Life on Aisle 2 Episode 30: Aisle 2 During the Long Hot Summer Part Two
This blog parses the changes in my middle age–how I went from working as a columnist at a major daily newspaper and a leading cheesemonger to being a beer buyer at a fancy grocery store–and how I maintain hope of finding happiness. It’s underpinned by an element of confusion fatigue, frustration fatigue and fatigue fatigue, but it’s about life and downward mobility in New York City, which is never dull.
Continued from Episode 29
Where Were We? It was the long hot summer of 2020 at the store and managing through COVID times had become routine. My roommate chuckled about how I sometimes failed to take my mask off when I got home from the store because well, I was just used to it; grabbing hand sanitizer on my way out was as automatic as grabbing my keys. What knocked me askew was the offhand way an editor at a site I’d applied to repeatedly shrugged off the lack of diversity on his staff. “It’s not open mic night,” he told the New York Times. I had been laden with guilt for not overcoming the barriers my parents overcame, now I was just seething mad. Then an out of the blue text and email late one Friday afternoon arrived from a friend about a job possibility with a leading media trade publication. I’d given up on pushing that rock up that hill; I spent the weekend reconsidering my retirement from the Sisyphus Games.
All day that Saturday, I thought about my friends who had staff jobs as well as those who had had them for decades before getting pushed out. What skills did they possess that I didn’t? I couldn’t think of any short of they got connected while I was cutting cheese or opening stores (it amused me at the time, though not so much in retrospect that people thought I preferred to flail away at near minimum wage employment rather than enjoy the salary and benefits of a real middle class, full-time job). Here was the chance to correct them, and prove that at 60, I was still employable for something better than lugging cases of White Claw to a sales floor on Friday nights.
Sunday morning before retail, I composed a note to the GM of the outlet citing my pal; I was pleased at how charming and enthusiastic the first draft was. Monday morning, I sent it very first thing. I opened the computer, sent the note, then went to the kitchen get my first cup of coffee. When I returned to my terminal coffee and oatmeal in tow, I was excited to see a response to my dispatch. A dialogue ensued. After four or five exchanges, he looped in his Executive Editor. Ah, I figured, now I’ll get ghosted. Well, this was fun.
Nope, Tuesday morning, the Executive Editor responded and brief exchange about craft beer, baseball and food ensued. Wednesday morning, I was on the phone with him for what was supposed to be a 30- minute interview. We were still chatting after an hour. I was indeed expert in the fields they were looking to cover, sports, politics, and culture, but my actual hands-on editing experience was minimal at best. Nevertheless, I have written for the Wall Street Journal since 2002. My articles there are read initially by three editors, the rewrites by two and the final draft gets another once over. Writers cringe when I tell them of the regimen, but my editors are GREAT; every piece reads like me but better. When I told Executive Editor that I had taught at NYU in 2013 and several of my students praised my ability to improve their writing, he asked me to schedule an edit test.
I was stunned. I had won two rounds. I scheduled the test for Friday and Monday mornings. I had a WSJ review due on Friday, but I figured I’d finish it on Thursday. Then I took the afternoon off to wander the streets of my picturesque neighborhood. I sat in the outdoor seating of a coffee bar and wondered, maybe the long game was going to work out after all. Everything seemed charged with possibility. I savored the moment. Then I went home to get back to work on WSJ review.
I finished my review early Thursday afternoon and spent rest of the day looking to sharpen my line editing skills. The Friday morning test was rigorous, clean six pieces of somewhat sloppy copy in 90 minutes, but that went well. I was cleared to move on to part two. By this time, my progress wasn’t so surprising. I steeled my mindset over the weekend. I wanted to ace part two of the test and figure out how to give notice at the store. I looked at my budget could I afford a week off to refuel before I started if it came to that. Two would be better, but that didn’t seem reasonable.
I sailed through part two of the test, designing the section. I was somewhat happy to have a demanding day of retail to occupy me afterward. I was as usual racing around the store all day and around six, I checked my phone for updates. There was an email from the Executive Editor asking me how much I wanted to get paid.
Well, this too was different. I get that question in retail sometimes, and I just say 275 million over 10 years, Alex Rodriguez’s famous salary from the Yankees in 2007 (yes, citing Mike Trout’s contract or Gerrit Cole’s would be a tad more au courant, but not as iconic). I knew what to expect, but just to see I took A-Rod route. I knew Executive Editor was a baseball fan; I even joked that the famed sports negotiator Scott Boras was my agent. Executive Editor responded cordially, and we worked out a number that was substantially less than what my friends who still had full time jobs made but way, way more than what I was making at the store.
Then the line went dead. I reached back at the end of the week and was given the “we’re evaluating other candidates,” response, which made sense to me. It also ended the period of giddy optimism. The city is sprawling with un and underemployed experienced media professionals. One of them, I reasoned, might be able to hit the ground running faster than I could. Sure enough, I got the thank you for your time and efforts or something like that email a week later.
My friends thought I was crushed, but it was the exact opposite. Age and race had nothing to do with me not getting the job. In fact, a tenet of my campaign, “I’m 60 but I can grow into this job,” was persuasive; I told them that I’m a fervent believer in the Bob Dylan line “a man not busy being born is busy dying.” I was far from a perfect fit for this gig, but that didn’t matter; I had made the finals. A door that I feared was permanently closed was in fact, ajar, if not open.
I subscribe to music journalism and sports journalism newsletters and there are job listings. I resolved to look at them with greater interest. Also, I began subscribing to journalism job boards again. Maybe 37 years of doing this stuff made me of interest rather than irrelevant.
I never thought for a second that I was over the hill, and I hoped that the world didn’t think so either, mounting evidence notwithstanding. Now, I had reason to believe that the world saw things my way.
Martin Johnson is a freelance writer whose work on music, sports and culture has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, NPR, Wine Enthusiast, Jazz Times, New York Times, Newsday, New York, Vogue, Rolling Stone, Huffington Post, The Root, Slate, The Atlantic, and numerous other publications and websites. He also blogs at Rotations, and he can be contacted at thejoyofcheese@gmail.com.
The Geoffrey Owens Experience 