Posted on 08/11/2013 2:30:46 PM PDT by pabianice
Sheilah O’Donnel tells herself that her new home, a townhouse in a development in Chevy Chase, Md., just a stone’s throw from a Safeway, isn’t really all that bad. Sure, it’s near a gas station. And the front window, with its cheerily upholstered cushions, overlooks a dreary parking lot. And yes, it’s kind of small — “an apartment,” O’Donnel, who is 44, sometimes says bitterly, when she’s reminded of her former life with her ex-husband in their custom-built, six-bedroom home. But then again, it’s perfectly maintained and impeccably furnished, and most important, it’s rented with her own money, from the first real job she has had in almost a decade. From the Archive Lisa Belkin's 2003 Article on the Opt-Out Revolution »
It’s a midlevel sales job, a big step down from the senior position she held before she had children and quit work. When she was first hired, in May 2011, her salary was just a fifth of what she earned at her peak. But, she said, she wasn’t complaining. All around her, she saw women her age scrambling to find work, some divorcing and losing their homes. She liked to help them, editing their résumés, polishing cover letters, pumping up tearful friends who forgot what they were worth after years without a paycheck.
After one emotional session with a friend, her 12-year-old daughter asked what all the fuss was about. O’Donnel told her: “This is the perfect reason why you need to work. You don’t have to make a million dollars. You don’t have to have a wealthy lifestyle. You just always have to be able to at least earn enough so you can support yourself.”
Nine years ago, O’Donnel was promoting a very different message...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
[we’ve had 13 years of our professional life with a declining economy.]
Awe, boo hoo. Maybe that’s because bullshyte, buzzwords, and high-score on XBox Live aren’t very useful for actually PRODUCING something.
Those who can, do. Those who can’t, fail by teaching others that their failure isn’t really theirs.
News article on Fox. More and more college grads are unable to pass a basic competence exam when seeking a job in business. All those “no count” Fs and “drop anytime you wants” in college didn’t do much to prepare you for a real world, did they?
Boomers have been such excellent teachers that we are seeing their influence today on the business world with Boomers as the captain of industry.
How is it working? Not very well!
As for me providing valuable skills, there’s a bunch of nurses who are nurses because of me. :) I tutored them so that they were able to get up to speed (and correct the extremely poor instruction they had received from their boomer teachers).
I’m not impressed with ‘common core’ and other boomer gimmicks designed to hobble the education of Americans. I go quite a bit further back. Perhaps you’ve heard of Dewey?
I was just beotchin’ about this the other day!
My kids are grown, the ex-huz is in ‘La-La-Land’ due to drugs and alcohol, and I’m still farming and keeping this place up by myself!
I do every bit as much every day as I did when they were all underfoot...BUT - the benefits in the end are mine, all mine! :)
>>That’s not a bad run at all. Retire at 55 and you’re done
Done what — being a L.I.F.E.R.?
>>Boomers have been such excellent teachers
The lesson that your generation’s failures are somebody else’s fault certainly seems to have been taught well.
If you hate your career so much that not being able to escape from it at age 55 terribly disappoints you — then whose fault is that?
You are what you allow yourself to be, L.I.F.E.R.
“The lesson that your generation’s failures are somebody else’s fault certainly seems to have been taught well.”
The current economic crisis can hardly be blamed on us, but it would be just like the boomers who are in power to do exactly that.
It is not *our* failure that the economy is not doing well, but yours. Your parents handed you a corvette, and you’ve turned it into a volvo.
“If you hate your career so much that not being able to escape from it at age 55 terribly disappoints you — then whose fault is that?”
Where did I state I hated my career? I like my career as a teacher. What I did state is that a boomer who was born in 1946 had a pretty sweet run, his entire working career was a breeze.
His children do not have that luxury.
That’s the boomer attitude isn’t it? Complain about your job and then retire at 55 on the taxpayer dole.
>>didn’t do much to prepare you for a real world, did they?
I was on a jury a few years ago with a professor of physics from UCIrvine.
