The Bookworm: Bait and Switch

Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream by Barbara Ehrenreich. 248 pages. Owl Books. 2005.

Who are these people? Though I’m sitting against the wall in the back of the room, most of the assembled businesspeople are arranged around tables, so quite a few name tags are visible to me and most include company names: CVS, Moneywise Payroll Solutions, WBT Advisors, and a few realty firms. The attached humans are hardly intimidating; I see the same desultory coiffures and dulled, passive expressions you might find at the Forty-Plus Club. It must be that the same corporate culture embraces both jobholders and job seekers, and that it is a culture of conformity and studied restraint, maybe something like that of the Chinese imperial court in the heyday of hardline Confucianism.

Bait and Switch is a well-traveled book. I bought it at City Lights in San Francisco. Back in Huntington, it took its place at the bottom of my reading queue (just above the other book I bought at City Lights). A month ago yesterday it was in my luggage when I flew back to Iowa. I’d hoped to do a ton of reading while in the heartland, and planned to finish it after Uncommon Carriers and leave both behind. But that didn’t work out. Uncommon Carriers stayed in Iowa City, but Bait and Switch flew with me back to California.

Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed, is back, this time writing about the hardships of the unemployed, underemployed, and fearfully employed white-collar workers who were lured into corporate America and the promise of the American Dream, only to be hooked, cooked, eaten, and shit for the benefit of those in, what Ehrenreich calls, the C-suites.

A result of the rampant business downsizing and outsourcing of the past two decades, white-collar unemployment is becoming as common as the well-known hardships of blue-collar workers, and its affects are no less devastating. Ehrenreich legally reassumed her maiden name, Barbara Alexander, and joined the growing ranks of those who’ve been shed by American corporations to get a sense of what it’s like to be “in transition.” She hires career coaches, attends networking events and job fairs, and constantly tweaks her cover letters and resume (which she spells the old school way: résumé) in an effort to get a job. It was a goal she thought would be attainable within six or seven months. Instead, she found herself stuck and constantly ignored, like many of those she met in the course of her research.

Bait and Switch is, needless to say, the white-collar version of Nickel and Dimed, and it’s just as interesting and engaging. Ehrenreich’s encounters with so-called career and resume coaches exposes many to be nothing more than entrepreneurs preying on the aimless and unwaged. Some use ancient and hokey mysticism, or baseless personality tests, to try placing their clients into suitable positions, regardless of past experience or expertise. Career counselors point the blame of unemployment to the individual, deflecting any kind of blame on the system or corporate culture. Although she never gets inside the “castle on the hill,” as she thought of corporate America, she learns about the incompetence and ignorance of its leaders through those who’ve worked with CEOs, COOs, and every other C of the C-suites. Ehrenreich also exposes and comments on the pervading culture of corporate America: the acting, office politics, and ruthless egotism employed to get ahead and make a few extra bucks.

One thing that amazed me was Ehrenreich’s cluelessness about job searching. I, too, was a clueless novice when I first started searching for a full-time job — but I was 23 and fresh out of college. Ehrenreich is a well-established professional journalist in her sixties, yet she had no idea how to get a job. It was a bit shocking and pathetic, especially given her experience in Nickel and Dimed, to read about her initial forays into job hunting.

As with Nickel and Dimed, my main criticism of this book would be that Ehrenreich, as someone with a reliable income and career to fall back on, was not truly able to experience the unemployed white-collar lifestyle. Some of the people she met were in financial and emotional dire straits, and this is a situation she could only convey through their words, which she does; she included many interviews and quotes from those she sought work and career counseling with. Also, I understand she hired career coaches and traveled to meetings to gauge their usefulness, and because she was trying everything to get work, but these are things many unemployed white-collar workers are unable to afford. When you’re not working you spend every dollar thoughtfully and cautiously, and won’t willingly spend $100/hour for resume advice over the phone.

In her job searching, I think Ehrenreich aimed too high. At the end of the book she admitted it, too. Based on a wealth of “consulting” experience (she couldn’t completely fudge her resume, so she used legitimate personal experiences that wouldn’t give away her true identity), her goal was to get an upper management slot. But with no prior working history with major corporations, her goal fell flat; no one, she realized, was going to hire her when her resume had so much of a “Gap,” meaning time between employments. Basically, her whole resume was a “Gap.” What she should have done — if not from the beginning, at least halfway through the book — was realistically refocus her goal and try landing an entry level position, though her age was always an inhibiting obstacle. (Until looking up her Wikipedia page just now, I never knew she was that old — 68. Throughout the book she never mentions her real age, only saying she is over 40.)

