If You’re Over 50, Doors Are Shut

I was commiserating with my friend, Rita, the other day about how hard it is to get work after turning 50. Taking six years off to complete college and postgraduate degree programs did little to increase my chances of successfully making a midlife career change. Rita recently had the same conversation with a friend of hers at a party, who, in turn, related her own experience trying to find a job at age 50-plus.

“They smell 50,” she said, “and they don’t want you around.” I knew exactly what her friend meant. It’s the look they give you when you go to apply for the job that is so telling. “This is a young company,” they might say. Of course there is a statute on the books about age discrimination, but try to enforce it. People who are age 50 or older all over the nation are quietly being set out to pasture, many at the top of their form professionally and intellectually.

The reason for this ageism, many say, is economic. The logic: People who have been with an organization for a long time are paid more--cost that organization more money--therefore, an economically viable solution to that problem is to let that person go.

What I find horrifying is the tacit approval this gets from the average person on the street. Anything goes in the name of profit in our every-person-for-himself society. Loyalty is a quaint idea, gone with the last century. I don’t think the reasons are all economic. I think the underlying force is cosmetic. The shallow have inherited the Earth. We have become a nation of shallow ideals and values. We like our women unrealistically thin. We wear our labels on the outside. Just like a husband might trade in a wife for a younger model, corporations all over America are doing the same thing with their mature employees. Formerly useful employees quietly disappear into the misty corners of the night.

Where has this generation’s backbone gone? It is time to stand up and fight.

Look around you when you shop or do business. Use your dollars as leverage. Don’t support businesses that won’t support a staff of diverse age. Hollywood films are the worst offenders. Have you noticed that people in their make-believe world all are under 40? Age discrimination is as bad as racism and more insidious. Write to sponsors. Write to your members of Congress and the president. Use the power of boycott. Until corporate America reevaluates, ask lawmakers to create quotas. Encourage demographic studies of corporations to see who is complying and who isn’t.

Wake up, Americans. If you are not over 50 now, you will be one day and you will still need to pay the rent.