The death of one American dream
In the old days, Sue Irvine would have been chatting happily as she sat with guests, admiring the Cascade Mountains and the Snoqualmie River that spread out below them. Doug Irvine, soft-spoken and intense, might have been locked in a conversation about politics or international business.
That was before.
Before Doug lost his job as a vice president for an export company. Before their finances crumbled and their social circle shrank. Before the tension started pulling at the edges of their close-knit family and middle-class dreams.
Before Doug, now 63, accepted the only position he could find: a $7.50-an-hour job selling cameras and clock radios at the local Target store.
This is after.
After a For Sale sign has been planted in the front yard and after half of their belongings have been moved elsewhere. After their retirement account has been reduced to nothing. After they fell into debt.
Visiting the house after all that, Sue Irvine is uncharacteristically quiet.
"I get sad coming here." She runs her fingers over a box of books saved for her future grandchildren. "It reminds me of what's happened to us."
What happened to the Irvines is part poor planning and part misplaced optimism — a combination gone sour through bad timing. What happened to them is happening to more and more aging Americans who rode the giddy economic wave of the 1990s and thought their careers could go only one way — up. Doug Irvine was earning nearly $93,000 a year as a marketing executive when his career faltered. The export operation he was heading overseas shut down and, in 1998 at age 58 and with very little in savings, he was out of work.
It seemed a small setback at the time. Things were booming back home in Washington. He had made career leaps before, and always landed well. A lifetime of experience and can-do confidence would surely serve him again. He had experience, optimism, energy — and years to save for old age.
But this time, Doug Irvine was shoved not into a new opportunity but into a crack in the economy that soon split into the most stubborn recession in decades.
The rise
This wasn't the future Sue Irvine expected. Growing up in the 1950s, when most married women stayed home, she aspired to a life like that of the woman she baby-sat for, the doctor's wife.
"She ordered her clothes from Boston," says Sue, now 60, "read books, played bridge and looked pretty."
Sue met Doug in 1968 at a party on Mercer Island. She was a research nurse at the University of Washington. He was an aeronautical engineer for Boeing who had come to the United States from Scotland two years earlier.
"He was so interesting and so gentle," she says.
"Keep going," Doug prompts.
"And so sexy."
They married a year later. They had two children, John and Jill. Piece by piece, they built the world they would come to love.
In spirit, Doug was always more entrepreneur than engineer. He found Boeing's hierarchy too rigid, so he left in 1970 to try marketing, first in the seafood industry and later for an engine distributor. He specialized in opening risky foreign markets, willing to trade job security for the excitement of building something from the ground up.
That is what he loved about America. Work hard. Take chances. Get ahead.
By 1979, their family in place and nothing but promise ahead, the Irvines bought the last piece of their dream: a 3,400-square-foot raised-ranch-style house in Fall City just south of Snoqualmie for $118,000. Doug's career would advance. Sue would quit working. They would put the kids through college and then put money away for retirement.
But there always seemed to be plenty of opportunity and plenty of time. And Doug was never keen on the retiring part. "If I keep my health, knock wood ... " he says. "I've got lots of energy and I'm raring to go."
They rode the boom of the 1990s in comfort. Doug became vice president of exports for a Portland-based construction and distribution company. When he was assigned to open a market for marine engines in Vietnam, he and Sue left the house in the hands of their grown son, John, and moved to Ho Chi Minh City.
The assignment satisfied Doug's entrepreneurial drive and his social conscience. He would sell the engines and generators that would power a struggling nation's fishing fleets, ferry boats and coast guard.
"In our own tiny way we were going to help this country get on its feet again," he says.
But doing business in Vietnam proved tougher than the company had expected. In 1998, the division shut down. The Irvines came home, and Doug expected to soon find work.
'I'm overqualified'
With his neatly combed graying hair and athletic build, Doug could be mistaken for a country-club retiree enjoying a post-round break at Starbucks. Having just ended his shift at Target, though, he's still in his work clothes: khakis and a red Polo shirt.
"I just feel like I need a boot up my ass," he says, taking a gulp of coffee.
His job search has stalled while he's been working the electronics counter at the Issaquah store. His paycheck doesn't cover half the $2,200 mortgage payment on the Fall City house, but the health benefits are good — a crucial consideration for a couple in their 60s.
