Static on the Line

"Second verse....same as the first."

It's been one year, nine months, fifteen days since I got the call saying that I was closing the file on being unemployed. It's also been two years, one month and eight days since the last time I sat in an office looking across from a boss I didn't respect who was feeding me a steaming pile of insincere half-truths.

"Budgetary reasons" he said as he reached across the table to shake my hand. I looked at his hand, slightly shaking, then withdrawing, then drawing tightly to his body as he excused himself out of the conference room.

Cut ten minutes later, after the unfortunate human resources lady has finished her spiel and I'm being escorted out by the lanky security guard, who asks me what my plans are. I tell him it might be a little early for plans considering I was just told moments ago that I was without employment. He apologized, thinking I was one of the group from a few weeks prior that had been alerted to their working demise before it actually happened. Respectable style. I, myself had no such luck. One to the back of the head. Check the pockets.

He took the numbered hang-tag that allowed me to park in the parking lot without getting towed and shook my hand and wished me the best. I saw an acquaintance who asked how I was and I told her I was fired. She didn't really know what to say. I didn't either.

I texted a friend to bring my backpack outside, since I wasn't allowed to go to my desk, and a few minutes later she and another friend came out with my bag, stuffed with desk tchotchkes and got to see me cry in my car and wonder what the hell was going on and why it was happening to me.

Is this really happening again?

GUEST POST: Unemployed Year-In-Review

EDITOR'S NOTE: Another guest post, from another friend of U.F. that has been out of work, this time for exactly a year yesterday. Please take a second to comment if you dig it. Thanks.

Today was a bad day. For a lot of reasons, actually.

Mainly, it was a day I had been dreading for a week or so now. Sept. 3, 2009 is the one-year anniversary of what has become, in retrospect, the worst day of my life.

Only 365 days and about 12 hours ago, my cell phone rang at what I'll guess was 8:30 a.m. This was odd for a number of reasons, the foremost being that sportswriters, as a general rule, don't like to be awake before noon. I'd been called at 11 a.m. before, and I was fine with that. Reasonable people, I assume, will have been up for at least three hours by this point. But 8-freaking-30? This is the civilian equivalent of being called at 4 a.m., I think.

On the other end of the call was the editor for the smaller paper that technically employed me, even if I did split my time more or less down the middle between it and its much-larger affiliate newspaper. There was something odd about his tone of voice, but given my inexperience with the time of day, I figured I just didn't know what people sound like before The Price is Right ends.

"(My name), it's (his name).. uhhh," he started, "There's something going on. I need you to come into the office as soon as possible."

My first thought was that "as soon as possible" could only refer to a time that was much closer to lunchtime (I promise that I will soon stop making references to how early this call came, but I cannot impress upon you enough that it was very jarring). I grudgingly drove to the office without showering and it only dawned on me that this might be The Day as I was about halfway there. That made the back end of the ride seem like forever, you understand.

When I arrived at the office, the editor that called me was nowhere to be found, so I dicked around on the internet for close to an hour before the paper's EIC poked his head in the sports office and said with a sigh, "Oh, (editor) hasn't talked to you?" My life didn't flash before my eyes as I followed him into his office, and I didn't feel my whole body tighten when I saw that a second person, another higher-up within the editorial department, waiting in the office.

I don't recall what was said in that office, except that I just muttered "Yup" a lot throughout the five minutes or so it took them to explain that I was out on my ass and then make me sign some papers to this effect (what indignity!). I don't remember much else except that, like everyone else that's been laid off the past two years or whatever, "it has nothing to do with performance." In my case, I knew that much was true since I'd been nominated for and won a number of New England Press Association awards (and indeed some more came in after I got laid off, and I heard through the grapevine that this was much to the embarrassment of the editor who called me that morning/decided I'd get the axe, which was a bright spot this year for sure). These awards, however, offered no consolation.

Neither did the woman to whom I was whisked, whose company the newspaper had hired just for this occasion (and probably cost about half my annual salary for a day's work). She was, I'd guess, in her late 60s or early 70s, and seemed nice enough as she explained that everyone I knew would understand my plight and that it was okay for me to be angry. I remember exactly what I said to her, with what I think was disaffected nonchalance: "I want to punch you in the fucking face right now." To her infinite credit, she took it in stride. I imagine she got that response a lot.

