Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
The greatest dot-com loser story ever told: A refugee from the bubble seeks a job in Atlanta, and is humiliated. Repeatedly.
Feb 12, 2003 | My arrival in Atlanta lacked appropriate fanfare. No winsome blond belle greeted my plane, delicately boned hand upturned and cupping a gently ripened peach. I noticed the distinct absence of a military band playing a rousing rendition of "Dixie" in time with my heavy footfalls. Nowhere in sight was a swarthy limo driver in a fedora clutching a sign to his chest scrawled with my name. In fact, there was nothing at all to indicate that Atlanta was even remotely aware of my arrival. This was disappointing, as it's not every day that the City of a Hundred Hills welcomes a man of my stature. Twenty-five, overweight, unemployed and recently "relocated" to my parents' house in New Jersey, I am truly a man in full.
Rather, I am a man fully in need of a job, which is why I was in Atlanta. Many moons had passed since I last set foot in an office, several more since I last received a legitimate paycheck. After a few months spent ferrying back and forth by bus across the toxic swamps of New Jersey and into Manhattan to search for something, anything, while my enthusiasm waned, I had a break. The break came in the form of an interview with the sales team of a well-regarded consulting firm in Atlanta. In retrospect, I should have stayed home and burned myself. It would have been less painful, and left me with arguably more attractive scars. But after all that time without a job I accepted the invitation with what I now recognize as "irrational exuberance."
It hadn't been so long ago that the burst of the dot-com bubble had hardly seemed tragic. In June of 2001, I entered my reign of unemployment with the carefree enthusiasm I thought the exclusive possession of characters in Fitzgerald short stories. I was idle; I was handsome; I was rich. Well, not rich exactly. The company I worked for never actually made any money. But on the last day before the padlocks sealed the entrance and the creditors repossessed the foosball table, our CEO kindly cut me a handsome severance check. Our investors, having been fleeced, were understandably reluctant to provide anything more than the two-week severance pay required by law. So the CEO masked the payment, the equivalent of 6 weeks gross pay, as an expense reimbursement.
That meant two things: 1) it was tax-free; and 2) I could begin collecting unemployment insurance immediately. I approached summer like a swill pot with a trust fund. I had no plan and a bloated sense of entitlement. I would drink; I would womanize; I would wear plaid pants, follow the sun and work on only the tan between my toes. Occasionally I would don a Thomas Pink shirt and swing into Boston to chat idly with a venture capitalist or two. And for this I would be rewarded with the legacy of my two years of 80-hour workweeks by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' Department of Employment and Training: $480 per week before taxes. All would be well in the world.
With the exception of a short period in early 2002, when I was forced to steal filet mignon from the local grocery store and drink dusty bottles of vermouth found in closets while Congress debated funding an extension to unemployment benefits, all was well in the world. Then, in September of 2002, my situation took a turn for the worse. First, my extended-extended unemployment benefits ran out. Then, in November, the striped bass left for warmer waters and I no longer had an unlimited source of free sushi available from my adopted back yard. I was soon forced to leave the massive house on the water on Cape Cod where I'd been living rent-free for the better part of a year (courtesy of the generous family of a college friend) and move back in with my parents in New Jersey.
The new reality was pleasantly emasculating. No longer required to deal with the social difficulties associated with living the single life in a multimillion-dollar waterfront home, I could focus on more pressing issues like fighting with my 14-year-old physics-failing brother over the last slice of humble pie. There was a brief period of calm following my return to my parents' home during which I was urged to "take time to figure out the right next step." Then my mother began to excise classified ads for jobs with exciting titles like "Night Janitor -- Inmate Control Center" and "Kitchen Bitch" and lovingly attach them to my still-sleeping chest with a figurative thumbtack. Apparently she did not appreciate my descending to the kitchen at midday to distract her from her third pot of coffee and 12th cigarette.
So when a company that actually made money offered to pay to fly me to Atlanta, put me up in a fine hotel and take me to dinner and then spend a day talking to me in complete sentences that did not contain verbs like "clean," "wake" or "leech," I had but one thought: "Choo-choo-choo, I'm back on the gravy train."
Get Salon in your mailbox!