Oft evil will shall evil mar

Speaking as a recovered marketing type, there's only one thing I don't understand about the latest Belvedere Vodka outrage. Which is, why is it unexpected?

Advertising is an industry heavily populated by frat boys: adolescents past their prime. One is expected to get into the business right out of college. By the time one has reached an age at which common sense should predominate over hormones, one is either president of an agency or forced out of the business. This is age bigotry at its most refined.

Another thing that's just like frat boys: apparently, Nobody created the ad.
You know, one of the evil spirits from The Family Circus: Ida Know, Notme, and Nobody. It's understandable when little kids won't take responsibility for their actions, but not so much for theoretical adults in their 20s and early 30s.

If this were a single aberration, perhaps we could buy it, but Belvedere advertising has been in a death spiral for months, nearly a year. One hopes that with sick rape humour they've hit bottom, but of course there's still rape and murder to explore.

It strikes me there's a conflict here. On the one hand there's a mammalian response, the idea that anything that gets attention must be good. This runs the gamut of species: cat behaviourists explain why your kitties keep scratching the sofa by saying that if you yell at them, you're rewarding them. On the human end, there's the publicists' trope that "there's no such thing as bad publicity."

There is, however, such a thing as bad advertising. As I recall it was Jerry Della Femina who said that the sole purpose of advertising was to get consumers to try a product once. Advertising that gets caught up in its own jejeune cleverness and forgets to sell is by definition bad advertising. Every goddam thing done for Belvedere Vodka in the past year has been bad advertising. This is what you get when you let the children run the nursery.

I'm not much of a hard liquor drinker, I admit, but at this moment, I would sooner drink cat piss than Belvedere Vodka. If a product is trying so desperately to get my attention, I'd conclude there isn't much difference.

A comment from the age barrier

Some of the online idiots whose uninformed opinion passes for truth would have one believe that I, at 65, am eligible for Social Security.

Not.

People my age, first wave of the so-called Boomers, had our full retirement age advanced to 66 a generation ago. The second round of my generation had their full retirement age hiked to 67 at the same time. Thus, in a stable political climate, and an employment climate that didn't consider people old and worthless at 45, I would have no problem with further incremental advances in the retirement age. I've never had a problem with moving up, or eliminating, the income ceiling. The latter especially could eliminate the projected Social Security deficit all by itself.

Although I do belong to AARP, I take some exception to its periodic descent into scare tactics about these and other reasonable reforms. However, I understand why they do it because they share my chief reservation.

I do not trust the shredded remains of our legislative branch. Along with millions of others, I have to assume that the majority will lie; that they will make a determined effort to eliminate the entire system, which the wingnuts have hated since it was enacted. In their ideological zeal, they are quite capable of eliminating Social Security entirely without a moment's thought to what will happen to the people who depend mostly or entirely on Social Security. They certainly won't give a damn about breaking the commitment the system represents to those people. After all, the wingnuts in particular are owned by the same corporations who promised their workers pension plans, then sold them out.

Further, any idea of continuing to increase retirement age in a reasonable way rests on the assumption that years left to live at 65 is going to go on increasing. But beware the sine wave fallacy: put simply, this is the belief that a given variable will always move in the same direction. Today's increases in years left to live are on a collision course with the corporate age bigotry which has lately been enabled by the Supreme Court. A society which considers workers useless after age 45 is wedded to a principle which is likely to cause mean age at death to plummet. Pop goes the sine wave!

Perhaps that's what the wingnuts in Congress want, as long as it doesn't include them.

Social Security and the age thing

In theory, I think raising the Social Security retirement age is one good and logical step toward getting our house in order. After all, anyone my age already reaches full retirement age at 66, not 65. (It is a constant surprise how many younger people don't know that.) In practice, I have reservations, to wit:

1) Can we trust the lap-dogs of the people who have spent the last 30 years cheating--yes, cheating--their workers out of the pensions that they relied on for their retirement? Any tinkering with Social Security has to come with defences against this sort of thing. Putting Congress on Social Security is a good place to start, but it may need more. I've worked for the very rich. I know how they think, and in general they have no problem with older Americans dying by the roadside, as long as someone sweeps up the corpses so they don't frighten the horses. Cut the deck before starting this reform.

