Episode 219: Lost Jobs

This episode of the Memory Palace is brought to you by Quince.

Cold mornings, holiday plans. This is when I need my wardrobe to just work.

And that is why I am all about Quince.

They make it so easy to look sharp and feel good and find gifts that are gonna last-from Mongolian cashmere sweaters to Italian wool coats.

Quince pieces are crafted from premium materials and they are built to hold up without the luxury markup.

A case in point: it has been raining in LA and the day after one of our winter rainstorms, everything is beautiful. The air is clean, the hills are green.

But it's also pretty cold, I mean for LA, but just moments ago, I gotta walk the dog.

It feels freezing to me outside, so I grabbed my very own Mongolian cashmere sweater in this terrific heavy linen overshirt.

that I recently got from Quince, pulled out a blazer, and not only was I essentially the layer king of Los Angeles, I within mere moments looked way, way cooler than your average dude walking the dog.

And this is all because you cannot go wrong with the essentials from Quince. With the holidays coming, I am telling you that Quince has gifts that just cannot miss.

Get your wardrobe sorted and get your gift list handled with Quince. Don't wait, go to quince.com slash memory for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns now available in Canada too.

That's quince.com slash memory. Free shipping and 365-day returns, quince.com/slash memory.

There's so much running around to do during the holidays, but that doesn't mean you can't look and feel amazing every day.

If you're searching for affordable, luxurious comfort this season, you can turn to Macy's Cashmere. Their pieces are designed to last, so it only feels like a splurge to stock up.

Macy's Cashmere pieces are designed to be wardrobe staples, not just for special occasions. They have 70 silhouettes in over 40 colors, from warm to cool to neutral tones.

Don't forget, Macy's Friends and Family event is also going on now from December 2nd to the 11th.

So, if you're in gifting mode, take advantage of 30% off the best brands that make the best gifts, plus 15% off beauty and fragrances.

There's also fine jewelry from Effie, Le Vianne, Batchley Mishka, and more at 30 to 50% off, so you can elevate your cashmere look with some sparkle. Shop in store or online at Macy's.com.

Hey, before we get going, a quick note to let you know that we are in the home stretch of our annual fundraiser here at Radiotopia, the time when I ask you to directly support the show and the network that keeps it running by kicking in a little cash.

This show exists because of direct listener support. The ad market rises and falls, sometimes, often, honestly, wildly.

And as it does, the single most important thing that allows me to carry on, despite that, despite not knowing what the year ahead might bring, is the stable foundation provided by your donation, your tax-deductible donation.

This is an entirely independent show, and there are no investors. There are no corporate backers.

It is just me, and it is you, the audience, and the members of the audience who value what I do and what the show does for them enough to support it directly. This is where you come in.

If you are able to to donate. Head on over to radiotopia.fm slash donate today.

This is the memory palace. I'm Nate DeMayo.

A brief note written after reading that the Social Security Administration has removed a number of jobs from a list it had been using in the processing of disability claims.

Which is as bureaucratic and complex as it sounds, but the gist is this.

When Americans apply for financial assistance from the government because they are unable to work due to a disability or debilitating disease or injury, one of the key factors the Social Security Administration uses when figuring out whether to provide benefits or not is whether there is work out there that the applicant can do.

So if you had a catastrophic back injury, say, that meant you couldn't keep working as a forklift operator in the warehouse of a tractor and heavy equipment parts supplier in Kansas, when you applied for disability benefits, Someone at the Social Security Office or a computer program at the Social Security Office would would determine whether you, with your changed circumstance, could reasonably find a new career.

Too often, however, claims were being rejected unfairly based on the supposed availability of jobs that people simply could not reasonably get.

But as of June of 2024, thanks to an expose in the Washington Post and rulings in court cases brought by labor lawyers on behalf of people who had been improperly screwed over out of disability checks, The Social Security Administration has removed 157 jobs from its list of possible alternate occupations.

Some of the jobs were removed because they were deemed too niche or required too much highly specific expertise. And so, imagine Kansen forklift operator.

Your claim can no longer be rejected because you are not out looking for work as a scuba diver. Job number 379.384-010.

Nor for job 961.667-010,

an artist model.

Nor 413.161-014, reptile breeder, nor maxillo facial surgeon, nor industrial organization psychologist, nor historian of the dramatic arts, nor impersonator of popular characters or public figures, nor hog confinement systems operator.

