I started my professional career as a mainframe computer programmer at one of AT&T’s “Baby Bell” telephone companies, in St. Louis, Missouri, on June 1, 1981. Fresh out of college, armed with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Missouri at Rolla, I barely knew what to expect at the time. I did know that I was getting a good job with a good company, known for its employee training and benefits. But like most 22-year-olds, I didn’t think too much further down the road than that.
I progressed through the ranks at “The Phone Company” (as it was called then) at a slightly faster-than-average rate, making supervisor at about the five year mark. That was my first real taste of what I will refer to as corporate politics. It was all about communicating “their” way, dressing for success, making the right personal connections, attending networking events, and the like. While I knew the rules and was able to play the game, it always felt to me like I was playing a role, reciting from a script.
At about the eight-and-one-half year mark, I did something that was nearly unheard of at the time: I resigned from “The Phone Company”, having accepted a job elsewhere for less pay. The shock waves that reverberated around my resignation made enough of a distraction that my coworkers just assumed I was getting a raise to leave; the truth was that I just needed a change. Working for that company, for me, was like being a rebel child in a big family where I never felt I really belonged but was merely tolerated.
Every company, regardless of size, has its own culture and rules requiring some degree of conformity. Without reviewing my entire employment chronology, let’s just say that I realized at some point I wasn’t good at conforming. I could do it; I could do the work and get the glowing performance reviews, but I always felt like I was acting.
At some point I realized that I wanted to do something “real” for a living rather than sit at a desk and develop code for big computers to use to process lots of data quickly. Much as I enjoyed programming, what I really enjoyed was making things better and helping people. But in the 1980s and 1990s, it would have been hard to get paid as well as a programmer doing something more “real”, and I was reluctant to forgo the security I had.
During 2001 and 2002, in the aftermath of Year 2000 (“Y2K”) and the shock of our country going to war, unemployment first reared its ugly head in my reality. As I had done several times before that, I resigned from a job in March of 2001 without having another job secured. I had gotten to the point with that particular job where I couldn’t take any more of the stress and the culture; I was also desperate for some time off.
In the past, I had no problem quickly finding employment when I was ready to do so; this was no longer the case. It was scary, but after several short contract jobs, I did at last find a company that wanted to keep me, where I felt a greater degree of “fitting in” than at any prior job. I was securely and happily employed for about five years.
During this period, I barely noticed that jobs were becoming scarce for people like myself who were willing to do the less glamorous “system maintenance” jobs on mainframe computers. Companies were replacing their mainframes with entirely different configurations of networks and personal computers, and I was becoming obsolete.
My employers had not yet seriously considered outsourcing to other countries and I wasn’t worried about it. It now seems odd to me that I could attend department meetings where the department manager presented a slide show from his recent trip to India and still not realize (or believe) that my job was in danger.
September 10, 2007 should have been a day like any other day. But it was different for a number of reasons. First, I was out of the country, on a wonderful vacation with my husband at one of our favorite all-inclusive resorts in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. Second, it was actually (and ironically) the six year anniversary of my first interview with the lady who was to become my current boss. And third, and most important, notice was being served to most of my coworkers that their jobs were being eliminated – outsourced to India. Yes, mine too.
I wasn’t going to find that out for two more days. It would actually have been three more days – the first morning I went back to the office – had I not seen some strange things in my work email on arrival home, and phoned around the office until a coworker finally answered the phone. I was able to get enough information from her that I wasn’t blindsided the next morning with the official notification. Exhausted following a sleepless night, perhaps, but not blindsided.
I was one of the lucky few who was offered extended employment, until February 1, 2008, to train my replacements. I was also offered (and declined) the opportunity to hire on with the Indian consulting firm that was taking over the work. As it turned out, had I hired on for the longer term, our family finances would have kept us comfortable, but my own sanity would have seriously suffered.
The majority of 2008 and 2009 were spent desperately hunting for a similar full time job: something in computers, if not mainframe. I impressed enough people with my skills and intelligence to get a few interviews and two actual jobs, neither of which lasted. I also devoted 13 fifty-plus hour weeks of my life and a great deal of our money to get retrained in a variety of newer and more marketable technologies.
After the training and quickly getting hired, only to be FIRED after 8 weeks, for the first time in my life, I lost my desire to continue hitting my head against the brick wall of the St. Louis MO Information Technology job market. I still wanted to do something more “real”, deep down. So I was willing at last to consider my husband’s desire for us to buy and run a business together, forsaking forever the 40-hour work week and the regular paycheck with benefits, and also forsaking the corporate phoniness, the daily commute, the “dress for success” and everything else I didn’t consider “real”.
There is a whole other long story about how my husband and I wound up as owners of a small Bed & Breakfast in a small town in Central Florida, but let’s instead fast forward to the present day: October 5, 2010.
My life these days is, to a large degree, about as wonderful as it could possibly be. We have succeeded in winning a handful of regular guests who have booked subsequent stays with us. We are meeting people we enjoy networking through the local Chamber of Commerce and playing shuffleboard with a Seniors’ club less than two blocks from our home.
I am singing with a ladies’ Sweet Adelines chorus again, although a much smaller and less award-winning one than the one I left in St. Louis – but also a lot less pressure and a lot less expense involved. And most recently, I have become an on-air personality and writer/editor/researcher for a new AM radio station in town – something I loved doing in college and have dreamed about since.
In order to be “real” in this narrative, I must also share some of the not-so-lovely aspects of our current life, as follows.
• The work days are very physical – lots of cleaning, housework, yard work – as well as easily interrupted, since we need to stop for any telephone inquiries or drop-in visitors wanting a tour of our place.
• The hours can be very long – we have done check-ins as late as 3 a.m. (although we try to avoid these) and breakfast services as early as 5:30 a.m.
• The list of things we each need to do around here (housekeeping, yard and grounds maintenance, marketing, networking, bookkeeping, research of local attractions and restaurants for guests, and more) never seems to get shorter, and we both wind up working as many hours as we can stand each day.
• The pay, at the moment, is actually non-existent, since in this our first year of owning a fledgling business and building our reputation, we still do not have guest income to meet expenses for the business. We are currently living on what we had intended to be our “retirement savings” and are scrambling for odd jobs to provide whatever income we can attract outside the business itself.
• Our “health insurance” is neither affordable nor useful – it’s what they call “catastrophic only” coverage, meaning everything is out of pocket unless an accident or hospitalization occurs. We opted to go this route after learning that every health issue either of us has ever had would be excluded as “pre-existing conditions” and the cost would be about 50% higher to cover almost nothing.
Despite the financial worries, we work very hard to keep our spirits up – and living in Florida, with its beautiful weather and flora and fauna year round, certainly helps us do so. It’s now getting back to that time of year when the northerners are shivering and our friends back in St. Louis are starting to worry about driving in snow and ice, not to mention scraping windshields and shoveling driveways and walks. We also have renewed hopes for more guest reservations as the “snowbirds” return south for the winter. We have more friends and social life here than we ever had back in St. Louis, and we’re not sure whether this is a consequence of our living in a small town or being surrounded by retirees with time and energy to socialize, or something else. Technically, we aren’t yet retirement age ourselves, but when guests are sparse and our spirits lag, we do try to take time to enjoy the many wonderful things in this area.
We also pray a lot more than we ever did in the old full time paycheck days. While many of our prayers are for financial security, avoidance of disasters and our own continued good health, surprisingly we also find ourselves giving thanks for our wonderful, “real” life. Thank you, God.
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