Getting Cut Off by AT&T;

The mass firings at AT&T; were supposed to start on Jan. 16, though for reasons deemed humane, some executives gave workers the option of finding out their status on Dec. 21, the Thursday before Christmas.

For the 389 people in the tax department--most of them terror-stricken at the coming of the latest company purge--this was a gut-churning choice. What if you got canned? That would turn your whole family inside out during the holidays. Then again, why let it haunt you if everything was going to be OK?

In the end, most workers decided they could not bear to wait. Throughout the day, they left the maze-like shelter of their gray, shoulder-high cubicles for a private session with one of the tax bosses.

Joe Ottaka, for one, was fairly confident. An accountant, he had been with AT&T; for 12 years. His most recent personnel evaluations were all tiptop. The tax unit itself was an award winner. He figured the odds fell his way until he picked up a voice-mail message from a friend that said: “Joe, it’s a blood bath.”

Suddenly, Ottaka, 51, felt the fateful tug of the corporate undertow, the endless rounds of downsizing and restructuring that now engulf more than 1 million workers a year. An old psychological contract has been broken, loyalty and hard work no longer an even trade for job security. It may well be the biggest change in the American workplace since the introduction of the 40-hour week.

With so many jobs insecure, in good times or bad, a low boil of anxiety percolates within most every office and factory. Ottaka had felt it for years. AT&T; was always hemorrhaging jobs, and 40,000 more were about to go. Was it his turn now? He took a seat behind closed doors, and when he actually heard the words, they hit him like a hammer blow:

“Joe, you don’t have the skills to fit in at the new AT&T.;”

Later, Ottaka would learn that this was the company-approved phrase. Over and over, to one employee after another: “Sorry, you don’t have the skills.” In her session, Shelda Maier, another accountant, demanded to know, “What skills are you talking about?” But the bosses had been coached not to say. Such answers might lead to pledges to improve, begging, arguments, a scene.

Dispensed with only vague explanations, the firings then took on an eerie, inscrutable cast, like an arrest by the secret police in a Kafka novel. Maier was furious as well as hurt. There was no place to appeal, nothing left to do. She hurried to a restroom to cry.

Co-workers were watching each other come out of the offices. Who was safe, who was sorry: News sped its way through the cubicles. People were still trying to calibrate their own chances. Maier was a Fulbright scholar, conscientious and kept to herself. If she was out, what about me?

As the day went on, people separated into pockets of sorrow and pockets of relief. The fired were the easier to spot under the low ceilings and overhead fluorescents. Their troubles seemed almost visible, like a curl of smoke. Some of them slumped, as if their bodies were suddenly without bones.

Bruce Picard was another victim. After 27 years with AT&T;, the moment left him oddly puzzled. What should he be doing? Like the others, he had been told he would stay on the payroll until March 15. Should he finish the day? Take a walk? Go home? Finally, he decided to call his wife. “Guess what?” he said.

Ottaka, who is divorced, phoned his girlfriend, then started packing some personal items in a box; he stared at an old photo of himself, competing in a triathlon. Henry Nwokonko, the father of two young children, announced his meager revenge: He’d tell everyone he knew to switch to MCI.

Inevitably, people began their dreary post-mortems, the present unspooling into the past. They searched for the causes of their misfortune: The department was badly run, nothing but a joke, really. Just look at who was kept and who was not.

But then the brooding would take an inward turn. People blamed themselves--or blamed their circumstances. Careers and personal choices were picked over. They should have schmoozed more or kissed up or been more political. They should have put in longer hours. They should have seen that competitive pressures would force the company into drastic changes.

Life’s blessings were work’s curses. Maier, 39, was divorced. Her kids were 7 and 5. “Single parents are vulnerable,” she thought. “AT&T; knows I have other obligations. They know they can’t get as much out of me.”

In all, the tax unit was cut by 53 people. The fired tried to soothe each other with the well-worn homilies of the grieving. They told themselves that life went on. They still had their families, their friends, their good health. The thing to do was to look ahead. Their job now was to find another job.

Finally, they all went home. “Mommy had a bad day,” Maier told her son. Then they went to watch her daughter in a Christmas pageant. The little girl wore one of Maier’s nightgowns to play the Virgin Mary.

Read Rankin, a 45-year-old tax analyst, had a 40-minute drive to his new house in the horse country by the Delaware River. His wife, Joanne, was seven months pregnant with their third child. His sons were 4 and 2.

