Do you doubt
age discrimination exists in the job market? Well, I don't, not only from my
own experiences and the experiences of other higher education professionals I
know, but from stories like the following -- this incident that I personally
witnessed.
Yesterday I was
helping a friend's mom get set up to do freelancing work on Upwork. She is
someone who has worked hard in a wide variety of occupations all her life and
takes great pride in the quality of her work. Most recently, she had been a
long-time remote medical transcriptionist making good money with the company
she worked for -- until they decided to outsource all their transcription work
overseas and permanently eliminate all US-based transcriptionists. They did
provide some limited severance benefits, not without jacking the ex-employee
recipients around mercilessly at every step, but in no way did it make up for
the lost earnings to a meaningful degree. While wrestling with these idiots to
get what she's entitled to under the terms of the severance contract, she has
been diligently and consistently applying for jobs online. She showed me her
logbook of every place she has applied to and I was impressed. I thought **I**
sent out lots of apps looking for more online teaching work; she has me beat 10
times over.
Anyway, as
we're sitting there crafting an Upwork profile, the phone rings. She picks up,
and a cheerful female job recruiter's voice comes on the phone. While the
recruiter is going through her spiel, my friend's mom starts to laugh and shake
her head. She answers some initial innocuous questions, and then the recruiter
asks "what year did you graduate high school?" My friend's mom
replies "1955." There's dead silence on the other end, my friend's
mom bursts out laughing, and held the phone out to me to see.
"She HUNG
UP?"
"Yes, yes,
it happens all the time! I sent out applications, I get these calls, and when
they figure out I'm 80, they just hang up."
"But --
what the hell! You may be 80, but you're a hell of lot sharper than most people
I've worked with half your age!"
Yes. This
motivated woman who has many, many skills to share is 80, and wants to keep
working, and is fully capable of continuing to work. I don't know her super
well, but I do know her well enough to know that working is a strong part of
her identity, and it's important to her to be independent as possible as long
as possible. Her mobility is not great, but her mind is sharp, and she's
applying for almost 100% remote jobs where her mobility would not matter. (She
did apply for a local job assisting seniors with Alzheimer's disease and other
issues.)
Why do we live
in a society pays that pays copious lip service to valuing wisdom and
experience while punishing those who have the wisdom and experience with lack
of opportunity and inequities?
I know that
workplace age discrimination exists on the other end of the spectrum too; I
remember the long-ago (and I do mean LONG ago) days of being the youngest
person working as a law office staff member and having a lot of incorrect
assumptions placed on my intelligence, capabilities, and dedication because of
it. That's wrong too. People should be assessed as individuals. I was no more a
"typical" 19 year old in that law office situation than my friend's
mom is a "typical" 80 year old in her position.
Now that I am in my mid-50s and having transitioned to my career in higher education going on 20 years ago, I realize that by the time I attained my master's degree, I had, in the prevailing higher ed job market, likely already "aged out" of full-time faculty job market viability. Compared to other people my age, I had far less experience because I was a second-career non-traditional age student and just starting over in many respects. By the time I accumulated enough professional experiences in teaching psychology and research to be attractive from an employability standpoint, I don’t doubt that in some cases my age did not help me. Don’t get me wrong; I have been known to interview awkwardly at times, so I know in certain cases, my self-presentation in an uncomfortable suit in a small room with 10 people judging my every word and move has not been optimal, to say the least. In fact, there have been some interviews I have flat out bombed. I know which ones those are, and I wouldn’t have hired me either. But there are others where I did present myself, my skills, my abilities, and my passion for psychology very well indeed, and yet, to use the old and slightly sexist saying, I am “always a bridesmaid, never a bride.” If I apply for a full-time teaching position in my field within the three counties I can readily drive to, 85% of the time I get an interview. That’s a pretty good hit rate, so I know I look decent on paper. I have many students who inquire near the end of semester “what are you teaching next semester? I want to take another class with you; I learned so much and enjoyed it.” Granted, I’m not everyone’s cup of tea as an instructor, but, for the most part, feedback from peers and students makes me feel that I am actually good at what I do.
It would be
excessively simplistic to point at age as the only factor or as the primary
factor as to why my friend’s mom, I, and countless other seasoned workers of
all kinds experience these roadblocks. Hiring is a complex process, and I know
for certain, within the higher education environment, there’s a whole lot more
to consider than meets the eye – I’ve sat on more than one hiring committee
myself. Yet age is a factor that cannot be ignored in the process either.
Where
is that particular crossing point where “highly experienced” becomes “too old?”
As an experimental social psychologist by training, I believe implicit bias
against older individuals is an important place to start exploring this
phenomenon. While implicit bias research is especially rich in examining racial
and gender constructs, a casual search of empirical literature does not show
ageism as a popular topic, much less as to how ageism might affect employment
prospects. If I had more time for research in my professional life, I’d relish
taking this topic on; but, as an adjunct who is unemployed at the moment,
waiting for unemployment benefits to kick in and hustling for freelance work in
the meantime, and hoping nothing happens to eliminate the summer classes I have
tentatively scheduled to start in a few weeks, it seems it’s in my best interests
to concentrate on using my hard-earned skills and abilities to make sure I can
pay the rent next month.
Copyright 2018 by Linda S. Krajewski
