COVID-19 has sidelined millions of American workers or sent them down the employment exit ramp, and coined “The Great Resignation” and other phrases intended to describe an economy begging and pleading for workers.
Jump in the Time Tunnel and take a trip back with me to 1982 when, to quote economists Michael A. Urquhart and Marillyn A. Hewson, “The unemployment rate, already high by historical standards at the onset of the recession in mid-1981, reached 10.8 percent at the end of 1982, higher than at any time in post-World War II history.”
Guess who hit the bricks looking for a job in 1982?
Fresh out of Boston University with a journalism degree and visions of besting Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward sparkling in my head, I made a list of newspapers desperate for my new-found talents with The Boston Globe and Boston Herald at the top of the page.
The Globe didn’t answer my cover letter query and the Herald editor who got back to me said the path to their newsroom next to the Mass Pike started with a strong but small daily newspaper like the Lowell Sun.
After a couple of months of fruitless searching, I found myself calling around to Boston-area weekly newspapers and running out of money. Desperate for any work — never mind a first job in what I hoped would be a stellar journalism career — I pored over the Want Ads every morning and called the numbers listed in them.
My interview with a place called Inkadinkadoo in Boston’s Fort Point Channel neighborhood seemed to go well until the manager told me I flunked the compound addition test they gave me.
I applied for a job as a houseman at the old Ritz-Carlton and got hired. I filled out a union card and they gave me a locker key and four uniforms that included a black polyester tie, light-blue rayon shirts, and dark blue trousers. I had to buy a pair of durable black shoes.
I lived with the three other guys in Brighton — all college graduates — and none of us were working what you would call a career job. We scraped together enough money to pay the rent and buy beer — not necessarily in that order — and stole from our employers to cover basic needs. Alan the hardware-store helper brought home light bulbs and trash bags. Bob and John brought leftover food from their respective restaurant jobs. I snuck toilet paper and those little bars of soap out of the Ritz.
Jim Hoover and Skip Rosenthal called me in for an interview at The South End News during a blizzard, and hired me to write part time if I would also use a compact hatchback to deliver the paper. I ran down Washington Street skipping through foot-high snow and screaming. I had my first newspaper job. Someone wanted to pay me to write the news. I was in heaven.
A few months later I added a third job to my budding resume when the great Helen Woodman hired me two days a week at the State House News Service. I was off and running in journalism even though my biggest paycheck came from polishing brass rails and vacuuming hallways.
I ended up working full time at the News Service before spending a year at the Dedham Transcript and joining the (then) Daily Evening Item in 1988. The rest, as they say, is history.
The pandemic has dealt a roundhouse blow to the economy. Still, it’s amazing to see how many jobs are begging for workers.
I was stunned to read the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s (MBTA) full-page advertisement in this newspaper seeking bus-driver candidates. I remember when MBTA jobs, with their iron-clad union protection and fat pensions, were only mentioned in whispered reverence and you had to know a state representative to get hired.
I like working for a newspaper, but I take pride in my grocery-bagging skills and if Shaw’s gets desperate for employees, then you’re going to see me in Aisle 5 gently placing your dozen eggs in their own bag.
