Homeless man with law degree, MBA looks for work

[The Straight Story]

Homeless man with law degree, MBA looks for work

By JESSE TINSLEY
The Plain Dealer
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CLEVELAND (AP) -- Henry Navin lumbers along the streets of downtown Cleveland like an urban gypsy, lugging white plastic bags - one or two at a time - to and from the homeless shelter.

Navin, 61, hauls his eight or 10 bags everywhere he goes.

Inside the bags are work boots, copies of his resume and cover letters, a tattered winter jacket and everything else he owns.

Navin moves one or two bags 25 or 30 yards, then goes back for one or two more until he has moved them all. He continues this routine until he has moved his last bag to his final destination.

It takes him three hours, just about every day, to walk five city blocks from the men's homeless shelter on Lakeside Avenue to Cleveland State University - where he audits classes and uses the library computer to look for work.

http://tinyurl.com/39sbrj

[YOY]

1. Cleveland bites for employment

and being an older worker he's doubly screwed. Poor dude.

[TechBear_Seattle]

2. With so much outsourcing, I'm surprised there are not more homeless MBAs

Between his age, the scarcity of jobs and the fierce competition to get one, there really isn't much chance of getting hired at a decent job. It is very difficult for any homeless person to get employment, as they generally lack a telephone contact or the regular access to hygiene facilities necessary to keep body and clothes in "interview" condition.

Would this kind of situation be tolerated in England, France or any other civilized country?

[Herman Munster]

3. this is why

anyone who gets a professional job while they are young needs to save as much of their income as possible and not get into debt. If you are lucky enough to make $100,000 when you are 35, I'd live off $50,000 and save and invest the rest so I wouldn't end up like this guy when the inevitable firing happens when you are 45 or 50 years old.

[tech3149]

4. Being of a similar age, I know how different the world was back then.

It was always assumed that there would be another job out there if things didn't work out. You could figure the company would appreciate a stable, experienced employee base. Most executives weren't playing some short term profit concepts that screwed the company over the long term. I remember in the eighties when people started saying "Don't stick with that good job you've got, use it to springboard to a better job. Never stay with any job more than a couple of years." If you look at the world with a "what's in it for me?" attitude, it might make sense, but I've always been about doing the best I could do in my position. If I'd bounced from company to company, that would never have happened.

I dropped out of the employment scene in '02 and vowed not to return until Junior Bush was history or I found a company I could be proud to work with. Hopefully, I can hold out until one of those happens.

[Trillo]

5. May have been your experience.

I certainly read of that claimed world in newspapers through the same 80s, almost like the reporters were repeating MBA's "talking points" for the public's impress.

Executives have, in my experience (highly limited) never given a damn about any thing other than money and going to jail, and that included the 80s.

Perhaps they have merely been hypocritical, with one set of behaviors for other executives and people at their class level, and simultaneously possessing another mind set of contempt for lowly workers.

Ah, yes, the good ole days that never were. Private employers have always been feudal in my short life of experience.

[tech3149]

6. I was fortunate enough to work for international corporations and

private companies that had ethical leadership. That may be the exception to the rule, but that's my experience. I'll just consider myself lucky for having been a part of honest and ethical business's.

[raccoon]

8. It WAS different back then.

"It was always assumed that there would be another job out there if things didn't work out. "

I believed that too.

[Crabby Appleton]

7. 61 - he's screwed

may as well go to walmart and see about the door-greeter job.