2) Living until 90 is a statistical construct, subject to many variables. Depriving the older poor of retirement income and health care is one of those variables. The more the reactionaries get their way, the more likely it is that "years left to live" (a more accurate statistical term than life expectancy) will decline, not increase. Don't make changes based solely upon this one, vulnerable measurement.

3) During my time of un- and under-employment, it has become clear that in the near future most "careers" will run from age 25 to 45. Age bigotry is entrenched in corporate America. If present mindsets are allowed to persist, the nation will have an entire generation greeting customers at Walmart between 45 and retirement age. This just at the time we have made the retirement age a moving target. This too introduces a factor that is likely to cause life expectancy to decline. What if anything will reform do to adjust corporate attitudes and keep people over 45 working?

4) Finally, remember that all those jolly age projections may work for the elite and professional classes, but they aren't realistic for the working class, now. For anyone in the sort of physical occupation praised in TV truck commercials, 66 is a stretch now. Age 90, for men at least, is absurd. I see this every day I work. Time to get out and see how the other half lives before dicking around with anything in the social safety net.

I'll save Keynesian rants about the benefits of deficits for some other time.

In case of doubt, check this

If any of my peers were wondering whether "age bias" is only an excuse, I suggest a bit of light reading courtesy of myboomer2boomer. A charming thread on Yahoo Answers called "Should we blame the Baby Boomers for everything? " No I won't give you the link: you can Google this yourself if your digestion is up to it. The Asker's opinion is "yes, we should blame the Boomers for everything." Evidently that includes original sin, the fall of Rome, the rise of 19th century imperialism, Karl Marx and smelly cat urine.

The thread proves that no one generation has a monopoly on bigotry, selfishness and whining. Commenters include a couple who are of my generation and attempt to show that they too hate my generation. It's a feat of intellectual gymnastics that is frankly beyond them.

In fairness, the thread demonstrates that even in a confederacy of dunces, there will be one or two people of reason and principle who try to make their point over the noise. Unfortunately, the noise usually wins.

I can afford to smirk for a couple of reasons.

First, the oldest members of the so-called "Generation X" turn 45 this year. This means, by their own standards, they are now too old to make a meaningful contribution to society.

Second, I can seldom overlook the slavering and uncritical praise most of the American public heaps on the servicefolk and veterans of our present imperial conflicts. In common with other, more thoughtful veterans of the late and overlooked unpleasantness in Southeast Asia, I know perfectly well that this slobbering is a compensation for the disagreeable way my generation of veterans were treated once, and are treated still. They might consider including us in their encomiums, but that seldom occurs to anyone.

Both instances lead me to caution younger people to be careful what they say, especially on the Internet. It will stay there forever, and it may come back to grab their throats at an awkward moment.

Cooks who spoil the broth

This topic came up a couple of days ago in a networking group I visit regularly. (OK, I brought it up.) A thread in a certain social networking group highlighted one of the problems that has surfaced when one blends 50-year-old job-hunting practices with a culture of privilege and entitlement.

The first "networking" was more or less learning to use and love the old-boy (or good-ol-boy) network. It seems to have worked very well in those days gone by when most people looking for a job already had one. It has steadily eroded over the past 40 years as the so-called social compact between the employers and employed has eroded. Now, most people looking for a job don't have one. Many haven't had one for some time. Although the era of the social compact and lifetime employment was dying or was dead before many of these people entered the work force, most of them still believe they have a right to—not just a job, but to all the money and perquisites they had enjoyed before the HR person with the empty box arrived at their cubicle.

When earnest employment pundits trot out their Haldane-era advice, especially about networking, that advice gets as garbled as the kids' game of gossip. What comes out is not the idea that you will actually try to meet a friend of a friend, in a place or field of interest, and make them your friend. Oh no: the output is too often that you will get the name of that someone, whether you have mutual connections or not, and demand that they give you an interview (i.e., give you a job). When that someone, very understandably, either ignores you or tells you to sod off, you then throw a tantrum. This has happened more and more often over the last 15 years or so, to the point where the artificial networking structure built on the old-boy example is pretty much dead.