Rankin had 10 years with AT&T;, a master’s degree from Yale University, a law degree from Case Western. When he had phoned Joanne with the awful news, she quickly turned to the bedroom clock to mark the exact time that their lives had changed: 11:42 a.m. Now there would be no money for curtains or wallpaper. She would have to keep her part-time job at the mall.

Joanne’s parents were arriving that day from Florida to share the yuletide cheer. Rankin did not know what to tell them. His thoughts were tumbling. When he had gotten the word, he angrily told his boss it was “damned unfair” and then gave him what for. But now he actually felt liberated, even happy.

Joanne would recall that he “seemed on speed, high as a kite.” But it was only the first of many mood swings to come, the dismal up-and-down of being left behind. In a few hours, he would collapse back into himself as he played with his 4-year-old, Cole. He had something important to tell the boy.

“Always remember that your Dada, just like Dada’s Dada, always tried the hardest to do the best he could,” Rankin said. Even if the boy was too young to understand, maybe the words would stick in his mind and mean something later.

Then Rankin walked toward the fireplace, near his in-laws, Ed and Sue. He was nearly crying. What kind of a breadwinner was he? “I’m sorry I lost my job,” he apologized. “I’m sorry I didn’t do better by your daughter.”

Unwritten Contract

By now, it is a weary American ritual--the announcement of the layoffs, the actual discharges, the handoff of veteran employees to those worker recycling centers known as “outplacement services.” The biggest of the job cuts make headlines--the 74,000 at General Motors, the 63,000 at IBM, the 40,000 at AT&T--but; almost every corporate work force now has its own diaspora.

These days, restructuring rather than simple downsizing drives most of the job loss. Corporations are not so much reducing their size as trading in their people--out with the old and in with the new. During the 12 months before June 1995, the net work-force decline for companies eliminating jobs was only 1.1%, according to the American Management Assn. Businesses fire, then hire.

The rationale for all this churning is the super-competitive nature of the current marketplace. Entire industries rise and fall in a matter of years, prompting a flurry of merging, divesting, resizing and remolding in an effort to keep up. Workers with today’s skills are brought in to replace those with yesterday’s. Though, for the sake of the bottom line, corporations are also sometimes willing to exchange better and older for younger and cheaper.

Even as highly profitable AT&T; reported that it was cutting 40,000 of its 304,000 jobs during the next three years, it quietly added that it would hire 15,000 to 20,000 people in 1996. Changing priorities required it. After all, no company could transform a now-unneeded sales clerk into a newly-necessary computer programmer.

The world moved too fast for that. There “used to be a lifelong commitment on the employee’s part and on our part,” Bob Allen, AT&T;’s CEO, told Time magazine. “But our people now realize the contract does not exist anymore.”

There is a new unwritten contract to replace the old. The updated deal is more immediate and straightforward: this work for that pay. The paternalistic employer is now a relic. Workers themselves must assume sole responsibility for their own careers--and expect to change jobs frequently.

“The healthy way to approach this is to understand that we’re all temps,” said David Noer, a management consultant. His book about the trauma of layoffs, “Healing the Wounds,” is on AT&T;’s list of recommended reading for those recently fired. “That’s the new reality, so every employee needs to develop skills that keep him marketable across different organizations.”

Other business experts are not so accepting of this new epoch. They say the revolving door often moves carelessly fast--and they ask: What is happening to institutional memory and hard-won trust and camaraderie? These days, companies are always talking about “empowering” workers to show more initiative. How can that occur when people always feel scared and vulnerable?

There are many signs of worker shellshock. One poll after another shows they are losing confidence as consumers. If every job is a keg of dynamite with a fuse of uncertain length, how can a person plan ahead? In the past, the average home buyer could count on a rising salary to finance a mortgage. Now, unpredictable periods of unemployment change all the arithmetic.

To some extent, blue-collar workers--especially those without unions--have always lived with this insecurity. But now the upper-income white collars are feeling it too. The most stunned of all are middle managers. They once manned the front lines in the expanding corporate hierarchy, settling into lifetime jobs the way a child might slip into a goose-down sleeping bag.

Blue-collar work may still be more tenuous, but it does often involve a transferable skill. Middle managers, on the other hand, have been busy “facilitating” and “coordinating,” steeped in a single corporate culture and ill-prepared to be shed as so much bureaucratic flab.

Those managers who were just fired from AT&T; will be running into some of their predecessors at the company job fairs. Angela Patrone, 43, who earned $45,000 a year as an associate manager in human relations, was let go by AT&T; in 1994. She has been looking for a comparable job ever since.

