Moving day

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Beginning of a great adventure

Tomorrow at 6 a.m. or thereabouts, I am going to get into my car and drive out west. I am helping my friend of some 10 years or so, Rachel, move out to Santa Fe, NM., where she will begin her teaching career, teaching math to 7th and 8th graders.

Her ex-husband, Frank, held a going away party for her at his house, which tells you the kind of post-marital relationship they've had the past few years. The kind I wish I had with my ex-wife, Susan. Oh, well.

At the party were several other people who'd been laid off, most of them former aerospace workers (I live in Melbourne, a town full of engineers and other who work or worked until recently at Kennedy Space Center) who lost their jobs because of the end of the space shuttle program.

One friend, Mike, told me that he had written his resignation letter two months before he got laid off, and read it every day to remind himself why he needed to get out. His company obliged him, by pulling the trigger for him, and he used the separation package to reinvent himself, becoming a yoga instructor and devoting more time to community theater. He was laid
off four years ago, and is still living in the same beachside condo he's rented for the past seven years.

Frank, one of my best friends and our host, was laid off more recently, along with his girlfriend, Maro. They got generous packages from their employer, so things are not so bad, even if they still have to jump through the byzantine, patronizing hoops to get their unemployment benefits. He got laid off from a $90,000 a year job, and now can devote himself full-time to the care and maintenance of his precious Sears Craftsman home he painstakingly restored.

 The biggest challenge he and his girlfriend have these days is finding something to do. Travel figures deeply in their future.

Christina, another friend with theater ties, told me she's been laid off twice. Once by an investment banker a decade ago that allowed her and her husband to buy the home they live in now, and then again at the same newspaper where I was just laid off. She seems pretty happy, and spends most of her time raising an awesome son.

Rachel, too, is a victim of double-dip job attrition. She was laid off in 2001, and again earlier this year, which prompted her to get a job keeping the books at a non-profit for the homeless, which has its share of dysfunctionality. But her dream was to teach, and when the offer came from Santa Fe, she jumped at it.

Hope abounds. People who were laid off have found promising, thriving second careers doing what they really love. I should be so lucky.

Assess these skills, mother fuckers!

One of the more humiliating aspects of filing an unemployment claim in Florida is the newly inaugurated skills assessment test. As of Aug. 1, applicants for their benefits have to take a battery of math, reading comprehension and "locating information" questions.

For instance, you could be asked how much your company needs to budget for widgets in the next quarter if a case of 20 costs $17.95 and you need 800 widgets.

Or you could be asked a series of questions after reading a memo about a new parking policy at school.

My favorite is the "locating information" section, which basically asks you to tell the difference between a bar graph and a pie chart.


Needless to say I aced the test, scoring higher in math than verbal, ironically.


But why take it at all?


Here's the official explanation:


"Skills Assessment – Individuals filing initial claims must participate in an online initial skills assessment in order to be eligible to receive benefits. The initial skills assessment is provided by Florida Ready to Work. Claimants will be notified of this requirement when filing for benefits. Failure to complete the assessment will result in the denial of benefits until the review is completed. The agency will be notified by Florida Ready to Work when the claimant has completed the assessment. In responding to claimant inquiries relating to the assessment, staff should NOT refer to it as a test. The results of the assessment do not affect benefit eligibility."


So, the test is not a test, the results don't affect eligibility, but you won't get benefits if you don't take it. Sounds to me like some political supporter got thrown a bone, an easy government contract probably worth millions. I made a public records request with the Agency for Workforce Innovation Monday. Still waiting for them to get back to me.

Supposedly the skills test is meant to better match you with potential employers offering jobs, and to identify areas where you may need more training you take the test, the site actually sends you to a prompt where you can sign up for training right away to get "credentialed." Complete a course and you will get a certificate signed by Governor Voldemort that you have the basic credentials for an entry level job. Yippee!

When I went to the Florida Ready To Work website, I learned the program is being administered by the Florida Department of Education and Agency for Workforce Innovation. The training is free, but someone is paying for it. A grant, no doubt. Money that could be better spent on, oh, I don't know, extending unemployment benefits or raising the rate from the $275 a week it's been since at least 2001.

