I know it seems an unlikely sub to post this on. But when I ponder the implications, this sub comes to mind the most. Read on and you will understand. Per sub rules, there is no identifying information. I know this comes off as more antiboomer than antiwork, but work culture contributes a lot to this story.
This is a story of a man I knew in real life before he passed away.
He was born in poverty in 1949. He grew up with little to no rules or supervision, was never a good student and suffered most of his life with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or at least that's what we think he had, he had all the symptoms, but refused to ever admit he was the source of any problems or to seek diagnosis and treatment.
Unable to complete or maintain school he dropped out of high school in the 9th grade. He then floated around doing odd jobs and little else. After being cared for by his family for several years, he finally got a GED and began to “pick up” the electrician's trade in his early 20's, beginning in 1973. I say pick up, because he never took any formal training or journeyman work and never joined a tradesman's union. Despite this lack of training, he found a job as an appliance repair technician for a small locally owned company in 1976. In the mid 1970's he met and married a woman of modest means and education. But she was keenly intelligent, fiercely tenacious, focused and possessed a strong work ethic. Eventually, he transferred from field repairs to in house repair in the mid 1980's mostly because he found floor/return repairs (soldering components, rewiring, etc.) more appealing than dealing with people, he was eventually made floor supervisor in 1988 after working for the company for 12 years.
He was, along with his wife's income, able to afford a nice suburban home, multiple cars and had several children. He and his family could go out to eat, take vacations to Disney, and he could indulge in his love of classic cars. Put simply, he lived up to the promise of the “American Dream” as a new member of the American middle class. He did what his father and grandfather failed to do, pull themselves out of poverty.
In 1995, after working in his career for just over 19 years, he suffered a mild heart attack for which he was given “up to” 18 months of long term disability in order to recover. His treatment consisted of a stent, a drug regimen and a series of warnings and recommendations for lifestyle changes. During this period of recuperation he found that not working and getting paid was much better than working and getting paid, so he made sure to take as much time to recover as he could, basically the whole 18 months.
Once he was cleared to return to work, he worked for as long as he could stand it, nearly one whole month. He abruptly quit and refused to return to work. But, bills still needed to be paid. So, he placed the burden of making money on his wife who began taking odd jobs and cleaning houses in order to make extra money, while he, in the fashion of a true narcissist, he claimed he was “too sick to work”.
Soon after, he began a five year quest to pester the Social Security Administration to declare him “eligible for benefits” as early as possible. I say that in quotes because in order to do this you have to convince someone at the SSA that you are too disabled to do anything. This was a man sturdy enough to build muscle cars from scratch but still managed to harangue multiple doctors into signing off that he was “too sick and too weak” to work even though his job, while not a full desk job, mainly consisted of schedule making and some light soldering.
He managed to succeed at getting early disability for Social Security benefits in 1999 (five years after he started trying) at the age of 50. To our non-US friends, that is 15 years before the SSA considers you eligible for full retirement. This normally would have resulted in a huge loss in benefits, but not to this man, he got full retirement benefits as he was deemed “disabled”.
So, he never worked again after the age of 45. He then turned his attention to doing as little as he could possibly get away with and irritating as many people as he could for the rest of his life.
When I first met him I thought he was “a character” but by the time he passed I realized he was a deeply disturbed person. He was as petulant as a four-year old, a pathological liar, and openly hostile to almost everyone. His favorite pastime was letting everyone know how much better he was at everything than they were. He was cynical, distrusting and anti-social. But to those “in the club” (or at least in the club at that moment) he could be affable and generous. The most confusing aspect of his personality was that he was a fairly typical angry old man, he was openly racist and a right-wing, GOP supporter. He would complain loudly about “those people” and the ones “on the dole” all while cashing the government checks he was able to con them into giving him 15 years early.
He would tell us at length about how amazing he was at the job he hadn't been doing in over a decade and his great accomplishments, stuff that amounted to a typical work day for the rest of us. All the while I was thinking his one great accomplishment was how little effort it took for him to get what he had.
I bring this up because I now realize that he led a life that is difficult to achieve for so many, especially the very young. He had no advanced or even basic completed education, minimal training, no ambition, no work ethic, and barely even the ability to function in society. And yet, he still had a life many highly educated, hard-working people today cannot achieve. Don't get me wrong, he was by no means wealthy especially at the end. But he never worried about paying bills, having food on the table or a roof above his head. Partially this was because of his wife and her work ethic, but partially, maybe even mostly, because he had a huge unseen advantage by simply being both white and a baby boomer.
His career started with a resume that would be laughed off the pile today or paid at a sub-living wage. It's fully possible he didn't even need a resume, just the old handshake agreement popular 50 years ago.
A good life was handed to him, he didn't have to work hard, he didn't have to be educated, he didn't have to be nice, he didn't even have to try and yet he raised his lifestyle from impoverished to the middle class in one generation only because he was a boomer, he was white and he lived during a time when that was the totality of the credentials you needed to pull yourself up.