Noble professions, all,

but ones which can no longer be used as a barrier between government assistance and its rightful claimants. The agency's decision will help many people today today and in the future.

And it marks an official end of sorts to dozens of ways of working that sustained and framed and dictated the rhythm of lives of so many people in the past.

People who photographed documents such that they could be stored and cataloged on microfilm. People who processed those microfilm reels.

who knew the difference between the processing of microfilm versus other photographic methods, the particulars of chemical formulas, of of lighting and drying times.

Knew whatever gadgets and props, catalog, bought, or handmade, that they used in their work to keep film strips clean while they dried or to attach them to spools or lay them in boxes or wherever they were when they went from the lab to the sales office to a library.

Steps lost now.

like the specific smells and sounds that filled those people's days that maybe they stopped noticing after a while that if they could somehow suddenly experience now might Madeline them back to that lost time.

All those hours and weeks spent, maybe decades, when that was their job, when that was how they spent their time. A time that's gone now.

Like the scent of the glue and the feel of the newspaper articles beneath one's fingers, the specific heft of the binder that the cutter and paster of press clippings would put those clippings in.

and all the little distinctions, all the untransportable expertise they learned on that job.

All the little tricks of that trade. That is not a trade anymore.

People still, people who prefer the sound of analog recordings to digital ones or who just work for those who do, some people still wind magnetic tape.

But it is likely that no one, not a single person in the world, still holds job 726.685-010, magnetic tape winder.

Maybe anyone who spent their life with job 521.687-086 does not miss the manual sorting of nuts, but who am I to say?

There may have been meditative pleasures in all the sifting and separating, as there may have been in the hand blanching of almonds, both jobs now done almost exclusively by machines.

It has been a long time since someone, when asked at a dinner party what they do, responded that they adjust the pins required by certain calculating devices used in the banking industry.

And maybe that is for the best. Maybe that was the most mind-numbing, soul-sucking of jobs.

Maybe it is better to be the person who runs the machine that removes loose threads from mittens and gloves than one of the people who used to do that work by hand. Ungloved hand.

People called puller-throughs. Maybe it is safer or less tedious.
But maybe it was better before. Maybe it was kind of nice.
Maybe the person beside them on the bench always had the best stories.

Maybe it became their kid's godmother.

Let this bureaucratic change mark an overdue endpoint to jobs long since vanished from the American landscape. Maybe have a moment of silence for the pneumatic tube operators.

Those men and women who knew the whom and whoosh of the document or the envelope of cash, the stack of cancelled checks, sent from one place to another through vast networks of tubes filled with pressurized air, who knew the thunk and the clack of the container that held those memos and messages when they arrived at their destination.

Missives that one day would be faxed, then emailed, then slacked, then whatever. In New York City alone, there were once 56 miles of pneumatic tubes.

You can still find them in use now and then, connecting bank tellers and pharmacists to customers. But they are no one's life, and so they have taken job 239.687-014 off that list.

And they have taken off the professional projectors of celluloid film, who were once Legion. who now barely number enough to fill one of the theaters into which they cast their magic.

Take off the dance hall hosts and hostesses, the addressers of envelopes, telegraph agents, airline radio operators, wire transfer clerks, the makers of wooden models, and 17 professions related to the building, maintenance, and repair of clocks and watches.

These were full-time jobs, once done by hand, dexterous and steady, and tired at the end of the day.

changed at the end of a career.

Jobs that stopped really existing at some point, as life changed and time slipped away, as it does,

no matter how well it is kept.

This episode of The Memory Palace was written and produced by me, Nate DeMayo, in June of 2024.

This show gets research assistance from Eliza McGraw, who is a proud member of Radiotopia, a network of independent artists-owned podcasts from PRX, a not-for-profit public media company.

I have a Memory Palace book coming out on November 19th, 2024, from Random House. I'm extraordinarily excited about that.

And if you want to keep up to date on the podcast, on the book launch, on live appearances as they get scheduled, you can follow me on Twitter and Facebook at The Memory Palace, on Instagram and threads at the Memory Palace Podcast,

and in my recently launched newsletter where I'm writing about each episode and some stuff related to the book, which you can find at thememorypalaspodcast.substack.com.

You are always welcome to drop me a line at nate at thememorypalace.org. And I will talk to you again.

Radio Tokyo

from PRX.