 Really, after more than 25 years in journalism, I don't think I need more training. Nor do need a totally irrelevant, waste of time skills assessment that merely scrapes the surface of high school math and reading skills barely used by your average barista or book store clerk.

You want skills? Check out these mad skills, baby. I scored a 1240 on my SATs in 1975. I was a New York State Regents Scholarship winner. I was a member of the National Honor Society. I got a 690 on the verbal section of my GRE. I can test with the best.

I investigate public records, analyze campaign reports, dig through federal tax statements, read government budgets and compute tax increases. I work in Microsoft Word, Excel, HTML and a host of other platforms.

The skills assessment "not a test" is a joke and an insult to me. I can only imagine how insulting it is to a laid of aerospace engineer who spent 30 years at Kennedy Space Center. What is a skills assessment going to tell them? That they qualify for an assistant manager job at Wal-Mart?

And there is the great disconnect between what is really going on out here in the world and what the paternalistic government sees as the problem: You got laid off because you don't have the right skills, not because the economy sucks or your company needs to put the squeeze on your office to send more money back to corporate to pay for Cadillac insurance benefits and million-dollar bonuses.

And, by the way, we don't see your unemployment check as a benefit for you to help during these hard times, but as a burden on we business owners. In other words, we are tired of carrying your lazy fat asses. Now, get to work!

First Monday (of the rest of my life)

Today is the first Monday in 25 years I didn't have a full-time job to go to. And it feels weird.

But as my friend Craig, who owns his own restaurant in New Orleans, said today, "Embrace it."

The positive comments have been streaming in all weekend, both on Facebook and in the real world. Friends have been very supportive of my decision Thursday to take a voluntary layoff from a decent-paying job with Florida Today, one of 31 top-earning papers at Gannett Co. Inc.

The last four days have been nothing short of an emotional roller coaster ride. I have been riding alternating currents of relief, anxiety, joy, fright, elation and depression pretty much around the clock. The worst part is when panic sets in and I feel I need to "do something," like jump into this freelancing gig for Hellometro.com for a piddling $40 per 500-word story. Hell, it isn't about the money. It's about getting a foot into the door of online content providing, which is where the bulk of freelance gigs are at these days.

The best moments are when I realize I don't have to do anything, that I am still financially secure for at least the next three months, and even after that I have a "crisis account" to dip into if need be. I could sublet my place and trek around the globe if I wanted, but my driving nature won't allow that. Not entirely. I feel that I've got to work. I've got to "have-something-to-do."

So much of my identity for the last 25 years having been wrapped up in journalism, writing stories daily and weekly, investigating political campaign funds, ethical lapses, and government spending of public dollars. Now I'm writing 500-word business profiles and collecting  unemployment and transitional pay that equals what I was earning prior to my unemployment.

So the self-evaluation continues, a never-ending cycle of critique and deconstruction of my actions, my reasoning and motive for taking the layoff option, and reminding myself why I quit in the first place. And each time I run into a friend for the first time since my separation from work I hear myself repeating the sequence of events, the reasons why I did what I did and the internal editor revises, polishes, rechecks the tone and intent of the narrative to make sure it's on track, to search for missing information or illogical constructions. And each telling is a little more polished, a little more sophisticated, a little more self-assured and authoritative.

For instance, the same afternoon I got laid of, I ran into Jared and Lisa at the "Purple Publix" in West Melbourne. She was like, "So, what happened?" And I was like, Oh, yeah, you don't know. So I told her and I conveyed my anxiety. She said, "You know, I'm a smart person, and I read your stories and know you're a smart person, too. And so I know that whatever decision you made was the right one, and you obviously gave it a lot of thought. Do you trust your own judgment? Have you ever made a bad decision?"

It blew me away. I hugged her for saying that and then Jared delivered the coup de grace: "Use your anxiety in your favor." Very Jedi knight of you, Jared.

The next day, at Friday Fest, I run into Bastard and his Old Lady at Matt's Casbah. They think it's awesome that I left the paper, and that I'm going to be traveling west in a few days. Their friend Toni shows up with her friend Regina, and they're very cool about what I'm doing. So I'm beginning to feel like it's going to be OK, that I am not a pariah or leper just because I'm without a job.

And on Saturday, I went through another iteration of the events of that Thursday with yet another group of friends wondering what the hell happened. And again on Sunday at a going away party for the friend I'm going to help move out west. So I'm getting good at telling this story of mine.

