The World of Short-term Employment

Have you ever been a short-term employee - by choice?

Tired of factory-type summer jobs during my college years, one summer I decided to sign on with a small landscaping company. The “company” consisted of one 50ish Italian guy with his pickup truck, some tools, and two of us hearty young know-nothings. After one day of trying to keep up with the owner and dog-tired from working from 7 AM to after 6 PM, I decided that I was not really cut out for landscaping (i.e., lawn mowing) and didn’t go back on day 2, forfeiting the one-day pay that was due to me. I failed; but factories did look relatively palatable from that day on.

I can recall being desperate for work during a 5 or 6 week period wedged in between getting my BA and starting grad studies (with a paid teaching assistantship no less). My new wife had secured a modest job at our new locale but our bank account was bone dry – we even borrowed money from her new boss to pay the first month’s rent at the married student apartments!  But who is going to hire you for a month+ when it’s half way through the summer; in Bangor, ME? I even lost out on a gas station job when the owner hired a 15 year old instead so he didn’t have to pay minimum wage. So I signed on with Manpower and waited for “the call.” I did get some interesting one-day assignments – unloading vinyl siding from a railroad car, painting an empty gas station that was changing hands (OK, that took two of us a couple of days) and filling in pot holes with hot asphalt from the back of a truck on the very campus where I would be starting my illustrious grad studies a few weeks hence. I also learned that there was no shortage of folks on Manpower’s list and sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring wouldn’t cut it. I had to take the initiative and call them up every morning to see if any work assignments were waiting to be filled. Squeaky wheel and all that stuff. I confess I was glad when September rolled around and those big fat teaching assistant checks started pouring in (yeah, right).

A consulting firm I worked for many years ago hired a biologist sight unseen from Kentucky for a near-entry level position at our NH headquarters. Apparently this fellow had never been out of KY before and he traveled up to New England by bus on the weekend before his Monday morning start. Seems that one partial weekend sitting in a YMCA room in a foreign land, pondering Momma’s home cooking, was enough for the young guy. He took the first Monday morning bus back to KY, calling his would-be boss from somewhere on the road. Given my prior landscaper’s experience, I withheld any criticism of his actions.

Over the years I’ve supervised a few employees who didn’t stay around too long. One was a bright young 20-something who just graduated from a big-name eastern university. While in grad school she interned with a major federal agency in one of their downtown DC headquarters divisions. It was actually a fairly responsible policy analyst position that addressed a then-controversial regulatory subject area. There was absolutely no shortage of beltway consultants and contractors giving this 20-something worlds of attention (think lobbyists or better, bees to honey). She was definitely the “it girl” while the position lasted. And when it ended, the beltway consulting firm that I was working for at the time hired her. We really didn’t know what she was to do, and didn’t have a suitable on-going client project to stick her on. So while I had no input into her hiring and she had relocated herself to a different east coast city by choice, my boss decided that I should figure out her fit in the company and find her a suitable role. She was quite bright, and actually a very nice individual. But it was soon clear to both of us that there was no fit and she resigned within a week or two. I never met her face-to-face.

That was 10 years ago. But ahhh, now there’s the vibrant internet and people pop up seemingly out of the woodwork. Even ones you’ve forgotten about. It turns out that “Y” had moved from the East Coast to San Fran and has since held many short-term positions in the intervening years. In her own words:

“In 2003, she began her deep personal journey through her learned self, tearing away layers of conditioning to find her true self. She now dedicates her life to the practice of living authentically, and inspires others to live with a sense of self-awareness, connection, gratitude and compassion. A writer, Y uses her deep love of people and the natural world as inspiration for her blog pieces on human behavior and our sense of connection with self, others, and the planet."

“Y is (currently) a freelance environmental analyst, program and project manager, strategic consultant, conference facilitator, writer, and ESL instructor. In May, she visited India where she taught English to Tibetan monks and wrote.”

Probably just intuition, but something deep within my soul seems to be signaling that she probably wouldn’t have made a good long-term landscaper either. I can feel the inner guilt melting away right now.

The Rare and Endangered Spotted American Lounge Lizard

Much has been written in scientific journals regarding the demise of the Spotted American Lounge Lizard (ratpackius imitatious).  But largely overlooked in past research is the steady and unfortunate erosion of the creature’s habitat, starting in the 1970s. Habitat is everything for the sustainability of a species and the Lounge Lizard’s primary urban domain, the American Lounge, has long been in a steady decline.

This marked erosion in lounge habitat began in the 1970s when many locales were converted to mirror-balled disco halls by the score. Some Lounge Lizards were able to successfully adapt and trade their spots for pastel leisure suits, but many more chose not to adapt but rather retreat further into the wilderness areas of Nerdania.

The second wave of habitat conversions was even more severe and widespread when, in the post-disco 1980s and 1990s, many establishments were converted to video arcade parlors. The flashing lights were welcoming to the Lounge Lizard but the incessant clatter and loud beeps of the electronic devices interfered greatly with the creature’s dating rituals (the intended subjects could not hear the Lizards’ pick up lines).

Some researchers suspect that there are still a few original Lounge Lizard habitats remaining and that they could be functional and in relatively pristine condition. The University of Peoria recently received a federal Humanities Council grant to dispatch teams to several of these reported sites to attempt to verify their existence and document any inhabitants found there. The very first wave of research teams is headed to Worcester, Poughkeepsie and Altoona as we speak. Wish them well.