For Doug, having a job — any job — feels better than the futile whiplash of search-and-rejection.
He had landed a couple of other jobs since returning from Vietnam but nothing permanent and nothing that paid what he used to earn. His odds of replacing his old salary and status slipped along with the economy.
A survey last summer by the Chicago outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that one in four executives — 25 percent — fails to find new work that pays at or above his or her old salary. It's the biggest drop-off in the 16 years the firm has tracked executive pay. A few years ago, only one in 10 executives failed to bounce back.
Worse, the average job search now takes 4-½ months, compared with three months in 2000. And for 1.7 million Americans, joblessness has lasted six months or longer.
Doug isn't stuck behind a sales counter for lack of effort. He reads the want ads and knows — knows — he could do those high-flying jobs, even if he's never worked in this or that specific industry. He knows how to negotiate deals, build teams, troubleshoot. These are transferable skills.
"But if I submit this," he says, holding his two-page résumé, "Whoosh! It'll go right over their heads."
He used to churn out résumés daily, tweaking the text to suit the position and making sure recruiters saw his skills before they saw his age. He hired a career counselor to help him market himself. He joined international trade groups to network with people.
He's applied for more jobs than he can remember — with a toothbrush company, a housing developer, an electronics manufacturer, the British Consulate. He has seldom received the courtesy of a response. In the rare interviews he's had, the message was the same: He's overqualified.
The excuse prompts rare indignation from Doug:
"If I'm overqualified, by definition I have to be qualified. You know damn well it's age discrimination."
And in that opinion, too, he's part of a growing trend. The number of age-discrimination complaints filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission rose 14.5 percent in 2002, a larger percentage increase than race, gender and disability complaints combined.
Dear Mom and Dad
These days, Doug can barely muster the energy to scan the classifieds.
"The defeatism is insidious. You don't really feel depressed ... " his voice trails off. "It's hard to describe."
It's a chilly night in January, and Doug and Sue live in a contemporary apartment in Snoqualmie while they ready the Fall City house for sale.
Sue Irvine had gone back to work, reluctantly, as a school nurse. But even with that, there's no way they can cover the mortgage, make the $1,175-a-month apartment rent, and pay for the remodeling to get their $399,000 asking price on the house.
"Financially it didn't make any sense to move into this apartment," Sue says. "But emotionally, it made a huge amount of sense."
For her, the house holds too many memories. That is where the kids, John and Jill, had water fights in the back yard (and once, when their parents weren't home, inside the house).
It's where they shouted their Christmas lists up the chimney.
It's where Doug tucked Jill into bed every night with a different stuffed animal. He maintained the ritual even when he was away on business trips, listing what animals she was to sleep with on what nights.
It's where they thought Jill would get married.
"I think you've been down a lot more than you think you have," Sue tells Doug now. She knits furiously, as if to distract herself. A lively woman whose thoughts tumble out unedited, she's promised to let her husband do most of the talking tonight.
But not before she makes one more point.
"You didn't want to take a job like Target, because you were afraid it's what you would be doing for the rest of your days," she says.
"I don't think I felt bad about working at Target," Doug counters. "Target is an excellent company. But in terms of working your way up ... "
He thought customer service would be a foot in the door. He thought he'd advance through the ranks back into management. He applied for two promotions, but they went to younger people with more seniority.
"That's when I realized this is not feasible for me," he says.
Like his mother, 32-year-old John Irvine finds it hard to accept his father's fall from middle-class executive to clock-puncher.
"There are lots of nights when I go to bed thinking about it and I can't go to sleep," he says. "He's a person who should be adding value to this society and imparting wisdom to others, and this economy doesn't allow it."
His father's situation does not compute: Doug is driven to work hard; he's a man of high integrity and equally high intelligence. He taught his children to share his faith in the American dream: Hard work is rewarded with steady progress in career and income.
"Now that's totally shattered," John Irvine says.
John, a former stockbroker now working toward an MBA, admired his father's unshakable optimism, but now he wonders if it's become a form of denial.
Why is he wasting eight hours a day working at Target when he could invest that time looking for a real job? Why didn't his parents save more? Why, after five years, haven't they dug themselves out of this hole?
Someone had to take charge. So on Mother's Day of last year, John Irvine presented his parents with a typed letter:
"I am convinced that opportunity exists in the middle of this debacle," he wrote. "Good things will happen to us but we have to make them happen. Change is doing something different. What are we doing differently?"