I am beginning to think of my situation as more like being between gigs or waiting on the next assignment. Like a samurai wandering from village to village, Toshiro Mifune with a laptop. Have laptop, will travel.

On the dole in Florida

Florida may be one of the cheapest, most mean-spirited states when it comes to helping out the unfortunate, the disabled, the elderly and the down on their luck. If someone asks, "Brother, can you spare a dime?" Florida will say, "Get a fucking job, loser!"

Case in point: The state hasn't raised the $275 maximum weekly payment for unemployment benefits in a decade, even during the worst economic crisis in the country.

Hardly a sustainable stopgap, it works out to less than the minimum wage, less than what some high school kid makes working the register at Burger King or 7-11.

Other states have stepped up during hard times: New York pays a maximum $405 a week, California $450. Washington State was paying $583 but raised it in March to $608.

The economy hit Florida particularly hard because when the real estate market tanked, thousands of construction workers lost their jobs. Our state unemployment rate peaked at nearly 12 percent and is still one of the highest in the nation, and here in Brevard County it's even worse because of the end of the space shuttle program. Thousands of aerospace workers have been let go, albeit many with generous separation packages.

I am relatively lucky. My chintzy company is giving me transition pay. It's a good deal for the company I worked for, Gannett, because it doesn't have to dole out my full pay over the next three months or pay federal withholding tax. Cheap bastards. It set up a trust fund to supplement my unemployment compensation to match what I was making while employed. When it runs out after three months, I think I will definitely move to Seattle. I could live on $608 a week.

If that wasn't bad enough, the Florida Legislature decided to make it more difficult to qualify for and receive unemployment, and reduce the benefits to save businesses millions a year in payroll taxes. The douchebags in Tallahassee put the screws to people, who through no fault of their own, got laid off or lost their job. One lawmaker even wanted to include a requirement that unemployed folks put in four hours a week of volunteer service but someone pointed out that it would probably be illegal. Not to mention, kind of fucked up to volunteer at an agency whose services you yourself might need.

What did pass was an unemployment package that is extremely punitive, and only adds more misery to the lives of people who are trying to get by, feed their families and save their homes.

As of Aug. 1, you must file your unemployment claim online. If you don't have a computer you'll have to go to a local library or job center. And job centers are few and far between.

But it'll save the state $4.7 million a year in administration costs.

To add insult to injury, once you successfully file your claim, you are required to take a skills assessment test, which measures your math and language skills and your ability to read pie charts, for some unknown reason.

Also, to receive your benefits, you must prove you contacted at least five employers a week, or meet with a job rep at one of the state's one-stop centers.

It gets worse. Starting Jan.1, 2012, the benefits duration drops from 26 weeks to a range of 12 to 23 weeks depending on the unemployment rate. That'll save the state another $103 million a year.

That's $103 million businesses won't have to pay in taxes, which will magically produce jobs, or so thinks Conservative Rep. Ritch Workman (in photo, right), a mortgage broker from Melbourne.

"High business taxes equal higher business taxes and increased layoffs," Workman said as a way to justify shafting the out-of-work. "Our businesses drive our economic recovery."

Sounds like the logic of  a man who sold more than one sub-prime mortgage.


Unemployment insurance is supposed to help people who lose their jobs, not punish them. It's rather dickish in these tough times to make it harder to receive what is essentially a benefit you earned by working -- a benefit that was taken out of your paycheck in the first place.

And that is just another reason for wanting to leave this fucking state.

Maybe I'll check out Seattle.

A blog is born

Over the weekend, a group of friends and I rode our bicycles to the Broken Barrel Tavern, a kind of Mecca on tap for lovers of micro-brewed, handcrafted beers in Palm Bay, Florida. It has a wide selection of IPAs, Stouts, Porter, European beer and other deliciously frothy concoctions to keep a thirsty biker busy all afternoon.

Their food is good, too. Smoked chicken wings with a variety of sauces, from Jamaican Jerk to Spicy Habanero. And their Cuban sandwich rocks. Testify!

Lover's Note: Tank top for girls bears the logo: "I blow kegs."

This is a unique group of bikers. Da Bastard is a wizard of a designer and welder and has made several beautiful one-off choppers and burrito bikes.