“They’re in for quite a shock,” she said of those now starting the job hunt. “They’re used to being part of the AT&T; family. Well, the family got divorced and nobody wants custody of the children.”

Outside the Circle

On the day after the tax people got the news, many of the fired showed up at work anyway, even though they had been told this was no longer expected. They sat in their regular spots, but things felt uncomfortable now. They were outside the family circle and a distraction to the others, who were unusually relaxed and jolly. This was the morning of the office Christmas party.

The tax department is located here in Morristown in Mount Kemble Plaza Two, just one of dozens of massive office buildings that AT&T; has placed in the wooded towns of eastern New Jersey. On the Friday before Christmas, Kemble Two’s cafeteria is always decorated for a party. The buffet is free. Cafeteria workers dress up as elves. Carolers sing the joyous lyrics of the season.

Shelda Maier ordinarily overflows with holiday spirit, but now she only dreaded the AT&T; festivities. She had to go. Her two children counted on it, lining up with the other kids to deliver their Christmas lists to Santa.

It was all so terribly awkward. “I could see the pity in people’s eyes,” Maier said. “Some of them hugged me, but they were all careful not to say too much in front of the kids.” Lame cliches were tendered. One woman reassured her, “I’ve always found that these things work out for the best.”

Psychologists say the loss of a job is similar to a death in the family; people go through stages of denial, anger and depression before acceptance. Read Rankin had made it through denial and was speeding into high dudgeon.

He was at his desk when he saw his boss, Gary Wiggins--the very one who had handed him the pink slip--walking from cubicle to cubicle, making holiday chitchat and shaking hands. He wouldn’t dare stop here, Rankin thought. But then there he was, looking sympathetic, like someone on a condolence call.

Rankin cut Wiggins short. “I think you’re trying to say something nice to me, but let’s face it, you’ve taken my job and sent me and my family down an uncertain path,” he said. “Why did I get nailed and not the others?”

Wiggins is a tall, thin man, two years older than Rankin. These difficult decisions were made through a long, careful process, he tried to explain.

“Whatever the process, it was designed to get rid of people and then to disguise who did it. . . ,” Rankin responded sharply. “You know, Gary, I don’t hate you, though it’s pretty hard for me to contain it. I have to forget about what’s happened and move on. It’ll only hurt me to get angry and negative.”

Then, angry and negative, Rankin refused to shake his boss’ hand.

The Darwinian Rule

AT&T; used to affectionately refer to itself as Ma Bell--and who was there to quibble? As a regulated monopoly, it had a hammerlock on anyone who wanted to place a call. This motherly self-image, however, had genuine meaning to the employees. With no competition, AT&T; was a cozy place to work. Individualism was subordinate to communal bonding. The phone company took care of its own.

All this would change in 1984 with a court-ordered breakup. New rivals took on the giant and often found it sluggish. Telecommunications was changing at madcap speed. To keep up, AT&T; had to grow bigger in some places and smaller in a lot of others. Over 11 years, it cut 73,000 jobs, 20% of its total.

Kindly Ma Bell now obeyed the Darwinian laws: survival of the fittest. Each downsizing arrived with a jolt of anxiety that was cumulative. Bruce Picard, the 27-year veteran, said he once heard a perfect description of the multiplying tension: One foot over the cliff and the other on a banana peel.

But however many the layoffs, AT&T; remained an unwieldy beast. In 1991, it forced its way into the computer business with a $7.5-billion hostile takeover of National Cash Register. This was a costly blunder, the two vastly different companies fitting together no better than a right arm on a left shoulder.

Last September, Bob Allen proposed a cure for his $80-billion lopsided titan--a split into three companies: one each for communications services, equipment and computers. In his announcement, he ominously stated that “it would be safe to say that the combined new companies will have fewer employees than the current AT&T.;”

That breathtaking number, 40,000, would be released 104 days later.

Cut and Divide

Actually, the 40,000 total--so often cited as yet another calamity for the American worker--has been misconstrued. Not every job cut will mean a firing.

By AT&T;’s calculations, 12,000 employees are expected to accept voluntary buyouts (though those who jump are sometimes pushed). About 4,000 more will exit to AT&T; spinoffs. Another 6,000 are likely to rejoin the company eventually, either in newly created jobs or positions vacated through attrition. That leaves 18,000 unaccounted for.

