Bait and Switch by Barbara Ehrenreich Read Free Book Online Page A

that he is bitter—his word—because space turns out to be a dark, almost belligerently undecorated he gave eleven years to Time Warner and has just been laid off in basement suite. Pamela, who's about fifty and dressed in a some inexplicable corporate reorganization, leaving him with two teenagers to f e e d a n d e d u c a t e . S o t h e s e a r e m y W h e n I n o d i n a g r e e m e n t a n d s a y t h a t I a m a l s o
    p e o p l e , m y n e w constituency—men, and now a few women, consulting—a
    term I've learned to substitute for
    who will go home as I will to a desk off the dining room and freelancing— he observes that "that's what they want us an afternoon of lonely web searching.
    all t o be —consultants." Because then they can use us when I had worried about not having an elevator speech prepared they need us and get rid of us when they don't—no benefits or but none of the people I talk to offers one, much less asks to other entanglements involved.
    hear mine. What were Kimberly and Joanne thinking of? Most At 10:00 the meeting is opened by Merle, who explains that the of the job searchers present wear expressions of passivity and
    "core program" of the Forty-Plus Club is a three-week "boot mild expectation; clothing-wise, few have advanced much be-camp" aimed at turning newbies like myself into mean, lean, job-yond the sweatpants level. Going by such superficials alone, searching machines. I find myself slavishly cathected to Merle; she I'd be surprised if there's another ENTJ in the bunch. In fact, is beautiful, for one thing, about my age or a little younger, and even as the place fills up with a total of about thirty people, all in awesomely poised. I take her to be my female executive template—the same white and over-the-hill demographic, I notice that I'm kindly in tone but brooking no deviations from the business at the only one systematically working the room. One of the later hand. She says she's been job searching for nine months—which, arrivals, Michael, barely responds to my smiling overtures, given the setting, must be meant as a qualification for her burying his head in the Washington Post. From him I move leadership role—but the information is definitely disturbing. If on to Frank, a rumpled-looking fellow of about sixty, who says such a paragon of executive virtue can go jobless for almost a he is a consultant in financial matters.
    year, what hope is there for someone in my situation?
    "Do you know what's wrong with Bush?" he asks me. "He's Merle introduces our guest speaker, Joe Loughran, a former "Wall never had to work; he's had everything handed to him on a sil-Street Associate" who has a Harvard MBA and now runs his ver platter."
    own business as a career coach, or "transition accelerant" as the brief biography on the Forty-Plus web site puts it. A large, Merle, who has never abdicated her position at the front of the mild-mannered fellow turned out preppily in khakis and red room, steps forward to ask, "What have some people done to sweater, he begins with a bit of self-deprecation on the theme of manage?" I want Joe's job is what I am thinking, which seems to giving up chocolate as a New Year's resolution—he "would have involve no more than note taking and serving, in his brilliant red trouble with that"—and then seems to have trouble sweater, as a human stoplight. But solutions to my problem of relinquishing the chocolate theme, getting tangled up in how
    "scheduling" are pouring in as fast as I can write them down. "I resolutions can have a "domino effect": you don't buy a new make a daily schedule including Internet searches and exercise,"
    suit because you're waiting to lose a few pounds from the chocolate one woman contributes. "This forces me to be accountable even if deprivation, and then, because you don't have a new suit, you don't I'm the only one in the room, managing myself." Someone else go for an important interview. The lesson would seem to be: don't adds,