Freedom 54

Articles

Freedom 54

By David Jenneson
June 13, 2004

There’s a place called Freedom 55, a mythical early retirement plan where you never have to work again. You sweat and save hard all your life. At last it looms dead ahead like The Big Rock Candy Mountain. You show them your ticket, walk in, and all your earthly problems vanish. Although people talk about it a lot, I’ve never met anyone who is actually there, but perhaps they do exist. I have an alternative plan which is available to anyone. Freedom 54 gets you there faster too. First, you get fired without notice on your 50th birthday. You go into shock. They give you a letter and a cheque in an envelope. Then you drive home, where you sit at your kitchen table only to realize you have to go back and get your stuff. But when you get back, there’s nothing you want. You drive home again and only then does it occur to you to open the envelope. It is a cheque for $124.50 after nine years as Marketing Director. You realize you need to call a lawyer.

Under last minute pressure of the lawsuit, the company admits they did it for political reasons. The new President wanted his own boy in there. As far as ‘gross misconduct,’ they admit it was a big mistake on their part, and they write you a letter stating that. But by then it’s too late. The lawyer takes half the settlement in fees, and the company pays out the rest in such a way that it’s taxed out of existence. Practitioners of this dark art know this is the way it works. They know word will get back that you sued the company for wrongful dismissal, won, yet ended up with nothing. It’s a message to other employees: “Never do this.” I should add that there is a clause in the judgment where the company promises not to badmouth you to the industry. They do anyway, and by then the damage is already done.

Your next stop down the road to Freedom 54: the Elephant’s Graveyard. These exist in various downtown locations, and you only recognize them if you are an elephant yourself. Your out-of-court settlement dictates that a good part of your money be paid to an outplacement agency. You walk in, spirits as high as they could be, whistling a little. The tune immediately dies on your lips. You see men like you in blue suits and fine ties, with a touch of grey, wandering aimlessly, photocopying their resumes as if it mattered. It is corporate palliative care. That’s when you know you are in much worse trouble than you ever imagined. The Elephant’s Graveyard makes you attend classes to justify the price of the program. Then they do what is called a fax-out. These are antiquated lists of fax numbers of potential employers. It is cold-calling and a throw of the dice. Working the numbers. The more faxes, the more chances. I was lucky. I’m a writer and I can do direct response letters. When my fax-out went out, I sat by the phone at home. After the first fifty calls from furious potential employers telling me to take their name off their fax lists, I got a bite.

Dotcom #1. I went to see him in Gastown and the dude was inspired, saying, “Boy, you’ve been in the trenches, so we need you as a seasoned marketer.” He called it ‘kismet.’ Explaining his product to me, it was the dorkiest thing I’d ever heard of. However , as I was broke, I did not say this. Hiring me for an immense sum, two months later the company sunk out of business. On the street again, I popped up to the surface. I did not know it at the time, but the place I surfaced was not good. I was beginning a slow drift toward the fringes of the economy, along with all the other fired fifty-somethings. At the same time, I took a course called SEARCH, which supposedly teaches you how to make your living through your art. As a fifty-something with four novels written, I have a very good agent in Washington, D.C. who currently represents several best selling authors. By nature, I am all for art and self expression, but most of the examples I saw were heartbreaking. An artist who couldn’t paint a wrecked Datsun, an insane opera singer, and a punk singer who wrote stuff derivative of Neil Diamond. I wanted to move on. Fast.

I did another fax-out from the Elephant’s Graveyard, and got a call from Dotcom #2. Although the pay was far lower, I must describe it as an instructive, spiritual awakening. An online advertising agency fuelled by a stock promoter, office furniture salesmen, and various other victims forced to sit through seven-hour board meetings. Haggard, after seven hours on coffee alone, I listened to the CEO give this final message to his employees before he flew off to New York. “Now, I wanna talk about corporate culture,” he said from the head of the table. “You got three kinds of corporate culture,” and he counted them on his fingers. “The first kind be where everyone be playing basketball in the hallways and no one gives a shit about nuthin.’ That’s your lax.” Dutifully, everyone wrote down lax. “The second kind be where no one trusts anyone, and everyone is checkin’ up on everyone all the time. That be your strict.” Everyone wrote down strict. “Now, we’re somewhere in the middle,” he continued. “We ain’t too strict, but we ain’t so lax neither. We’re … ah ….” You could tell he wanted to say ‘medium’ but it wasn’t good enough for him. He wanted something better. Classier. More flashy. Our pens were poised. He reached for the word. “We be, ahh ….” Time held its breath. “Mediocre.” Truer words…