After all the years of downsizing, the corporate bosses are adept at it. Big subtractions can be made by eliminating unprofitable units; for instance, 2,500 jobs have been “gained” by closing the company’s phone stores.

But the challenge this time, company officials said, was not only to cut jobs, but to divide AT&T; into the three new parts. People in departments such as tax, real estate, purchasing and human resources would have to be apportioned. At the same time, top managers were instructed to pare their payrolls to the core.

All the anxious sorting and sifting began with a numerical rating of every worker. Then, in meetings called “round tables,” small groups of top managers matched the available jobs with the people they thought the best.

Decisions were then reviewed. Job cuts are a magnet for lawsuits about discrimination, and AT&T; did not want the ax to fall too heavily on any one age group or gender or race. In any case, severance packages would be sweetened with a 20% bonus for employees who waived their right to sue.

Finally, it was time to tell the workers.

Delivering Bad News

Gary Wiggins--director, property taxes--had 30 people to inform, thumbs up for 20, down for 10. “It was a wrenching day,” he said. He gave bad news to a lot of good people, and delivering it was as painful a duty as he’d ever had. These workers had families, just like him. To make the chore easier, he arranged the appointments so he did not have to fire too many in a row.

Passing the word was only the last step in an exhausting process. Wiggins himself had taken part in six round tables, judging others even as higher-level round tables were judging him. “Every decision was thoroughly talked about, and every employee was represented by someone who knew him,” he said, satisfied that all the somber winnowing had been done as fairly as possible.

For the tax department, the job cuts had come at an opportune time. The unit was changing, relying more on temps and outside help for the basics. The emphasis was now on minimizing AT&T;’s tax burden rather than mere compliance. Strategists were needed, not just “data gatherers” who plugged in numbers.

But how does one go about firing people? Wiggins and the other bosses were given 10 hours of training. Pointers in the manual included: “Stay off the ‘blessing in disguise’ theme. . . . Don’t say, ‘You shouldn’t take it so hard.’ . . . It is not time for a performance appraisal. . . . Stay off the topic of criticizing the company. . . . Give tissues and water. . . . Don’t say, ‘I know how you feel.’ ”

When the day finally arrived, the bosses would be surprised about which employees cried and which did not. “There were more tears from the people with [jobs],” said Greg Millert, who is Wiggins’ boss. “They cried out of relief, I guess. The stress was over, and they let it pour out.”

The fired, however, were oddly quiet. Most gasped or blurted something, then fell silent. Several began to stare right past Wiggins, looking at the painting behind his desk, at the boats docked peacefully in a cove. He was obligated to tell them about termination dates and available counseling, but he may as well have been talking to clothes on a mannequin.

True, there were some who spoke up. Wiggins would only discuss Rankin in generalities: “Different individuals have different issues. Some people have strong academic backgrounds, but maybe they haven’t been accomplishing all we’ve wanted. They’ve had difficulties marching in the new directions. . . .

“I feel pretty bad about Read. You know, he’s not taking this too well.”

Lessons for Displaced

In the affluent towns of New Jersey, as in those in nearby Connecticut and New York, hundreds of white-collar support groups have started up in churches and community centers. Suddenly shorn of purpose, some of the jobless act as if they’ve been rendered useless, like human windows painted shut. But for the most part, people are upbeat. They come to “network,” to trade job leads.

Though some specialize in the dispossessed of one occupation or another--such as computers or banking--one group is much like another. The leaders preach a similar folk wisdom: No job is safe; never stop networking; never stop learning; as soon as you land a job, start looking for the next. Most of all, never confuse your own best interests with those of the corporation.

These were lessons Read Rankin had yet to learn. Weeks went by, but he could not let go of his hurt. AT&T; was embedded in his mind and soul. He spoke unwittingly of those in the tax department as if they were familiar to anyone, describing some as near-mythic figures of epic flaws and diabolical cunning.

“Well, I’ve figured out what this was all about,” he said, beginning a typical rant. “Gary likes his own people. If he didn’t bring you in, you’re garbage, and I was a threat to his power base because I had the expertise. I was in charge of the appraisal, which is a very important document. So now he’ll give the job to Bruce. Bruce is his boy. It was a brutal power move.

“You know, Gary once tried to ship me off to California because he knew I wouldn’t move there. So I called his bluff and that embarrassed him. I put in for a job with Manny. Manny called Gary and said, ‘What are you doing to Read?’ Gary was livid. It all blew up in his face.

