It was the late Friday afternoon. I was just returning home from a gruelling day of work and all I could think about was a nice cool beer and a natter with the friends. Little did I know that the weekend what the rest of the day had instore for me! I remember clearly, at about 5.00 clock I got a call from my friend. The voice on the other side was not the usual jovial one and just as we were exchanging pleasantries it was clear to me that the news wasn’t good. “ So tell me whats the problem” said I. I heard a deep sigh on the other side of the phone, “ how do you know about the it”?? “I don’t” I said, “but clearly this is not the normal you that I am used to listening, so go on and tell me” and then she said the dreaded words, “ my husband has got the pink slip”. I suppose in the world that we live in today this line is never our of place. Almost every conversation at the pub invariably had a so n so who lost his job just like that on a Friday afternoon without any warning, or they didn’t even bother to inform him face to face just an email or something along those lines and yet you always think it will never happen to you or anyone you know!
As I was driving to my friends place, I was not sure what I was going to say or do. I knew them for quite sometime and her husband was a very qualified software engineer with 7+ years of experience. I was sure that someone like him will always get another job! Yes, I thought, that’s what I am going to say to him. It’s a temporary blip, people like him don’t remain unemployed for a long time. Also, I thought to myself, he was very well paid ( or so I presumed ) and must have recourses at his disposal. I thought to myself, if I lose my job today, I would think on the same lines. I have enough savings to keep me going for about 3-4 months and then I can always find something as a stop gap arrangement if I don’t get what I want right away. With all these thoughts racing through my head, I reached their house, quickly parked my car alongside his BMW. Even as I was doing that. I thought, look at this he is my age and has done so much better than me. He has a great car, a house of his own, goes for holidays twice a year, has a lovely wife, he will get through this ok. And its probably this though process that accentuated the impact of what I was going to see next.
My friends husband was already drunk. As I entered the house, she said to me that he is going through the motions and is oscillating between declaring that he never wanted to do that job ‘good riddance’ to his life has been destroyed and that he will never be the same man! He was also shouting at my friend calling her names and blaming everyone who was in the house ( his family and close friends ) for the mess that he was in! I know this man for the last few years and I was almost dumbstruck at how he was behaving. I went into the room, and tried to calm him down. I held him with both hands, then gave him a hug and asked him one simple question “ whats bothering you the most”? You are a well educated well qualified engineer with lots of experience under your belt, you will always get a new job, so why are you behaving as it the world as you know it has come to an end!? Now I agree it wasn’t the most appropriate question in the circumstances, but I thought someone had to knock some sense into him as his behaviour was freaking out his wife and parents. Two mugs of black coffee later he said to me that he never liked this job, infact he hated it and yet he went there day after day for the last 7 years, endured his boss ( who according to him was barely human! ) all so that he can have a good life. I looked around at his house and at this point I had to say “ So what’s the problem? Look around you don’t you think you have everything you want? You can always get a new job and everything will be just as before”? And that’s when I realised what the real problem was. He said to me that everything in the house was bought on EMIs ( easy monthly instalments ) and that he is going to lose everything if the bills weren’t paid in a weeks time. This unfortunately wasn’t the worst of the declarations, he had a credit card balance £8000 outstanding ( at 24% = £160 a month just in interest). Every electronic thing in his house was on pay monthly basis through the store cards ( yes even his Ipod! ). Even the furniture and cutlery weren’t bought by paying the full sticker price! Also the big ticket items like house and BMW were on monthly instalments. He said to me that he hated his job so much that every day when he got up, his wife had to push him out of the house. Everytime his boss shouted at him, made him work long hours on short notice, he did it because he knew even a month without the job meant that he will lose ‘everything’. He always wanted to start his own business but never had the capital or time to do it. And now after all those years of torture, the one thing that he thought he was doing it for was taken away from him even without a weeks notice! The whole evening passed listening to how his life was miserable and how helpless he felt doing that job.
On my way back to my house, I could not help thinking how a man earning upwards of £3000 per month still thought that the day he lost his job was the day he lost everything? More so, I couldn’t stop thinking about why he kept doing a job ( under a tyrant boss ) that he so clearly disliked? And the only answer to all this was consumer debt!! Like most of us, my friends husband did not think twice before buying almost everything on EMIs. Yes, they had even bought their yearly holidays ( two a year!! ) on EMIs from a reputed travel company. The consumer debt he had taken was so huge that leaving his job ( actually the very thought of not having a salary at the end of the next month ) was never and option, he couldn’t ‘afford’ it. I couldn’t help but wonder, are modern families equivalent of slaves from the middle ages?
By definition ‘Slave: A person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them’. Now I know some of you may think that comparing a well paid engineer to a slave is one step to far, but please hear me out. In the middle ages the slaves were made to work long hard hours and in return all they got was enough to keep them alive. They never had the time to express themselves or manifest their creativity in any way. I have already written about why most people tend to hate Monday (http://socyberty.com/issues/monday-a-love-hate-mostly-hate-affair/ ) so I will not go into details of that here. Also, when I wrote about the pleasures of life (http://socyberty.com/philosophy/pleasure-the-essence-of-good-life/ ), I have said that getting rid of the 9-5 routine is one of the goals of my life and there are lessons from this story that I will try and learn and hopefully not emulate. Coming back to the point, as far fetched as it sounds I think that’s what modern day consumerism is doing to people like my friends husband. The social pressures of ‘having it all’ are making us slaves to our jobs and indeed our bosses and organisations ( many people take loans from their organisations and are then required to serve them until the loan is paid back ) and killing our creativity and individualism in the process. We are becoming less and less human and more and more like machines, a cog in the wheel that keeps turning day after day! Most people that I know, their only way out is retirement and the money they get after retirement! Is there any other way out?? I think there is, and I will make it the topic of one of my blogs to follow.
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