It May Be Time For A Demotion

There's an exchange in the film "The Devil Wears Prada" where Anne Hathaway's character is employed in this ridiculously demanding job at a high-end fashion magazine office where most, if not all, of the employees are required to dress the part of a high-end fashion magazine employee. No casual Friday's here folks unless casual means a pair of thigh high Chanel boots or a Prada ballcap or Jimmy Choo sneakers if there was such an item. Anyway, I digress... The exchange was between the Andy, played by Hathaway, an up and coming fashion magazine assistant and Nigel, played by Stanley Tucci, a dedicated and jaded Associate Editor who seems to grasp the subtleties and significance of a high-end fashion magazine in the life of whoever reads that kind of stuff.

At a photo shoot in Central Park, Andy approaches Nigel and casually comments on how her personal life is hanging by a thread because of the demands of this job that she really doesn't care for. Nigel's reply was somewhere along the lines of: "Let me know when your personal life is in the tank. It may be time for a promotion." So at 4:00 am on the morning of my departure for my high school reunion, I find myself unable to sleep not because of the excitement of my upcoming trip, but because of the job... err, I mean office work that I'm going to leave behind.

Time and time again, I've alluded to how demanding my chosen field is. I work in the real estate and mortgage industry and the hours are long, the clients difficult, the bosses slash sales reps egomaniacal and most everyone is involved in the unashamed pursuit of making money. In it's heyday, starting in 1999, the industry has sort of fueled the nation's economy. Property values skyrocketed and people took advantage of their accumulated equities to spend, spend, spend on anything and everything they can get their hands on. It stimulated the economy, increased production and strengthened all things economic in our nation.

As property values leveled, creative individuals found ways of maximizing equity even to the undeserved (bad debtors) and the unqualified (low-income). And after engaging in long complicated processes of cheating, dare I say defrauding, lenders the industry is now taking a nose dive. Home Foreclosures are up, lay-offs by the thousands are a monthly occurence, brokers are going out of business daily, agents are taking jobs at Target or Walmart, people are skipping on mortgage payments and sadly, many have just completely walked out on their mortgages. And were not talking about just the middle class, there are those highly publicized individuals who've abandoned their million dollar homes too. Oh and did I mention that indictments are a-flying because of how "creative" some people have become?

Here's my point, everyone is feeling the pinch. Six figure salaries have now been reduced to four. Mercedes Benz and BMW's have now been replaced with Prius and Toyotas, and everyone is on edge and out for themselves. It's more demanding than it used to be. Clients are meaner and greedier because there isn't much to go around anymore. There's more backstabbing among those who are still employed and more jockeying for whatever positions that are left that everyday is a day full of machinations and manipulations that one would think Machiavelli himself was orchestrating all of it in one fell swoop. This is Darwin's theory at its best. Gone is the love and joy for the work before us. It has now been reduced to the survival of the fittest or at this point, the survival of the most politically correct, backstabbing, suck-up money can buy.

And just like Andy's character, on top of all this, my personal life is hanging by a thread to boot. So at a little after 4:00 am, on the morning of my departure for a 2 week trip, I find myself up and about thinking that maybe it's time for that demotion. I certainly don't want to get to the point where my personal life is "in the tank." Though I admit to having fears of financial hardship when I take that plunge into something new and more sane. And then this thought, nay this reassurrance, as in all things I ought to trust in God to provide and deliver us from this hardship. After all, He is the Great Provider and, if nothing else, whatever He brings together, let no man put asunder.