And yet, the job search experts still bang on this drum all day.

Entitlement shows itself in unusual ways, even amongst the formerly entitled. The 1950s were a wonderful, gilded age in the USA: if you happened to be a white Protestant male. It was solid gold if you were a rich, white, Protestant male.It seems that a great deal of the loud social angst of the present is coming from people who resent the social changes of the last 40 years or so, which amount to a message to please share. They did not want to and they do not want to: a characteristic reaction of the terminally spoilt.

As I've been poking around the topic of age bigotry, I've had the unsettling experience of discovering just how many of these spoilt brats still remain in the corporate world and in the ranks of the unemployed. Many—but not all—of them are over 50. Many are obstinate in their refusal to start their job search with a look in the psychological mirror*. To them, their loss of privilege must always be someone else's fault. People who actually have done nothing more to employers than have the gall to get older may very well be collateral damage in a conflict between the fools who did the sacking and the fools who got sacked. Possibly bigotry enters into the business only because bigotry of any sort is a symptom of stupidity.


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*A look in an actual mirror is irrelevant. Any job search pundit who advocates a physical makeover as a solution to unemployment has never taken a look at online background checks, in which age is the first data point. Perhaps dispensing online job search advice is the one field available today in which stupidity is a positive virtue.

Wooed to return?

No older worker can accuse US News & World Report of being pessimistic. A May 10 article trots out an impressive and convincing set of statistics that support the present and future need to involve more older American workers in the workforce.

Trouble is, this will happen over the dead bodies of most middle and senior managers, and nearly all HR people, alive today.

In my experience, most managers between 30 and 50, and a few older than that, are threatened by older workers. A good many also harbour unresolved fears of their own mortality that the mere presence of older workers tends to reinforce. If one is going to make the transition, it becomes a matter of changing the psychology of management.

Nothing could be better for the future than sacking every HR department. Assuming that won't happen, they must be jolted out of attitudes toward older workers that are a half-century out of date.

Here, we have a (possibly overstated) example of the stereotype of the older worker held by most managers, HR people and job search pundits:













And here, by contrast, is an actual woman (Helen Mirren) at age 63, photographed in 2008:

One grants that many of us haven't held up quite as well as Dame Helen, but I suggest that my generation more resemble the latter than the former.

Will the wooed, if they return, be able to change the culture of the wooers? Many people who accept their enforced retirement now do so because they are fed up with long hours for no additional pay and with incompetence at every level of management. This old guy would go so far as to say the long hours are in part a result of incompetence—the combination of bad planning and lack of coordination that makes long hours necessary. They are also in part the result of a culture of phony machismo that makes excessive work hours a hallmark of manliness. Sorry: endurance of that sort only counts in one place, mates, and it is not the office.

WBZ-TV analyst Jon Keller asked, in the aftermath of the Celtics upset of Lebron James, whether that did not suggest the value of age and experience. It might, for those who have a brain...not to mention those long past the ages at which the Celtics are considered "old."

I would say that the inmates are in charge of the asylum in today's work world if I weren't entirely convinced that the results would be better if they were. The situation is much worse. The asylums of work and media are run by those people who have never been blessed with a moment of self-doubt, who are sure of their course and perennially optimistic, even as they plunge over the cliff. Many of those the world calls crazy would have more self-awareness than that.

The best revenge open to older workers is to wait for the wooing...and to reply with the finger. If we follow the US News logic, the future of this economy is in our hands. By the time the wooing begins, those of us still alive will have discovered the best of gifts: the understanding that we do not need most of the things for which we once slaved, and that we do not need to be treated like galley slaves to get what we most need in life.

And if you don't think the media speaks out of both sides of its mouth on such matters, consider this, which appeared whilst I was dawdling over this item.