Regardless of its minor shortcomings, Bait and Switch is a great and often, unfortunately, hilarious read. It’s Ehrenreich at her best.

Now about City Lights. Frankly, I was a little disappointed. No doubt it’s a great independent bookstore, stocking many titles you’d never find at the mega-mall behemoths. But I was expecting… Well, I don’t know how to say it. Maybe it’s because I’m used to another “Lights,” one inspired by the San Francisco landmark, that I had such high expectations. The basement, where I found Bait and Switch, was dedicated to nonfiction, though not of the literary variety; the ground floor was a mélange of all forms of literature — fiction and literary nonfiction, alike; and the upstairs was for poetry. Mostly, I think, I was annoyed to find City Lights so compact and claustrophobic; it was a pretty small place, and the aisles between shelves on the ground floor were as narrow as Chinese alleyways. The art section sucked, hovering above nonexistence, and I hated how the literary nonfiction was not given its own section. I guess what I expected was a bookworm Mecca — a place to find anything and everything, organized in orgasmic micro-categorization. Instead I found a typical indie bookstore — which isn’t all that bad of a thing. Plus, the cashier didn’t give me a store bookmark. How fucked up is that? An indie bookstore that doesn’t flood its customers with its unique bookmarks? I practically have to plead with the cashiers at Prairie Lights not to give me anymore.

New words I learned: I’ve decided this will be the last time I list the words I learned. It’s a hassle I dread when I write these posts. As with everything I dread, I do it first to get it done and out of the way. I flip through the book to find all the unknown words I circled, type them in a Word document, copy and paste their definitions from the Mac dictionary, then make sure I bold each word when I transfer everything to Blogger. I’m tired of it, so this is the last appearance of “New words I learned.”

All definitions courtesy of my MacBook dictionary. Oeuvre: “the works of a painter, composer, or author regarded collectively.” Fount: “a receptacle in a church for the water used in baptism, typically a freestanding stone structure.” Pastiche: “an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period.” Idée fixe: “an idea or desire that dominates the mind; an obsession.” Cathexis: “the concentration of mental energy on one particular person, idea, or object (esp. to an unhealthy degree).” Simulacrum: “an image or representation of someone or something.” Vet (used as “vetted”): “make a careful and critical examination of (something).” Kinesthesia: “awareness of the position and movement of the parts of the body by means of sensory organs (proprioceptors) in the muscles and joints.” Postprandial: “during or relating to the period after dinner or lunch.” Troika: “a group of three people working together, esp. in an administrative or managerial capacity.” Straitened: “characterized by poverty : they lived in straitened circumstances.” Tabula rasa: “an absence of preconceived ideas or predetermined goals; a clean slate.” Semiotics: “the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.” Substrate: “a substance or layer that underlies something, or on which some process occurs, in particular.” Riposte: “a quick clever reply to an insult or criticism.” Moue: “a pouting expression used to convey annoyance or distaste.” Bowdlerize: “remove material that is considered improper or offensive from (a text or account), esp. with the result that it becomes weaker or less effective.” Koan: “a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.” Tamoxifen: “a synthetic drug used to treat breast cancer and infertility in women. It acts as an estrogen antagonist.” The Dalkon Shield: Ehrenreich mentioned this and I had no clue what it was. It sounds like an ‘80s hair metal band, but was, according to Wikipedia, “a contraceptive intrauterine device (IUD) developed by the Dalkon Corporation and marketed by the A.H. Robins Company. The Dalkon Shield was found to cause severe injury to a disproportionately large percentage of its users, which eventually led to numerous lawsuits in which juries awarded millions of dollars in compensatory and punitive damages.” Fructify: “make (something) fruitful or productive.” Buttonhole: “attract the attention of and detain (someone) in conversation, typically against his or her will.” Ebullient: “cheerful and full of energy.” Gravitas: “dignity, seriousness, or solemnity of manner.” Dissimulation: “conceal or disguise (one's thoughts, feelings, or character).” Irascible: “(of a person) easily made angry.” Evince: “reveal the presence of (a quality or feeling).” Fealty: “a feudal tenant's or vassal's sworn loyalty to a lord.”