This was not an advertising agency. It was a pump and dump stock scam. It turned out the CEO was so paranoid he spent nights reading every email employees had sent during the day. Several weeks later I was fired. I had sent an email to a friend voicing my doubts about the company’s veracity. I checked a year later. The company website was still there, unchanged, and they didn’t have a single client. As I moved further toward the fringes of the economy, the jobs became more bizarre. Dotcom #3 was an online game show run by a 20-year-old, who didn’t just run out of money — his venture capitalists scammed him so there was a lot of work done for which no one was paid. One of the final demands for proof of performance for payment was to “statistically prove that users get the proper emotional experience from using the website.”

So I did one more fax-out, and got a call from a young Chinese guy. Dotcom #4 wanted to meet downtown for coffee. Now I was desperate. On faith and hope, I put on a suit, drove downtown, and met him at a Starbucks. Describing his silly internet product in detail, he blandly proposed I come to work for him for commission only. You called me all the way over here for this? I thought. I am a big man, over six feet, and well over 200 pounds. Upon hearing his suggestion, I nearly reached across the table and throttled him. Then I imagined the headlines: “Large Well Dressed Man Chokes 98 Pound Chinese Youth at Fashionable Downtown Coffee House.” I resisted the urge, but it was another cryptic road sign toward the dark edge of the economy. I had entered The Land of Commission Only, where you cease to have any value whatsoever as an employee. The bosses and owners are full of big talk about potential. The long and short of it is you are now in a position where you are expected to finance their big dreams by investing unlimited time at no charge. That is because, as a fifty-plus man, your time has ceased to be a currency with any value. It is free. You are, in some sense, bankrupt.

By now, I was literally bankrupt. About this time I lost my house. Unable to withstand the merciless pressure and stress, my wife and I divorced. I became depressed. Making a living in The Land of Commission Only is not easy at the best of times so I thought it best to at least work for a bona fide company. I got my RESP license — that is, cold calling new parents to pester them about College Scholarship Savings Plans for their kids. I had ten years of very successful sales experience in advertising so I thought the transition would be manageable. I quickly learned that selling to the public is nothing like dealing with business people. I became more frustrated and depressed and was sent to see a shrink for it. In the meantime, I didn’t give up. I kept trying to sell RESPs while seeking ways to free myself from the odium of telemarketing. I connected with a graphics company, who upon seeing my resume were very enthusiastic about me coming on board. But, as they put it, “Paying a salary isn’t in our business model.” Out of desperation, I took it. The graphics company did big ticket jobs, most of which would take nine months to a year to develop from initial contact. I invested freely of my now apparently worthless time, while still trying to sell RESPs. Two jobs, no money.

Seeing my desperate situation, friends began offering suggestions. One was the MOVE Forward Program, where the government sponsors you to start your own business. Out here on the dark, cold, edge you have to make your own chances. Using their format, I developed a business plan and application, took it to the MOVE Forward people, and they liked it. It was submitted to a jury panel, and after a month of waiting, it was turned down because it was “too creative.” Having done business plans and presentations before, this intrigued me. I went to speak to the Move Forward people again. After going through the presentation, they admitted that it wasn’t “too creative” after all, and agreed to reconsider. In fact, they were enthusiastic and encouraging. During this time, I was naturally launching emails and resumes to all parts of the universe, which if you are over 50, is like throwing stones into the sea.