“But the one I still don’t understand is Ephraim. He came in here to make the department more professional, better educated and family-oriented, but all it became is dog-eat-dog. The thing is, you had to play the game, be on stage. What it is is a betrayal. I feel their faithlessness, a bunch of 30- and 40-year-olds looking at other 30- and 40-year-olds and cutting their throats.”

Help for Jobless

Corporate horror stories are legion. People get fired and a minute later a security guard is marching them out the door. That does not happen at AT&T.; People here were given at least eight weeks’ notice--and paid an extra five to 35 weeks of salary based on years of service. They were also referred to an AT&T; “resource center,” where counselors offered them free career advice.

In January, the center in Murray Hill, N.J., geared up for a long onslaught. More space was added, computers installed. Janice Cooley has been running this hospice for the jobless since 1990, but still cannot get used “to all these sad people walking around, looking like they were bruised.”

With many, the hardest part is to get them to apply for jobs outside of AT&T.; “They think they’ll be rehired; some even say it’s disloyal to be looking elsewhere,” Cooley said. “That’s part of the denial. They believe someone within AT&T; will realize a mistake was made and take them back.”

All day, the fired would come in to check job postings and use the phones, though the rooms stayed quiet as a library. People moved unnaturally slowly, like rubber balls that had lost their bounce. Occasionally, one would recognize someone they knew from way back and silently nod: You too, huh?

Among the seminars was “Career Transition Training.” Martha Bisaccio, a woman with the kind face of a kindergarten teacher, told people to identify their salable skills and buck up. New opportunities were always coming open. One handout explained that joblessness was “a valuable learning opportunity for your family in developing unity [and] building bridges of caring.”

Shelda Maier said she found the session useful. She had never before viewed herself as a “product,” something that had to be updated in order to meet changing demand. Joe Ottaka also began to evaluate his market value. Maybe 12 years at AT&T; had been too long. “My career as a tax professional died here,” he said. “I spent too much time working on the same old thing.”

In fact, as Ottaka now looked back at it, he had never liked his job at all.

Emotional Swings

The best way to fend off depression was to send out resumes. After all, with no fleet out there, no ship could come in. But who had a resume?

Three weeks after getting fired, Read Rankin finally put one together. It was three pages long, going into detail about how he had analyzed, managed, appraised, reviewed, compiled, documented, determined and reconciled.

A while later, afraid the resume was not all it should be, he asked for help from someone in Yale University’s placement office. She called it pathetic. It was too long. The typeface was ugly, the sentences incomplete.

But Rankin was not discouraged. By then, he had a plan. If he had to look for a job, he would begin by aiming high. His dream was to work with “the great” Jack Grubman, who analyzed the telecommunications industry for the investment banking firm Salomon Bros. He repeated this name with great veneration, the way someone else might say Frank Sinatra or Michael Jordan.

“In my daydream world, I’m working beside Jack Grubman, and we’re picking the winners and losers on Wall Street,” he said. “Me and Jack Grubman.”

This was characteristic of the newly jobless. Their hopes seemed to bob up and down like a cork in rough seas. They were life’s washouts one day and cocky as Bugs Bunny the next. Some, like Rankin, seemed able to explore the limits of all this emotional territory in a single conversation.

“Listen, I’m a statistical person, and the odds of my getting work are not real good,” he began morosely. “My greatest concern is my age. Not that 45 is old. At 55, I’d be a lot older. At 25, I wouldn’t even care about this. But 45 is there in the middle. I don’t know about 45.

“I wish I could say I was confident. The big obstacles are psychological. AT&T; has given me the message: We don’t want you. Yeah, you’ve got the credentials. Yeah, you did a good job for us. But now we want someone new.

“Think what that did to me. I had low self-esteem for years. I had a lot of unfunded debt. Then I made myself into someone who someone like my wife would want to marry. It was a long haul, and now look what they did to me.”

But in a just few minutes he was talking his way back into the pink. “You know, AT&T; has done me a favor. All those years, I was willing to take a low paycheck in return for job security. I wasn’t out to conquer the world. Well, now I’m going to try for something that’s bigger and better, and I think I’ll get it. You know why? Because I’m a cool head. I’m a deft hand. I know how to do the work. That’s why.”

Alarming Trends

National rates of job loss go up and down. Among workers with at least three years on the same job, one in 26 lost that job during 1991-1992, the latest two-year period studied by the Labor Department. The big change in recent years is that there is no longer a strict link between layoffs and the health of the U.S. economy. With corporate restructuring so routine--and job cuts so fondly embraced by Wall Street--good times no longer provide workers much added protection.

