Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream

Once again Barbara E is right on the money with her insightful, at times funny, but always shocking commentary on searching for a white collar job in the US. She takes us through the hopes, the CV preparation, the multitude of applications to companies, the rejections or more usually the total silence from companies and the increasing despair of the job seeker. We also visit the plethora of people and companies who supposedly "help" sharpen the skills of job seekers but who do little but take precious financial resources from those who need them most, the unemployed. It is a eye opening, but sad commentary on white collar job searching in the US and makes me glad I don't live there and have to enter this lion's den.

Barbara Ehrenreich always seems to capture the feelings of the subjects she writes about. In NICKEL AND DIMED: ON (NOT) GETTING BY IN AMERICA, it was the underpaid (a few aren't) blue-collar workers. In this account, she empathizes so clearly with the devastated, unemployed middle class and the fearful, but employed, middle-class worker who knows he or she may easily be next. I have relatives and friends that are high up in reasonably big companies and they acknowledge the change in their job over the years: much more work for no greater pay. Some play the game of trying to make themselves indispensable, but are not fully confident that will work. I do have a couple negative comments. There is one disturbing, recurrent faux pas in the book. it is a (perhaps, unconscious) problem too many (especially white--I am white) people have and that is to unnecessarily identify someone as being of another race/ethnic group when it makes no sense. Here are some examples from the book: P. 143: "Some of the new people are women, even a few women of color..." P. 194: "...even the anxious-looking Asian-American man..." P. 194: "I wander into the corridor; where an older African-American woman and light-skinned young man are sitting..." P. 200: "No one works here except a few Hispanic men--day laborers, I suppose..." P. 207: "Take the case of Donna Eudovique, an African-American single mother of two..." (The above is not to imply minorities get short shrift in the book--quite the opposite--but still these descriptions are unnecessary. I can only speculate that she purposely included such references to make the book appear as not for whites only--which she doesn't single out-- or more relevant to potential minority readers, but she should have simply stuck to her theme.) The book seems to ramble on at times (when I can hear myself saying, "Get on with it!"). For example, Chapter 5's "Networking with the Lord" (27 pages) could have been summed up in one page. There is also a lot of meat in the book, which is very enlightening and almost depressing, but necessary, to read. If I had to choose a sentence that reasonably sums up the author's theme, it is on page 237: "If anyone can testify credibly to the disappearance of the American dream, it is the white-collar unemployed--the people who 'played by the rules,' 'did everything right,' and still ended up in ruin." Ehrenreich does (almost) suggest a solution to the white-collar unemployment problem: a union: "What they need, too, is not a 'winning attitude' ["cheerfulness, upbeatness, compliance,..loyalty" (p. 230)], but a deeper and more ancient quality, one that I never once heard mentioned in my search [via "transition" gurus/coaches, Internet sites, job fairs, seminars, books and networking], and that is courage: the courage to come together and work for change, even in the face of overwhelming odds" (p. 238).

I notice most of the criticism of this book focuses solely on the author and not on the fact that there is a whole industry out there that is, to put it bluntly, scamming people out of thousands of dollars and offering all kinds of conflicting advice that, those people will later admit, doesn't mean a damned thing when you head into an interview (if you even get one). While Ehrenreich's quest for a job wasn't real (she stated that a few times in the book, if people bothered reading those parts), she did express compassion for the former executives who were stuck in countless "networking" events that yielded nothing more than a few business cards and no further contact despite repeated attempts by voicemail and email. The one or two times "Barbara Alexander" did get a return call, the contact turned out to be useless. Too bad people on this page are too busy focusing on personally attacking the author as opposed to questioning the purpose of the entire job search industry. Basically what that industry is about is reinforcing the notion that "it's not what you know, it's who you know." They claim networking will land you contacts (which, majority of the time, doesn't) and they also want you to harass anyone you come in contact with for a job. You need to *pay* people to tell you that? Why not the same level of concern about people who post their resumes on all these wonderful job sites (Monster, Hotjobs, etc.), email their resume to hundreds of companies and the only bite they get is an independent contractor position that offers no defined salary and no benefits? (Or, better yet, have temp agencies call you for "information sessions" - not an interview - in a part of town not accessible by public transportation on a Saturday morning like what happened to me a year or two back). Yeah, the business world is constantly changing but does that justify someone being tossed on their derriere at the end of the day, with no advanced warning, after being complimented on doing a wonderful job for the company, because their high salaries were a perfect expense cut for the company? (Never mind CEO salaries continue to increase, even while they're busy making their corporations "lean" and "mean." Why no complaints about that?) Barbara also uncovered the fact that "gaps" are a convenient excuse for someone not to hire you. It makes zero sense that you lost your job because the Bush economy stinks (my sentiment, not Barbara's), you spend your time job searching like it was a job (what these crack "career coaches" advise people to do), and you're penalized for it in the end because you weren't working? Hello! That situation was summed up beautifully on Page 169: "If you haven't spent every moment of your life making money for somebody else, you can forget about getting a job." It's been proven time and again (I know, I've been a victim of that sentiment) and all people on this page can find time to complain about is the author's motives? The one

