Lowered Expectations 21st Century Style

This happened in early December. A young woman, around 25 or so, works at a law firm as a paralegal; she is still finishing up college. They like her there and she likes them and likes the work. Her annual review is at this time, her review is excellent, and because times are tough, she can only be given a token raise—a thousand dollars a year. Less than $20 more per week—now is so not the Nineties. She got the recognition though, important always but more so at the beginning stages of a career.

One week later, she’s summoned back into the conference room. Just like the last time, the firm’s partners and business manager are gathered around the oval table. She had been the only employee to receive an increase in 2008. Other paralegals and most of the junior lawyers had been fired, as had one secretary. The remaining two secretaries had to cut their hours—they only work four days a week. Even the partners had taken a pay cut, their billable hours are down about 40 percent. She listens to their explanations; her bosses keep apologizing.They inform her that her salary increase has been rescinded.

She can still afford to take a few college classes and is close to the degree. She still has a job. She knows she is lucky—not just because of continued employment—she has something to look forward to, and she still has a little left over from each check after paying her bills.

Working—any career—is a combination of skills and politics; identifying an opportunity and taking advantage of it and learning from experience. As with life, sometimes it cuts your way, sometimes it doesn’t. The next time you hopefully will know why it didn’t cut your way and try to make the outcome different—when or when not to speak up, who to trust, that sort of thing. A rescinded raise is not the same as having a colleague lie about you to a superior or not seeing an opportunity in time to have it pay off. Career dynamics have been transformed. In this economy, everyone is getting a bad break and there are worse breaks, far worse, happening to folks now than having a job without a raise. Not being let go is now accepted as success.

During the times of high inflation and high unemployment in the late 70s and early 80s, American and British economists talked about lowered expectations. Having a higher quality of life than your parents should no longer be an aspiration. Many definitions have changed in this new century, including quality of life. Work, the career—no longer the only or the most crucial component of life. No matter how satisfying, even the most successful have disappointment. Lowered expectations are a painful thing to accept or maybe those expectations have not been exactly lowered just so delayed that they seem lowered. Or maybe, unlike the prognosticators of the late 70s and early 80s, we all have realized, lowered expectations are inherent in working and that there is more to life than the career.

She goes home and hangs out with her cats, talks to her mother and they make holiday plans, goes out with friends for pizza instead of a nice restaurant. She hated Bush, her first vote was for Kerry. Obama won and in a few weeks he will be president. The freezing rain is ending. She and her friends are in a good mood and there’s a lot of laughing and they look at Christmas decorations in the store windows and the thick plastic silver stars and snowflakes on the street lamps that the city puts up every year. Last week, she mailed out Christmas cards for the first time. It made her feel like an adult. She mailed them to her family, her friends, everyone she has worked with whether they are still employed there or not.