I made a number of calls on the ride home, to my girlfriend at the time, to my parents, to my now-ex-coworkers. None of them had much to say to me other than, "Oh, that blows."

I kind of can't believe it's been a year since that sunny, doom-filled morning. I don't feel like a different person now, or anything like that. I just feel as empty as the days that have rolled past with an irritating lack of speed under a microscope, while the weeks and months have positively flown by. I got sick of playing XBOX every day at least nine months ago, and yet here I am. I've sent out literally hundreds of resumes and heard back on a percentage that's right below the Mendoza Line. Actual interviews? One in 20. Maybe. As it happens, people that hire other people are assholes.

But as I reached this first birthday of the shitty part of my post-college life, something that was too cruel to be coincidence happened: for the first time since college, my checking account is below $100. My "generous" severance checks stopped arriving at my house just two weeks after I stopped arriving at work. My unemployment payments ran out four months ago. My various part-time jobs as a hockey writer have, understandably, not paid very well in the hot summer months. In stark contrast to the ice on which hockey is played, it was my liquidity that started melting away come June.

I don't know for sure when I'll get my next paycheck from anyone. I don't know what I'll do for food and gas when that $100 dwindles to $0 sometime next week. I don't know anything. Except that this has been the worst year of my life in a goddamn runaway. And also that, while I thought writing this would be cathartic, it has, instead, just made me feel worse.

Blah.

Ringing In Your Ears

One thing the Unemployment experience teaches you is to be humble.

After a harrowing, near-death experience (from nerves, not actual real danger) buying clothes and getting, *ahem*, groomed for The Big Interview last week, I entered the period known as "Waiting For The Call" where all of your senses are heightened and any sound, from a bird chirping to a cat throwing up to the mailman pulling up to the mailbox all the way at the end of the driveway -- sound like your phone ringing.

But it's never really ringing until you go to take the dog outside.

During this stage of your Unemployment, you will occasionally think it's ringing when it's not (which is key to the whole experience) you will, if you are in any way high-strung, have what we call anxiety. Some of us who are little more high-strung than others have what can only be referred to as panic attacks. For those of you that aren't as perceptive of everything going wrong in your world, or just lucky enough not to be ridden with anxiety, I can best describe this with a quote from Chris Hardwick, who broke it down to it's brutal explanatory truth.

"A panic attack is like getting fucked in the HEART. "

You can beat these attacks.

The key to getting around this is to tell yourself you don't want a job.

It's not the end of the world if they don't call. (Yes, it is.)

To breathe (which will happen anyway, I assure you) and to focus on your breathing. (Oh God, I'm breathing...)

To keep your heart rate down and to avoid caffeine, if you can. I can't. (I won't.)

Or you can just be a real functioning human who doesn't think that not getting a call from someone who might give you a job will make your head explode like you're an extra in Scanners. Do whatever you think works best.

So I'm in "Waiting For The Call" mode and what do I get? My old friend Insomnia! You might remember Insomnia from earlier in the Unemployed Files, where he visited for several weeks. I quickly went from DayWalker to Bill from True Blood, burrowing into the ground at Sun Up and only peaking out once that damned fire orb goes back behind the trees and wherever it goes when I am amongst the living.

Of course, insomnia is no good when you're "Waiting For The Call." Mostly, because those that could potentially be making the call are awake, and outside, and wearing pants and are at an office and ostensibly, on the phone...

..and they're calling you while you're sleeping.

Of course, sleeping really doesn't happen either, since you're in "Waiting For The Call" hypersensitive senses mode where your reflexes are augmented by 315% and your needs for sustenance and rest are negated by the needs or wants of, well, what you think you need or want.

So every noise wakes you up. REM sleep is a thing of the past. Dreams are gone. Nightmares prevail. They adapt quickly, like a virus, learning to strike quickly in the short times you make an appearance in the Land of Nod. Tense muscles give way to body aches, and the sleeping positions that work for you also make you snore, and therefore, don't work for the wife, so you're forced into an uncomfortable position that makes you snore less and Oh, Why Not: Stop Breathing.

All this fun multipled by a few days of it plus the general uneasiness of being Unemployed in general leave you with a Unshaven, Grumpy, Surly, Un-rested, Jumpy, Skiddish, Ill-Mannered, Over-Tense, Heart-Fucked, Soulless, Panic-Ridden, Anxiety monkey waiting for a call from a potential employer.

I got one. I had the phone in my hand when it happened.

