Fear & Despair in Suburbia

The neighbor, a jovial suit-and-tie presence at the school bus stop in the mornings, disappeared for a while last fall.

Nobody saw him for weeks. Finally he began to venture out — at afternoon pickup, in jeans and a T-shirt.

A senior manager of a technology department, he had been laid off. Neighbors didn’t know what to say to him.

Across the soccer fields of leafy suburbia, conversations are stilted these days; the bravado has a tinny ring, the gallows humor is more prevalent, the deft change of topic more abrupt.

As classes let out at a city private school, a normally chatty top-of-the-heap woman, whose banker husband was recently escorted out of his office building, rushes in, sweeps up her child and dashes off, avoiding glances.

As the economy blasts away at white-collar workers as well as blue-collar ones, the newly jobless are learning an ungainly new language: How to spin their situation to other parents on the Saturday morning sidelines.

How to convey nonchalance during Pinteresque pauses in the golf-club locker rooms. How to fend off inquisitive family members at Memorial Day barbecues.

For so many, the loneliness is palpable. “I stopped getting together with colleagues from the office,” said a Manhattan man who had worked for nearly two decades in sales and trading for a large investment bank and was laid off in January.

His office friends could offer little solace, he said. They are preoccupied with their own anxious limbo. Summoning the post-apocalyptic refrain, he added, “It’s like ‘The living envy the dead.’ ”

Friends tell him, “ ‘You’re probably better off,’ even though they don’t know what they mean by that.”

Still trying to slough off his anger, he said: “I see less of my closest friends in these past three or four months. Everyone I know works.”

American companies have shed 240,000 jobs in the first three months of the year, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Business-page headlines announce layoffs by the thousands at major American corporations: 2,000 at AOL, 5,000 at Morgan Stanley, 4,000 at Merrill Lynch.

Despite the pervasiveness of the cuts, many people contacted for this article were unwilling to speak for attribution, citing confidentiality agreements or, simply, embarrassment.

In general, middle-aged professionals seem more anxious and demoralized than younger ones; men tend to be more buttoned-up than women.

When Janette La Vigne, an insurance company executive from Clinton Township, N.J., was laid off 10 days ago, she immediately told fellow lacrosse moms.

The women were empathetic and bracing, particularly those whose husbands had been through layoffs, said Ms. La Vigne, who had been with the same company for 21 years.

“But the guys are speechless,” she said. “They don’t know how to handle it. Their body language says, ‘Eww, I’m so glad I’m not you right now.’ ”

Breaking the news to parents who grew up under the shadow of the Great Depression is an art unto itself.

Last summer, when Diane Gelman, a single mother, was laid off as a financial analyst at a Manhattan bank, she called her mother, masked her own shock and front-loaded the spin with optimism.

“I’ve been unhappy for so long at my job, Mom,” she recalled saying. “And now they’re offering me money to leave! It’s not personal, it’s a business decision, and I am so fine with it.” She has since found a position.

Those on the sidelines are also uncomfortable, fumbling for a protocol, an etiquette to support their struggling neighbors, while also respecting their dignity.

“As this has become more prolonged, friends are pulling away, probably because they think we can’t afford to go out with them,” said the wife of a former executive at a national apparel company, who asked for anonymity because the couple’s friendships have become strained. “They mean well. But I wish they would give us that option.”

Deborah Tannen, a linguistics professor at Georgetown, explained the inarticulateness of the well-intentioned.

“People feel caught between two conflicting concerns,” said Dr. Tannen, the author of “You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation.”

“You’re caught between the need to show you care and the fear of offending because you’re reminding them of something painful.”

How are friends supposed to respond? “People say, ‘Oh, well, it’s not so bad, it’s happening everywhere,’ ” said Anne Baber, co-author of “How to Fireproof Your Career,” which is based on interviews with several hundred laid-off employees. “But to the person getting laid off, it is that bad.”

Although layoffs are becoming dismayingly common, the term still has a lingering stigma. The slang for being laid off is inherently dehumanizing, notes Ms. Baber, a career workshop leader in Kansas City, Kan.

