Don’t end up like Milton!

This is a trick question, so speed-read the following two job descriptions? Which one of the two job descriptions is likely to become an obsolete/dead-end job?

The first job described below is from Toledoblade.com:

“Full-time film projectionist. Job Description: Two old reel-to-reel projectors in the booth, whose reels need changing every 20 minutes. Modern projectors are easier, using big platters to unspool movies from one long reel.

Poor Job prospects: “Blame big movie theater chains, which since the late 1960s have replaced professionals with manager-projectionists who dart between 18 screens.”

And the second is an actual, out-of-date posting of a job description from smarthunt.com:

“CLAIMS MANAGER/MARKETING REPRESENTATIVE:
Claims Manager duties include all aspects of pre-litigation, scheduling and handling recorded statements of clients; heavy contact with all clients, claims adjusters and all medical facilities; signing up new clients; requesting medical specials; reduction of bills; handling of property damage claims; submitting claims for settlement consideration; negotiating and settling cases; negotiating subrogation; prepared settlement documents including attorney fees and other expenses on client files; disbursing settlement funds and closing files. Marketing Representative duties included heavy public relations with many doctor’s offices located in the general area. The firm specializes in personal injury law.”

Okay, which of the two above jobs is an obsolete/dead-end job? The answer is … the job you yourself hold now! Hey, I said it was a trick question.

Once you accept that your job that’s there today may not be there tomorrow, you have won half the battle. What battle? The daily battle to stay alive and healthy and pay your bills. Still, you are apt to hear at anytime, anywhere what Henry Ross Perot described as a great whooosh! sound sucking your job away. Gone. Gone forever. (Perot ran for President in 1992 and was against free trade.)

Just as older people of the U.S. and the rest of the world learned to live with the Cold War not knowing whether the world would be there on the morrow or not, so too a person has to learn to live without knowing whether his or her little world will be there on the morrow or not. What gets one through day by day by day? What counteracts the constant feeling of job insecurity?

I don’t know, but I do think by random experimenting, people are learning a new mindset. It could be humor, concern over a cause, love for a child or mate, a fantasy (why not a fantasy?), a striving toward a better day, living life to the fullest in the now and here. Or something, someway, somehow that’s off the register of my suggestions but works for them. Something aside from drugs.

I’m sure many of you have worked it out to where something works for you. Try to share it with others who are at a loss.

We won’t know what this new mindset for living with a questionable means to earn a living will be called down the line, years from now. But you are part of it, now; everyone is part it because no job is secure. How do you put it out of mind and live with it just below the surface? How do you keep it in mind and accept this condition as a matter of fact. What works for you?

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