- Joined
- Aug 6, 2008
- Messages
- 2,039
- Points
- 0
[ bag boy with an mba degree ]
Bagging a Job: Father of Three Is Part of the Humbled Underemployed
<script type="text/javascript"> var collab_title = 'Bagging a Job: Father of Three Is Part of the Humbled Underemployed'; </script>
BY MICHAEL KRUSE
ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
Published: Tuesday, January 19, 2010 at 7:02 p.m.
KERI WIGINTON | ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
DON GOULD works as a bag boy at a Publix in Land O'Lakes. He has been unable to find another job since he and his family moved to the Tampa area.
LAND O'LAKES | Don Gould clocked in at the Publix in central Pasco County. The green computer font on the small black screen told him to BEGIN SHIFT.
Gould is 46, has been married 21 years and is the father of three boys. Three years ago, he was living in Indiana, managing a small design company and making a six-figure salary.
Now he's living in Wesley Chapel making $8.25 an hour. Publix calls him a front service clerk.
"I used to be a big shot," he said one day last week. "Now I'm just, 'Hey, bag boy.' "
The national unemployment rate is 10 percent, the state rate is 11.5 percent, and the Polk County rate is 12.9 percent. For every open job, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 6.4 people who want it and need it.
Gould is in none of those numbers. He is part of the large swath of the humbled underemployed - highly educated people who during the recession have gone from highly paid to paper or plastic.
His sons are 18, 16 and 12.
"I want to be a role model by showing by example that no job is undignified."
Which is true.
And also not so simple.
Gould grew up in Lansing, Mich., where his father was the director of inheritance and intangible taxes for the state.
"Wore a suit and tie, 8 to 5, carried a briefcase," he said.
A professional. His mother stayed at home. They weren't rich, but they weren't poor, either.
In junior high, Gould had a paper route; in high school, he bagged groceries and was a janitor at a church; in college, he washed pots and pans at the cafeteria.
He graduated from Michigan State University in 1985 with a degree in engineering. He graduated from Grand Valley State in 1991 with a master's in marketing.
Starting in 1985, a week after he finished at MSU, and until the fall of 2007, he worked - at small companies and at big companies, as an inside sales guy and as an outside sales guy, as an applications engineer and as a marketing man.
He traveled to places like Singapore for business. People worked for him.
Then he got laid off. Soon after that, his wife did, too. They both looked for jobs, and she got one in Tampa in quality control at Bausch & Lomb.
So they moved.
This was August of 2008. He started looking for a job. And then the economy collapsed.
Instead of sitting at home, he said, all woe-is-me and constantly clicking refresh on CareerBuilder.com, he decided to work in the meantime, anywhere, doing anything.
Not every executive out of a job makes that choice. They climb society's rungs, latch onto a level of prestige and won't let go.
The questions he was asked in his interview at Publix, he said, mostly went like this: Do you realize you're going to have to clean the bathrooms? Do you realize you're going to have to mop the floor? Are you sure you want to do this?
He started at Publix that December, making $7.75 an hour, working for a supervisor who was 18 years old.
For a while, he worked with his oldest, Clark, father and son side by side.
GETTING READY
The other day at his home in Wesley Chapel, he "suited up" for work - black pants and black shoes, have to wear a belt, can't have a beard - and drove to the Publix and clocked in.
The computer letters told him to HAVE A NICE DAY!
At the foot of the lane, he stood and put into plastic sacks Tyson Fun Nuggets and Foster's 12-packs, Dole diced pears and strawberry Pop-Tarts, plastic-wrapped pieces of pineapple and Scooby Doo mac and cheese, a 24-count box of Publix-brand doughnut holes and a bottle of Shiraz.
He took people's groceries out to their cars, and collected carts, five at a time. He bent over and picked up trash, off the asphalt outside, off the floor inside.
It's easy: "I feel like I take my brain out and hang it on a hook."
It's hard: "My feet throb. My knees throb. I take an ibuprofen to go to bed."
He wears a Publix back brace.
Bag boys see things. Here's what Gould has seen:
People talking on their cell phones while paying for their food by swiping their cards - so connected, to someone, somewhere, but so thoughtless and indifferent to those immediately around them.
"How are you, ma'am?"
No response.
"Plastic OK, ma'am?"
No response.
People walking to their cars and getting in their cars and sitting in their cars while he's still loading the bags from the cart. No "thank you." No nothing. Just a trunk thump and shift to reverse.
GOOD & BAD
It's good: "Publix threw me a lifesaver. It gave me purpose. It gave me structure. It made me meet new people."
It's bad: "Still, there's a certain amount - if I'm being brutally truthful with myself - there's a little bit of, I don't know, I failed."
Gould is glad his wife's job allows his family to pay the bills - they live in a nice house, they drive nice cars, they're not desperate or destitute or anywhere close - but he feels guilty that his contribution isn't more than what it is.
The first six or so months, he didn't put Publix on his resume; the last six or so months, though, he has.
Some people he has talked to about jobs have mentioned it, and they've said nice things, about how they respect that, about how they're not sure they could do that.
Still hasn't gotten him a job that's not bagging groceries.
One recent evening Gould bagged a woman's groceries and put them in her cart. The pin on his Publix smock read ABOVE & BEYOND. He pushed her cart into the parking lot.
"Which way are we going?" he asked.