Over the course of the trial we ate lunch together and he articulated his frustrated irritation regarding the amount and sophistication of cheating he observed going on.
He said they rationalized their behavior - “everybody does it” “that’s what you have to do to survive”.
It’s same attitude self-evident among the predators who graduated into the systemic corrupt manufacture of AAA a$$paper that was shoveled into the global economic infrastructure ala the Sub-Prime farce.
Deliberate, systemic, CORRUPTION. If they didn’t learn it in college, then where?
From their parents, or the lack thereof; and those multiple generations of demoralized failure are coming home to roost.
Sorry to hear that about your ex husband. :( That sucks. No hubby on my end, all the improvements here go to the landlady who owns the place. The nice thing is that I pretty much have the place to myself. :)
>>>That’s the boomer attitude isn’t it?
That’s the attitude you’ve articulated, Junior.
And envy is STILL one of the 7 deadly sins.
” “everybody does it” “that’s what you have to do to survive”. “
Does it seem strange to you that the generation raised by the generation that preached, “if it feels good, do it”, would espouse this philosophy? That is what they were taught, is it not?
“It’s same attitude self-evident among the predators who graduated into the systemic corrupt manufacture of AAA a$$paper that was shoveled into the global economic infrastructure ala the Sub-Prime farce.”
And all those predators are 30 year olds? Somehow I doubt that!
“From their parents, or the lack thereof; and those multiple generations of demoralized failure are coming home to roost.”
Exactly so. The boomers are having things finally come home to roost. :)
“And envy is STILL one of the 7 deadly sins.”
Right. I’m *envious* of the boomer lifestyle which is why I find it offensive. It couldn’t be because my the social security payroll deductions which currently fund this lifestyle, now could it!
>>I like my career as a teacher.
But your boomer parents, not so much.
Must be THEIR fault you’re a whining little pissant suckling from the teat of the school district that pays your salary.
Yep. Must be!
LOL! That's part of what makes life a bitch!
LOL!
“But your boomer parents, not so much.”
Oh. I see. Which one do you want to hear about first? My father or my mother?
“THEIR fault you’re a whining little pissant suckling from the teat of the school district that pays your salary.”
What evidence do you have to support the assumption that I teach for a public school?
>>And all those predators are 30 year olds?
>>Somehow I doubt that!
Well, such is life up in the Ivory Tower your parents built for your generation.
Meanwhile, down in reality land:
“...hired as a 19 year old to become a sales AccountExecutive for ACC Capital Holdings subsidiary, the now infamous “Ameriquest MortgageCompany”. Over the next three years of employment, I became the shining star of “portfolio retention”, a predatory division that would specialize in refinancing home owners who JUST gotloans from Ameriquest in the last 24 months. I was the number one producer in the region over 60% of the time I was there, the company sent me to management training in Orange CA twice, trips to the Super bowl twice, Hawaii and Las Vegas based on my large production statistics and paychecks. Most moths I would individually sell more then $5,000,000 in volume and bring inover $30,000 in net income……typically ore then 15 loans with more then 3 points and all rates higher then 7.00% - much higher then industry standard at the time and not to mention not bad for a 19-22 year old kid with no degree. As a 19 then 20 year old boy, my managers and handlers taught me the ins and outs of mortgage fraud, drugs, sex, and money, money, and more money. My friend and manager handed out crystal methamphetamine to loan officers in a bid to keep them up and at work longer hours. At any given moment inside the restrooms - cocaine and meth was being snorted by my estimates more than a third of the staff, and more than half the staff manipulating documents to get loans to fund and more then 75% just completely made falses tatements on 1003s regarding stated income etc to get loans funded...
—Christopher Jared Warren
http://www.news10.net/news/pdf/christopher_warren_memo.pdf
How’bout a nice snort of AAA FAIL, Junior?
You still inflicting your disability upon the unimpaired?
>>Which one do you want to hear about first?
Your spiteful reflection of the family bidness speaks for itself.
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