I've made a couple of ratbikes out of reconstructed Schwinn parts, my best being an old Torpedo frame with Stingray handlebars and a Phantom saddle (that's my bike up front). Other folks in our gang rode their store-bought cruisers and Basmans (I'm in back, riding the Basman).

We're the Florida Chapter of the Chopaderos Outlaws Bicycle Club. We ride because walking sucks.

As we drained one heady brewe after another, we talked about all sorts of stuff, like the maddening habit of Miami drivers who stream through the left turn lane after their light turns red. The bullshit level rose along with the alcohol level in our blood.

As did the girl-on-girl face sucking, and the display of one gal's ample cleavage. Viva la difference!

This was relatively easy to achieve because the beers we were drinking had super-high alcohol content.

On about my second or third beer, I told my friends that by Thursday I would be out of a job. Unemployed thanks to corporate downsizing, after more than 25 years in the newspaper business.

They offered heartfelt condolences with the best intentions, and I thanked them.

And then talk steered toward what I would do with all this free time. I told them my plan was to help a friend move out to Santa Fe. They told me about brew pubs in the area. The Bastard said he'd hook me up with some buddies in Escondido and San Diego, and I promised to visit the Stone Brewery, the ultimate Valhalla.

That's when the idea of this blog came up. I should travel, drink beer and write about it. Whatever else happened along the way I would record as well, in the natural order of things: Drink. Piss. Fuck.

I should be so lucky.

And now, a great song by the Pogues to get the ball rolling:

Unemployed in America

As of 10:06 a.m., EST, Aug. 11, 2011, I became a statistical casualty in the ongoing Great Recession, which supposedly ended a year ago September.

On that day, a Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics report stated that 13.9 million people were without work, 9.1 percent of the workforce. But who's counting?

While the rest of the economy has seen signs of modest recovery, the journalism industry, in which I have toiled in the trenches for more than 25 years, has not.

The powerhouses of mainstream print have all seen huge declines in revenue over the past few years, with stock prices plummeting in double digits.

Still in freefall, my former company, Gannett Co. Inc., (slogan: "It's all within reach")ordered my former newspaper, Florida Today, to slash its newsroom payroll by a "large amount," as our executive editor so eloquently put it. He restructured the newsroom, cutting it from 78 to 57 staff positions. About a quarter of the staff.

Then we all had to apply for the remaining jobs.

It was hell. But it's over.

I was one of the fortunate ones offered a job, basically the same job I already had. I thought, WTF? How could I work for a corporation that treats its employees this badly, and still give multi-million dollar benefits and buyout options to the top execs who are running this company into the ground?

I turned them down.

My David Allan Coe moment wasn't some dramatic, "Take this job and shove it," kind of statement. I was quiet, professional and courteous. I thanked them for offering me my job, told them it made me feel like they appreciated my work, but I had to respectfully decline.

I almost wavered. But as I looked into the eyes of the man who would be my new supervisor and the shit-brown mustache crinkling above his lips, my resolve became tensile. I said no thank you.

The other editor asked if I was kidding. I told him I'd given it a lot of thought, but I had to move on and try other things while I had the chance. I have no kids, no mortgage, no car payments, no worries. Someone in that office with a spouse and kids would be in worse shape without a job than I.

I didn't tell him that the corporate environment was sucking me dry or that I just had too much outrage with the way the economic mess was being handled that I couldn't sit by another moment without saying something.

They both wished me luck, and I wished them the same. They then had to do some quick-footed scurrying around as the dominoes started tumbling to rearrange the deck chairs on the sinking ship before the next victim stepped into the office.

My decision saved someone their job, but it put me on the unemployment line. I'll register with the unemployment office, receive a generous termination package for the next three months or until I find another full-time job.

Meanwhile, the posts from my friends on Facebook have been nothing but positive, if a little surprised. They know how much I love what I do, holding government agencies accountable, putting public officials through the ringer to keep them accountable.

To some, I'm an anti-establishment folk hero, sticking it to Big Media. To others, I'm a free-spirit, an iconoclast shedding my worsted-wool, hand-stitched corporate skin. There is truth to both views, but I see it more as a self-rescue mission to restore my own sanity, spirit and soul and to make a huge course correction in my life that will get me back to the passion I once had.

Peace.