This story appeared in print on page C6 Copyright © 2010 TheLedger.com — All rights reserved. Restricted use only.
Bagging a Job: Father of Three Is Part of the Humbled Underemployed
<script type="text/javascript"> var collab_title = 'Bagging a Job: Father of Three Is Part of the Humbled Underemployed'; </script>
BY MICHAEL KRUSE
ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
Published: Tuesday, January 19, 2010 at 7:02 p.m.
DON GOULD works as a bag boy at a Publix in Land O'Lakes. He has been unable to find another job since he and his family moved to the Tampa area.
LAND O'LAKES | Don Gould clocked in at the Publix in central Pasco County. The green computer font on the small black screen told him to BEGIN SHIFT.
Gould is 46, has been married 21 years and is the father of three boys. Three years ago, he was living in Indiana, managing a small design company and making a six-figure salary.
Now he's living in Wesley Chapel making $8.25 an hour. Publix calls him a front service clerk.
"I used to be a big shot," he said one day last week. "Now I'm just, 'Hey, bag boy.' "
The national unemployment rate is 10 percent, the state rate is 11.5 percent, and the Polk County rate is 12.9 percent. For every open job, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 6.4 people who want it and need it.
Gould is in none of those numbers. He is part of the large swath of the humbled underemployed - highly educated people who during the recession have gone from highly paid to paper or plastic.
His sons are 18, 16 and 12.
"I want to be a role model by showing by example that no job is undignified."
Which is true.
And also not so simple.
Gould grew up in Lansing, Mich., where his father was the director of inheritance and intangible taxes for the state.
"Wore a suit and tie, 8 to 5, carried a briefcase," he said.
A professional. His mother stayed at home. They weren't rich, but they weren't poor, either.
In junior high, Gould had a paper route; in high school, he bagged groceries and was a janitor at a church; in college, he washed pots and pans at the cafeteria.
He graduated from Michigan State University in 1985 with a degree in engineering. He graduated from Grand Valley State in 1991 with a master's in marketing.
Starting in 1985, a week after he finished at MSU, and until the fall of 2007, he worked - at small companies and at big companies, as an inside sales guy and as an outside sales guy, as an applications engineer and as a marketing man.
He traveled to places like Singapore for business. People worked for him.
Then he got laid off. Soon after that, his wife did, too. They both looked for jobs, and she got one in Tampa in quality control at Bausch & Lomb.
So they moved.
This was August of 2008. He started looking for a job. And then the economy collapsed.
Instead of sitting at home, he said, all woe-is-me and constantly clicking refresh on CareerBuilder.com, he decided to work in the meantime, anywhere, doing anything.
Not every executive out of a job makes that choice. They climb society's rungs, latch onto a level of prestige and won't let go.
The questions he was asked in his interview at Publix, he said, mostly went like this: Do you realize you're going to have to clean the bathrooms? Do you realize you're going to have to mop the floor? Are you sure you want to do this?
He started at Publix that December, making $7.75 an hour, working for a supervisor who was 18 years old.
For a while, he worked with his oldest, Clark, father and son side by side.
GETTING READY
The other day at his home in Wesley Chapel, he "suited up" for work - black pants and black shoes, have to wear a belt, can't have a beard - and drove to the Publix and clocked in.
The computer letters told him to HAVE A NICE DAY!
At the foot of the lane, he stood and put into plastic sacks Tyson Fun Nuggets and Foster's 12-packs, Dole diced pears and strawberry Pop-Tarts, plastic-wrapped pieces of pineapple and Scooby Doo mac and cheese, a 24-count box of Publix-brand doughnut holes and a bottle of Shiraz.
He took people's groceries out to their cars, and collected carts, five at a time. He bent over and picked up trash, off the asphalt outside, off the floor inside.
It's easy: "I feel like I take my brain out and hang it on a hook."
It's hard: "My feet throb. My knees throb. I take an ibuprofen to go to bed."
He wears a Publix back brace.
Bag boys see things. Here's what Gould has seen:
People talking on their cell phones while paying for their food by swiping their cards - so connected, to someone, somewhere, but so thoughtless and indifferent to those immediately around them.
"How are you, ma'am?"
No response.
"Plastic OK, ma'am?"
No response.
People walking to their cars and getting in their cars and sitting in their cars while he's still loading the bags from the cart. No "thank you." No nothing. Just a trunk thump and shift to reverse.
GOOD & BAD
It's good: "Publix threw me a lifesaver. It gave me purpose. It gave me structure. It made me meet new people."
It's bad: "Still, there's a certain amount - if I'm being brutally truthful with myself - there's a little bit of, I don't know, I failed."
Gould is glad his wife's job allows his family to pay the bills - they live in a nice house, they drive nice cars, they're not desperate or destitute or anywhere close - but he feels guilty that his contribution isn't more than what it is.
The first six or so months, he didn't put Publix on his resume; the last six or so months, though, he has.
Some people he has talked to about jobs have mentioned it, and they've said nice things, about how they respect that, about how they're not sure they could do that.
Still hasn't gotten him a job that's not bagging groceries.
One recent evening Gould bagged a woman's groceries and put them in her cart. The pin on his Publix smock read ABOVE & BEYOND. He pushed her cart into the parking lot.
"Which way are we going?" he asked.
This story appeared in print on page C6 Copyright © 2010 TheLedger.com — All rights reserved. Restricted use only.
