大学生就业各种岗位-没有泳衣时,我们就裸泳

“马克库伯是一个清洁工，他早晨工作第一件事，就是用抹布把他干活的办公大楼门把擦干净，把入口处塑料脚垫上的泥土抖到地上去，并用拖把拖过长长的走道。”
Mark Cooper started his work day on a recent morning cleaning the door handles of an office building with a rag, vigorously shaking out a rug at a back entrance and pushing a dust mop down a long hallway.

这是今天纽约时报网站头版故事。讲述一个曾经在五百强企业拿七万美元年薪、拥有一百二十万美元预算的主管，在金融危机中失去工作后的生活现状。为了生存，他被迫做了一个清洁工，收入锐减了百分之七、八十（相当于股市崩盘），地位也坠落到最低层，心情更是坏到了顶点。
“You’re fighting despair, discouragement, depression every day,” Mr. Cooper said.

“每天每日，你都在和绝望、沮丧和抑郁搏斗。”马克库伯告诉记者。

对于很多类似从高位降落在底层岗位上的工人而言，心理调节和经济适应一样艰难，因为他们的身份意识和个人价值被彻底颠倒了。
For many of the workers, the psychological adjustment was just as difficult as the financial one, with their sense of identity and self-worth upended.

这样的故事，在上一次亚洲金融危机时，我们读到不少。

中国大学生就业难，确实已经进入了一个很难的时刻。

我通过转述这个故事，鼓励就业难的大学生，向马克库伯先生学习，勇敢走向每一个能够得到的工作岗位上去。

你还没有拿过七万美元的年薪，你也没有管过一百二十万美元的预算，你去做清洁工，也就没有什么大不了的！

当今中国的领导人、高级主管、各行各业的领导者——包括台湾、香港——只要他们当年出国留学过，绝大多数都在国外做过清洁工、洗碗工、杂工、搬运工、伺应生（waiter）、家庭工、送餐工……结果是，他们不仅学到了先进的科学文化，他们还得到了最深刻的底层感受，和最现实的人生体验。

邓小平早年留学时，就曾在法国雷诺汽车厂做过工人。

徐小平当年留学时，也在加拿大必胜客餐厅送过比萨。

我祝愿所有大学生都能找到自己心仪的工作。但我鼓励所有暂时没有找到这样工作的大学生，放下架子、降低期待、先把自己的sense of identity 和self-worth颠倒一下，确立“实现理想是人生最高纲领，但养活自己是人生最低纲领——而找不到理想的工作则要为最低纲领奋斗”这个人生暂行大纲。

养活自己是硬道理。

这样，当你被迫拿起抹布、拖把、你就不会让despair, discouragement, and depression 统治你的心灵，你就不必像马克库伯那样需要和这些黑暗情绪作斗争，你就会从生活的磨练中迅速崛起，成为就业的强者、人生的强者。

Now Mr. Cooper is grateful for what is known in unemployment circles as a “survival job” at a friend’s janitorial services company.

此时此刻，库伯先生充满感激地做着这份被称之为“活命工作”的事儿，在他一位朋友开办的这家清洁公司里。

瞧，即使干清洁工，也能干出一家清洁公司来，也是一种创业机会啊！

只要有人类需要的地方，就有就业机会，都有创业机会，都有商业机会和挣钱机会。

大学生们，努力寻找、抓住并珍惜这些机会啊！

没有泳衣时，我们只好裸泳。一旦金融海啸退潮之后，我们就知道谁的裸泳最漂亮！

Forced From Executive Pay to Hourly Wage    NewYork Times

Mark Cooper started his work day on a recent morning cleaning the door handles of an office building with a rag, vigorously shaking out a rug at a back entrance and pushing a dust mop down a long hallway.

Nine months ago he lost his job as the security manager for the western United States for a Fortune 500 company, overseeing a budget of $1.2 million and earning about $70,000 a year. Now he is grateful for the $12 an hour he makes in what is known in unemployment circles as a “survival job” at a friend’s janitorial services company. But that does not make the work any easier.

“You’re fighting despair, discouragement, depression every day,” Mr. Cooper said.

Working five days a week, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Mr. Cooper is not counted by traditional measures as among the recession’s casualties at this point. But his tumble down the economic ladder is among the more disquieting and often hidden aspects of the downturn.

It is not clear how many professionals like Mr. Cooper have taken on these types of lower-paying jobs, which are themselves in short supply. Many are doing their best to hold out as long as possible on unemployment benefits and savings while still looking for work in their fields.

About 1.7 million people, however, were working part-time in January because they could not find full-time work, a 40 percent jump from December 2007, when the recession began, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And experts agree that as the economic downturn continues and as more people begin to exhaust their jobless benefits and other options, the situation Mr. Cooper is in will inevitably become more common.

