We All Fall Down (32 page)

The course, for executives, covered talks and discussions on being made redundant, how to cope with it on a practical, financial and emotional level, the art of networking, creating a hard working, powerful résumé, and various interviewing techniques. Most useful of all, perhaps, they supplied office space and a phone number so that prospective employers would be unaware of the fact Hugh now spent his days at home, that he was one of the Unemployed.

Although everyone told him the course was worth attending, he couldn't help but feel he was being sent to some kind of health resort to convalesce after a particularly serious illness. The people at the firm of redundancy advisors were sympathetic, to a degree, but their eyes gave them away. He could see they weren't that involved. Dealing with unemployed executives was simply a job, one that prevented them, in all probability, from becoming unemployed themselves. But towards the others on the course, Hugh felt some affinity. They were in the same boat as him. They'd been cast adrift together, and he could see in their eyes the same desperation and sadness that he also felt. They too had lost their lives by losing their livelihoods. The unemployed, he realised, are the undead of our times.

He gave up his idea of waiting for people to contact him. Instead, he threw himself into the task of finding work. That was his job – to find work. He spent his whole day in the pursuit, making phone calls, writing letters, searching websites and being interviewed by head-hunters. He tried to arrange appointments for the same day so he could save on the train fare, and he usually walked between meetings so he could save on bus fares. As a special treat, he had one coffee in the mornings and one cup of tea in the afternoons. For lunch, if the weather was fine, he'd find a park or some small patch of greenery where he could sit and eat a sandwich. Around him were the employed, those who had the time to take a lunch break, usually young and casual (he supposed management stayed at their desks and worked through their lunch break), enjoying an easy familiarity with each other, texting or calling friends while talking and laughing with their work colleagues. Among the crowd lying on the grass, or squashed together on the park benches or strolling along the paths, he guessed there must be people in the same position as he was, and he searched the faces for giveaway signs of envy or desperation. Some unemployed were obvious. The permanently unemployed, the down-and-outs and homeless drifted amongst the affluent, or at least fortunate, their eyes lowered as they scanned the ground for cigarette butts, or held out their hands, mumbling well-rehearsed lines about a cup of tea or a fare home. He turned away from these filthy spectres much more determinedly, much more aggressively than others, as if there might be a stronger attraction there, a recognition of fellowship that he wished to deny for as long as possible.

A full time job continued to elude him. Most of the vacancies were for juniors. Everyone knew agencies were only willing to pay for juniors now, in all departments, but especially on the account side. Having long been regarded as no more than glorified messenger boys, people who carried strategy documents, media schedules or the creative work from the agency to the client, then instructions, approvals or rejections back from the client to the agency, management always considered account executives to be the easiest group to make cuts in. This was an agency's middle management, and it was being kicked out of the door, not just in Australia, but across the world. Agencies had become top and bottom heavy, staffed by those on enormous salaries and with expense accounts to match, or by those working for a pittance with hours a peasant in a rice paddy would blanch at. Many people Hugh visited glanced at his résumé and said, ‘I'd love to have someone with your experience working here, Hugh. We're desperate for people like you. I'm so tired of relying on kids. But I simply don't have the money to take you on.' The senior positions that did come up were few, partly because, in the current economic climate, people were reluctant to resign from an agency they'd been at for years in order to join a new one. Longevity in a job gave employees a feeling of security, even though it was in all likelihood illusory. The jobs that did come up were keenly competed for. There could be more than a hundred applicants for the most ordinary of jobs. Hugh frequently missed out to someone who was born and bred in the city, someone with the contacts. Always he was told it had been a hard decision and that he'd been their second choice. Soon he stopped believing that.

He managed to pick up some freelance assignments. He joined the army of consultants, those who a few years back had known the security of a full time job, but lost out when their agency was forced to downsize, restructure or consolidate. The way these people suddenly materialised in coffee shops around the city was one of the phenomena of the modern world. They were easy to spot. Usually alone, often working on a laptop, they spent hours on their mobiles. But Hugh always thought it was the look that gave them away: it said,
I don't belong
. They did their best to appear independent and secure, but struck Hugh as being almost as rootless as the homeless. They were like dogs without name tags. There was no company name on their business cards. They didn't have an owner; they were strays.

Hugh replaced people who were on holiday or maternity leave, or helped out on a pitch for a new piece of business, when existing staff were so overworked they were unable to do it themselves. He enjoyed being back in an agency, even though it was temporary. He liked the companionship, being able to talk to people if he felt like it and catching up on what was happening in the business. Most of all, he enjoyed being part of a team again. He also liked receiving a salary cheque, even if it only covered a brief period of time. Money had that affect on him: it made him feel secure.

But the day inevitably came around when the head of department or the people in Human Resources said, ‘Thanks, Hugh, you've been a great help to us, but we think we can manage without you next week. You can get back to the beach.' The comment was made kindly enough, as if he was a lucky bastard being freelance and being able to spend his free time on the beach, but it was said to cover up what they both knew: that Hugh would be happier sitting in an office, at a desk, with a job. Consultants would joke among themselves about how it was advisable to keep a low profile on Friday afternoons, even spend a few hours in the toilets because, if you were out of sight, you were likely to be out of mind too. Management might forget about you until you walked back into work on Monday morning … and then you'd get at least another day's pay, possibly even a week's.

Many of these freelance jobs came through people Hugh had known or worked with in the past. It was a mateship thing. He appreciated it wouldn't last forever, and it didn't. People either stopped feeling sorry for him, felt they'd done their bit, or gave the work to someone else – a closer mate, or someone who'd been fortunate enough to walk through the agency's front door or phoned the very day they'd decided they needed outside help. It could be that random.