Remember the interview from my last dispatch that I killed at?

It was those guys.

Remember how I thought I killed at that interview?

I did.

They love me.

They think I'm incredible.

They're so impressed by my abilities and how I came across and were so happy to meet me.

And, that they offered someone else the job.

Well, there you go.

I was told they liked me a lot, and want to work with me in the future, and that they'll keep me in mind.

I said thanks for the opportunity and hung up the phone, and looked out the window. I saw a bird on a tree and the mail truck pulling up to the mailbox.

Suddenly they just didn't sound like the phone anymore.

Nothing does. Because the phone's not ringing.

It's hard not to take it personally, because every call that doesn't happen, and every call that does but includes a "I'm sorry to inform you..." is just another in a long line of the thing that most humans are allergic to called rejection.

It's become a theme this year, and the worst part is that I'm getting used to it.

I'm an Invisible Man walking through a society that's drudging on around me, pushing my way up and down the aisles of stores in slow motion while the manic hysteria of the working world goes on around me. I hear about The Unemployed on the news and in the papers and on the internet, but I never see any of them because I suspect they're all on odd-time schedules and have become recluses like I have.

It's hard not to feel like the only one living this reality.

It's even worse when you realize that you're not the only one.

The production world that I used to be a part of has been described many times as "A Lot of Hurry-Up-And-Wait" and I'm finding that's more true now, and appropriate for more situations than just that tiny block of the entertainment business.

Jobs come and go and opportunity comes knocking when you least expect it to. If you're wanting it too much, you might as well just kiss it goodbye.

You have to remind yourself that work doesn't define you and life is what you make it.

Sometimes you need some rejection to put that back in frame of focus for you.

You Ain't Allowed To Do Them Things

Day One and I was down in it. The first night was bad. Interrupted by several bouts of sleeplessness, anxiety ridden jolting and tossing and turning. I wasn't sure if I was mad, or hurt, or angry or what. What I did know was that my phone was ringing constantly, with a lot of people telling me not to worry about it, and that my bosses were jerks, and that things would be better. While I appreciated their sentiment and the fact that they called me on my worst day instead of just, you know, a normal day, it just didn't help.

I had made plans with my friend who had also been let go to meet him at the Unemployment Office so that we could make as quick a strike as possible in making sure our funds kept coming, whatever the size of the hit would be dropping from a real salary to an approximation given to you by the State.

The Unemployment office is all the way across town. I had been given word it opened at 8 a.m., so I made my way down at 7 a.m. There was already a line by the time I found the place and parked my car. Fifteen people or so deep. They'd obviously been here before and gone through it. Some were sitting on the floor leaning against the wall of the building catching a quick snooze and other were reading a True Crime novel that was dog-eared and beaten down from multiple perusings. After several minutes there, many more people had arrived. Some had greeted others as if this was a regular occurrence. I called my friend, who had not showed yet, and told him he might want to make it down there with the quickness so he'd have a shot of being there with me while it went down. Frankly, I was glad he was in this with me, because I, at the heart of it all, was just scared. I wanted someone I knew, and was comfortable with, just to be there. To talk to and to make jokes with, and to try to get my brain off of what was suddenly suddenly the all-encompassingly deep end of the pool which was currently my life.

He finally showed right as the doors were opening. There was a fork in the line of "People who had been here and signed up" to the left to stand in one line, and "People who had never been here before and hadn't signed up" to the right, where we were ushered into a room full of strange seemingly late 1990's desktop computer with CRT screens and bulky laser mouses to sign up on. A fully functioning disinterested team of state drones were our multi-headed Charon, leading us down the River Styx that is the Path of Unemployment. Answering questions about why we were currently unemployed (My answer at the time, if answering honestly, would have been "I don't know.") and how long we'd been unemployed ("One day") and the other staples of signing up for anything, from a newsletter to your temporary monetary lifeline were all on this computer screen.

Once all that was filled out, I saw on the screen what they estimated that I would be making. I was disheartened because it wasn't much, or at least as much as I was used to, but I was happy that it was more than I thought I was going to make.

I pulled out my iPhone, hit the "Camera" button and took a picture of the computer screen just to keep a shot of what I would be making as a reminder for later, in case there were any discrepancies. I then clicked "Next" and moved on in my sign-up form.

