Subject: A Year of Living Dangerously 
Date: Published: 12/30/91 (119 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    A Year of Living Dangerously
    ----
    By Xander Mellish

    I've found a job now.  My days of recycling postage stamps
 and going to bad parties for a free meal are over, for now at
 least.  But for a year, I was broke, I suffered, I was
 humbled.  Some might argue that a year of clerical jobs was
 just the kind of comeuppance a smug young conservative
 deserved.
    Remember campus conservatives?  We were the big story in
 the '80s.  Those were the days when over half of the under-30
 voters went for Reagan or Bush, despite the disgust many of
 us felt for their social policies.  Those were also the days
 when it seemed perfectly credible to say that just about
 anyone who really wanted a job could find one.
    But survival of the fittest can be a depressing philosophy
 when, suddenly, you don't seem to be one of the fittest.  My
 own odyssey began last January, when I quit a poorly paid job
 with a disagreeable boss.  My decision to quit disqualified me
 from New York's unemployment compensation program.  (I don't
 suppose I showed up in the unemployment statistics.)  But with
 a solid educational background, and about five years'
 experience in my field, much of it overseas, I thought I was
 marketable.
    I was wrong.  I'm still not sure why:  I spent the past year
 in rapt self-analysis, wondering if I should go into a new
 field, wondering if I should move to another city, wondering
 if the French Foreign Legion had opened its ranks to women.
    Surely, I did everything someone who really wanted a job
 could be expected to do.  I had my resume typeset so
 beautifully it looked like a wedding invitation, and sent it
 out to companies in my field.  Nothing.  I regularly purchased
 a newspaper I hated because it had the best classifieds, and
 drafted a distinct cover letter for every appropriate ad.
 Nothing, nothing.  I made the rounds of job agencies and gave
 exceedingly personal information to dozens of smiling ladies,
 who sent me on a combined total of three interviews.  Before
 every interview, I researched the company involved and ate a
 good breakfast.  Nothing, nothing, nothing.
    I was coming to the conclusion that supply and demand
 could be a very cruel thing when the something not in demand
 was people.  The cliches about unemployment are true:  You do
 get discouraged; you do begin to doubt your worth; your false
 friends really do desert you.  I was building up the
 magnificent, bruised vanity of the unemployed.
    In this recession, even standard fallback jobs like
 waitressing and retailing have been unavailable:  I quickly
 learned my Phi Beta Kappa key opened no doors at Macy's.  I
 was lucky to have office skills:  All year, I survived on
 temporary typing and filing jobs, as well as occasional $20
 bills from my grandmother.  The temp jobs proved to be a
 learning experience on their own, since I worked in
 industries and met types of people with whom I never would
 have come in contact otherwise.  I also saw the insides of a
 lot of companies, some of which were very well-run, some of
 which were not.
    In the long run, I found a job the old-fashioned way:
 connections.  But I've got a new way of looking at the world.
 In the chimerical good times of the 1980s, I don't think we
 realized how much we were at the mercy of circumstances.
    One strike against people now in their 20s is
 demographics.  Born at the end of the baby boom, we find a
 thick layer of managers ahead of us, with those in top jobs
 often only 10 or 15 years older than we are.  These are not
 kindly old geezers seeking someone to carry on their fine
 tradition of excellence.  These are young, vital managers,
 looking less for a successor than for a vinelike assistant
 who will be photocopying well into the 21st century.  The
 smiling job-agency ladies were continually urging me to "dumb
 down" my resume to snag such a job.  One even told me to
 remove my college degree.
    I also learned a lot about American business's penchant
 for short-term thinking.  In a year of job hunting, I didn't
 come across one trainee program.
    This year, my funds confined me to a small apartment in a
 poor neighborhood, where I could see the results of the
 welfare state first hand.  It's no empty cliche that the
 liquor store on my block did wondrous business on the day
 government checks arrived, with their recipients reduced to
 begging a few days later; that some of my neighbors had moved
 to New York specifically to take advantage of the city's
 larger welfare payments.  In my neighborhood I met a few other
 conservatives, many radicals, but not one Kennedy liberal.
    Still, a year in economic Antarctica has certainly changed
 my perspective.  I have less respect for business, which seems
 more concerned with pumping up executive egos and paychecks
 than with serving stockholders.  I'm also more impressed by
 people who have, despite difficult backgrounds, made the
 climb to self-reliance.
    I do believe the government should do better at providing
 the three things no one else can:  public education, public
 health and public safety.  It should provide support for adult
 education and retraining as the economy mutates and mutates
 again.  It must not be penny-wise and pound-foolish by
 skimping on AIDS research or making it impossible for people
 to seek medical care until they are staggering into a
 hospital.  (The one handout I really coveted this past year
 was some kind of health coverage.)  And it must make it
 possible for people in poor neighborhoods to own small
 businesses without constant fears of extortion and stickups.
 I'm also not convinced that the Reagan and Bush teams have
 delivered anything like the fiscal conservatism we supported
 with our votes.
    With the newest round of cutbacks, more and more people
 will be in my situation, sincere people who do want to work.
 In the light of experience, I plan to be a little less
 arrogant and a little more supportive.  Now that I have a job,
 maybe I can help them out with a connection.
    ---
    Miss Mellish is a journalist based in New York.

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