My Story Part II
It came. What I’d dreaded for months. A vague meeting invite from HR, with mere hours notice.
It was the Great Recession, and we’d seen countless peers marched to the gallows already. Would my head roll next?
I knew this day was coming. My contract job had already been re-outsourced, and I’d been conscripted to train my India-based replacements. That’s why my wife and I had decided to pause trying to conceive our first child.
Too late. Two pink lines on a plastic white stick had confirmed it that very morning: my wife was already pregnant. My elation turned toward panic.
Our employer had already dialed back our already criminally bad health insurance benefits this year, pushing 75% of the costs onto us.
And now we faced unemployed parenthood, with health insurance as good as an umbrella in a hurricane.
The sweatshop
In 2009, my yearly pay as a non-company “contract” employee was $35K, far below the average of $52K for full time workers.
It hardly counted as “career” level pay. It didn’t even come with basic rights like sick pay or 401K.
Contract work is a staggering one trillion dollar global industry. For the uninformed, contract employment is a shady outsourcing practice conducted by ~70% of US businesses, employing 10% of all US workers.
Companies use contract work to reduce expensive “in-house” headcount and instead use workers from staffing agencies to perform the same work for less with no benefits or rights.
Contract workers are legal sweatshop workers, both blue and white collar. Expendable peasants, discardable at a moment’s notice. My wife and I were both contract workers, or were anyway, until that dreaded HR email.
The final countdown
Two weeks. That’s what I had left. The HR lady read every word robotically off a cue card. Her voice cracked.
My wife would keep her job with a 10% pay cut, but my job was gone.
I plopped dejectedly back in my chair after the meeting. I heard a coworker groan at the next cubicle. “Urgh.”
“Kelly, you okay?”
“Well, I just got my bonus. It’s . . . it’s less than I thought,” she grumbled.
“Far out. I just lost my job.” Her eyes suggested she saw the axe before it fell. I pressed on. “And by the way, I don’t get a bonus.”
She swallowed whatever she was about to say and turned back to her desk.
The Pregnancy “Condition”
On lunch break, we went to see a guy selling private health insurance. We already had this meeting scheduled, but now with a baby on the way, this took on more significance.
His office sat in an abandoned stripmall. He sat behind a beige metal desk that looked like he fished it out of a dumpster. But the agent had a disarming smile and pleasant voice.
He went over everything in detail. I zoned out. Just give me the price already. Finally, he did. “Because you’re young and healthy, you get a really good rate,” he explained when he saw our eyes pop.
“Unless you have a pre-existing condition, like you were pregnant or something.”
Nervous feet shuffled. Panicky blue eyes found mine. “Well, funny thing,” my wife finally confessed. “We just found out today. I’m pregnant.” And that was that. There went affordable insurance. Up in smoke like my job.
A funerary lull permeated the building when we returned. I struggled to focus on work, a training document for my replacements.
Kelly and another coworker walked by. She was still complaining about her damn bonus.
What Money Buys
This is the part of the story where I should grab my guitar, mournfully strum the strings, and sing a sad song. I was a flat tire and a dead dog away from a country western epic.
But wallowing is not the path I chose. Looking into the mirror, I did not see a victim. I saw a father. His furrowed brows sagged with worry. But his eyes were full of life and love for a child he would one day meet.
What kind of example should I set? Sabotage innocent workers in India, just doing their job? Slash the bosses tires? Give up and drink myself stupid?
No. I would stand tall instead (at a towering 5’9, at least). Money and work would never define me, not now, not ever. I would face my job loss with dignity.
By this time, my wife and I had saved 3 years of living expenses. Other than healthcare, we realized how little money we actually needed. We could survive this.
We devised a patchwork plan that night.
- We would both work full time, even with a newborn
- I would seek a job with affordable healthcare
- We would live below our mean forever, even on one income
Our view was simple: money was the currency of security and little else. We desired but did not need two incomes. We hoped for a future with a decent home, but our lives would be no less if our daughter’s first steps were in our dumpy rental.
The next day, I came to work a new man. I finished my training document and devoted myself to coaching the new team on how to do my job. I treated everybody with dignity and respect. I was resolved to leave with my head high.
Close call
It was my last day. At noon, I’d walk out unemployed. HR had other plans. Another short notice meeting.
The HR lady flashed a rare smile when I entered, and I wondered why I was the only invitee. What she had to say floored me. I still had a job.
“What about everybody else?”
“This offer is just for you. And two others. They saw your hard work and want to keep you.”
Ultimately, I stayed on for 6 more months and then left for another white collar sweatshop job, one with lower pay but better healthcare.
My family would go on to survive the Great Recession without an employment gap (except for 2 unpaid maternity stints), and we still managed to save 30% or more of our meager incomes.
It took a full 6 years before my wife and I escaped the indentured servitude of contract work. 2013 was the first full year we both worked entry level “company” jobs, making $50K each for the first time. We were in our early 30s by then.
Were those 6 years tough? Perhaps. But I remember those days fondly. With shit pay, we still managed to climb out of debt, buy our first house, and start a family.
My daughter’s first laugh was just as sweet in a crummy rental, as it would have been in a suburban mansion. And our first family stroll with two healthy girls on a sun dappled autumn day was no less because the mismatched strollers were pre-owned.
Those 6 years taught us that money can buy security, but it cannot buy happiness. Life experiences are waiting to be created or discovered by the curious, not purchased by those with the fattest wallets.
Those 6 years also taught us no job is truly secure. One day, the paycheck train runs out for everybody. The best hedge is to live below your means and save a massive war chest.
In the ensuing years, we never wavered from this mantra. We found happiness in minimalism and ravenously saved so that we would be work optional before the pink slip demigod pulled our names again.
In just 10 years, our net worth would hit $2M, but not before we encountered another career obstacle. I’ll cover this next time in Part III.