Among the coarser expressions: Canned. Getting rid of dead wood. Pruning. Fumigating. Cleaning house. Made redundant. Axed. Sacked. Bagged.

That stigma leads to the shunning felt by many in their communities. “Some people skirted around us and wouldn’t talk to us, as if they were thinking, ‘How come he keeps losing jobs?’ ” said Terryl Anderson of Bloomfield, N.J., whose husband, originally a computer programmer, has also been laid off as a surveyor and salesman.

Victim-blaming dates to Job’s mourners. “It helps people who are still employed to believe that people who have been laid off did something wrong,” Ms. Baber said.

“If you can blame them, then you can feel protected. If it’s just random — ‘they moved customer service to Dallas’ — then nothing will protect you either, and that’s scary to people.”

Certainly the sheer volume of layoffs is making brassy shoulder-shrug disclosure more acceptable. So is the battle cry of the outplacement services: Network! Tell everyone you know. Because you never know.

And so by last weekend, merely two days after Bob Adler’s finale as a market research analyst at a Fortune 200 insurance company, some people in Montclair, N.J., already knew, largely due to the efforts of the gregarious Mr. Adler.

“I understand you’re sorry, so am I, but that doesn’t do me any good,” Mr. Adler, who starts paying college tuition this fall, is telling those offering condolences.

“If you really want to help, tell me what you think I do well, who you know, and where you think my skills fit best. And they were grateful for being given that option and I was glad I could redirect the nature of the conversation pretty much on a dime.”

Mrs. Anderson also said that friends had been her family’s greatest support. “Friends have kept us alive and given us clothes for our kids,” she said. “One friend just found a job for my husband.”

But networking on such a local, backyard level is hard for some, especially the innately private or shy and the staunchly proud, to say nothing of those who perceive neighbors in the same profession as competition for the small pool of jobs.

A PUBLIC tennis court in the suburbs reverberates with gruff thwacks, the players almost all middle-aged men and women. It is 10 a.m., on a Wednesday. “How’s it going?” “Tough.” “Yeah.”

Don’t ask? Ask? How? Three monosyllabic words — “How are you?” — take on a spectrum of inflections. Breezy (“How are ya’!”). Earnest (“How are you?” — sotto voce). Funereal (“How are you?”). And, more recently, they translate as polite code for, “Lose your job yet?”

Patty Nigro, a hairstylist in West Caldwell, N.J., whose salon chair can double as a therapist’s couch, says that these days, she doesn’t ask.

“It’s a sad, sour time for people, and it’s a touchy subject,” Mrs. Nigro said. The appointment is their opportunity “to escape their worries, to have a treat.”

The hair salon as economic indicator: “The haircuts and hair color, those are the necessities because they’re looking for work,” Mrs. Nigro continued. “But all the extra feel-good things about yourself — the massages, the facials — those are being cut.”

Experts suggest that people take a gentle, open-ended approach: “ ‘Well, how are you doing, what’s new with you,’ ” recommended Ms. Baber, “Not, ‘Why are you here in the middle of the afternoon, are you taking the day off?’ ”

The replies can deflect or invite pity parties, create entree for further questions, provide cover.

The new euphemisms: “They freed me up for my future!” “I got a great severance package.” “I’m between successes!”

“We’ve been a two-career family for so long that we decided one of us should stay home with the kids.” “I’ve decided to take my career in a different direction.” “I got tired of the commute so I’m working out of the house.”

Many people remain uncertain about whether a call intended to express concern will be interpreted as condescending or intrusive. But an investment banker from Manhattan who has seen many colleagues laid off recently recommended erring on the side of being helpful:

“Call! Say: ‘Hey, I have no idea what you’re going through or what you need, but I’d love to have coffee with you. Maybe there are a couple of introductions I can make,’ ” said the banker, Joshua Schwartz.

“Even if you can’t be helpful or they don’t take your offer, it’s the right thing to do.”

tags: recession  jobless  middle class  capitalism  

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