The indiscreet deceptions of job hunting

The alarm of my job-hunting compeers over the fact that I express opinions here would be cubed if they also knew that here, among other things, I

• discuss in detail a chronic disease that I live with, in ways that I hope could be clinically useful to somebody
• admit to being over 40; considerably so

Twice in the past, in interviews, I detected and ignored warning signs of age bias in interviews for freelance gigs, bias that took very little time to appear. The most immediate, and subtle one, I call "the look." This is body language from the interviewer that says they clearly expected someone at least 20 years younger and that they do not want an older worker.

HR departments and hiring managers read the same articles that older job-seekers read. They want neither a bad reputation nor a followup phone call from the interviewee's lawyer. Also, they may be under immediate pressure to fill this particular position. They don't ask the giveaway questions that we're all coached to answer, and you, the job-seeker, give suitable answers to the questions they do ask. You're hired, and life in hell begins as soon as you get your cubicle.

Companies afflicted with age bigotry (that's what it is, pilgrims) are unlikely to get as far as this blog. All but the most basic HR departments now have a background check subscription, through which they run everybody. When they do that, the second piece of information they find is age. If they're age bigots, the story ends there. All of the clever little dodges job-seekers have learnt to use over the past 25 years are useless. They don't need this information; they're not even supposed to ask for this information until they've hired you. It doesn't matter, because all they have to do is key your name into a security screening search engine and they have your age, right there between your name and address. I'm not making this up: I tried it recently.

Between this revelation, and those two uncomfortable gigs that wasted my time and the clients', I've reached one of my defining conclusions. Up to a point I'll play the hiring game but, if anyone crosses a line by word or by action, I'll be in their faces. Yes, I'm old. Suck it up, because I have. Yes, I live with a chronic disease. I have taken less sick time in the eight years I've had it than most people half my age. Unlike most of them, I know how to work through pain and be reasonably productive in spite of it. Unlike people afflicted with bigotry, I'm not sick all the time.

One of the three best bosses I've ever had was on a job I began about four years ago. When we started work together, he was 29 and I was 58. It is not age difference that is a barrier to understanding. I do not think timeworn formulas about cost and seniority and sickness are anything but excuses. It is that in some essential part of themselves, age bigots have not grown up. They are afraid of what seems like an upside-down relationship with older subordinates. Most of all, they see older workers as an uncomfortable reminder of their own mortality, a thing to fear. Like most humans, they lash out at what they fear.

My 29-year-old boss did none of these things. We both knew my compensation related to my time with the company: my age meant nothing. He could see for himself that sick and well, I produced, and that I took less time off than my younger peers. Above all, he had enough confidence in himself to define the relationship purely in terms of supervisor and employee. I was never some sort of surrogate for his older relations or remembered authority figures. He wasn't afraid of his own mortality, so did not have any fear to project on to anyone.

It may be too much to expect the same thing in another job, but I hope not. As a boss, JB was the antithesis of age bigotry. If he could do it, there's no excuse for anyone else.

In this contest, at least a portion of us hold the upper hand. First, age bigots must, if they do not die, get older. By writing their fears into corporate conduct, they stand a very good chance of being treated as we now are treated...and not far in the future, either. Second, all busts end. The demographics, and the damage wrought to retirement incomes, both dictate that older workers will be a significant part of the workplace within five years. Age bigots will be obliged to face their fears sooner or later. Third, I just crunched some numbers at home. If we both retired tomorrow (which would be involuntary) there would be enough in the piggy bank to support us. No Caribbean cruises each winter, but we wouldn't be eating cat food either. In my experience age bigots tend to be assholes in other aspects of their management style. The reality of older workers with other income sources means that I and others like me will be calling a lot more shots when it comes to work-life balance. It's much harder to bully people who don't need your job to survive, and it will place a higher premium on imaginative and collaborative management styles that allow everyone to give the best they have to offer. And don't forget that a good part of our often maligned generation made life very miserable for Authority when we entered the stage. Many of us are prepared to be just as troublesome when we leave it.

The age bigots can enjoy their moment, but they should either change, or be preparing for future careers as tailgunners on dump trucks.