Work Gets Funnier After 50
Published with permission from FabJob.

In considering a short humorous piece about work I’m tempted to say that there’s nothing funny about it. That’s because, at 54, I have trouble getting any. Work, I mean. Maybe if there were something called "Workagara" that made you look twenty-five again they’d hire you more easily, but that drug is still in development. Hey! That’s it! I’ll become a pharmaceutical researcher and invent it! I’ll be rich! I’ll be rolling in the dough! I’ll be comfortably well off!

The thing is, it isn’t legal to discriminate against someone for being over forty and less than seventy. So, you can’t say something blunt like "you’re too old, gramps, go play some checkers!" Frankly, that would be an improvement on the stuff I have heard like, "we found someone with just a little more technical skill."

Technical skill? Listen, girly, I was ridge-reaming my Mercury Comet when your mom was in high school, OK? I know technical skills. Why you whippersnapper, I remember when floppies really were and it took ten days to boot up your PC and another ten to shut it down, and we liked it!

The honest truth is that I really do have the technical skills. There are lots of theories out there about why age discriminations happens in spite of that fact. They say (you know, "them") that it’s a lack of social fit. If you grew up listening to the Dave Clark Five on WABC you’re just not going to fit in with a crowd that grew up listening to Dr. Dre on XM. Maybe, but I don’t think so. I think that the trouble with older workers, so far as younger workers are concerned, is that we just remind them too much of where they’re headed.

Oh, yeah. There you are, thirty-two years old, couple of kids in daycare, spouse working worse hours than you are, trying to make the payments on that Ford Humungoid parked across three spaces in the lot, and in walks some guy with some grey hair, where he has hair, who’s maybe excited because his new granddaughter is coming to visit and all you can see is that that SUV and those trendy clothes and the home theater and all that other stuff you’ve bought to stay young are just never going to work. No matter what you do, no matter where you go, no matter how you slice it, you’re gonna get old slick! And that’s right next door to dying, maybe even worse.

People try lots of tricks to look younger. You can get your hair cut in a contemporary style, for example. That’s actually a good idea, because the seventies were a long time ago, you fossil, and you might wake up and consider that the twentieth century is over and so should you be. Over, I mean. Over it, I mean. Then you can put color in your beard if you have one, and unfortunately a beard in general makes a man look younger, though it doesn’t do much for a woman, so if you’ve got one you aren’t going to like the grey hairs in it. So you color those, and maybe the hair on your head in the new style, and you rub some Preparation H in places it isn’t sold to be used and you go in to the interview with a bounce in your step and a smile on your lips and it goes great.

Until they check with your college and find out you graduated decades into the distant past. That’s when your skill set suddenly gets outdated.

So, my suggestion is not to try to fool anyone. Heck, try to look older. Creep into the interview with a walker if you can borrow one, maybe grey your hair even more than it is. Sit out in the sun until you wrinkle even more than you are naturally, then buy a suit that was fashionable in 1977. (They’re easy to find in costume shops. Just look in the Halloween section.) Don’t catch a third of what’s being said. Ask for lots of repeated statements, cup your ear and say "eeeh?" a lot. Then, when tottering out the door at the end of the interview, lose your balance and smash the water cooler all over the carpet.

No, you won’t get the job that way either, but it will be a heck of a lot more entertaining than hearing about "technical skills."

Click here to find a career you can be passionate about at any age.

by Steve Fey:
Variety describes my work life, including five years as a career counselor, about ten years as a computer systems administrator, being a trainer and training manager, a typesetter, and weekend manager of a pizzeria. A Masters in Career and Technology Education offered too many choices, which led to the career counseling and the systems administration jobs. Now past fifty I know first-hand the joys of finding a job when you’re an “older” worker. Maybe I could write a humorous article about them some day.

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