take this job and...

Note to Anonymous: Thank you. I will.

When I was in high school, I took a course in physics. I learned about measuring power and work. We learned the terms for measuring power, like horsepower and kilowatts. I was introduced to the terms for measuring work, such as erg, dyne, joule and newton. You rarely hear these terms in common usage, and almost never in office conversation, even around engineering companies, where I have spent much of my career. Sometimes you hear derivations of the words, like something is ergonomic or someone is a dynamo, but I’d wager that no one in your office has ever referred to anyone as being full of joules or newtons.

In physics class we also learned the phrase “moment of inertia,” which Webster defines as the measure of resistance of a body to angular acceleration. That means when something starts to move, the initiation of movement requires a surge of energy. That is why the amp draw of an electric motor increases dramatically when the motor starts to rotate. That’s why in a house with an old wiring system, sometimes the lights will dim when the central air kicks on. But, I guess you didn’t really want or need to know that, did you? I think of the moment of inertia as when you are sitting on the couch and you realize your bottle of beer is empty, it takes a burst of energy to get up off your ass to go get another one. And it is why, sometimes, instead of moving, you feel like saying:

“Honey, would you get me another beer?”

To which your significant other will respond, “Get it yourself, stupid.”

I’m thinking of work this morning, for a couple of reasons. I recently had a telephone conversation with a Human Resources person who had received a resume I sent to her in application for a job. It sounded like a high-profile, responsible position. The HR person told Jimbo he had a very good resume, but that their advertisement had not mentioned the position was entry level, and her implication was that Jimbo was probably way overqualified. Interesting, they ran the wrong advertisement. You’d have thought someone would have caught that. Anyway, she asked Jimbo what kind of money he’d need and I shot her a figure. She was extremely pleasant, but I know I won’t be hearing back. At least I have a very good resume. That’s something of a victory, I suppose.

The other reason I am thinking about work is that it was a year ago this month that I left the work force. I had told people close to me six months earlier that I would be resigning after the first of the year, but when it came time to give notice on January 2, I decided I would stay for a while longer. Within a week I knew I had made the wrong choice. I had a particularly bad day and I was properly primed and I went in, gave my letter of resignation and told my boss to take his job and re-staff it. Those weren’t my exact words, but he got the message.

My first day off was when I overcame my initial moment of inertia. I was up early, but went back to sleep. When I was working my schedule had been up at 2:30 in the morning, check the overseas markets; have breakfast and shower and be out the door by 4:15 and to work by 5:00 a.m. Sometimes I would leave earlier and be there between four and five. I would almost always work until 5:00 in the afternoon, sometimes staying as late as 8:00 or 9:00, but usually no later than seven. I would be home for supper and in bed by 11:00 at night. Then, it would be up at 2:30 a.m. and start over. On Saturdays I would usually only work from 5:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., but sometimes I would stay until 1:00. You would not have wanted to be associated with Jimbo during that period of time.

As I said, that first morning I was off work, I woke up at 2:30 and went back to sleep until 4:00 or 5:00, at which time I overcame my moment of inertia and got out of bed. Within a week, I was sleeping six to eight hours a night, not addressing the moment of inertia until seven or eight in the morning.

The nature of work has changed dramatically over the past five years. In 2000, when I decided to make a career change, there were thirty jobs a day in my field listed on Yahoo! Jobs. I began my job search on May the first of that year and accepted a job offer on the Friday before Memorial day. I had fifteen job interviews that month, sometimes more than one per day. So far, I have not seen a single job in my field on Hot Jobs on Yahoo! since I started looking. Granted, after checking the site religiously for a month, I only check it sporadically, now, but it is empty every time I look. I am only looking in my local area-- a metropolis of about 2,000,000-- but my search in 2000 was also limited to the same area. Fortunately, Careerbuilder.com has been an excellent resource.

Granted, the economy in 2000 was a lot better. The man in the White House was more focused on the economy and the jobless rate was hovering at record lows. The federal reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, even gave a speech saying that, because of such low unemployment and such a solid economy, we were in danger of running out of workers. To cool off the economy, he began raising interest rates, with the intention of relieving the pressure on the economy from what was virtually full employment. Through his actions, and with the impending election debacle putting the current administration in power, somehow the economy and the job market went straight down the toilet.

If one looks honestly at the current economic numbers, it is difficult to deny the economy is on the mend and it continues to improve. Consumer confidence is up, but the people who actually call the shots in this economy don’t appear to be as certain as the average Joe. CEOs don’t seem to be as willing to hire and many are stockpiling cash rather than putting it back into their businesses. Money managers are hoarding cash-- keeping it on the sidelines rather than reinvesting it. No one seems to be willing to be fully invested like most of us were in the 1990s. Technology is making us more efficient in the workplace so fewer people can do more work. The reported rate of unemployment is historically low, but there is something wrong. There is a discrepancy between reality and the unemployment numbers that we see reported on television every month. The economy has lost jobs over the last four years and we have not created as many jobs to replace the ones that were lost, but still the unemployment rate is low. I think we are under-reporting the numbers of unemployed. The figures I always hear are based on the claims for unemployment insurance. There are probably many whose unemployment has run out and there are probably many, like Jimbo, who have never received any unemployment insurance, and are therefore not reported, and consequently not unemployed.

You are probably saying to yourself, “Well, Jimbo, you screwed up bad this time. You are always whining about not being able to find a job, and the whole time you could have been working at a high-paying, responsible position. You could have been bringing home the long green instead of bitching about being poor.”

You have a point. However, as much as I dislike disagreeing with you, leaving my job was the second best decision I have ever made, second only to deciding, along with his mother, to conceive my son.

Complaining is something many of us do. As Joe Walsh says in his song Life’s Been Good:

I can’t complain, but sometimes I still do...

I guess I can complain all I want, and some of you are good enough to listen to me do it. The truth is, my life has been better the last year than it was for years before. And, I still think that someday someone is going to offer me a job. I’m just too damned good at what I do.

Until then, I’ll just lean back in my chair and try to decide when and whether to overcome this moment of inertia. Because my chair is ergonomic and my life is dynamic and in Jimbo’s world those are the kinds of decisions that occupy our day.