Grave business - my financial world

The ubiquitous symbols of gainful employment, the key card and picture ID attached to his sweater, speak equally to Ed Wolfgram’s periodic rejection of his life’s status quo.

“It’s important to keep learning and to keep things interesting,” Wolfgram said last week in an interview at a coffee shop near his Central West End home. “If you’re in a rut, and are feeling a little too comfortable, then every five years you need to add a new dimension to your life. That way you won’t lose out on something.”

A phychiatrist Wolfgram adheres to his own advice.

As middle age approached, Wolfgram abandoned a sedentary lifestyle to include a run in his daily routine. He has since competed in 60 marathons and Ironman events, once finishing first in the world in his age bracket.

The ID and key card underscore Wolfgram’s most recent commitment to personal evolution — a bid to re-enter the workforce.

The Metropolitan St. Louis Psychiatric Center responded to the submission of his resume with an invitation to an interview.

The “very nervous” Wolfgram apparently impressed the right people, because the resulting job offer was quickly followed the mandatory drug test, orientation, issuance of the key card and ID and, finally, his first day on the job.

Most of us are familiar with the drill.

Not Wolfgram: He last pursued and was subsequently hired for a salaried position 50 years ago when, to put it in perspective, John F. Kennedy occupied the White House and Barack Obama was still in diapers.

A half century later, Wolfgram, 79, leaped into the 21st Century from a work environment defined by segregation, households supported by a single salary, typewriters and manual labor.

“It’s sort of like riding a bike, but not quite,” he said.

The University of Iowa med school graduate took his leave from that world shortly after completing his training at the Washington University School of Medicine in the early 1960s.

Establishing a private practice, he set his own hours, made business decisions that had an impact only on him and his patients and reported to no one.

Now, to his astonishment, Wolfgram has a boss.

As well as an office, telephone extension with a dedicated line and the expectation that he’ll show up at 8:30 every morning and remain on the job until 4:30 in the afternoon, with a half hour for lunch.

Fifty years after he last punched the proverbial clock, Wolfgram arrived at his new place of employment with two primary objectives: to avoid getting lost in the labyrinth hospital corridors, and to pinpoint the location of the bathroom nearest his office without getting lost.

He got through those first days by sticking to another bit of advice he’d often imparted to others - “There are stupid answers, but never a stupid question.”

Wolfgram returned to the work place partially out of necessity.

A witness in criminal and civil proceedings, he is required by many states to maintain an active practice in psychiatry to meet the standard for expert testimony.

Beyond that, his position at the the psychiatric center also scratches the internal itch that propels him forward at an age when most of his contemporaries are long retired.

Between his private practice and periodic work in hospitals, Wolfgram through the years managed to stay up-to-date with the technology, medicine and research that has moved psychiatry forward over the past half century.

It’s thus the non-clinical aspects of the workplace — particularly the collegiality that has replaced the professional detachment of 50 years ago — he finds most interesting.

“Everybody is always saying hello, asking how I am and wishing me a nice day,” he said. “I wonder if they are programmed in some way.”

Wolfgram believes his own re-entry to the workplace carries a lesson for other job-seekers, be they recent college graduates or displaced workers landing on their feet after a prolonged layoff.

“No matter how educated you are, you’re starting at the bottom of the ladder,” he said.

And as he’s learning, there’s no where to go but up.

Even at age 79.

 

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Congressmen taking responsibility or taking credit for helping create jobs is like Al Gore taking credit for the Internet.” - Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney mocking claim by fellow GOP presidential hopeful and ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s claim that he played a role in creating 16 million jobs in the 1980s.

Source: Bloomberg

BY THE NUMBERS

60 - Percentage of Rochester, N.Y. workforce drawing paychecks from Eastman Kodak, Xerox and Bausch + Lomb in 1987. 

6 - Percentage of  Rochester workforce employed by the same three companies today. 

Source: The New York Times 

FINAL WORD

“The right claims the stimulus failed because it didn’t bring unemployment down to 8 percent in its first year, as predicted by Obama’s transition economic team. Instead, it peaked at 10.2 percent. But the 8 percent prediction was made before Obama took office and was wrong solely because it relied on statistics that guessed the economy was only shrinking by around 4 percent, not 9. Remove that statistical miscalculation (made by government and private-sector economists alike) and the stimulus did exactly what it was supposed to do. It put a bottom under the free fall. It is not an exaggeration to say it prevented a spiral downward that could have led to the Second Great Depression.” - commentator and blogger Andrew Sullivan

Source: The Daily Beast

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