Interviews with more than two dozen laid-off professionals across the country, including architects, former sales managers and executives who have taken on lower-paying, stop-gap jobs to help make ends meet, found that they were working for places like U.P.S., a Verizon Wireless call center and a liquor store. For many of the workers, the psychological adjustment was just as difficult as the financial one, with their sense of identity and self-worth upended.

“It has been like peeling back the layers of a bad onion,” said Ame Arlt, 53, who recently accepted a position as a customer-service representative at an online insurance-leads referral service in Franklin, Tenn., after 20 years of working in executive jobs. “With every layer you peel back, you discover something else about yourself. You have to make an adjustment.”

Some people had exhausted their jobless benefits, or were ineligible; others said it was impossible for them to live on their unemployment checks alone, or said it was a matter of pride, or sanity, that drove them to find a job, any job.

In just one illustration of the demand for low-wage work, a spokesman for U.P.S. said the company saw the number of applicants this last holiday season for jobs sorting and delivering packages almost triple to 1.4 million from the 500,000 it normally receives.

When Ms. Arlt applied for the job, she sent in a stripped-down resume that hid her 20-year career at national media companies, during which she ascended to vice president of brand development at the On Command Video Corporation and was making $165,000 a year. She decided in 2001 to start her own business, opening an equestrian store and then founding a magazine devoted to the sport. But with the economy slowing, she was forced to shutter both businesses by June of last year.

After applying for more than 100 jobs, mostly director-level and above in marketing and branding, and getting just two interviews, Ms. Arlt said she realized last fall that she had to do something to “close the monthly financial hemorrhage.”

Her new job at HometownQuotes pays $10 to $15 an hour and has mostly entailed data entry. But even though she has parted ways with some friends because she is no longer in their social stratum, Ms. Arlt said she was glad she was no longer sitting at home, “thinking, ‘Who have I not heard from today?’ ”

Her new paycheck covers her mortgage but not her other living expenses. Recently, she cashed out what was left of her retirement portfolio, about $17,000.

“It has been the hardest thing in my life,” she said. “It has been harder than my divorce from my husband. It has really been even worse than the death of my mother.”

Nearly all of those interviewed said they considered their situations temporary and planned to resume their careers where they left off once the economy improves. But there are people like John Eller, 51, of Lee’s Summit, Mo., who offer a glimpse of how difficult it can be to bounce back.

Mr. Eller had been a senior director at Sprint, earning as much as $150,000 a year and overseeing 7,000 employees at 13 call centers, before being laid off in 2002 amid the economic contraction after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

A year later, he found another job, at roughly half the pay, managing a call center in New Jersey. After he lost that job two years later in a downsizing, Mr. Eller found himself out of work for another year before landing a contract position running two call centers in Kansas and Illinois, earning close to six figures.

But after that ended a year later, he was unable to find work for several months. In July 2007, he took what he thought would be a temporary job for $10 an hour as a baker in a grocery store. He was laid off again last October.

Mr. Eller quickly landed a new survival job, working as a supervisor on the overnight shift for a contractor processing immigration applications for the federal government at a salary of about $34,000 a year. But with eight children and a wife to support, Mr. Eller said he was still “below poverty level.” The family has not been able to make mortgage payments in five months and has been on the brink of foreclosure.

“I’m still scratching and clawing and trying to work my way back,” he said.

In Mr. Cooper’s case, relying on unemployment checks was never a serious consideration. The maximum benefit that jobless people can collect in Arizona is $240 a week, among the lowest in the country — and much less than is required to cover the mortgage on the comfortable four-bedroom home in Glendale that he and his wife, Maggie Macias-Cooper, share.

Mrs. Macias-Cooper, who works as a personal trainer in a gym built in what used to be the couple’s three-car garage, has seen her client base shrink to 10 from about 50 over the last year.

In addition to giving Mr. Cooper a job as a janitor, his friend agreed to pay for the couple’s benefits through Cobra. Maintaining health care coverage was paramount for the family because Mrs. Macias-Cooper recently had breast cancer.

Some unemployed professionals said they decided not to seek even part-time work because it might interfere with their job searches. But Mr. Cooper rises every day at 4 a.m. and, after a time of prayer, devotes two hours to his job hunt on the computer. He prints out a detailed call list of prospective employers to take with him, squeezing in phone conversations during breaks throughout the day from his pickup truck, which he calls his “office.”

“There were times I broke down,” Mr. Cooper said. “I broke down thinking, ‘This is what I’ve become.’ ”

But Mrs. Macias-Cooper, who admitted that she was initially embarrassed about her husband’s new job, says she is now grateful.

“There is no shame,” said Mrs. Macias-Cooper, who grew teary during an interview at their home. “I am very proud of my husband that he will go to any lengths, do whatever it takes, to keep his family afloat, if it means mopping floors, cleaning urinals.”