Out of a job and out of luck at 54

Can't retire, can't find job:CNN - May. 21, 2008

It took those age 55 and older an average of 21.1 weeks to land a new job in 2007, about five weeks longer than their younger counterparts, according to AARP.

"Clearly older workers will be more adversely affected because of the time it takes to transition into another job," said Deborah Russell, AARP's director of workforce issues.

In other words, we now have at least ONE EMPIRICAL METRIC by which to measure the current impact of AGE DISCRIMINATION. It's a weak, manufactured, and understated figure, but at least it's a figure: "five weeks longer." In practical reality, it's five months to five years ... or maybe NEVER.

Companies like Bank of America (who tried to rip off my mother-in-law's 30 year service pension after 29.5 years of faithful service!) at least used to wait until 64 to toss you on the scrap heap. Now it's 54. At just 54 workers are increasingly told, "you're old, you're a burden, you suck, now get the hell out of here!"

But that's how it's supposed to be, right? It's a free market, baby. Stop your whining. You're old. You suck. Now get the hell out of here and go die like you're supposed to. You did your part and the value you left in your wake is now OURS. Surely you realized you were always just another disposable interchangeable part in the manufacturing engine, right? If not, you are not only old and pointless, but STUPID and therefore deserve even more to live in stress, debt, and squalor for the rest of your days.

The basic message from American business: "So what if you have a Master's Degree ... you're old, so you suck ... now go bag groceries. What? You spent all your money raising children? What? You spent all your money simply existing? What? You have some vestigial professional pride and self respect? How DARE you! Back to the cotton fields, WAGE SLAVE!"

Facts About Age Discrimination

In the words of the EEOC, The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) protects individuals who are 40 years of age or older from employment discrimination based on age. The ADEA's protections apply to both employees and job applicants. Under the ADEA, it is unlawful to discriminate against a person because of his/her age with respect to any term, condition, or privilege of employment -- including, but not limited to, hiring, firing, promotion, layoff, compensation, benefits, job assignments, and training.

It's time to start filing these claims, people.

More Useless Trends and Non-starter Upstarts in Social Networking

True, only someone under 24 could POSSIBLY clue us in about such things, right? So go ahead and skip this post and be sure to keep up the Age Discrimination, even though you yourself are a victim of its relentlessly sclerosing sociological malignancy. Let's all just keep on working against our own best interest, shall we? Sure, yeah, that sounds good.

Besides, what's The Point, if you can't accomplish all of your life's goals in Less than The First Thirty Days, right? Anything that takes longer than that is a waste of time, right?

Oh, and since by far the fastest growing demographic in America is over the age of 50 -- and they only control more disposable wealth than any generation of consumers in history -- I think we should focus on their children and grandchildren ... you know, the really sexy hot ones who are like Totally Hot like Paris. The svelte and savvy experts at not just gaming consoles, but gaming your intricate accountability systems, abusing your pseudo-affiliate programs, and who have zero interest in "playing by the rules" of your meticulously thought out "programs."

Yeah, that sounds like a low-maintenance-cost plan, a real gold mine. So yeah, keep on hiring more young people and firing more old people. Make sure everyone is always chipper, chirpy, perky, and cackling merrily along with the herd. After all, anything less would be ... un-American.

And always, always, always remember: any proposed deviance from these Comfortable, Familiar and Self-Destructive Norms could instigate thoughts of CHANGE -- and change must always be opposed at all costs!

So I say, keep chasing those penniless, near-do-well MySpace cadets (anyone over 40 on MySpace is clearly a creep with nothing of value to offer) and forget the growing Eons of users in Well Established and Proven Markets who are flush with CASH and on average have 30 to 50 more years to SPEND IT.

Yeah, that's the ticket!

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That's com-SMASH-tic!

What drives super productive, accomplished, and perfectly normal [1] people to such extremes?

The insulting idea that, as Shaw puts it, "they thought just because we're old enough to get Social Security that we lack both brains and backbone."

Taking a Whack Against Comcast - washingtonpost.com highlights the BEST of Brains and Backbone. This lady got WAY more than here money's worth for the very paltry price of "a three-month suspended sentence for disorderly conduct, a $345 fine in restitution and a year-long restraining order barring her from the Comcast office." Congratulations, Mona! Well done!


Note [1]: "She is a nice lady who lives in a nice house. She and Don are both retired from the Air Force (she was a registered nurse). They have been married 45 years. She is secretary of the local AARP, secretary of a square-dancing club and takes in strays for the local animal shelter (they have seven dogs at the moment). She has a heart condition. She lifts weights at a local gym. The couple attend a Unitarian Universalist church."

