'Not Working' reflects the adaptability of today's workforce -- Career Center Blog

July 9, 2012

'Not Working' reflects the adaptability of today's workforce

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By Randy Woods
NWjobs

A woman finds out she is being laid off from her bank job via email attachment after 22 years of service. A man shows up one morning at his office to find a padlock on the front door and all the desks cleaned out. Another man is told he is being let go by his own wife, who worked in the human resources department. Then there's the HR executive who is forced to terminate hundreds of workers she had helped hire and nurture over a 20-year career in the same firm, only to be eliminated herself once she was done.

These and other grim, real-life stories from today's Great Recession survivors are recounted in a new book, "Not Working: People Talk About Losing a Job and Finding Their Way In Today's Changing Economy." Last Saturday, the author, DW Gibson, gave a reading of some excerpts from the book at the Elliott Bay Book Co.

"This is the story of becoming unemployed through no fault of one's own, due to circumstances beyond one's control," Gibson said. Many euphemisms are used to soften the blow of these actions (laid off, fired, surplused, RIF'd, released, sacked, etc.), but none of them, he added, "fully serve the experience of having your work, identity, livelihood and dignity swept out from underneath you."

Conceived as a darker counterpoint to Studs Terkel's seminal 1974 oral history, "Working," Gibson's "Not Working" project is a series of interviews with dozens of people whom he met during an epic cross-country drive last summer and fall, from Fresno, Calif., to Camden, N.J., with filmmaker MJ Sieber and playwright Mallery Avidon. Together, the three artists are planning to turn the book's stories into a documentary film about the collective psychological shock of corporate layoffs between 2007 and 2011, and the corresponding rise of what's being called the "precariat class" -- those who jump from one low-wage job to another with little security.

The book itself can be an emotional read. Those who've recently experienced a layoff may find themselves having disturbing flashbacks. Almost every story has a slightly different anecdote about how each worker was called into the boss's office for an "unscheduled meeting," but the dread felt is universal. Many describe bouts of depression, overindulgence in food and/or alcohol, loss of friends and the persistent shame of having to go on welfare or apply for food stamps.

"Not Working" should not be considered a self-help manual for job seekers. The chief purpose of the book is to document and analyze the psychic damage of the Great Recession, not necessarily how to recover from it. But there are inspirational passages in several of the narratives about how workers used this professional trauma as a catalyst for pursuing career choices they never would have chosen otherwise:

an out-of-work architect decides to pursue a long-neglected penchant for horticulture;

a private investigator declares bankruptcy and later becomes a security consultant;

a former radio executive creates her own website for identifying dog-friendly restaurants;

a newspaper feature writer and brain-tumor survivor turns freelance and begins writing her own popular monthly unemployment column. (Hey, that sounds familiar!)

For most of these resilient workers, their new careers brought in a fraction of the annual income they had earned before the recession, yet many said they were pleasantly surprised to find a degree of satisfaction in their new and unexpected professional environments. The stories in "Not Working" are initially about upheaval and anxiety, but the overarching theme is the remarkable adaptability and optimism of the American worker.

As one laid-off home-care worker told Gibson, "I really feel like this happened for a reason, because I'm finding out how strong I am in one aspect and how weak I am in another." The nearly 60-year-old woman, who is pursuing a nursing degree, went on: "It's not what happens to you, it's how you handle it once it does."

Also present at the reading was Gibson's personal friend Erik Hill, a Tacoma-based former salesman for a carpet- and tile-cleaning firm, whose layoff story is also told in the book. Hill lost his job during the implosion of the national real estate market and just before his wife became pregnant with their only child. Yet through it all, he was able to fall back on his family and friends for support and has found some stability and fulfillment at a printing and copying company.

Hill pointed out a fact that many of today's spreadsheet-obsessed employers have largely forgotten: "That little number you see on column A, row seven, is an actual person with a wife, with a kid, with a car payment, with a mortgage, and is actually from your country, from your neighborhood, and is a viable person in the community."

To order copies of Gibson's book and find out more about the development of the upcoming documentary, visit the Not Working Project website.

Randy Woods writes about job-search tools, networking techniques and other tips to help you land your dream job.