New York Proves Itself One More Time
A returned wallet restores faith in the big city
“They have your wallet over at The Mansion [Diner],” said my doorman last Monday morning.
He was referring to my new, blue, rectangular Michael Kors wallet that holds my life and that I thought I’d never see again. Read more
How to Unhook from Addiction
A new year means new resolutions—here’s how to stick to them
Welcome to your first week of change.
Five days ago, you most likely made a resolution involving one of the big three. With any luck, your agreement with yourself to exercise more, weigh less (always No. 1 on my hit parade) or stop smoking and/or imbibing will last out the week. Read more
Living in Manhattan is the Gift that Keeps Giving
2011 was a rock ’em, sock ’em year for politicians and celebrities
Every year, just being able to say that I live in Manhattan is my best Christmas gift. I love it here because I never know what’s going to happen next.
Judging from the events of 2011, our borough has proven once again to be a place of ups and downs, joys and disappointments, contradictions and consistencies.
Who needed Hurricane Irene, which tore through New York in August, to stir things up? There’s never a dull moment here, especially when it comes to:
Jobs
• Aside from our unfortunate colleagues who have been downsized, there were some high-profile career enders. Cathie Black (remember her?) was schools chancellor for what, five minutes, until someone realized that her magazine world skills were not transferable.
• Then there was Anthony Weiner, who tweeted himself out of work.
• Eliot Spitzer’s TV show got cancelled. (Yet Ashley Dupre still writes for the New York Post.)
• We became preoccupied with Occupy Wall Street and their rage against the machine of those 1 percenters, who are rich and horrible until they offer you a job, as one firm did to Zuccotti Park protestor Tracy Postert.
• But not everyone had a bad time with their 9-to-5s: Andrew Cuomo started a new job and Yankee Derek Jeter reached his 3,000th hit.
Celebrities
• Unless you’re an American Airlines flight attendant or a Starbucks barista whose face he’s screamed in, one-time Upper West Side (now Soho) resident Alec Baldwin seems to still be considered by many people—especially those on Saturday Night Live—as handsome, charming and funny.
• Once again, the Kardashians came to “take New York”—then they went, thank goodness.
• Along with everything else, Bernie Madoff lost his son. Luckily, not one but two books came out to chronicle what it was like to be a member of that family. (I think we’ve all got it by now: it was great when they were living large off OPM and sucked when it disappeared because their father was a crook.)
• We said goodbye (and good riddance?) to “housewives” Jill, Alex (and Simon), Cindy and Kelly. Let’s hope the new batch brings a little dignity with them.
• And in the category of local girls make good, a once-bullied outcast, Lady Gaga, gave us the holiday windows at Barneys and Ivanka Trump had a baby (aka the heiress to the throne) and filled the fashion world’s accessory void by launching a line of bags and shoes to go with her jewelry.
Society at Large
• Citizens gathered at ground zero to celebrate after U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden; months later, they returned to mourn those we lost tragically 10 years ago.
• After much debate, New York State approved gay marriage, making many long-time same-sex couples very happy—as well as caterers, designers and other wedding industry vendors.
• Target shoppers proved moderately priced Missoni can turn otherwise sophisticated women into an angry, greedy mob. (The Versace event at H&M was a tad more civilized.)
• The Second Avenue Subway and the East 91st Street Marine Transfer Station continue to vie for the title of “Bane of Our Existence.”
• And, as if Grand Central wasn’t crowded enough, Apple opened its fifth New York location there. It’s an iMac, iPhone, iPad, iPod city; we just live in it.
I plan to savor the last week of the year (in New York City, any number of things can happen in seven days.) Even though I can’t see the future, I can tell you that, as always, there’ll be more to surprise us in 2012.
Lorraine Duffy Merkl’s debut novel Fat Chick, from The Vineyard Press, is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.
Not Keeping Up with the Kardashians
How Justin Bieber saved me from Kim
Just when I thought I’d be turning in a column about the nadir of entertainment, Kourtney & Kim Take Manhattan (10 p.m., Sundays on E!), I channel surfed my way to finding “the Biebs” rockin’ out on NBC with Rockefeller Center as his stage. Read more
An Open Letter to OWS
Dear OWS,
You are not the only ones who are part of the 99 percent. How do you expect the rest of us non-1-percenters to support you if your actions are hurting us?
I was with you (figuratively, not literally) in the beginning. I believe in our rights to rise up and congregate to show our elected officials the number of citizens who are tired of being jobless with no prospects on the horizon; to express resentment that, while many watch their unemployment run out, others are cashing bonus checks—we’re all suffering from bailout burnout.
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From ‘Good Job’ to No Job
Unemployment for recent NY grads not mom’s fault
By Lorraine Duffy Merkl
When all else fails, throw mom under the bus.
In a rash of recent articles in the New York Post, New York magazine and the Wall Street Journal, to name a few, company owners and independent recruiters are declaring our young “unhirable” because their moms took care of them, resulting in a sense of entitlement.
It seems we coddled them by using the much maligned compliment “Good job” when they were 2 and put a book back on a shelf. Because of this infraction, they now have a dreaded case of self-esteem, which people say you should have but are so intimidated by when it is displayed.
We aided and abetted in the travesty that allows all of the 9-year-olds in Little League to garner a trophy—not for winning, but for showing up (what Woody Allen said 90 percent of life is) and participating. One would think an employer would find this training to be a positive, as in: Our kids will show up for work.
We were being “helicopters” when we thought—mistakenly—that we were simply taking care of our kids by showing an interest in their day-to-day lives; attending class trips, recitals, plays and games. We realize now that we were only fostering this whole ugly self-worth business.
