#PoliticalScandal #LostJobs #NewCareers
An engineer, 50, at the peak of his career, loses his job and can’t even get a callback, after an interview.
The CEO of the company he’d worked for was arrested and jailed and, just like that, 100,000 construction jobs are gone.
Today, that engineer operates a small, hair-removal salon in a mall on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Operation Car Wash, a sprawling investigation that traced corruption from a Brasilia gas station to the highest level of government in Brazil, has wrecked the economy there.
The investigation was discussed at length in an article by Marina Lopes and Nick Miroff in The Washington Post. It was also published June 25, 2017, in The Atlanta Journal Constitution.
It has put in prison not only several politicians, but also executives in Brazil’s construction, petrochemical and meat industries. They are charged with trading bribes in lieu of lucrative government contracts, the article says.
Fortunately, we are facing nothing like that here, though, in the last decade, lots of 50-year-olds and others who had good jobs have lost them. Many of them have had to take jobs that paid much less than the jobs they’d lost – if they were fortunate enough to find work at all.
In Brazil, workers paid a steep price for the games of the rich and powerful. Unlike in Brazil, we in the U.S. have the ability, or can cultivate the ability, to weather hard times better, the article says.
The trick for us is that we have to be open to different things – not just what makes us comfortable.
As we find that replacement jobs pay much less, and offer fewer benefits, to thrive and prosper, we must be willing to check out things that we would have never dreamed we would do.
There are ways to prosper in trying times. When such vehicles are presented, though, one must be willing and open to check them out.
If you are hard-working, and what you are doing now does not suit you, your lifestyle, your family and your future, and would like to check out something different, message me.
Brazilians support the Car Wash investigation, hoping that it will clean house and will create a new culture of transparency, the article says.
Sometimes, one must go through something terrible to find out how strong he or she might be.
Sometimes, doors are suddenly closed, yet windows, or even bigger doors, are opened.
“The Brazilian engineering industry is finished,” the article quotes Silvia Boccagini, 52, a pipe technician in Brazil.
As for Ricardo Coelho, the 50-year-old engineer the article featured, he’s making more money with his hair-removal business than he did as a civil engineer.
“I’ll never go back,” the article quotes him.
Some of us can’t go back, even if we want to. It’s time we found something great to go to, rather than complain that we can’t go back.
Peter