot of hope anyway, would be worse than the disease. Our best option is to make him as comfortable as possible until even that becomes a cruelty.

I feel pretty badly about all this. I’ve only known Bud a short time, but I feel a real affinity with him. I think of him as the canine me. We’re both old coots, coming to the end of our usefulness. Our spheres of influence are shrinking, and our bodies are in revolt. Maybe the drugs I’m taking are making me too vulnerable and sensitive for my own good, but any way you look at, it Bud is a good old dog. I hate to see him fade away.    

          My wife called Kelly to tell her that Bud was sick. Kelly felt compelled to speculate that the cancer was the direct result of my walking Bud too much for the last several months. If Bud doesn’t offer to bite her next time we see her, I intend to do it myself. 

Day 34 - Clothes Make the Man

          I’ve always been something of a dandy—not a fully realized one as that requires considerably more disposable income than I’ve ever been able to muster—but I do appreciate and wear nice clothes to the extent practical. I like to think that I’ve got a good eye for color and texture, and I’m not afraid to take a fashion risk. I was the first of all my friends to adopt and abandon bell bottom trousers, Nehru jackets, double breasted suits, pleated pants, suspenders, cowboy boots, black tee-shirts with a sports jacket, two-tone shirts, jewel-tone dress shirts, Hawaiian shirts, and a raft of others over the years. I came by this condition honestly. My dad liked to dress up as well, and had a collection of ties that I covet to this day. His dad, my grandfather, was a tailor by trade and was always immaculately turned out.

          It is with considerable excitement then that I set out to get myself a new suit. It is with considerable chagrin that I realize that I am going to have to spend more money than I am comfortable spending to dress myself in a fashion equal to my aspirations. Not having that kind of cash, I’m going to have to compromise. That means a trip to a discount clothier. Not so bad really, but under the circumstances I’d rather be able to deck myself out smartly—to look as successful as I think I need to feel to get the job I think I ought to have.

            There’s been a lot written and said about how to dress for an interview, a job, success. Most of it has been less than helpful in the situations in which I’ve found myself over the course of my career. What’s written and popularized in the press pertains to, as a rule, big firms in big cities. My experience has been with small firms in small cities, and in these places anything too fashionable is viewed with a certain amount of suspicion.

          A company in Alabama was a case in point. When I started there all the men in the finance department were required to wear ties. Jackets were optional, but a dress shirt and a necktie were the uniform of the day. The CFO at the time was an older gentleman, always impeccably dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and silk tie. The dress rule was his, and though there was some grousing from the good old boys, there was no real dissention. When the old gentleman CFO retired and the company brought in a younger, hipper, more assertive, and less gentlemanly replacement, the first thing to go was the necktie rule. A collective sigh of relief went up as the ties came off and the dress shirts were replaced with a diverse collection of colorful knits and short sleeves. Comfort was the new order of things, and given the Alabama propensity for 100 degree days from July into September not a minute too soon.

          I myself relished the new freedom. I spent a lot of time on the plant floor, and I felt that my effectiveness there was improved once I no longer had to worry about the possibility of ruining my ‘good’ clothes. Nothing spoils your day like getting machine oil on a $40 silk tie. Things went along swimmingly for a while, but gradually my internal sartorial discipline began to flag. This is perhaps because my waistline was expanding at an alarming rate, and the expense of accommodating it with ever larger clothing was getting to be a burden on the household budget. Rather than limit my intake of calories I opted for the less restrained but wholly more satisfying approach of buying cheaper clothes.

          So one day I found myself on the way to a meeting with executive management in the company of my boss, the division vice president—he resplendent in pressed wool slacks and a stunning sports jacket and me in a fleece sweater, brogans, and extremely commodious jeans. My boss took the opportunity to comment on my deteriorating mode of dress.

          “You know,” he said, “whenever someone asks me who is the baggy-pants clown that I’m always hanging out with, I have to tell them ‘That’s no clown. That’s my controller.’”

