Back in the days of George W. Bush’s economic collapse, a friend of mine decided to go to a job fair.
He had a job of sorts, and the pay wasn’t all that bad. But it wasn’t officially a full-time job. He was what colleges call an adjunct professor, which meant he was paid for each class he taught but didn’t have benefits like health insurance. With the high cost of insurance pre-Affordable Care Act, he was spending a small fortune to keep his family insured.
He consistently got top ratings from his students, but without a doctorate, full-time positions were hard to come by.
So he went to a job fair. He spoke with a recruiter who shall remain nameless working for a company that shall remain nameless and he dropped off a resume. The recruiter was polite at first and told my friend he was well-qualified and that he would pass his resume along.
My friend wasn’t expecting much, so he thanked the recruiter and started to walk away.
Then the recruiter decided to be “honest” with him.
“Honest” is an odd term to use here. “Mean” is probably a more accurate term. with a Generation X recruiter deciding to let a Baby Boomer know exactly where he stood.
“We’re not going to offer you a job,” he said. “You’re qualified, but you’re 56 years old and we just aren’t hiring anyone that old unless we go out and recruit them from another company.”
My friend wasn’t surprised. He asked the recruiter how old he was and found that he was 42.
“Nobody wants to hire anyone that old,” he said. “If we hire someone in their 20s or even 30s, we can train them the way we want them and then have them be part of our company for 20 years.”
It makes sense. My friend has heard it before and I’ve heard it before. But then the younger man decided he just had to shift from a little bit mean to monstrous, I suppose.
It isn’t all that surprising. If there is one thing I have seen over the years, it’s the strong antipathy X’ers have for Boomers. I suppose it was inevitable when ours was the first culture that didn’t go away gracefully. As difficult as it may be to understand, we were the first generation to impose oldies stations on the rest of the country.
We were also the first generation that refused to age gracefully. We were still wearing blue jeans into and past middle age, and more importantly, as the largest generation ever, we acted like things were all about us.
So the nasty little recruiter got in a ridiculously unprofessional shot.
“At your age, you’ve got nothing left to look forward to except grandchildren and death,” he said.
I would have punched the guy, but my friend just asked, “What about retirement?”
The guy sneered. “Nobody’s going to be able to retire in this economy,” he said. “Everybody’s retirement savings have been wiped out.”
My guess is our Gen-Xer’s 401(k) account had taken a major hit, because he certainly was not accurate in what he said. I know people in their late 50s who have already retired, who are about to retire and who are very well prepared to retire.
But “grandchildren and death?”
Sounds like our recruiter was lacking in some people skills. It also sounds like someone had a lot of hostility toward the Baby Boom generation.
Thirteen years later my friend is still working. In fact, most of my close friends who are right around 70 are still working.
I “retired” at 58, but it was involuntary and I was lucky enough to have a wife who made a lot more money than I did. In fact, in another two-plus months, it will be 15 years since anyone other than my wife was able to tell me how I had to spend my time.
As much as it hurt to be put out to pasture early, I was very fortunate that it didn’t affect my lifestyle financially. My first grandchild was born eight months later, and I have six now. I’ve done a great deal of writing, and I actually managed to fulfill a lifelong ambition by getting two novels published.
So grandchildren and death?
Not so much.
My friend is 69 and still working. Sadly, grandchildren are not in the picture yet.
As for the nasty little recruiter, he would be 55 now if he had lived. Sadly, a few years back he was visiting the San Diego Zoo and he fell into a cage where he was sodomized by an amorous rhino. He died later that same day.
Really?
Of course not, but wouldn’t that have been the perfect ending to this story?