The Kid Always Gets The Job
by G. Polvinale 01/31/16

The following is a reply I sent to a recent email job posting from a recruiter.

Thanks for considering and contacting me regarding the open IT position. This second email says it is a reminder that you are awaiting a response, so I thought I would explain why I didn't answer your first email. I'm satirical by nature, so don't take this personally.

After losing my job through no fault of my own in a hostile corporate takeover, and the resulting 3 years of online searching, scouring newspaper classifieds, pounding the bricks, sending out hundreds of resumes, going to dozens of interviews, half a dozen of which were "one of the final two ", I finally figured out that the kid is always going to get the job. Always. No matter that I work out at the gym 3 days a week, ride the bike, walk the treadmill, stairclimb, lift the weights, do Tai Chi 15 times a week and eat vegan organic. Nobody will hire a 67 year old. It's that simple. I am extremely qualified, having a vast array of experience doing everything from basic PC tech support to managing an IT department, and I have strong communications skills. Doesn't matter.

So now I have taken those skills, repurposed them into building a business teaching Tai Chi in order to put food on the table. The employers' loss. Even though everything you describe in the job description below fits me to a "T", and even though they could have snapped me up for practically a song, right now I'm not ready to give up my Tai Chi business that I've spent 2 years building so far. My clients are businesses and healthcare institutions interested in providing their employees and residents with inexpensive wellness benefits. I also teach Tai Chi at EHOVE (a well-known local vocational school) and offer individual classes to the general community. This kind of enthusiasm, creativity and drive is what short-sighted corporate interviewers are missing out on because they don't want to hire an "old person".

The government should really repeal the law that makes it illegal for employers to discriminate based on age. Because employers are doing it anyway. At least then recruiters could put the age requirement in their job postings, saving themselves a lot of interview time, and save job seekers a lot of trouble and frustration by getting the truth right up front. Maybe someday when my business finally blossoms into its potential, the people I hire should be required to have 15-20 years' experience with Tai Chi. Although a shame that it would effectively exclude kids from employment, it would be legal enough.

I do harbor more than a little resentment for the system that effectively legally excludes every unemployed person over fifty from participating in what the president calls the remarkable recovery of the US economy with its 5% unemployment rate and millions of new jobs created. That 5% unemployment came from millions of people over fifty dropping off the map when they lost their jobs as a result of the Great Recession and unable to find work by the time their unemployment ran out. I have met many people over fifty who are happy to offer their remarkable experience and work ethic to employers for cheap wages. But all they ever hear back is "dead air" the minute the interviewer gets a whiff that they might have white hair.

I think recruiters are missing the boat by passing over a rich pool of labor resources. But that's only me talking. Thanks for the heads up on the job, though.

Good luck,

Pick Your Poison
by G. Polvinale 06/30/12

  Of course we all wonder when they will find a cure for cancer. Well, they've already found it. You know the Roundup-ready seeds for corn, soy and cotton? The reason they work is that the life-giving enzyme that Roundup kills has been replaced by a different one in these new seeds.
  News flash: chemical pollution is everywhere. And it is responsible for new diseases we suffer today, like cancer, diabetes, heart disease, muscle and joint illness. The chemicals are killing off our enzymes and blocking processes important to life. All we have to do is replace these natural enzymes with chemicals concocted by the chemical-drug companies and we're good.
  They poison us, sell us a chemical cure and keep us dependent on them for life -- as we should naturally be on mother earth. Smooth.

People Over 40 Are Done
by G. Polvinale 03/02/16

I'm more than fed up with being replaced by a kid in every job out there. I saw plenty of interviewing discrimination after I lost my job because of my age and experience, and then couldn't get hired for those same reasons.

Society's economic model has changed in the last several years. When we were younger, we had to work hard to scrape by, giving us valuable experience and skills that would see us through our whole life. Gradually, we made a life for ourselves. Now suddenly everywhere you look, the kids have plenty of money to spend on the tech culture that corporations are pushing. And older people are handcuffed, watching everything they worked hard for slip away, due to higher living expenses and no job prospects. This is criminal. And it's all part of the new corporate culture that has taken over every aspect of our lives.

Those of us over 40 "don't fit in" to the new society. So we scrape by the best we can... or die trying. The "greatest generation" and the "baby boomers" have been thrown under the bus, to provide cheap labor to the soulless corporations. The result? Everywhere you go now, you get some seemingly unemployable, ignorant, inexperienced, belligerent kid who doesn't give a shit waiting on you, taking care of you, on the other end of the phone, selling you stuff, fixing your plumbing, building your car or reading you the news.

After the greedy rich top 1 percent take 90 percent of what our economy generates, the rest of us have to fight over what's left. And "what's left" has pretty much been commandeered by workers in their 20's. And all this happened suddenly in the last 5 years, with no chance for a gradual adjustment to occur. Leaving people over fifty to die. Don't think so? Just wait.

Don't make it here? Don't sell it here
by G. Polvinale 03/04/13

We all need to earn a living wage to live. Simple concept. But the corporate line is, "Competition is tough out there today. We can't afford to pay a living wage with decent benefits." Bullshit. Corporate profits are higher than they have ever been. Tax rates on rich people are the lowest they have ever been. The stock market is booming. Rich people have at their command things never before seen in the history of mankind. And even the "well-to-do" making $200,000 - $500,000 a year live like royalty and are a fur piece above "wanting for nothing". Affluence abounds.

So why are so many people in a country with this much money floating around ending up without jobs, living in poverty, starving, hurting, sick and dying? What happened to The American Dream?

It's been replaced with the nightmare of corporate entities running the show, owning the government, squeezing out every penny of profit from the poor and less well off - draining the American economic system of its vitality, for their own personal greed. Placing American workers on the same playing field with workers from Mexico, Malaysia and China, in order to secure that extra profit. Economies were set up to be run in an environment where all components were self-contained and could interact freely WITHIN THAT ISOLATED ECOSYSTEM.

Until we isolate our economy from the rest of the world, there will continue to be blood-letting. In order for our economic "system" to work, it needs to be free from outside coercive influences. In an economic model that allows only US companies and citizens to participate, people get paid living wages and those people purchase products made in America by American companies who employ American workers. They can afford to buy the products because they make a living wage. Companies can afford to make the products, because the largest consumer market in the world - America's - can afford to buy their products. Everybody wins.

When corporations outsource jobs with workers from other countries where the cost of living is 1/10th what it is in the US, US workers can't compete, because they need more to live. That blows a hole in the US economic ecosystem. Corporations being greedy, they take the cheapest route with the labor. And then say they need to sell their products on the world market to compete. Convenient answer, but wrong.

We need to say, "You can't sell it here unless you make it here with American workers earning a living wage, be willing to accept a reasonable profit, put that profit into American investments and American banks, and pay fair taxes for the quality of resources that enabled you to make that profit." If we shut out the rest of the world on the economic front, and worry about developing our own economy right now, we would IMMEDIATELY see the state of the country improve. And we would all live like kings. THEN we could do something to help the rest of the world. And if they followed the same concept, they wouldn't need help either.

For all this to happen, we need a president who is capable of leading, instead of kowtowing to the spokesmen for the rich and powerful. Mr. Obama, you said you were that man. Are you? Talk is cheap. Walk the walk. Find the balls.