EDITORIAL JULY 1, 2005

The Invisible 'Dropped Outs' of US Business.
"The American Dream is incredible.....until...."

Joe (actual case history; name changed for obvious reasons) is sitting in his office down in the heart of Manhattan's financial district.
He works for a seriously Big Name Blue Chip company.
He's busy, he's "important," and he was recruited for his specific skills.
Then he gets the dreaded Interoffice Memo: The Powers that Be have changed their minds; his department is...kaput. He...and "every fourth person" on his floor, are out the door.

Now...did Joe screw up do somehow awful? Nope.
Did Joe fail his last Review? Nope.
Did Joe come to the company with a sparkling resume? Yep.
So...where did Joe go wrong?
The simple answer is that The Economy Changed. First, the Y2K non-event rattled things. Then the dotcom market crash put the icing on the cake.
"We don't need Joe any more." Out.

Now what happens? (What follows is pretty harsh; you are big boys and girls, you can stand the truth.) Joe has just become one of America's Invisible Dropouts. Or, as we say...Joe is now a Dropped Out.
Joe was dumped by his company DESPITE outstanding performance.
Dumped into a Job Market where...maybe nobody NEEDS those skills...that were in such hot demand only a couple of years previously. Even though they bid UP his salary to get him, complete with a...(believe it)...Signing Bonus!

So Joe joins a (small?) army of...Dropped Outs.
And you know what the reaction to Joe's Pink Slip is? A big, fat Yawn.
Nobody...in today's All American, Dog Eat Dog Darwinian Business World
really cares.
a. The survivors don't want to even THINK about what happened to Joe.
b. A few...who have a heart...sympathize...but keep their distance. (God forbid something should rub off on THEM!)
c. Others don't waste a moment on something as saccharine as SYMPATHY; mostly they think: "So...go get another job!"

And so on. But...we have discovered (in our continuing in-depth examination of Senior Dropped Outs) that something disturbing and even sinister is going on.

There is a mood in the air that goes something like this:
"If Joe was really that good...he'd never have been fired. If Joe was worth it, they would have "found something" for him. If Joe was up to par...he'd still be there." Then comes the really nasty part: "If Joe got fired...he probably did something...or came up short somehow..." In other words...a great many people automatically assume that THE FAULT IS JOE's!

At all costs...Joe has to fight this bias. Joe has to wake up the morning after, and immediately start to get his ducks in a row. Joe has to fight off creeping doubts that...just maybe...somehow HE DESERVED TO GET THE AXE.

Hey, FortyPlus people...sometimes a Joe DOES get fired for cause...or for lack of performance...or maybe he/she did come up short somewhere. In which case the answer is to regroup and fight your way back. The only thing you CANNOT do...is TO slide into despair. That will get you absolutely no place fast, and will, instead, push you further and further from your goals.

Note that even the most successful people in the America seem to share a secret dread: "Maybe someday someone will find out that I am a fake."
(We are not making this up...it's true.)

Members of FortyPlusNY are really and truly lucky...we are all here for the same reason...fighting the same battles...working to grab our piece of the American Pie. And we are determined not to let the nasty shibboleth discussed above bleed our energy or impair our commitment to succeed once again.

FortyPlusNY, since 1939, is in exactly the Right Place for you to be.

Richard Calderhead FortyPlusNY/July 1, 2005