I was also working on novels and other creative proposals to keep myself sane. Sending a documentary concept to a production company, when I called them back, they were interested and wanted a meeting. By now, I could no longer afford car insurance. My last act of driving had been trying to push my out-of-gas Oldsmobile into a parking spot so it wouldn’t get busted for having no insurance. As I did this, I caused a major injury to my Achilles. I could no longer jog. Hardly walk. This prevented me from taking physical labour jobs, which up to that point, I could have done. So I took the bus over. It turned out they had read my resume and needed a Marketing Manager for their fast-growing business. I couldn’t believe my luck had changed. We entered into negotiations, and it quickly became evident I was still in The Land of Commission Only. I said no — commission only is a good way to go broke. Pay me something. More meetings. In fact, eight in all. Eight bus rides. Finally we had a deal where I would get a small up-front retainer. The day I was to start, they couldn’t afford to pay. This was puzzling to me as they already had about fifteen full time employees. More phone calls. Wait one more day. Call me in the morning. Call me by five. It was less like a job and more like waiting for a drug deal to happen. The two-month-long black comedy only ended when, at the urging of friends, I stopped phoning them.

The same day, out of desperation I called the Move Forward people again. “Yes,” they said, “The same business presentation had been resubmitted. And yes, it had been rejected again.”
“What this time?” I sighed.
“It was too professional.”
Without totally losing it, I asked him to explain.
“The committee felt you could handle this on your own. After all, it was a colour presentation, bound, with photographs and even your own logo.”
“That’s exactly the same one they saw last time and said it was “too creative.”
“That’s true.”
“So if it had been written in longhand with a rubber stamp logo I would have gotten it?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Did it occur to anyone that if I were able to do this on my own I wouldn’t have come to you?”
“I take your point,” he coughed.
I couldn’t think of anything else to do except demand a letter stating exactly that. It has never arrived.

I went to see my psychiatrist for the first time in two months. He asked me how things were going and wanted to know if my earlier optimism about the job at the video production house had paid off. I just started laughing and told him about the fiasco that had happened — eight interviews ending up with a situation where they couldn’t afford to pay me and how the whole thing had turned into a debacle. He seemed crushed; far more so than me at this point. “That is really bad luck,” he said finally. “No,” I replied, rock calm. “That is normal.”

Sometimes it feels like my shrink and I are sitting around a camp fire and I am telling him stories. Perhaps I am his first patient who can do this. In an effort to cheer him up, I told him I had applied to the Canada Council for a grant to finish my latest novel, Moon Over Wal-Mart. I shoved an endorsement letter from my agent across the table, which read in part: “I wish to sincerely endorse David Jenneson as a candidate for the Canada Council Grant. When I first read Mr. Jenneson¹s writing, I knew that he had something special: a unique and endearing sense of style.

In my tenure at this literary agency., I have had the good fortune of working with a number of best-selling authors. A distinct percentage of those markedly successful authors found their audiences and impacted readers worldwide by imparting the flavor, folklore, and wisdom of their native communities. These authors have not just presented bare facts, nor bare fiction. In their meticulous craftsmanship of words and thoughts, they passed on a part of themselves and their communities. In each one of the writing projects by Mr. Jenneson that I have had the pleasure of reading, I recognize a similar level of craftsmanship and community pride.

The pride and skill with which Mr. Jenneson portrays his home and country is one matter for commendation. Another, no less important, matter for your consideration is the quality of his writing and the potential for his work to become a serious contribution to your nation¹s culture. Here too, Mr. Jenneson¹s MOON OVER WAL-MART promises to stand out. Judging from his previous writing, I am confident that Mr. Jenneson will handle the subject of World War I and the sorrow of armed conflict in a memorable and thoughtful way; one which will appeal to and impact readers both in Canada and abroad.
My shrink seemed briefly cheered.
“When does this happen?”
“I don’t find out for eight months. And I hear they always say no to first-time applicants.” For the rest of the session, he appeared to get gloomier as I described what else had happened and my current state. The only really positive thing he had to say was, “Your situation is twice as bad because you have expectations. A lot of people in your situation have just given up and resigned themselves to living in poverty for the rest of their lives, but you still expect some sort of success.”

