(The Front Page National Lay-Off Appreciation Day crowd applauds the loss of Jon’s income. L-R, JPeter (father was a legendary Christians In Action Chief of Station), Keith the Master Mounter (from the Smithsonian), Liz-with-an-S, Certified Fraud Examiner from the Office of the Inspector General Upstairs From the Bar rand former Mixologist from the fabulous Willow) and Jon-without-an-H, former Government Relations officer for Heavy Industries-USA). Not shown is the humble scribe taking the picture or Key Grip Tom to my left, who isn’t interested in voting this cycle (he can’t) because of that conviction for smuggling he got before moving to Hollywood and learning the movie trade. Or the Bartender, who we know as Coach (from his wrestling days) who gave us some very favorable billing treatment in honor of the occasion. Honestly, at those prices, and with the election so near, who can afford to stay sober?)
I talk to The Blonde just about every morning during her commute. She was my boss, and had to lay me off in 2012, right in the cocktail nook of the Willow. We didn’t waste a lot of time on it, and there was no HR person there to make it formal. I had been converted to “part time” from “full time” status, which was a great deal for the company, though not quite so good for me. You have to roll with the flow around here, since the market depends on the Feds, who behave a lot like the big River that divides the capital, rolling majestically down to the Chesapeake Bay.
We use our chat time in the morning the same way we did when we worked together. We catch up on rumors, gossip, and the joys of parenthood. She changed companies a while back, and we share the joys of working for really large, ossified brick-and-mortar companies. It is a challenge dealing with what used to be part of The Bell System. They don’t seem to recognize what sort of agility and innovation is required in today’s fast-paced government contracting business.
They seem to think that contracts they have had for twenty or thirty years will go on indefinitely, poor dears.
The Blonde has to go from the Maryland (“wrong”) side of the Potomac River to the Virginia (“slightly better drivers who use turn signals”) side. That is after joining the tide of commuter lemmings via the appalling chaos of the Wilson Bridge. Then onward across the Capital Beltway way through the “Mixing Bowl” (“Dante’s seventh circle of Hell”) where I-95 slashes south and the Beltway mayhem increases on the clock-wise approach to I-66 (“who was the idiot that had five lanes go down to two at the Arlington County border?”) and, of course, colorful Route 7 to Tysons Corner (“just shoot me now”).
Normally, when this is going on- this morning’s adventure featured a guy from Maryland (“The Free State”) who was determined to ride her bumper from the Wilson Bridge (pronounced as one word) to McLean- I am minding my own business in the privacy and comfort of my spacious bed while trying to clear off the email that accumulated over night. But like yesterday, it is sometimes completely surreal being awakened at the farm to have her bitching about the latest back up at the Robinson Terminal by that accursed Braddock Road exit.
I try never to go anywhere before ten in the morning, and time the trips back up from the farm to be just after noon, when there is a reasonable chance of only being in one jam on the way back to the apartment.
Trying to do any of this during the rush hour here is insane. Rush Hour’s first installment goes from 0500 to 1100, and then starts starting at 1430 and runs until happy Hour at The Front Page is done.
Timing is everything, and we all know that no one is ever on time here- you are either a half-hour early or a half hour late for any meeting, which makes them like revolving doors, with people showing up halfway through after you already talked with the Early Birds.
Dealing with it- and finding someplace to park when you arrive wherever it was you thought you were going- is the consummate Washington experience. And I am frankly starting to warm up to Edgar the Turkey Buzzard and his feathered associates. They are so dignified, like a flock of funeral directors standing around in their plump black weskits.
And the power of their wings! Amazing! I think all of us here envy their ability to just fly away, and one of these great mornings, I am going to do exactly that.
Oh, we had a popup event last night we decided to call “National Lay-Off Appreciation Day.” Jon-without-an-H appeared at a ten o’clock meeting last Thursday and the first thing he saw was his new boss and the representative from HR he knew things were not right, and he was quite right about that. He had been working for a major international manufacturing concern- he was doing “Government Relations” for them, which is what we insiders here inside the Beltway call “doing unnatural things with the Feds.”
It is very specialized work, and since it can really only be done here, the way forward is uncertain. GovRel is not dissimilar to the Oldest (and second oldest) professions. The latter being my former specialty- espionage- while I think I am getting too old for the former.
I told Jon-without that the severance and vacation payout gives him a chance to reinvent himself, and maybe not here. We will see. The downturn in the defense contracting world has all the companies contracting and merging. I went through two imported management teams in two years at my old company before I threw in the towel and went with the small business. I concluded my remarks by pointing out that now he has the Washington Dream line, which is that he now has “much more time to spend with his family,” which is Mom and Dad in upstate New York.
We all agreed that things suck. The tally around the bar was two hostile takeovers for me, and a change of employer. The Key Grip is managing an equipment warehouse for the local film industry at the moment. Liz-S looks safe, since she is a Govvie, as is The Master Mounter. That amounts to life-time sinecures, if you can handle it. Jon-without might be adrift for a little while, but I am confident something will come up. He is too valuable as an executive to be on the street long, but like The Blonde, some things just happen and you have to pick your self, dust off the seat of your pastel pant-suit and get on with it.
JPeter has a much more traditional sort of role. He supports one of the big agencies downtown, but like Engineer Cindy, lives from contract to contract, and being “uncovered” or worse, “on the bench” are terms no one likes to hear, not with the town being as expensive in cost of living as it is.
Anyway, it was a rollicking evening confronting our unique hot-house economy in the National Capital region. Our pal the Left Coast Attorney used to ridicule us as “War Profiteers” from the fat days when the Iraq and Afghan wars gave us plenty of work at decent profits while the rest of the country tightened their collective belts. He was wrong, though, and DC follows the same process of entropy in long sine waves alternating between feast and famine.
I am getting a little tired of it, and am considering going into the Turkey Buzzard Care industry.
Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com