No, not I, shockingly, even though the magazine industry, like most every other, is twitching on the ground and coughing up blood. But many of my friends and colleagues have been laid off, with the same randomness with regard to talent as people used to get promoted back in boom times. There but for the grace of God go I, and I don’t even really believe in God, I don’t think.
For those of you who are used to my posts being funny, a heads-up: this one is not.
Seeing talented people being tossed out like bread crusts cut off a kid’s grilled cheese got me thinking about what it means to be laid off as a grown-up and laid off as a young person with next to no clue. I was let go from my second magazine job ever (SHITCANNED from my first, but that’s a whole other story) when two magazines became one.
It was 1990 and I was making $20K, which even to a single, ramen-eating, roommate-in-Brooklyn-having 22-year-old was crap pay. Being told that my position no longer existed felt bad, certainly, but bad in that intense 20something dramatic life-is-so-hard-am-I-in-a-music-video? way that was kind of joyous at the same time as horrible. Rent wasn’t yet on Broadway, but you get the idea. I cried to my friends and started charging my ramen on that credit card they sent me in college but frankly I was living on so little to begin with that it didn’t make much difference in my quality of life. My friends bought me drinks and I had another dues-paying (read: low-paying) exploitative job for which I was over-educated by the end of the month. On to the next music video.
Now, of course, it’s something else entirely. That the stress of debt and tough choices is brutal goes without saying. For people who are being laid off as adults, after working in a field 10, 15, even 20 years, it raises a whole set of questions that someone in transition would be best not to answer until things stabilize. Did I even like my job? Often the answer is, Not really, but I would have liked to retain the option of tolerating it and fantasizing about what I’d do next. Now what?
So here’s thinking of everyone who has been laid off, or is worried about being laid off: Ramen isn’t so awful, at least until your personal and professional uptick, and there will be one.
November 20, 2008 at 5:35 pm
I ost two good editors at Redbook and I’m sure that’s just the beginning. It’s so demoralizing! And we may be rediscovering Ramen ourselves if Citibank goes Chapter 11, which it very well might–like in about 45 minutes. Ouch!
November 20, 2008 at 6:57 pm
You captured exactly how I felt about being laid off at age 40. I didn’t love my job, but I was willing to tolerate it to pay my mortgage. Ramen and I have been on friendly terms for months :-).
November 28, 2008 at 10:36 pm
I was a valued employee for 25 years at newspapers and magazines. Yet, after 10 years of loyal service, I lost my editing job at TV Guide two years in one of the many waves of job eliminations. The most recent massacres at EW and TV Guide have left many friends jobless as well, and I don’t know what everyone’s going to do. There are now more and more people looking for nonexistent jobs. Thank you for your heartfelt words. I would just ask that you not be quite as flip as to say ramen will get all of us through this. I am lucky enough to have a husband with a good job and, so important these days, good benefits, including health insurance. I don’t know where I’d be if we didn’t have that. Add to the mix a mortgage, children, car payments, the rising cost of food, etc., etc., and I really don’t know how some people are going to hang on until things get better. I can only hope this amazing team Obama is putting together can come up with some answers to pull people through this awful crisis.
November 28, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Sorry–didn’t mean to sound flip. More ramen as a symbol of simpler times, something we’re forced to return to, whether we want to or not.
December 8, 2008 at 2:17 pm
http://graphicdesignr.net/papercuts/
December 12, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Excellent content here and a nice writing style too – keep up the great work!