“Would you work at McDonald’s flipping burgers?” I asked.
“Not in a million years!” he retorted.
“But what about your family?” I quizzically asked as I turned up my eyebrows.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it!” he said as his face went flush and he took his right arm and rubbed the back of his neck deeply.
That was the discussion I had a few days ago with a buddy who has now been laid off twice in the last 8 months. He lost his job of 15 years back in October of 08 then picked up another job in January 09 but got laid off again after a few months of work.
So we were having lunch and our discussion turned to the dialog listed above. Essentially we were asking ourselves if we would cross the job threshold, meaning would we pursue a job in the labor workforce working at or slightly above minimum wage to make things meet.
My buddy absolutely refuses to even consider an hourly labor job while I wouldn’t mind it if it came to that and I’ve seen many a millionaire fall from their good graces down to your local Wal-mart greeter (e.g. Madoff investors) but my buddy still refuses to accept that he may need to do it.
My friend also made some interesting observations. He has some neighbors that just purchased new vehicles like Mercedes and Lexus and they’re doing fine and we got into a discussion about John Edward’s famous “two Americas” and he agreed. It seems if you are employed as an executive for a company then there isn’t much to worry about as the wealthy are doing just fine but if you’re not part of that “elite” group then you might have an entirely different story.
I still have a bit of money left before I even begin to fully consider getting an hourly job but if things keep deteriorating will it be too late at that point in time to try to find an hourly job?
It’s an interesting situation that we may all need to carefully consider soon enough.
Is there really an event of being “laid off”? Isn’t it just being fired? I have been “laid off” before. The company is still in business, so I take it as I did not make myself valuable enough for them to keep me. Therefore I was fired. In my next job, I have created myself as an asset of the company. They are investing in me by paying for additional education and other community organizational activities. Anything that would make it more costly for me to be “laid off”.