Twenty Years

I just realized yesterday the significance of when in time I am.

It was twenty years ago that college had delivered me into an economy that didn’t want me.

December 16, 1987 was the date when I had my last final of my last class ever in college.  It just happened to be MA 318, “quantitative methods for management,” a math class specifically for management science majors, with prerequisites of the other three required math classes in calculus and statistics.  Turned out none of the prerequisite math was actually needed for the capstone math class. 

That math class also stands out because I befriended a girl named Barbara Princiotta, who picked me out to buddy with for stuff like sharing notes if one of us wasn’t there.  I ended up loaning her my tests from cost accounting, in which I had a 96 average, and never did get them back.  Ended up falling out of touch with her, despite having hit it off, having visited her house in Franklin and met her parents, and having gone out for a drink with her and her boyfriend.  I believe his name was Keith.

At the time, I was completely disillusioned with accounting.  She impressed me with her laser focus on becoming a CPA.  She knew precisely what she wanted and was pursuing it doggedly.  Another example of being more intelligent than most being cool, but not everything.

It’s interesting, but I’ve digressed from the intended narrative.

I spent most of college working at Christy’s Markets, until I had a meltdown and left that.  I’d started a business of sorts in 1986, just before leaving the job, but it ended up half-hearted.  That was Solo Services, after the Jay Solo pseudonym/nom de plume a friend came up with in 1985.  That was tax preparation, bookkeeping and such.  That was not sufficient.  While working in the Wareham store, I met a guy who delivered Boston Globes every morning.  That’s how I knew to get into that, which was great for finishing college.  I later went on to have an interview with that guy’s father, who owned a substantial office supply store that would soon succumb to Staples.  The paper delivery guy did sales there and thought of me when they needed a bookkeeper.  I wasn’t actually done with school yet, and I thought the pay was too low, reinforced by one of my accounting professors.  It was six years later I finally made more than that paltry offer.

The above made me realize that I started businesses in 1986, 1996, and 2006.  Funny.  Especially since I probably started one in 1976 as well.

I was officially class of 1988, grouped with the rogue February graduates, but able to participate in the spring ceremony if I wanted, which I didn’t, to the dismay of some.

There I was, tumbling unceremoniously out of college like so much laundry down a chute, ready to conquer the world.  Or not.  1988.

The theoretical average pay for accounting degrees then was 27k.  My income didn’t hit that until 1996.  I delivered newspapers, with a little break “to jobhunt full time,” until about May 1990.  As far as I was concerned, the economy was dead during that time.  What ifs abound, naturally.  It would have made sense to take something, anything and start stepping toward something better from that.  It would have made sense to look for lower paying work the college degree would land, but that was not accounting-related.  It didn’t help that my education was that, so I looked for that, but didn’t really want to do that, but didn’t have anything better in mind.

It was also 1988, I think next month, around the same time as I started blogging in 2003, I got my first PC.  I had a TRS80 from 1985 on, but this was a real PC, a 286, so I could learn Lotus 1-2-3 and get a job more easily, and so I could write and do resumes more easily and stuff.  Twenty years!

While the objective of getting accounting work by learning relevant software didn’t work, and I didn’t stop worrying about money long enough to focus and write the NGAM or whatever, it set me firmly on the road to geekdom.  It was pre-internet, so it really was geekdom, not surfdom.  (He types gleefully, amused with his cleverness and wondering how few people will get it.)

Anyway, 1988.  It’s kind of a mess.  Kind of a blur.  Though not as much so as 1989.

I attempted to send out resumes, but wouldn’t send them to Boston or other points too far north or citified.  I attempted to muddle through a bit of bookkeeping and tax side work, including some for a guy who always made me uneasy with his glossed-over sleazy aura.  He sold insurance, helped people get financial aid, and pretty much whatever else he could.  He gave me the immortal advice to go out and buy a new car because getting into debt was a great incentive to go make money.

I ended up doing just that, after an axle broke on the latest old car I was driving.  Trouble was, being in debt made no difference, except to make it worse that I might as well have been on an employment blacklist, or so it felt.  To the point where I had a nightmare about trying to get in with someone for an interview before a fax could arrive telling them no, I was on The List.

While it makes me nervous that the press and naysayers have talked us into a downturn, aided by the mortgage and realty good-timers and all that, and it makes me nervous to realize the synchronicity between 1988 and 2008, the two aren’t really comparable.  If I work half as hard at getting work now as I did then, I could be overwhelmed with options.  It’s a dramatically different world.  Even spiraling down, the economy is better.  Heck, I don’t think it was bad in 1988, not enough to put me so firmly where I ended up had I acted and/or lucked differently.  I do think the pep talk about the car was the moral equivalent, only less so, of all the people the past few years who couldn’t understand our not going out and buying a house we couldn’t afford, wouldn’t qualify for without questionable practices all around, at what was obviously the top of the market.  While circumstances may keep us from waiting that long, it’s likely to be several years before things normalize.  Which is to say, prices and payments required matching available incomes to some rational degree, and no more expectation of relatively short term enrichment.

I lived with my brother from early 1986 until June 1988, just before my niece arrived in July.  Followed by my nephew in September, making it a good year in at least a couple ways.  After that, almost exactly two years, I lived on the second floor of a house belonging to an elderly friend of my grandmother’s.  It was one of those pseudo-apartments, which is also how the house where I grew up was setup, with my grandparents on the second floor.  The entrance was shared, but there was a kitchen, living room, bedroom, and a fourth room I used as an office, with the very computer desk I am typing at now.  It was surreal, and I will endeavor to avoid any situation like it again.  The woman was in the process of dying of cancer, and even aside from that could be kind of random.  It was cheap; kind of the opposite of the new car thing, where I didn’t risk being homeless through lack of income, so there was less theoretical urgency.  Which made it as bad as it was good, at least from one perspective.

During that couple years of job hunting and coasting, I was so thoroughly insulted by one of the recruiting companies, which all seemed snooty at the time, that I still worry about dealing with recruiters, even though that is standard for my skill set.  Apart from one instance of a friend sending me to demonstrate to a mainly temp agency that I couldn’t type (especially since it was a typewriter; I was already getting a bit of speed up on a keyboard) , I have never dealt with an outfit like that again.  It was weird, being in business and having recruiters contact me from the opposite perspective, wanting to place people.

Yet another “wow, I guess I really do hold grudges” moment, remembering that.

I didn’t get a job of substance, and that just barely, until 1993.  1994 Was a step up, and was the last time I had to look for a job.  The people who did the hiring apologized that they couldn’t pay more.  To me it was the most I’d ever made, ohmygod, and almost as much as I was theoretically supposed to be able to make in 1988, six years earlier.  In retrospect, of course, I realize it was low by at least 20%, and stayed that way for the duration, even when I was making almost 160% of my starting pay.  Oh well.  It was a great experience I don’t regret at all.

Obviously that can’t happen this time, and while I may have to settle for almost anything, the sum of everything I do has to become adequate and beyond.  Writing this has reminded me of another angle I’d thought of writing about recently, but I’ll either save it for its own post or skip it entirely.

Wow.  Twenty years.  That’s amazing, because it was just a few years ago, you know?  Then wow, scary, realizing there’s any kind of similarity, given how bad it was.

(Wow, I started this at 6:59 AM and it’s 3:16 PM now.)

Posted by on 01/18 at 03:00 PM

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