          I didn’t say anything at that point because, let’s face it, there was nothing I could say that would reflect well on my character. I could have advanced the arguments my children used on me when they were teenagers trying to get out of the house dressed as street toughs—‘It’s not how you dress that’s important; it’s what kind of person you are inside.’ As adults and parents we all understand that not only is that statement irrefutably true, it is utter bullshit. Why? For the simple reason that the world does not work that way. The world works on appearances. The world cares little for substance and character, nor has it since Machiavelli published The Prince in 1513. It is important to cultivate the appearance of character and virtue in the world, but if you want to prosper you need to stop short of actually possessing character and virtue. If it were otherwise accountants would flourish while politicians and salesmen would toil in oblivion.

          My boss went on, “If you would dress professionally you might be surprised to find that you are taken more seriously. You might even find that there is a place for you over in the corporate finance office. You’ve certainly got the talent. You just need to look the part.”

          Well there it was in plain language—Machiavellian principles fully realized in the less princely world of corporate America. You’re not going anywhere on talent and intelligence, not until you look the part. Appearance trumps ability…almost every time. The famous baseball player, Ted Williams, once said “I’ve found that you don’t need to wear a necktie if you can hit.” I wouldn’t say that this is the exception that proves the rule. The statement sounds remarkably similar to the arguments of my children. The only thing it proves to me is that baseball is not nearly the consummate metaphor for life that we would like it to be. It is a game played by boys who have never liked to wear ties. The workplace may like to talk about baseball around the water cooler or in the break room over coffee, but it is not an environment in which boys thrive who will not put on a tie and pretend to be grown-ups.

          I know when to take a suggestion. That night I went shopping on the way home from work. I stocked up on dress shirts, tailored slacks, and conservative neckties. Next day I showed up at work decked out in my splendid new duds. The reaction of my peers was less than comforting. Most thought that I must have scheduled a job interview. It occurred to me that if that’s what the executive management team thought, I probably wouldn’t be getting the kind of attention to which my boss had alluded. More likely I would be viewed with suspicion so long as I continued to overdress for my station. I was suddenly trapped between second and third, and baseball had become a more appropriate metaphor than I imagined just a paragraph ago.

          There is another apt Ted Williams quote: “God gets you to the plate, but once you’re there you’re on your own.”

          On my own I decided to keep wearing my new professional attire. If new clothes weren’t going to get me promoted, at least they seemed to be getting me noticed. If I wasn’t going to be taken seriously, at least I could keep them guessing. In the end I got the axe and the knit shirt boys got to stay. Sometimes it’s just hard to draw pertinent conclusions.

          An interview suit ought to be dark blue, either solid or in a muted pattern or stripe. In a pinch you may substitute black or dark grey. The shirt should be white. The tie should be striped. Everything I’ve read on the various job boards is in pretty specific agreement on these points. I don’t own a blue suit because I don’t look that good in blue. I do own a black suit, but I haven’t been able to button the jacket or the trousers for at least two years. This is the beginning of the compromises I am going to have to make.

          I don’t want to buy a blue suit because I don’t like blue suits. I don’t want to buy a black suit because I already own a black suit, and, like most overweight people, I live with the fantasy that one day I will begin to exercise and eat sensibly and lose the few pounds required to get back into my old clothes again. What I want to buy is a brown suit. I like brown. I’ve read that it is the new black. I think I know what that means, but I’m not sure that it was meant to apply to me. Because I like brown I’m going to apply it to me anyway.

          Job hunt gurus like blue because it is a sincere color. Wear blue and you come across as solid, substantial, sober, thoughtful, and mature. I’m not sure what brown says. No one has anything to say about brown because they’re all on the blue bandwagon. I think brown is sincere as well. I think brown is at least as sincere as blue—maybe more so, and here’s why. Every politician I’ve ever seen was wearing a blue, black or grey suit. Every stockbroker, banker, and insurance executive I’ve ever seen was wearing a blue, black or grey suit. Every lawyer I’ve ever seen was wearing a blue, black or grey suit. Now it’s just possible that in some utopian state of existence some of those politicians, stockbrokers, bankers, insurance executives, and lawyers may in fact be sincere, but the odds are certainly against it. Yet, owing to the blue, black or dark grey suits, all these charlatans appear to be sincere. There has to be a better litmus test for sincerity than the color of one’s suit if every scheming sneak thief bastard in the world is using his suit to proclaim his ethical worthiness.