I told him I didn’t expect much of that anymore. I’d just been turned down by a butcher shop. I didn’t know what I should do next, but it sure was hard facing each day looking at the same brick wall. I didn’t know where I would find the strength. It ended with the poor shrink walking out shaking his head at the end of the hour. I swear he was more depressed than I was. I felt sorry for him. It reminded me of a scientist walking out of the laboratory where his experiment has gone terribly wrong and he’ll have to start over.

But there are plenty more like me walking the streets, still dressed like we count for something. We don’t feel marginalized. We are. We live in a parallel universe to yours, exactly like this one except where money and jobs don’t exist. We see and hear others walking down the street and driving in cars, but we can’t participate. Each of us is sealed off by an invisible bubble of anxiety and zero opportunity. The streets and buses and alleys have an impervious, grainier look to us, barring the way. The only thing that has kept me sane is being able to write. Of the four pieces I have finished, the first one was short-listed for The Roberston Davies Prize by Chapters. My agent is convinced my first one will do very well once he finds a publisher, as will the rest. So I have more hope than most. Or expectations, as my shrink would put it. The shrink wanted to put me on more anti-depressants, but I told him there is no pill on earth to fix this. Nothing touches the sensation of hearing everyone around you who have safe jobs for civilized companies talk about early retirement, about Freedom 55, while you have done nothing different than them and you are hopelessly bankrupt. You could take so many anti-depressants you’d end dressed up like one of those advertising characters you see dancing on the street — a life sized Prozac pill like Mr. Peanut — and you’d still be furious and sad.

Age discrimination in the workplace has been given the quaint, old fashioned name of Ageism. A recent study suggests that of the 3.6 million unemployed people between the ages of 50 and 64 in the UK, many are involuntarily unemployed, and are finding it impossible to get work. Sixty percent of unemployed people in this age bracket are classified as either sick or disabled. The study was commissioned by Business Europe. Its author, Sean Rickard, said it’s probable that many of these accept retirement on these bogus grounds only after they have discovered how impossible it is to get a job when you’re over 50. When I was at my original job, at the end, the environment was so abusive and hostile that I called Employment Standards to get advice. The first thing they told me was this was the busiest number in the entire Government phonebook. Second was that over half the calls were from employees being abused emotionally or verbally. Third was they couldn’t do anything about it. “We cannot legislate behaviour,” they said.

Last year, the U.S. Hostile Workplace survey — the largest to date — found that one in six U.S. workers have experienced severe disruptive mistreatment in the past 12 months. A British study found it was much higher – 53 percent. Of those workers, 94 percent reported severe anxiety and excessive worry; 84 percent couldn’t sleep; 82 percent could no longer concentrate; 49 percent experienced shame and embarrassment that altered their personal lives; and 41 percent were diagnosed with depression. They suffer from what is now known as work trauma.

Twin demons: ageism and abuse. Statistics aside, I can offer more personal anecdotal data. Of the three other fifty-somethings who were axed after me, the first was so shattered he became a minister. The second is now permanently disabled with chronic back pain. The third, a year after he was fired, came down with a sudden cancer. I sat by his bedside as the morphine took him. His eyes rolled. Jaw slack. Tongue lolling. As I squeezed his hand and stroked his cheek, I whispered that we had not suffered in vain. I based the main character in my most recent novel on him — Moon Over Wal-Mart, the story of an abused white collar worker. As we drove back, I was deeply depressed. We were crossing a bridge when suddenly a pair of bald eagles swept past in front of us right at eye level. My girlfriend started crying. When I asked her what was wrong, she said, “Doug sent them. That’s him and you.” He died recently. Job related stress is a hard master.

The government should legislate an end to the working life of those so victimized. Maybe they could put us in big camps with trees around them where we get to play bingo and eat in a mess hall. Then at least we’d be together. Instead of the Freedom 55 crowd, we’d be Freedom 54. This plan allows you to be free of most earthly encumbrances, and become a sadu — one of those old men in India who foreswear all earthly possessions and walk about the earth begging until they curl up and die like an insect. I’m not saying it’s bad. It’s just different. Like my shrink said, I have expectations. My expectations were the last thing I expected to lose.

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About the author: David Jenneson is a writer and noveliest who lives in Vancouver, Canada. You may reach him at his website www.davidjenneson.com email: dmail@telus.net

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