Old People Have No Creativity

I guess that's why:

While others would likely suggest otherwise, [66-year old inventor Leonard Duffy] doesn't seem willing to budge on the name, insisting that "it's slidingly engaging... it's the slidingly engaging fastener."

Winner of a Popular Science invention award, SEF is able to support eight times the weight of velcro and is COMPLETELY SILENT. BTW, when you invent something better than SEF, you get to call it whatever you want; until then, STFU with even the slightest name critiques, deal?

Oh yeah, and just be sure to remember that all old people have nothing to offer because they've lost all their creativity, initiative, focus, and ambition when you pay $200 for that first pair of arrogant punk-ass SEF shoes, right?

Yes, it's a rare cross-post, so relax already.

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Elderly iPod users skip a beat

The excuse:

this kind of test had never been carried out before because it was never really an issue, being that most pacemaker wearers tend not to have an iPod.

"Never really an issue" because we ASSUME that All Those Old Morons will NEVER understand our hip, young, cool bullshit. I am getting increasingly outraged as the methodical disenfranchisement of older people in our society. "Yeah, don't even test it for safety, they're all too old and tired and lazy and stupid." With that prejudice driving so much of product development, and with product development driving so much of popular culture, is it any wonder that age discrimination is not only alive and well in America, but getting WORSE and affecting younger old people (down into the 40's and even 30's), every day?

Meet the Lackluster Omnivore Next Door

Missing Image Note: Hmmm, ImageShack apparently lost or killed access to http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/9301/ topographychart4974685sa8.png which was here in the original post. Not exactly clear why.

Bear with me on this one, it's a very rare cross post from the sardonic early-adopter MMBBG (massively multi-faceted blog-based game) known as Too Late, Somebody is Already Doing That. I promise you'll see the temperamental tie-in tirade here, very shortly. I know, I know, you just can't wait for more scintillating Infective Invective. That's okay, it's a safe place here, we're all friends, so feel free.

You gotta hand it to PEW for trying, but they still missed one segment ... the Lackluster Omnivore. Sure, this may be like .02% of the market, but it's also the .02% that will risk millions of dollars of it's own capital in order to make things better (yeah, yeah, a loaded term, yada-yada) for the both ourselves and our friends across the 99.98% side of the aisle. It's not that this tiny slice of society is any better than the rest, it's just DIFFERENT. Remember the old Apple Computer campaigns? Okay, maybe that makes Apple users a little better than the rest of the world; but this post isn't about that.

One of the whole points of this blog is to skewer my own inner technology "Omnivore, [those] who fully embrace technology and express themselves creatively through blogs and personal Web pages," while navel gazing in contemplation of the myriad and sundry inconsistencies, ironies, and even injustices involved in these peculiar little human practices we like to call: innovation and adoption.

According to the quiz, I'm about as hard core an omnivore as you can find (but if you look at the charts, it helps explain the very frustrating and discriminatory experience of encountering 99.9% of Omnivores who also come with an equally hardcore PREJUDICE against people like me because I break the "age rule" by about 20 years); hence, I wonder why I might bring a Lackluster Veteran's perspective, "those who use technology frequently but aren't thrilled by it" according to the latest survey that claims to 'shatter technology assumptions'?

Now is where this post crosses over into the Old People Suck blog category. The blatant overlap doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it's always ugly. So the squeamish may want to click away from the page, right away.

It's not the technology that's a problem for me, it's the Workplace Discrimination and dismissive and condescending guffaw's from many younger omnivores whom I'd probably eat for lunch when it comes to configuring an OpenBSD firewall rule set, or configuring AMPS on FreeBSD. On the other hand, of course, are my demographic cohorts who simply seem to be too damned tired and lazy to RTFM, or too impatient to learn new and FAR BETTER ways to do things.

So, what the study fails to address is WHY some otherwise enthusiastic and successful technology innovators might become equal parts enthusiast, grizzled veteran innovator, early adopter, and simultaneously skeptical as hell. One suspicions is that for those who pursue the leading edge, the coercive market power of the middle of the bell curve can often hang like a dead weight around the neck of truly creative, breakthrough innovation. Finding a balance amidst the opposing forces of anthropological, technological, and financial vectors isn't exactly an exercise for the feint of heart. All too often, it seems, an innovator either has a rich uncle (or VC who thinks you're kinda cute) or not; and that's the deciding factor of what gets built to scale and what does not. Yeah, that could pretty much lay a foundation for "lackluster" probably.