Equally alarming is what happens to displaced workers in their ensuing job searches. Among full-time workers who lost jobs in 1991 and 1992, only 35% had found work that paid as well by 1994, according to federal surveys. About 32% had not gone back into full-time jobs at all.

With the career ladder so slippery, and the climb back up so unsure, Americans seem all too aware of their jeopardy, but few have many thoughts about what might be done to change things.

Among two dozen of AT&T;’s fired, only a few mentioned the general topics of middle-class decline or the need to change corporate behavior. Even then, they would only say that “someone ought to do something,” though they could not specify who that champion might be or if government had a role to play.

Once, Rankin launched into a riff about the “ugly face of capitalism” and how “corporations like AT&T; have fallen out of touch with the common people . . . making decisions solely on one criteria alone: money.”

But then he quickly granted them absolution. “A corporation’s duty is to its shareholders. The whole process may be detached from the common people, but, hey, that’s why capitalism works and communism was a flop.”

Only one person mentioned the comeback of labor unions, though she was not endorsing the idea. It was just something “that would serve the corporations right,” like coming down with a cold after refusing to put on galoshes.

Bad and Worse Days

For the jobless, time was heavy on their hands but light on its feet. Their final weeks on the AT&T; payroll were flying by, which was mortifying. Counselors had told them that it usually took a month of job hunting for every $10,000 in salary. That meant four to five months for Rankin. By the end of January, he no longer had good days and bad, just bad days and worse.

The great Jack Grubman had not answered his entreaties, whether they were made by phone, mail or fax. The only employers nibbling at his resume were “vultures” in the life insurance business, “trying to seize on my fear.”

“They say the jobs are in financial planning, but it’s really just sales,” he said. “As a condition of employment, they demand a list of 200 people I know who’d serve as prospects. They also want a list of my 15 closest friends and then want me to ask each of them for their 15 closest friends.”

Everyday it was something else. Over at the resource center, Rankin saw that AT&T; was now advertising for two tax preparers. “My God, does Gary really think I couldn’t fill out the forms?” he huffed. “A software system makes it all ridiculously simple. I mean, that’s the last straw. What can be more obvious? The bottom line is that they just didn’t want me anymore.”

Nothing but spilled time--that’s what his years at AT&T; had come to seem. He felt in a curious trap now, all the cosmic tumblers cruelly locking into place and the whole world seemingly intent on rubbing his face in his shame.

Joanne, now just a month from her delivery date, sold dresses part time at Macy’s. One day, she spent 90 minutes helping a woman pick out half a dozen Liz Claiborne outfits. It was going to add up to a nice commission, but then, at the register, the customer mentioned she was about to start a new job.

“Really, oh where?”

“At AT&T.;”

Joanne could not finish. She let someone else have the sale.

The Firings Continue

The firings at AT&T; go on. Using the company’s euphemisms, 5,000 workers have already become “unassigned.” By the end of 1996, the job-cutters are expected to clear out about 28,000 spots.

Most of the fired will find work, even if the majority of the new jobs will not pay as well as the old. America is the world’s great job machine. The telecommunications industry itself is undergoing a boom.

As for particular individuals, it is too soon to know how things are going to work out. Job loss can be the spark for an electrifying rebirth or a shove into some dreadfully long descent. As always, life is a puzzle without all the pieces.

A comeback seems unlikely for some of the AT&T; castoffs. After 35 years, Brian Wolf was pushed into taking the buyout. He is 57, suffers from a bad heart, and while he talks about “going into consulting,” one can already see him regarding his career as a pinched-out claim, no more ore to mine.

But with others, it is different. On their good days, Joe Ottaka, Shelda Maier and Read Rankin seem as purposeful as greyhounds chasing a rabbit. And there are good days. Just a week ago, Rankin himself was revived. He had interviewed with a big bond-rating firm in Manhattan, and the bosses had kept him there all day. By the time he left, they were already talking about what trains he might use in his commute. The job would double his AT&T; salary.

“They still have to interview some more candidates, but all the signals I got were that the job was mine,” he said, unable to restrain his leaps of faith. “The job is an astonishingly good match. And they have a real feel for who I am. They picked up on the relentlessness, the perfectionism, the deftness, the flexibility, the attention for detail. It was great!”

In his mind’s eye, he was already making a soft landing in the precarious future. Once again, he was ready to invest mind and soul in the corporation.

Times researchers Anna M. Virtue and John Beckham contributed to the reporting of this story.