Barbara Ehrenreich deserves a standing ovation for writing this one. She has spoken some really uncomfortable truths that many job seekers are too uncomfortable to confront -- that is -- it's not their fault that they can't find a job in today's world. It's not their "personality", nor their "focus" or "passion." Too many of us are too content to blame things on ourselves when we get downsized or are forced to move downward to survive. It's easier to blame ourselves than to face the ugly truths of the corporate climate of today. The latter takes more courage. While I am no longer searching for a job, a lot of my friends still are. Taking "survival jobs" while searching for the real jobs that they want. Sometimes, the wait can stretch on for years. A lot of my college friends, friends who are smarter and more talented than me, had a hard time finding another job after they were laid off. They worked hard, played by the rules, even had the "right" personality, and in the end, they get left behind in this lean and mean economy. One of them went from a merchandising manager at a furniture company to a Starbucks barrista. The problem is not them. Simply, there are not enough jobs to go around today. It's like kids sitting at the family table, but not everyone is going to get food. How did this happen? Isn't this America? The land of equal opportunity? If you worked hard and prepared yourself to succeed, shouldn't you be rewarded accordingly? But as Barbara has pointed out that the rules of the game today are no longer fair. And no amount of "reinventing oneself" can solve the problem. There are larger forces shaping the world of the unemployed today, such as multiple rounds of corporate downsizing, outsourcing of white collar jobs to India and using "personality fit" as an excuse to atrocious firings so that executives could fatten up their stock compensations. Ignoring these forces and just focusing on one's "destiny" or "winning personality" is very much like putting your head in the sand. While everything looks nice and cozy down here in the tunnel, you wonder why your rear end hurts so much. Barbara's call to action at the end of the book is especially compelling. Job seekers are definitely not alone. Their pain and misery and relative invisibility is the white elephant in the room. Everybody knows its there, but nobody is willing to talk about it. As long as we remain divided, each one of us isolated in our own pain, we will remain defeated. Let's come together and change this climate. We deserve healthcare while we search for jobs and we deserve to have good paying jobs here at home, not somewhere in Bangladesh. We deserve to be valued and respected as employees for our hardwork, our creativity and our passion.

It's commonly assumed in the United States that if you go to college, get a job and work hard, you will be successful. You will own a house and a couple of cars, you will be able to afford medical care, and you will be able to educate your children to a level where they're guaranteed even more success than you've achieved. If this was ever true, it isn't anymore, and Barbara Ehrenreich shows us the results. In her first book, NICKEL AND DIMED, Ehrenreich went undercover as an unskilled worker to learn how the lowest level of workers supports themselves. They don't, she learned, because the system doesn't work, and her second book shows that the system doesn't work for the business classes either. Here, Ehrenreich poses as an out-of-work PR executive and details her job search. Franz Kafka joined forces with Charles Darwin to create the brutal, surreal corporate world the author discovers. People are downsized, laid off, forced into early retirement, and just plain fired as a matter of course in this brave new world of ours, for reasons as pointed as ageism and sexism, as arbitrary as a profitable company wanting to show more of a profit, or for no reason at all. Of course, even knowing the fragile task of holding a job in this environment, the human resources departments hold the job-seeker responsible for every unemployed minute. Working time lost to illness is unemployment, working time lost to child or elder care is unemployment, working as a consultant is unemployment. Unemployment is unemployment, and the longer such periods last, the blacker the mark against the prospective employee. You're lucky to be working, even if you're doing more work for less money over longer hours than you ever expected, even if you get no benefits, even if you survived the last round of layoffs and have no idea what will happen the next time. For if you're not working, you become one of the lost souls Ehrenreich meets. They max out their credit cards on image consultants and career coaches, each one contradicting what the last one said, on networking forums that turn out to be loosely disguised prayer meetings, on advice books, and on inspirational videos. They spend months and even years surfing the Internet and sending resumés to companies that rarely bother to respond at all. Oh, it's depressing. But it's not depressing! How could it be depressing? Jobseekers are instructed to leave behind any negative thoughts --- anger, depression or mounting panic, for instance --- in order to present a positive image in their next interview. They are warned that revealing any negativity will count against them, as will age, gender, overeducation, having children, or any interests at all beyond devoting themselves entirely to their prospective employers. Smile! In the book's conclusion, the author urges the unemployed to band together and lobby for more worker protections. I hope they make it happen, I really do. --- Reviewed by Colleen Quinn [...]