I like brown. I think it is sincere, but even if it is not, at least it doesn’t proclaim sneak thief trying to look sincere or scam artist trying to disarm you with the appearance of inner merit. When I read over these last sentences and allow the full implications of what I think and what I’ve said to register, I begin to think that I may never get another job.

Day 31 - Toiling Away, but Adding no Value

          Today was like yesterday only more so. Gary waxed eloquent about how much he appreciated my coming in to help him wade through the closing process. It’s not like anything he’s ever seen before. I knew it wouldn’t be. It’s not like anything anyone’s ever seen before. What we deal with, what I had to deal with, is a joke among accounting systems. IT sales people used to call me up several times a month to try to sell me a new system. All those software and systems decisions were made at our corporate headquarters in Kentucky, but I always liked to talk to the sales people to see what was available and dream about how nice it would be if I could actually buy it and if it actually worked as advertized. They would always ask what apps we were using. When I would tell them, they had never heard of it. That tells you something about how antiquated and obscure our systems were.

Everything we had and everything we did related to our accounting systems was the direct result of someone trying to get by as cheaply as possible. I’ve seen a lot of this over the course of 30 years. Everybody wants to get by on the cheap when it comes to functions that are seen as non-essential or non value added. Accounting often gets short changed…and systems as well. It wasn’t until some smart software developers figured out a way to bundle the sales function into enterprise software that companies started really parting with huge money for their IT solutions. When it was just accounting they couldn’t care less. The systems lag brought on by cheapness really gets telling when companies with suddenly heightened expectations like ours start trying to get 21^st century results out of 20^th century software. I had just got out of this situation—although not by choice. Gary was now in the thick of the struggle.

Henry, my old boss, the one I would’a, could’a, should’a killed, was like that too when it came to accounting and accountants. He even thought the engineers were a useless lot. He once said to me, “Engineers and accountants—all they ever do is fiddlefrick around.” He was building custom, luxury watercraft that sold from $400,000 to over a million dollars apiece, and he tried to skimp on the engineering. Then he was surprised when his boats kept catching on fire.

I’m still feeling awful, but not getting any worse. I should probably go to the doctor, but I’ve got stuff to do and, like I said, I’m not getting any worse. Three more days and we’ll have the closing in the bag. I’ll be done with work for a while. I can quit thinking about and worrying about the place that cut me adrift because they needed someone to blame for their own inadequacies. I wonder if anyone even cares that I’m doing the honorable thing here by staying around to make sure Gary doesn’t miss a beat taking over my job. Probably not—certainly not Fritz who’s probably busy congratulating himself that Gary didn’t bolt like the other guy. I wonder if he knows how pissed off Gary is about having to do a physical inventory at the end of the month. Apparently Fritz forgot to tell Gary that fascinating little detail about his new job. It turns out that Gary hates inventories almost as much as I do. 

Day 22 - Breaking More Rocks

          The second lithotripsy was a breeze. It’s only been a week since the first one. Everything looks good. I can keep using the stint that’s already in there. I’ve had a little discomfort from the stint, but it’s easily managed with the fabulous batch of oxycodone that the urologist prescribed for the pain. I’m still getting some blood in my urine, but it’s diminished. The doctor got all the rest of the stones in the right kidney.

          Life is good. If I only had a job it’d be damn near perfect. I called the Oklahoma recruiter to see what’s up with the Aerospace firm. She promised to call me as soon as she hears something. I’m beginning to think that if they were interested I’d have heard something by now. It’s easy when you’ve been fired to get eaten up by self doubt. It doesn’t matter how arbitrary the decision or how unfairly you think you were treated. At some point you’re going to begin to think that you had it coming to you.

Everyone knows that companies use economic downturns, reorganizations and the like that result in lay-offs to get rid of the bottom ten percent—the least productive and most incompetent of employees. That’s what they’re supposed to do anyway. Because people with all their prejudices, imperfections and frailties ultimately make the decision as to who will get fired, companies often get rid of very good employees along with the legitimate culls. I know this is so because I’ve seen it happen time after time—not just to me. Still when you’re on the receiving end of a reduction in force, you have to think that someone in management must have felt that you were not pulling your weight. Somehow you have to rise above these feelings of inadequacy every day in order to function, in order to get another job, in order to get past the set-back. The longer you go without work, the harder it gets to stay upbeat about your value to the rest of the world. Trust me...I know.