Taking a lesson from business school, he scheduled weekly goal-setting meetings with his parents, complete with printed agendas items: Doug's job search, financial security, climbing out of debt. "I was trying to force my parents to be accountable," he says.
Doug and Sue agreed to sell the Falls City house to pay off their debt and to take out term life insurance in case something happened to Doug. They agreed that while Doug needs to look for something beyond Target, the top jobs are probably out of reach.
"I could get $150,000 a year as a marketing manager," Doug says. "My son makes me see that it isn't realistic. I certainly think I'm way above Target level, but maybe between $40,000 and $50,000 is attainable."
Money woes
By early February, the Fall City house has been on the market for five months. The couple's finances — and their relationship — is stretched to snapping.
Sue, the worrier, says they are one month from disaster: "We are not that far from being street people."
Doug, the optimist: "We are not one month away. We're two or three months away from having a significant problem."
The couple earns a combined $54,000, well above the average household income in Washington. But their expenses — the mortgage, rent, a car loan, insurance, utilities — leave them short every month. Their credit-card debt has swelled to $52,000.
"It wasn't too many years ago that I bought a Coach handbag," Sue says, almost in wonder. "I would never do that today."
At one point they had $70,000 in various retirement accounts. But Sue cashed out her pension when they left for Vietnam; Doug used up his 401(k) while he was between jobs.
It's another trend: nearly two-thirds of Americans cash out their 401(k) plans between jobs, according to a 2001 survey by Hewitt Associates. At least 15 percent of working Americans have no retirement savings; nearly half who do have saved less than $50,000.
Without a financial cushion, the Irvines welcomed the small miracles that come in times of financial crisis — an unexpected refund from their escrow account, a forgotten check from an old job. And the precipitous drop in income forced changes in their expectations, if not their desires.
They no longer go to restaurants, and rarely entertain at home. Their once-expansive dinner parties have succumbed to Doug's schedule (if he wants to work 40 hours each week, he has to take whatever schedule Target gives him) and to a shrinking social circle.
"Our phone does not ring," Sue says. "It's like cancer. People don't want to be around people who have cancer."
They do have some loyal friends and old business connections who Sue thinks could help Doug find a suitable position. If only Doug would pick up the phone.
"He does not want to be somebody who is using someone."
Doug shoots back: "Once again you are overstating the case. There's a huge difference between using people and networking."
Sue: "I don't know anyone who doesn't think highly of you, but you have not contacted them. You don't make phone calls. You never make phone calls."
They fall into an awkward silence.
Doug: "I believe you can only go to the well so often."
Relief and a new start
"Did you hear?" Jill Irvine asks. "They got an offer on the house."
It's a Sunday afternoon in late February. Jill is taking a rare day off from her two jobs and college, where she's studying to be a nutritionist. Her schedule gave her less time to attend her brother John's family meetings. She has inherited her father's optimistic personality, and is convinced he'll bounce back.
But she inherited her mother's love of her childhood home, and the cost of losing it is steep.
"It sucks that they've remodeled it for somebody else to buy," she says. "The thought of other people living there is just sad."
Yet the sale, which closed last week, eases the financial burden that had been tugging at the Irvines. The house sold for $375,000 — about $25,000 less than the asking price, but enough to net $92,000. They'll use half to pay off their credit cards. The rest will provide a down payment on a $225,000 condominium they found in a new development in Snoqualmie.
John Irvine shakes his head. "They haven't even done a spreadsheet on what their budget is, what they can afford," he frets. "And they won't do it."
But Sue Irvine is done making sacrifices for a while. The condo is a downsized but gracious home base where Doug can work out of his funk and together, perhaps, they can regain some of what has slipped away.
Doug, too, seems re-energized, the old salesman in him coming back to life. He's too young to give up on his career. He knows what he needs to do. He'll quit Target and reinvest in his search for a real job. Forget the old shotgun approach; answering newspaper ads, blasting out résumés, and competing with hundreds of younger candidates is a recipe for failure. He's going to take the rifle approach: identify promising companies, develop the right contacts, get introductions to the decision makers.
He has experience, optimism and energy.
What he's running out of is time.
Shirleen Holt: 206-464-8316 or sholt@seattletimes.com