When's the Last Time You Got Laid?

"Off," I mean. Laid off.

I cringe each time a connection on LinkedIn opens his or her post, "After X years, I'm leaving my position at..."

As someone who was once laid off, I know how deeply anxious you feel. What's going to happen to me?

Much of the advice given to the laid-off, though well meaning, is shallow. It comes from Hallmark cards and self-published self-help books. 

Here's mine, take it or leave it. It comes from experience.

• Don't surrender to depression and fear. That's easy to do, I know, but don't do it.
  
  
• Don't self-medicate. 
  
  
• Don't spend money you don't have.
  
  
• Don't take advice from idiots (they're legion).
  
  
• Don't rely on a dusty old resume. Study state-of-the-art resumes and get outside help with yours, if you need it. 
  
  
• Don't spend hours applying for jobs on line. Work your network. And build on it as you do. 
  
  
• Don't jump at low-level sales opportunities you're offered (those businesses merely want to exploit you).
  
  
• Don't posture. Your usual baloney isn't welcome in a pandemic.
  
  
• Don't volunteer, unless your heart is in it and your efforts are valued (rare).
  
  
• Don't waste time. Spend four hours of every business day networking and four hours exercising. In the early mornings and evenings, read and participate in online workshops. Take the late evenings and weekends off.
  
  
• Don't surrender to "monkey mind." Try mindfulness mediation. Be patient with it.
  
  
• Don't bank on the "geographic cure." Moving to Austin or Atlanta or Anchorage won't land you a new job.    
  
  
• Don't fantasize a new life. If you think it's time for a self "reinvention," realize it will take years, not weeks, to pay off.

What's your advice to the laid-off?

They need sage advice.

The Holdout

Do not give up under any circumstance.

— Japanese Imperial War Department

When it comes to Covid-19, I'm amazed at some Americans' lack of a grasp of the basics. It's like, as we used to say of clueless coworkers, "they didn't get the memo."

History's strangest case of missing the memo is that of Second Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda.

An elite member of the Japanese Imperial Army, Lieutenant Onoda was stationed in 1944 on Lubak, a tiny island in the Philippines.

When the Allies recaptured the Philippines that year, Onoda was ordered to retreat to the interior of Lubak and "harass the Allied forces until the Japanese reconquer the island.

“You are absolutely forbidden to die by your own hand,” the orders continued. "It may take three to five years, but we’ll come back for you, no matter what."

At home in the jungle—and willfully ignoring the Allies' leaflet-drops announcing Japan's surrender—Onoda undertook guerrilla strikes against the local Filipinos—strikes that would go on for 30 years.

In 1974, a dashing adventurer named Norio Suzuki announced that he would find the mysterious guerrilla fighter, Onoda. Suzuki indeed found him, sheltered in his hiding-place in the jungle, and persuaded the steadfast soldier that the war was over. 

A month later, Suzuki returned with written orders from the Japanese government directing Onoda to cease fire and—at long last—return to his home in Japan, which he reluctantly did.

NOTE: Tomorrow marks the 75th anniversary of the formal surrender of Imperial Japan.

All These Condemned

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

 

― George Santayana

When I was a kid, it was routine to see people toss trash from the windows of their moving cars. Bottles, cans, cups, cartons, wrappers, bags, napkins, tissues, you name it.

It took a full-court mass media campaign—led by the packaging industry—to put an end to Americans' loutish behavior. The now-quaint Keep America Beautiful campaign sang out "Don't be a Litterbug," and we bought it (fines introduced by local governments helped).

Thirty years earlier, another mass media campaign—led by the Red Cross—was rolled out nationwide as the Spanish Flu decimated American cities. The even quainter Wear a Mask campaign spouted "Don't be a Mask Slacker." Americans bought it.

Our Executioner-in-Chief has resisted, mocked and politicized mask-wearing—and continues overtly to do so—with the result that he's condemned to death 183,000 Americans, with an additional 134,000—or more—soon to follow.

Now the Department of Health and Human Services is poised to spend $250 million of taxpayers' money on a new mass media campaign that urges America to Reopen Now, despite virologists' warnings that Covid-19 thrives on crowds.

The better use of the $250 million would be to fund a campaign preaching "Don't be a Maskhole."

But, hey, what's a few thousand more Americans' lives, when an election's at stake?

Klepto

Donald Trump has always put America first and
he has earned four more years as president.

— Nikki Haley

THANK GOD the four-day pageant of parasites known as the Republican National Convention is nearly over. I no longer have to shield my eyes.

I don't know about you, but I can't take another montage of lies, slurs, fantasies and fascist propaganda.

Trump's stooges have a vision of America, alright: it looks just like Putin's Russia. A kingdom of kleptocrats.

And Trump is the Klepto in Chief.

Trump's niece would have us believe Trump is a psycho, and he is. But he's also a klepto. Big time. Bigly. HUGE.

He needs four—better twelve—more years to amass America's greatest fortune.

Bezos, Gates and Buffett—the schmucks—had to work to acquire theirs. Trump, as president, can just steal his.

Trump's convention's over. Now his campaign begins.

Queue the violin.

NOTE: September 8 marks the 60th anniversary of the theatrical premiere of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, movie history's Number 1 thriller according to the American Film Institute.

Suite Nothings

At the conventions, fella, everything goes.

— John D. MacDonald

I have been whiling away the lockdown reading John D. MacDonald's "standalone" thrillers, paperback potboilers from the late 50's and early 60's. 

It's no wonder Ian Fleming and French mystery readers loved John D. His prose is pungent and punchy, and his take on Americans' habits raises his work to the level of the "literary" writers of his day (think of Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal).

A Key to the Suite, which earned John D the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere, “examines the ferment of a big-time convention," according to the cover of the original 1962 paperback.

Corporate hatchet man Floyd Hubbard has been sent by the home office to a trade show. His mission: to dig up dirt on a has-been sales manager, Jesse Mulaney. Management wants Mulaney gone and knows his obsolescence is on full display when he attends trade shows.

But Mulaney's ally, Fred Frick, knows Hubbard has it in for his buddy, and plans to turn to the tables.

Frick hires Cory Barlund, a classy prostitute, to woo the family man Hubbard. He instructs Cory to bed Hubbard, then “make some horribly slutty embarrassing scene" in front of his coworkers—a scene guaranteed to send Hubbard running back to headquarters.

The gorgeous Cory rather quickly seduces Hubbard, but then feels sorry for him and tells him about Frick’s scheme. 

And that's when the fireworks start.

As a veteran of the industry, I'm captivated by John D's taut descriptions of trade shows and the goings-on behind the curtain—both the innocent and the vile.

You find yourself so on edge following the fates of the husbands, wives, whores and hoteliers who populate the pages of A Key to the Suite, you can hardly put it down.

It's gritty realism at its best.