Not five seconds later I felt an over-manicured bony hand grip my shoulder and I looked up to find a bright aqua/turquoise/purple/hot pink monstrosity of a flowery print dress attached to a woman with a fucking flat top who was staring a hole through me.

HER: "You ain't allowed to do THEM THINGS."

ME: "Excuse me?"

HER: "You ain't allowed to be takin' no cam-er-uh pickshas with your tela-phone-uh."

ME: "Oh, uh...well, I didn't know that, I was just trying to--"

HER: "You were just tryin' to what?"

ME: "I was just trying to keep what I was making for my records, just so I'd know-- "

HER: "They give it to you on A SHEET."

ME: "Well, I'm sorry...I didn't kno--"

HER: "You didn't know?"

ME: "No, ma'am."

HER: "Mmm-hmm..."

And she walked off.

I was shaken.

I was pretty shocked. I was pretty pissed. I was pretty shocked and pissed. There was nothing in this building that said I couldn't take a picture of the stupid computer screen just because I wanted to have on record what the hell I was going to be making because I was now unemployed, which I might add, was not something I wanted to fucking be. Who the hell are you, and why are you being such a bitch and why is it such a big deal that I took a picture anyway. FUCK.

I took a deep breath. I was about to get crazy.

I saw "Flat-Top" walk by again, looking just above the eyeline of everyone trying to get her attention. I tried valiently to get her attention (because hey, she'd at least talked to me, unlike the other ladies who were just walking around staring down the Great Unwashed that they were forced to cohabitate with.) to ask her a question about a different part of the sign-up but she was in full ignore mode by that point as well.

This was my lot in life. At this point, I was thinking about Kafka. I was revisiting high school readings of The Trial and wondering if I would ever be told what I was on trial for. Why these people were staring at me and treating me like this.

I looked around and noticed a lot of other people with what probably was on my mind as well. It was best described as a slow moving parade of hopelessness.

I was done filling out my stuff. My friend finished his as well. We walked out of that room and handed a lady our forms. We were then ushered right back into the room we were just in before. Directed to new computers that were in reality old computers, and instructed how to do very simple things we already knew how to do on the computers. We were given usernames and passwords and were searching for jobs that were available in the State's database.

Once we were clear on how this worked, we were pointed to a waiting room. My friend and I tried to make light of the situation. Compared what our answers were to things on the sign-up list, and shared amazement at the ratio of crying babies to drunk looking people. (Nearly even.)

I pointed out a lady who was close to 6'3" with a script tattoo on her arm proclaiming her as "Big Sexy." He pointed out a little kid, probably two years old, that was sitting on the floor by his mother, as she waited in line, loudly yelling "Wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-aw-wa-wa-wa-wa-aw-wa-aw-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-aw-w-aw-aw-w-aw-aw-aw-aw-aw-wa" without her so much as raising an eyebrow. Of course, everyone else in line was noticing it.

Forty minutes went by. Then, another thirty. Twenty more. My friend and I were running out of things to talk about. We're staring off into space. I pointed out that one of the State jobs is for an assistant cook at a remote Log Cabin in a State Park followed by an opening for a Pediatrician Doctor. We both agreed we fall somewhere firmly in between, or at least we used to, as far as salaries went. None of that matters now, of course.

They called my name. I quickly got up and followed the person who yelled my name into another room without so much as a "see you in a few" to my friend. I was focused and I wanted to get out of there. I'm led into a room full of cubicles as far as the eye can see. Grey, and boring. No personality. It is freezing. So cold that it hurt. I'm led into one particular cubicle on the front row of the thousands (I possibly might be exaggerating, but in my head it seems like even more, going on, ad nauseum, forever.) The man I am inhabitating it with is a frail-looking, gaunt gentleman with thick sweater on (It's June, by the way) and coke bottle glasses, doesn't acknowledge my presence, and is thumbing through a manilla folder in his cold, freezing, boring little office.

We sit there for at least five minutes and my mind is moving back into wondering what kind of Kafka-esque situation I've entered myself into before he looks up with a faint insincere little grin on his face and mumbles "So, you're here for Unemployment insurance?" I agree that I indeed am here for just that. We then go through what they refer to as a qualification interview. I get to re-answer all of the questions that I had previously answered just an hour and a half before on the computer in the realm of "Flat-Top" and give him the same answers that I gave the computer.

