good luck Toots. at least you survived. in 10 years at my previous employer I survived around 3-4 big headcount reductions (followed shortly thereafter by massive hiring binges). never did get that BIG PAYOUT.

thanks. incidentally i just sent a resume out to a place in portland message-in-a-bottle style just to see what happens

fuck knows what i'd do if they offered anything decent

im getting tired of IN winters...

Survived? It's pretty hard to fire yourself.

The on-going economic woes are finally affecting my company's bottom line- basically no new projects coming in, and existing one wrapping up. Might just be my paranoids acting up, but 2 days ago, I got an annual performance review that was negative for the first time in 14 years. I haven't changed the way I conduct myself or perform my duties one iota over the course of the last year, but somehow the perception has been concocted (and documented)by the inexperienced manager that what was above average last year now falls in the category of "needs improvement". Methinks the tea leaves were read about upcoming staff reductions, and since I don't sit in the 40 hour a week cubicle row in Pittsburgh and shmooze, I'm being put on the bubble,even though I'm one of only 2 corporate citizens in the U.S. that do what I do. The prospect of looking for replacement employment at my age and in the current economic shit isn't very pleasant.

fuckballs.

Have you considered selling crack?

start a label

A guy in a similar situation lost his job almost a year ago now, I knew of him from a motorcycle board. We ride the same model, and it's a tight-knit community that tries to help each other out. Anywho I tried like hell to shop his resume around, and kept hearing that he either didn't have enough experience in our industry, or wasn't a 100% perfect match for whatever was open right that second. He's still out of work.

Have you considered taking rudimentary lessons in social interaction? Wait, don't answer that.

I take it as a given that you would know I wish you no ill. Just fuckin' around.

And no, I have no manners.

some retro goodness...

My FiL had a very specific and specialized job in the banking industry; He has taken up painting landscapes and trying to ignore the sucking sounds on his nest egg since his prospects haven't been too hot.

But you'll pull through, 'toze. Or get even with the bastards.

Just fucking with you too, mang.

Stu - Im not sure I buy that write up. I'm too dumb to care about the graph, but c'mon - do you think the average person in 1960 or 1980 stayed in as nice of hotels as the average people stay in now? I remember us staying 5 people in a room with double beds at The Comfort Quality Inn when we drove cross country. Through some gumption, know how, and strategy, I pay less in real terms for a room at The St. Regis than my family paid to stay in places where it was likelier to end like No Country than to wake up and drive away.

I'm not saying the far right is right, but in general generic "luxury" is far more accessible now than ever. Remember in the 1970s the zenith of American Malehood was earning $30K a year.

This attitude will keep you firmly positioned at #31.

Way to disagree and make no point at all, Dr. Doltenstein.

As I said in the hot rail thread - most everything has to do with marketing, and this is the wrong way to sell AMGERGIKAG on unionism or whatever. You've got to show people what works and why.

You know about my FiL right? Got let go after twenty something years, looked for a year, and has been remodeling houses for the last 6 or 7 years now.

Good luck, toze.

And on an unrelated note, Gervais provides a script to the Oscars' hosts:

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainmen ... _at_h.html

Here's the thing Loog, you have surpassed this and probably mostly associate with people that have surpassed this. But unfortunately, the masses have not. Adjusted for inflation, most people actually make less now than they did in the 70s (except for the upper brackets who make substantially more throwing off averages) and that's a big part of the problem. The census data coming out now points to further declines since 2000. And, since the bottom dropped out, you're actually starting to see Median incomes decline in real unadjusted numbers. These numbers are despite significant steady growth in output measured by GDP, meaning essentially people are working and accomplishing more but getting paid less. That's a recipe for a shitty quality of life no matter how you spin it. You can look back at humble beginnings and compare that to your life now and think how much things have gotten better and that's great for you. But, you can't extrapolate your experience to that of the average schmo.

Thanks, for explaining this to me. I had no idea that my personal, specific life experiences did not translate en masse to the entire country. Next you're going to tell me that "Blacks" and "Whites" don't all think exactly alike.

I think I understand the public at large fairly well, and we've all gone from Roadside motels where rape and junkies were the norm to a little better accommodations. Does privation and poverty still exist on a mass scale? Yes - in a country of 300+million people that will always be the case.

And because of the downturn (caused by Wall Street et al, you'll get no argument from me there) there is even more of it, and people are losing their grip on the middle class. But, I don't think the American Dream is over, and looking at that chart, I'm calling bullshit on a lot of it.

I should also have qualified that there has always been, and always will be a "Super Rich" who fly on private jets instead of sardine cans, and live in gated communities instead of diverse racial and demographic neighborhoods. In fact, there are a lot of more of them, and a lot more people in what we term the middle class now than there ever have been.

I'm not for Scott Walker esque policies, but to say we're an oligarchy at this point is just not the truth -- and it actually makes it harder to change the smaller things that can make a big difference, because you have a political sphere dominated by the two extreme ends of the spectrum.

We can agree to disagree if you'd like. But, you look at the numbers and just call them bullshit and lean on your own intuition and belief that things have actually improved while the numbers disagree. Sorry, I prefer to believe hard data.

I don't believe I discounted "hard data" because you cited but didn't source "hard data" - just because you say it, doesn't make it true.

I wouldn't say that's hard data. Those aren't necessarily objective numbers. "Democracy Index" and "Well-being Index" probably have a lot to do on how those terms are defined for example. Even "Food Insecurity" index is subjective. It's based on the perception of the person buying the food. I'd venture to say Americans have a different definition of food that the "family needed" than say Singapore.

Hard data would be things like median income stagnation, which has been extensively documented, declining health outcomes relative to the rest of the developed world. You can easily add in things like working more hours and watching GDP outpace typical income growth. You can look at poor health outcomes compared to other developed nations. All this in a country with such vast resources is simply horrific to me. You can disagree with that and that's fine, but I don't think just saying so makes your argument any more persuasive than mine and disregarding those charts for one thing, charts that were made with hard quantifiable data leave you with more of a burden of proof in my mind than relying on your intuition.