One day, waiting in an agency's reception area, he saw an article in
Ad News
in which Russell was quoted as saying that Alpha had taken on three account men to help handle the agency's new influx of business. There was one other new account apart from BMW.
Influx!
Where did that come from? His hatred for the word was immediate. It was obviously intended to convey the impression that the agency was drowning in a torrent of recently won work. Hugh had worked with one of those three account men in the past, and considered him to be a waste of space and a notorious yes-man. It wasn't only Hugh's opinion; it was a generally held view in the industry. It was typical of Russell to make such a choice, even more typical of him not to have bothered to contact Hugh.

For a while, he persevered with the phone calls, the could-I-come-in-and-see-you calls. He loathed making them. There was an unpleasant repetitiveness about them from the moment the phone was picked up at the other end.

‘Hello, is Bryan Cotter there, please?'”

‘One minute, please.'

He was put through to Cotter's personal assistant. ‘Bryan Cotter's office, Amanda speaking.'

‘Hi Amanda, it's Hugh Drysdale here.' It was important to maintain a tone of friendly informality. ‘May I speak to Bryan, please?' It was also important to convey the impression that the person you wished to speak to was an old friend, someone you'd known all your life.

‘Can I ask what it's regarding, Mr. Drysdale?' The personal assistant, meanwhile, did her best to keep the tone on a formal level. She was suspicious and always quick to discover any weakness.

‘Ian Stubbs, a mutual friend, suggested I give him a call.'

The mutual friend approach was once an almost certain entrée to the upper echelons of management, but had been weakened in recent years by overuse – even abuse. ‘And it's concerning …?' She was no longer impressed by the tactic.

‘I'm an Account Manager, Amanda.'

‘And which company do you work for, Mr. Drysdale?' Barely able to hide her impatience.

‘Right now, at this moment in time, I'm consulting.'

‘I see …' That long pause after ‘I see' meant he hadn't managed to pull the wool over her eyes. Not only could she see right through this charade, she could sum up exactly who he was, and she was going to make sure he got nowhere near Bryan Cotter. ‘One minute please.' Often Hugh then heard, as in was subjected to, the conversation between Amanda and her boss. ‘He says …' ‘I really don't …' ‘He claims Ian …' ‘Tell him I'm in a meeting or something.'

She came back on the line. ‘Mr. Drysdale, are you there?' As if he might hopefully have seen the light and gone away.

‘Yes.'

‘I'm sorry, but Mr. Cotter is in a meeting at the moment.' Had she really only just discovered that her boss wasn't at his desk? ‘Shall I ask him to return your call?'

You could well do that, but you know as well as I know that he'll never return my call. Instead, Hugh was tempted to shout down the phone, ‘I know he's not in a meeting because I've just been listening to you talk to him for the last two minutes.' Instead he tried to keep his tone friendly because he knew that, as likely as not, he'd have to speak to her, the holder of the key, again. So he said, ‘No, that's fine, Amanda. Thank you for your help. I'll call him again in a day or so.' This would allow them to go through the ritual all over again. Hugh's only hope was that they'd give up before he gave up, that he'd wear them down, that one day Mr. Cotter would speak to him, for just one short minute, if only to say – which Hugh knew full well he would say – firstly, that he had absolutely no idea Hugh had been trying to get through to him for all those weeks and, secondly, ‘Thank you so much for calling, Hugh, but no we don't need anyone right now, and we're not likely to need anyone for the foreseeable future, and, no, it's honestly not worth your while to come in and see me, but I'll be sure to call you … Yes, I have your number … As soon as anything comes up. You can rest assured of that.'

He didn't blame the Cotters of this world, despite it sometimes taking him a while to return to a state of calm. He knew managers were receiving dozens of calls a day from people like him, and that they were busy people. They couldn't afford to spend their whole day being sympathetic to those who were out on the street. But it still hurt, the fact there was no understanding or sympathy for his plight, none from any of them. The people he tried to get through to on the phone, like everyone else, regarded him as a failure and a loser, someone who'd been thrown onto the waste heap.

He was now discovering that the business world only respects those who are a success, and success is primarily the result of luck: being born on the right side of the fence, receiving a privileged education, having good looks, being in the right place at the right time, and being smiled on favourably by someone who has already been fortunate enough to have made it. Talent helps, but only if all the other elements are in place. Talent by itself is not enough, and Hugh was proof of that.

Now that he'd polished and re-polished his resumé and phoned almost everyone he could phone, he had time on his hands. He sat by the phone. He stared at it, willing it to ring. It sometimes remained silent for days on end. On the rare occasion it did ring, it was often a charity, someone asking for money from him. He wanted to shout down the phone that they should be raising money for him, that he was the charity case, yet they still sometimes, somehow, managed to talk him into donating.

Hugh didn't hate money so much as his dependence on it. From never having been short of money for all his working life, having always earned an above average salary, he now found that his lack of money preoccupied him. It was always in his head, deadening his thoughts; it was always in his heart, weighing down his feelings. It was present every hour of the day. It had become a part of his being. He despised himself for letting this happen, for allowing himself to be caught up in the world of materialism and for becoming a replica of his mother, for continually puzzling over ways to spend less, and save a few cents here and there. He started to calculate which of his possessions he might sell, and even took to using his mother's expressions:
I can't make ends meet, I don't know where the money disappears to, everything seems to cost so much more nowadays.

He continued to pay Kate generous maintenance every month, more than the amount that Centrelink would dictate if they became divorced. Once he explained to her that things were particularly tough and that he was getting very little work, so would it be all right if he paid her a little less for a while, until things picked up? She refused to entertain the idea. ‘Tim's always needing things. You have no idea how expensive it is to keep him clothed and fed.' He pointed out that she probably didn't have quite so many expenses now that she lived with her parents, but she told him that she felt obliged to contribute, to pay her way. So he continued with the payments.