A Merry Christmas to Teachers

For my oldest daughter, the teacher, and for dedicated Miss Bodkins everywhere.

The next few days groaned by. Now only three more school days remained before Christmas vacation, that greatest time of all year. As it drew closer, Miss Iona Pearl Bodkin, my homeroom teacher, became more and more manic, whipping the class into a veritable frenzy of Yuletide joy.  We belted out carol after carol. We built our own paper Christmas tree with cut-out ornaments. We strung together long strings of popcorn chains. Crayon Santas and silver-paper wreaths poured out of our assembly line.

 

Miss Bodkin, after recess, addressed us: “I want all of you to write a theme…”

 

A theme! A rotten theme before Christmas! There must be kids somewhere who love writing themes, but to a normal air-breathing human kid, writing themes is a torture that ranks only with the dreaded medieval chin-breaker of Inquisitional fame. A theme!

 

“…entitled, ‘What I want for Christmas,’ “ she concluded.

 

The clouds lifted. I saw a faint gleam of light at the other end of the black cave of gloom which had enveloped me since my visit to Santa. Rarely had the words poured from my penny pencil with such feverish fluidity. Here was a theme on a subject that needed talking about if ever one did.  I remember to this day its glorious wing phrases and concise imagery:

 

"What I want for Christmas is a red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time. I think everybody should have a Red Ryder BB gun. They are very good for Christmas. I don’t think a football is a very good Christmas present."

 

I wrote it on blue-lined paper from my Indian Chief tablet, being very careful about the margins. Miss Bodkin was very snippy about uneven margins. The themes were handed in and I felt somehow what when Miss Bodkin read mine she would sympathize with my plight and make an appeal on my behalf to the powers that be, and that everything would work out, somehow. She was my last hope.

 

In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, Jean Shepherd, 1966.

Shepherd’s book of course became the basis for the 1983 movie, A Christmas Story set in industrial northwest Indiana where Ralphie struggles through boyhood and Shepherd himself serves as the movie’s off-screen narrator. 

Show Your Stuff, Winter!

There had been no sign of snow when I put the house to bed, turning down the oil lamps one by one and blowing them out as the flames sank low. Looking forth a moment from the kitchen door, all that I could discover was an overclouded darkness – no wind, no sound, no star. Sometime in the night, however, a howl of wind or sudden and glassy rattle of sleet must have reached me in my dreams for I got up quietly to see how things stood now that a northeast storm had risen in the night.

 

The house was full of the sound of the gale. It was a winter northeaster, furious with wind and snow, and driving down against us from the dark and desolate North Atlantic and a thousand miles of whitecaps and slavering foam. Wailings and whistling cries, ghostly sightings under the latched doors, fierce pushings and buffetings of the exposed walls – thrusts one could feel as a vibration of the house itself – all these had something of their being in the shelter and humanly-beautiful room. United with these, tumultuous and incessant, rose the higher aerial cry of the gale in space above the earth.

 

A pair of windows over the sink face the east and the pond, and these were under the full attack of the storm. Volleys of sleet were striking against them, wild gust by wild gust, and great flakes were sliding down the panes. Every now and then I could hear, even through the wind, the sound which snow makes against glass – that curious, fleecy pat and delicate whisper of touch which language cannot convey or scare suggest.

 

Northern Farm, Henry Beston 1948

We do not live on a farm but I have winterized the koi pond, tucked the goldfish in for the duration, and put up our hand-painted snow stick. Bring it on, Winter.

 

Yankee Sensibilities

A friend and economist here in NH has blogged before about the intersections of economics and finance with "life" but today's blog is definitely worth following the link.  Brian looked at the debt delinquency rate of residents in our state by county and is pleasantly surprized that our most remote and less affluent county (Coos, prounced "Co-oss" - don't ask me why), also has the smallest per capita debt load.

“Whether it is the Yankee values of “living within your means,” or doing whatever it takes to honor obligations, it surely wasn’t a robust economy and strong income growth that enabled Coos County to have the lowest aggregate severe delinquency rate.” Read the full post here.

 

I haven’t yet studied Brian’s data thoroughly but one visual did leap out at me – two of our most affluent counties (Hillsborough and Rockingham) seem to have higher credit card delinquency rates than the other counties. Maybe more affluent NH Yankees can’t lives as well within their means as our more rural cousins? (development density and high-paying jobs are highest in southern NH in proximity to the Massachusetts border) Or maybe I can just blame this trend on the influx of fiscally irresponsible Mass folks into our fair state?? Nevermind. But really, Brian’s blog is worth following. A nice guy too. How many of you can say that about an econ type?

The Cape Is Open for Christmas

Tired New England Factories

Fortunately not all New England industrial sites are as tired looking as these two. We have many vibrant high tech firms in the computer, defense, medical device and other viable sectors. But there is something poignant about New England's industrial past as well.

Chicopee Falls, Mass - Former textile mills common to many communities with access to river resources.

This empty complex in East Longmeadow, Mass was a Pratt & Whitney aircraft engine factory during WWII and in more recent years housed Milton-Bradley/Hasbro toys awaiting distribution.