Rant #2,453: It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

You might be wondering why today's Rant is so late.

Yes, I overslept, but the fact of the matter is that I overslept for a reason.

Yesterday, the company I work for, the place I have been employed by for more than 23 and a half years, went out of business.

Thus, I am unemployed, and have been unemployed since about 3 p.m. yesterday.

I have no job to go to today, on Monday, or for the near future.

We were all--all five of us--called into our conference room, a place that I had not been in in at least six months, and we were told the news.

The place was costing too much to run, and with little ad revenue coming in, their accountants told them that they could not continue.

This is always a shock when it happens, but as you know, I have been talking about the state of this place for years, I have been looking for a new job for years, and I have been worrying for years, and it all came to fruition yesterday, so it was still a shock, but not as big as it could have been.

We all knew that the place was going down the tubes, we simply did not know when D-Day was going to happen. Personally, I was hoping that we could make it through the holidays, make it out the year, but I guess it was not meant to be.

Who can we blame for this debacle that has been going on for several years?

Well, the world has changed, print media is not doing well, and my company was a trade magazine publisher producing books for a niche market, so the chances of us surviving as a print company were dwindling by the day.

We were online, but unless you are a major publisher with major publications, you simply can't make a go there, or at least you can't make a go without experts telling you how to do it.

And they weren't hiring experts here. They weren't hiring anybody.

We hadn't had a dedicated salesman selling ad space for a couple of years. Why they did not hire someone is beyond me, or at least I can give you my thoughts as to why they did not hire a salesman to sell our books, a belief which was borne out yesterday.

I always felt that they were letting the company go as far as it could go, and would not add anything to it to make it sustainable beyond a specific period because the two principals were getting older, and were thinking that it was time to retire.

So much was said by our chief executive officer at yesterday's meeting, who said that she was 70 and a half years old, and "that it was time to retire so I can enjoy my retirement."

The chief operating officer is 82, by the way, and is well in need of a retirement.

So basically, they let the company erode and finally die because retirement was looming, nobody else wanted to continue the company--they told us that they had a few suitors, but nothing substantial--and that even the family that owned a good portion of the company--the family of the former owner, our publisher, who died several years ago--had no interest in keeping the company going.

So they let the company rot to oblivion, soldiering on for several years as the company basically fell apart.

Now, I guess it is fine to retire on your own terms, as the CEO and COO evidently are doing, but what about the employees? I am the oldest one, at 62, another guy is 61, and the remainder of the staff goes from their early 40s to maybe their late 50s.

What are we to do right now?

Well, I can only speak for myself, but personally, I wanted to work until I was at least 70. That was my plan, so I still have at least eight years to go to reach that goal.

I knew I wasn't going to reach it at this job, but happily, I was able to string it out until I was nearly 62 and a half years old.

As you know, I have been looking for a new job for ages, have had no bites--two real interviews and maybe a half dozen phone interviews during the past five years--so the situation is bleak. I am considered an older worker, and you just know there is discrimination in the marketplace.

But go prove it.

I will continue to look for work, but as I do, I will apply for unemployment, which I tried to do yesterday but was unsuccessful in doing because:

1) I already had an account on the site, probably stemming from it being a government site and also probably coming from the fact that when I applied for my son to get Social Security, I had to open a site--not only did I forget this, but when I discovered that I already had an account, I did not learn for upwards of a half hour that the site would only take my login with all caps, even though my information was entered in in upper and lower case letters--nowhere on the site does it state this.

2) When I finally figured this out and got into the site, and filled out all the necessary material asked for, I got a message telling me that the site only operates from 7:30 a.m. in the morning to 7:30 p.m. at night, and it was just after 8 p.m. when I finished the application. Again, nowhere does it state this on the site, so I completely wasted my time entering in anything.

So, I will have to do it again today.

So as to not have to say that I completely wasted my time yesterday, I did apply for three jobs; let's see if even one contacts me.

I will have to contact Social Security, because since our son lives with us, they need to know the up to date work status of the parents of someone who gets Social Security, because they then adjust the recipient's monthly payments to fit the situation.

As I am sure you know, calling any government office is akin to water torture, so I am going to have to see if I can call them early; if not, it becomes nearly impossible to get through to them.

I have to go to the bank, put in my last paychecks, and speak with a bank officer about using my Roth IRA to pay off what I owe on my car. I don't know if I can do it in one fell swoop, whether it is better to keep paying it monthly, if there are any penalties for taking money out of the account and if there are limits ... I have to find this all out.

In between, I am going to have to take my son to work and take him home from work, and maybe try to fit in food shopping.

Yes, it is going to be a very, very busy day.

My life has now changed. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise. Time will tell.

I just don't know anything now.

This is all so new to me. Let's see how things go.

And I will certainly keep everyone up to date on this, but no, this blog is not going to be the Larry employment blog, it will continue as it is, here to interest you, annoy you, and maybe even make you think a little bit.

So have a good weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.