He gave me a print out telling me what I would be making on unemployment. It's the same amount and the same information that I had taken a picture of in the Computer lab. "Flat-top" was off somewhere else in the building -- I'm sure -- feeling quite vindicated in her rightness.

He took me through the rules and the steps of what I'd need to do every week to report to the Unemployment office and finally hands me the manilla folder he'd previously been thumbing through while I uncomfortably had sat in his office in the beginning of our visit.

He reached across the desk, finally making eye contact and sent me on my way with a handshake and a mumbled good luck. As I walked out of the cubicle I looked back at him and he was already onto something else, possibly glad to be rid of the schmuck who had paid him his most recent visit.

I walked out of the cubicle farm back into the holding tank, getting my first view of the rest of the people in the Waiting Room, who are all making the same expression I probably was once the novelty of being in that room wore off. It happens quick.

I made my way through there, and past the Computer lab and out into the humid air. I texted my friend, telling him I was outside and that I'd wait for him in my car. Ten or fifteen minutes later, he came out and we talked about how awkward and strange it was to go from what we were doing the day before to what we were doing on this day. We made a few jokes about the people who worked there and their attitudes. We made vague attempts at making plans in the face of having absolutely no plans and I told him I'd make good on that beer he wanted to go have the day we got let go.

We said our goodbyes and our keep-in-touches, and then went our seperate ways.

I haven't seen him in person since then.

Where The End Begins

I'd been working where I worked for a while. Seven years to be exact. In fact, the day I was fired was one week exactly after my seventh year working for my workplace.

It came as a shock and it didn't. I hadn't always gotten along with my supervisor, who was just another supervisor in a litany of supervisors stacked to the ceiling, who were underneath another pile of Vice-Presidents leading up to some guy who owned the place, but enough about that.

Things are tough all over. I realize this. More now than then, but I do and did get it. Things were tight, budgets were being slashed, and the company even sold one of their private planes and let the pilot (who'd been there even longer than I have) go.

The week before it happened, a buddy of mine who was also let go and myself were perceptive enough to notice a lot of closed-door meetings. A lot of hushed talk. People were acting strangely all around. We got a cryptic e-mail telling all of us to "be in the office" one Thursday afternoon for a meeting. Then our supervisor told us "the visitors weren't going to be coming" and the meeting was canceled.

We had speculated and gossiped all day about "why would our boss tell us to be at work during work hours?" And, "why can't he just talk to us now...he's in the next room..."

The weekend happened, and we were off for Memorial Day, and bright and early the Tuesday following it I went into work.

An hour and a half later, I was taking cardboard boxes full of seven years of work detritus back to my car wiping away tears of shock. I was floored. I didn't see it coming. Never expected it to happen. This guy in my department who was also a manager told me he'd tell me all about it. It's over two months later and I haven't heard a peep. Probably doesn't hurt that I banned and blocked everyone I'd directly worked with on any and all social networking I have in my path.

Moments after I had staggered to my desk after being told that I was part of some budget cuts and that it wasn't performance based, but "budgetary" my friend got called in and was told the same thing. He had a different reaction as he'd longed to have the freedom to travel and do things outside of what we'd done at our job. All I remember was my head boss, a V.P., being in the room and saying "This sucks."

The visitors, my head boss and the HR lady, had arrived on this day. Odd to realize we would've been let go five days earlier. At least I had a okay Memorial Day, due to one of the other folks being let go being on vacation the day they were originally going to do it. Hence, the "visitors not coming over" on that day.

He invited me to have a beer, but all I really wanted to do was be by myself. It felt at the time like I'd wasted nearly a decade of trying really hard, and doing good work, and being loyal in the face of good job offers when I could have taken them for nothing. Here I was, with my box of inside jokes from a job I didn't have anymore. My friend and I made plans to go to the Unemployment office the following day.

The strangest part was going to our main office to drop off my keys so that the gears would start turning for my getting any sort of seperation pay. They'd had a meeting that morning to tell everyone that still had a job that several of us had lost ours. When I entered the building to drop off my keys, no one, and I mean no one was at their desks. So my last visit to the place I'd worked the last seven years was a solitary silent affair.

Surreal, to say the least.

I saw the lady who handled our travel in the parking lot. She seemed shocked to see me and told me that she was "really sorry to hear what happened" and I just said "Okay."

The ride home was strange. Telling my wife was even stranger.

My next post will be the very weird tale of my friend and I going to the Unemployment office. It's a doozy.