And what were we thinking with the over-scheduling? (We actually considered it introducing our children to as many interests as possible so they could become well-rounded.) We figured this would come in handy one day when they went on interviews (for schools or jobs) and the request was made: “Tell me about yourself.” Our children would be looked upon favorably as they spoke of the instrument they played or sport they excelled in, as well as the traveling they had done. Wrong again.
What is conveniently overlooked is that not only did our kids’ mothers take care of them, we also showed them how to take care of themselves. And the “everybody gets a trophy” thing falls by the wayside around high school, when not only do most kids fail to get a prize, many don’t even make the team. They also must compete to get into high school and college. Yes, there are “legacies” and those whose place in the Ivies was secured by a grandfather who put a new wing on a library, but most just take the SAT and cross their fingers. Sometimes Plan B is the closest they get to their original dream. They are well aware that they are not entitled.
So let’s turn that 9.1 percent unemployment finger around on the people who do the hiring in our no longer jobless nation, where there seem to be many positions to fill. Apparently, they just don’t hire and then pretend it’s because there are no qualified candidates.
In a good economy, those who have the power to give someone their livelihood feel pretty heady. In a bad economy, the arrogance of those in the position to hire is off the charts.
They dismiss people the way the prom queen turned away suitors based upon the side on which they parted their hair. “We’d hire her, but of the 27 computer applications we want people to know, she only knew 26.” “He came in to interview with me wearing loafers instead of oxfords. Next.”
Then they pick that extreme case who wouldn’t be hirable under any circumstances and use them as a representative of “what’s out there.”
This is what’s keeping people out of work.
Those in a hiring position can be assured that nobody, not even their own mothers, will be telling them, “Good job.”
Lorraine Duffy Merkl’s debut novel Fat Chick, from The Vineyard Press, is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.
Broke Girl of the Past
Decades before the CBS sitcom, broke girls were in NYC
“I’m dead inside.”
So says Max, the tough-as-nails twenty-something waitress on the CBS sitcom 2 Broke Girls, explaining how she copes to her co-worker with whom she toils at a greasy spoon in Williamsburg.
Still, they’re having a good time shopping at Goodwill, dumping subpar boyfriends and sharing an apartment.
As a one-time broke girl in Manhattan, I put a moratorium on the show as I choose not to relive those years, even via fictional characters.
Even though I can remember with humor the events of my post-grad life, such as the happy hour that allowed, for the price of a glass of wine, the ability to chow down on all the chicken wings I could eat and call it a dinner—it didn’t always seem funny or fun.
When I left Fordham University in 1980, diploma in hand, I spent the summer looking for the work that had not materialized from the letters and résumés I’d begun sending out the previous March.
Although Jan. 1 may technically be the New Year, everything really begins anew in September.
As fall approached and students were going back to school and summer share Hamptonites were going back to their nine-to-fives, I was still unemployed and going nowhere.
By October, though, I found myself with two opportunities: the first a low-paying entry-level position in publishing, the second in advertising. Both involved answering other people’s phones and typing other people’s words. Because Madison Avenue was where I wanted to be, I took the ad job and my dues paying commenced.
I lived at home to save money and brought my lunch for the same reason. When I finally got my own closet-sized apartment, my mother gave me money toward the rent. I’d say, “No, absolutely not. I’m a grown woman with a job,” to myself as I slid the check in my pocket. While others grimaced at the creative director’s dictum that we work late, I was thrilled—the OT meant my evening meal could be petty cashed.
Because I’ve been there, done that, I feel for the recently graduated who have yet to secure their set-the-world-on-fire positions. All I can say is, don’t give up. New York City has always been a competitive, hard-to-get-a-break place, and the only way to succeed is to get out into the fray.
Thirty-one years ago, we were also in a recession with unemployment at 7.5 percent. There was, however, no cyber anything. Every day, I had no choice but to get up and get dressed, hop on the 6 train from the Bronx and, once in Manhattan, sign up with employment agencies or see creative directors who were kind enough to give me five minutes of their time to tell me to my face that they had nothing for me.
Demoralizing? Exhausting? Frustrating? Yes, yes and yes. But I was out meeting people who knew other people who knew someone who might have a job.
In some ways, technology has made it harder to find work, since looking for a job can be done in your PJs while you Google and email your résumé. Signing up with recruiters in person gets you out in the working world, where you never know who you might meet. You may also have to reconcile that your first job may be unpaid. If nothing else, it puts something on your résumé, as well as shows that you really want to work.
New York City is a tough place to live, let alone start out. But being a broke girl in the city with the potential of making it here was, and I believe still is, better than a life in Suburgatory.
Lorraine Duffy Merkl’s debut novel Fat Chick, from The Vineyard Press, is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.
Watch this Fashion Trend
Ahead of the curve on sleepwear as streetwear
I never really thought of my 16-year-old son, Luke, as a fashion bellwether. He looks like every other teen on the Upper East and West sides, with his uniform that consists of T-shirts with logos—from his school’s crest to The Mets to Bob Marley’s face—and a hoodie to complete the above-the-waist ensemble. Below, he alternates between jeans and khakis, when he’s not in his prized possession: a pair of pajama pants. (Contrary to popular belief, they don’t all dress like the dandies on Gossip Girl.)
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Little Victories and Missoni Mania
Winning one in the age of economic and romantic upheaval
I don’t know how I sat through it.
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Little Victories and Missoni Mania
Winning one in age of economic and romantic upheaval
I don’t know how I sat through it.
In I Don’t Know How She Does It, Sarah Jessica Parker is “Kate,” an accomplished hedge fund manager who commutes to Manhattan two days a week to wheel and deal in a palatial office with a counterpart (Pierce Brosnan) who is not only a smart, ethical businessman but is handsome, charming and solicitous. Plus, he’s in love with her.
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