Faces that vanish from the commuter platform

Written by Joe Pisani
Wednesday, 16 March 2011 00:00

In the early morning darkness on the train platform, a familiar face crept up behind me like an apparition from the netherworld of the unemployed. My commuting buddy Tom had returned — a jobless statistic reincarnated into an FTE.

He spent a year looking for work, along with painting every room, cabinet, cubbyhole and closet in his house — more painting than Michelangelo did on the Sistine Chapel and for less money.

He came back to the working world with a collection of horror stories about what it’s like to go on job interviews when you have a little gray hair and a lot of experience. The insults and inferences are many:

“You’re too old.” (They look at you with impatience because they want to move on to the next candidate, who has no gray hair, no mortgage and no kids in college.)

“You’re too highly compensated.” (That word “compensated” is right out of the human resources training manual.)

“You’re over-qualified.”

“Do you have a pre-existing condition?”

“I don’t like the color of your eyes.”

The world is a different place when you have no job or medical benefits. Christmas comes and Christmas goes without gifts, but you’re happy just to pay the mortgage so your family doesn’t get kicked out on the street.

If you’re lucky, you’ll land a job that pays less and makes you work harder than ever before. You’ll feel like an indentured servant, and you’ll always be looking over your shoulder because the new philosophy of the workplace is very democratic: “Everyone is expendable.”

Yes, the world is a different place. An insensitivity to the hardship of others is spreading across America like a bad stomach virus, and our institutional addiction to greed, which is as powerful as any prescription drug, has dehumanized us and put profits before people.

The same day Tom went back to work, a few friends e-mailed me — some are still looking for employment after months of struggling, others quit their jobs because they couldn’t take the torment any more, and still others were fired because Big Brother found a more profitable way. Companies that were great places to work have turned into labor camps.

Layoffs, of course, are nothing new, but now it seems that middle-aged people are being targeted, and the ones pulling the trigger have become like bureaucrats in Stalinist Russia.

A bank employee whose performance had never been questioned in 30 years got sacked with no severance package. A fellow with a long career as an advertising representative walked away from his job because the boss kept tightening the screws, and it was destroying his health. He figured going on the unemployment line was better than going to the grave.

In the past three years, countless faces have vanished from the commuter platform, and I suspect they’ll never come back. Very often, their 401(k)s are shot, their savings and pensions are gone, and they’re suffering from despair because they think they’re too old to get a job or be of value in the workforce. Say a prayer for them and hire someone if you can.

Joe Pisani can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .