Mourning the loss of a job
The loss of a job is most often followed by a period of mourning. As a loss, especially when the job follows a set routine and has been held for several years, it includes the same stages of grief as the loss of loved one, to a different extent, of course. The feeling of loss becomes even more acute when it coincides with an economic crisis and a sense of having few if any prospects.
Kathimerini spoke to a man who has been through this experience. He didn?t want us to state his name, because, he says, ?I am not yet psychologically prepared to face the outside world.?
The man was a bookseller for 35 years. Up until 1989 he was a partner at a publishing firm and then opened his own publishing house and bookstore, with an outlet in central Athens, in 1990. ?Everything was going well until the fall of 2008,? he says. ?That was when the Lehman Brothers story exploded. Up until then we had customers, but things started going further downhill with the riots in December 2008,? he remembers, referring to the widespread riots that rocked the Greek capital for a week, following the fatal shooting of a teenager in central Athens by a policeman.
The bookseller worked mostly in wholesale, mainly using checks and promissory notes in the form of installments to conduct business. ?There was a ceiling in regard to our exchanges with banks, but that changed,? he explains. ?Up until October 2008, the bank would withhold 10 percent for every loan issued and then suddenly that shot up to 20 percent because of the added risk involved and the lack of liquidity. Before, the bank would issue a loan within two hours; after November 2008, this could take up to 15 days.?
The situation began to deteriorate further. ?The crisis hit us hard as soon as we entered 2009. My profits dropped by 20 percent in 2009 compared to the previous year, and I was a good example of what was going on in other businesses, because I worked with large bookstores. They were also facing liquidity problems. In 2008, one large bookstore in central Athens would buy around 1,200 euros a day from me on average. From December and on, this amount dropped to around 600-700 euros. So, -20 percent dropped to -30 percent. The drop became even more acute after the first Memorandum was signed [in May 2010]. This was compounded by the general decline of the city center due to frequent strikes and protests, as well as the rising crime rate.?
Almost any professional you speak to in Greece will tell you that the good years were nothing more than a bubble. ?Had the living standards of the average Greek gone up enough to justify such a plethora of stores? Nothing could justify the numbers. Something was not right, and this eventually showed,? said the bookseller.
In mid-2010, he declared bankruptcy and shut up shop. ?The good thing was that I owed small amounts of money to a lot of people. I did not owe much to the state, but I did have a problem with suppliers. I did not take anyone down with me. I entered the bankruptcy process and I have paid off almost all of my debts now.?
Despite this, however, the psychological blow was and remains severe.
?I entered the job market at the age of 17. Now I?m 52 and I have no job. It?s a huge psychological burden. I have two children, a son aged 9 and daughter aged 7, and to have given everything I have to keep my business afloat and then to see it collapse month by month is unbearable.
?I had to sell a large number of academic books I had published in order to pay off my debts. I have kept of few of my own publications and I?m trying to generate some revenue from them, but it?s very hard because the market is dry.?
The bookseller feels a little more confident today. ?The issue is what to do at 52. Another is the children. What do you tell them? How do you deal with it? It was even harder at first, because we could not protect them and keep them out of the situation. Now I?m trying to stand up on my own two feet again. I have knocked on a few doors, but who?s hiring now? They?re firing instead.?
