Executive Blues: Down and Out in Corporate America.

Executive Blues details the job searches of G. J. Meyer, a middle-aged public relations executive, who was "outplaced" (fired) by two major corporations in the early nineteen nineties. Although he had a string of unblemished career successes, Meyer was caught in the corporate trend of "rightsizing" (firing workers) which has enabled companies to increase profits in our "opportunity society" (downsize workers, "upsize" shareholders). His book should sound a warning to managers and executives that traditional loyalties between employers and employees are fast becoming anachronistic.

His first firing, from McDonell Douglas, comes as a shock, but Meyer assumes with twelve years experience and a steady record of accomplishment he will easily find another position. Bad assumption. Among the job search misfortunes he describes is a Holiday Inn Corporation interview which was cavalierly scheduled in a different city for the wrong day; the Gerber search that grew so "cold" he had difficulty getting his plane ticket reimbursed; and various headhunter leads which sounded promising but ended up in failure due to a host of rude and frustrating circumstances. Meyer desperately networks with old contacts and investigates alternative job possibilities but nothing pans out.

When all his employment opportunities seem to have disappeared, Meyer begins to question himself and his life choices. Should he have chosen more secure employment such as a civil service position? Should he have gone to law school and become an independent professional? Should he have stayed on as a newspaper reporter when he was in his early thirties? To his credit Meyer doesn't get bogged down in protracted self-analysis or self-pity. In 1995, after his latest job search which lasted 13 months, Meyer landed an executive position with a Cleveland utility. On the last page of his book he mentions that his wife has also "found a demanding job that she finds worth doing, and she too likes this place." (I have since learned from a "Sixty Minutes" TV interview that Meyer and his wife are separated.)

It seems to me that Meyer was victimized by his early successes which may have caused him to suffer a bit of an IFD syndrome. (Idealization leads to Frustration which produces Demoralization.) His more recent experiences have caused him to label as "business mythology" that "if you do what is expected, wear a necktie, are a good employee and follow the rules, then the promise is you'll get fair treatment." This awareness helped Meyer persevere in the face of unfairness and "finally" find a job.

Meyer was asked, in an author's interview with his publisher, "Why do you think the circle formed by the people who have money, security, and status is getting smaller?" He answered, "Economists say of global competition: organizations must be leaner, no one can be fat. I doubt that's the whole explanation. There is now a license to treat people brutally. Selfishness is more respectable than ever before. Companies that are doing well and making profits are downsizing and throwing out a lot of people. We may be returning to a 19th century early industrial model. Industrial workers were worked to death and got nothing for it. We sentimentalize the Victorian era which was prosperous for a small strata of society, but not for most people." I wonder how Adam Smith would have answered the question.