Episode 219: Lost Jobs

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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, 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 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 and 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 Keynesian 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 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 photograph 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 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 madley in 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.

It 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 thememorypalace podcast.substack.com.

You are always welcome to drop me a line at nate at thememorypalace.org.

And I will talk to you again.

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