So, unless you can point me elsewhere to prove me wrong, I'll now pompously and unceremoniously proclaim myself the the First Self-Identified Lackluster Omnivore in the Pew Internet segmentation model. Ah, the lengths we creatures of reason will go to just to feel more-or-less differentiated. What's up with that, anyway? I guess we'll have to find out in the next study.

In the meantime, you too can still take the quiz yourself, even though like myself, you are WAAAY TOO LATE to be first to this particularly swanky sardonic soiree; unless, of course, you can explain to me why you too are some statistically insignificant variety of under-appreciated, underpaid, under-recognized unholy half-breed or multi-dimensional freak-consumer that somehow defies the deistic power of the latest Official Market Segment Survey.

MY RESULTS (FWIW):
------------------
Based on your answers to the questionnaire, you most closely resemble survey respondents within the Omnivores typology group. This does not mean that you necessarily fit every group characteristic.

Omnivores make up 8% of the American public.

Basic Description
Members of this group use their extensive suite of technology tools to do an enormous range of things online, on the go, and with their cell phones. Omnivores are highly engaged with video online and digital content. Between blogging, maintaining their Web pages, remixing digital content, or posting their creations to their websites, they are creative participants in cyberspace.

Defining Characteristics
You might see them watching video on an iPod. They might talk about their video games or their participation in virtual worlds the way their parents talked about their favorite TV episode a generation ago. Much of this chatter will take place via instant messages, texting on a cell phone, or on personal blogs. Omnivores are particularly active in dealing with video content. Most have video or digital cameras, and most have tried watching TV on a non-television device, such as a laptop or a cell phone.

Omnivores embrace all this connectivity, feeling confident in how they manage information and their many devices. This puts information technology at the center of how they express themselves, do their jobs, and connect to their friends.

Who They Are
"They" are young, ethnically diverse, and mostly male (70%). The median age is 28 [so if you're in your 40's, you suck and you should act your lame age, despite your intellectual interests and capabilities]; just more than half of them are under age 30, versus one in five in the general population [so clearly, you are some kind of a CREEP if you're just as accomplished and interested in technology at the age of 50]. Over half are white (64%) and 11% are black (compared to 12% in the general population). English-speaking Hispanics make up 18% of this group. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many (42% versus the 13% average) of Omnivores are students. [So surprising, living off the WAGE SLAVE income of their parents and student loans, they have TIME AND ATTENTION to devote to embracing novel technologies -- how impressive of "them!"]

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Old People Can Now Get a Master's at Stanford, without going to the Farm

Oh, oh. Now those organized and annoying Old People can get a master's at Stanford, without going to the Farm: "Online education is not appropriate for undergraduates, who benefit from on-campus socialization, [said Andy DiPaolo, executive director of the Stanford Center for Professional Development, which sponsors the program]. Nor does it work for doctorate candidates, who work one on one with faculty.

But a masters-level degree from the School of Engineering is a good fit for older students who are working and so cannot attend class, he said."

-- INTERVIEW: A 2012 Odyssey --

HR: "Oh, I see here that you're 34 and earned a master's 8 years ago."

APPLICANT: "Yes, from Yale."

HR: "Yes. I see. I'm sorry, but I have a 64 year old candidate who just earned a Master's from Stanford this year, with distinction, and who obviously better understands the most current knowledge in the industry. In this competitive market, we need the freshest talent available. I'm sorry, but you've just become too irrelevant for our needs."

Paybacks will be a bitch, punk. But you just go right on ahead and keep discriminating. Oh, and have a nice day.

Global Rich List

Many younger workers seem to feel oppressed by the wages they earn, despite their lack of experience. I suggest a visit to the Global Rich List to see just how oppressed The Ignorant Old People have made you.

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Web Site Automates Fake Boarding Passes - Yahoo! News

"Before, any 12-year-old could have done it," Soghoian said on Friday. "Now any 30- or 40-year-old could do it as well."
Web Site Automates Fake Boarding Passes - Yahoo! News

THIRTY! Are you reading that, my friend? The destructive message delivered by this type of comment is utterly unambiguous: the average 30 year old is vastly more incompetent and stupid than the average 12 year old. It's obvious hyperbole, you might say, but the fact that such hyperbole is increasingly common and unconsciously accepted means that it exerts and eroding effect. As one tiny droplet of water dropped millions of times will wear through even the most solid rock, so such comments erode the rights of older citizens.

old.people.suck