One of the most disturbing stories following Hurricane Sandy was about a nursing home in Rockaway Park, Queens, that “failed to provide the most basic care to its patients,” according to a story in the New York Times.

“As waves slammed against the building for hours, patients remained inside in the dark, growing steadily more hungry and cold,” the article stated.

That’s the kind of scenario that worries anyone who has a mother or father in a nursing home, and it probably had many wondering how they can better care for their parents.

To often as a society we only focus on how young parents are able to deal with issues of work and children, giving little thought to elder care. But caring for mom and dad will become a major issue for many of us.

I remember interviewing a female top executive at an insurance company for a New York Times story I wrote many years ago, and she told me she never had to worry about having a flexible schedule because she didn’t have children. But now, in her late 50s, she confided in me, she was suddenly taking time off for an aging parent, and it was impacting her career. (more…)

You’ve heard of the sandwich generation — women caring for parents and children at the same time.

Well, I don’t think that term does this growing phenomenon justice. I’ve decided that women end up being more like Philly cheesesteaks. They end up oozing out of every end with responsibilities that are as thick as Velvetta, and when they think they’re done with the hot pepper job of raising their kids and simultaneously building their careers, they get piled on by a bunch of fried up onions, aka, their aging parents. (No disrespect to aging parents. We love you all.)

I got this idea when I heard last week that the president of Temple University in Philadelphia was resigning. Why is she leaving? Because she’s part of the Philly Cheesesteak Generation. (more…)

There’s one economist who’s been beating the drum for an economic fix that is the opposite of what many are suggesting.

James K. Galbraith, the Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations and professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, wants tp kick older employees out of the workforce, not at 65, but more like 58 or 59.

“We should move as many older workers as we can out of the labor force,” he maintained, and allow them to collect Social Security early. With more Baby Boomers out of the way, he added, there will be more jobs for younger workers.

This, he told me after Obama’s jobs plan was announced, would help the economy and lower the unemployment rate.

He admitted his idea goes against conventional wisdom right now. But he doesn’t care. (more…)

I was watching CBS’ Sunday Morning’s story on unemployed Baby Boomers this weekend and at the end of the piece a jobless salesman named Gary Boxhall, 65, talks about his frustration looking for work since 2009, but ends on a I’m-not-giving-up note:

“I’ll still send out resumes just in case. I think that’s kind of like going fishing. But I think if you really want to catch the fish, you’re going to have to get in your boat, and you’re going to have to row over to the business and knock on the door.”

I thought to myself, what a quaint, old-fashioned notion. Does anyone actually knock on company doors anymore? And if you’re trying to get into a multi-national conglomerate, which door would you knock on anyway? (more…)

“They don’t put you in a class with people your age Mommy?” my daughter asked me when I returned from a local University on Saturday. I was there to take a practice test for a graduate school exam and it was worse than any nightmare I envisioned.

Everyone was twenty-minus in the classroom; the seats were horribly uncomfortable; the bubbles on the test grid were way smaller than I remembered; and the test questions made my head hurt. They were like those horrific questions you got in math class that some masochistic test editor came up with to toy with the world. “You have four pilots and four copilots, and four planes take off in a certain order, but we’re not going to tell you the order or which pilot goes with which copilot, but you’re still going to have to figure out the pairing and when they take off….”

Ugh!

It’s been years since I’ve taken a test of any kind, other than medical tests, and it was quite a rude awakening. Yes, CareerDiva is pondering going back to school. (more…)

Remember Velma Hart, the woman who got up in front of President Obama during a forum earlier this year and told him she was “exhausted” and sick of defending his economic policies? She and her husband were worried about their financial futures, and she wondered if there was any hope.

Well, she lost her job.

The middle-aged Hart was the chief financial officer for AmVets, a non-profit veterans service organization, and found out last last week that she was yet another layoff casualty in this economy.

Unfortunately, her situation is not unique, and making matters worse for Hart as she goes back out into the job market is her age. Sorry folks, it’s just a harsh reality. (more…)

I got bad news this week. My kids’ long-time dentist passed away. But what made the news even more tragic was he retired earlier this year and died a few months after that.

He was in his 80s but felt, for what ever reason, that he had to keep working.

Unfortunately, many of us may be following a similar work route. I got two reports this week from two different organizations and the news is bad for individuals who don’t want to work until they drop dead. (more…)

Why doesn’t the oldest Congress ever and the old guys on the Supreme Court care about ageism?

Jack Gross had been a successful employee for 30 years at FBL Financial Services, getting numerous promotions and ending up as claims administration Vice President. But in 2001, at the age of 54, he was demoted during a company reorganization and a woman in her early 40s took over his responsibilities.

Gross filed a discrimination case with the district court in Iowa and won but the story doesn’t end there. His case ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court, and in a controversial 5-4 decision by the high court, the lower court’s ruling was over turned. The decision altered the landscape for older worker, making it more difficult for them to prove age discrimination.

Suddenly it became the burden of the employee to show that his or her age was the reason for a demotion or firing, and not just one of a few.

Some courts have already seen the Supreme Court’s ruling as the green light to “raise the bar” on older workers when it comes to proving discrimination charges, according to a New York Times editorial yesterday.

But hope may be on the horizon. (more…)

If you haven’t heard about the latest American, take-this-job-and-shove-it hero, you will soon.

Steven Slater, a flight attendant for JetBlue, was so angry at a customer who hit him in the head with his luggage when the plane landed that he cursed him on the loud speaker, grabbed a beer, pulled the cord on the emergency-evacuation slide, jumped on and headed home.

He was soon arrested, but his story shines light on more than just disgruntled workers in this economy. Slater, 39, is a prime example of the hardships Generation X faces. You know, that group born roughly between 1961 and 1981 that no one really talks about. Lately it’s all about the struggling Baby Boomers and Gen Yers, but the plight for Gen Xers is just as bad, and many are at their wit’s end. (more…)

If you work at Google and one of the founding employees of the mega search engine company starts calling you “obsolete” and “too old to matter,” your days may be numbered.

That’s what Brian Reid, Google’s vice-president of engineering, is claiming happened before he was fired at age 54 from the company. He worked at the tech giant from 2002 to 2004 and detailed a host of old-guy bashing comments on the part of Google employees in his suit against the company.

This former Stanford professor who said he got great reviews, believes Google, based in Mountain View, CA, gave him the axe because of his age.

His case was thrown out by a lower court because the direct manager who fired him never said a disparaging word about Reid’s age, at least not to his face. Even though other Google staffers made fun of his age, the court viewed those comments as “stray remarks,” and not relevant to Reid’s case.

Well, the state’s highest court ruled yesterday that those stray remarks may indeed matter and the case is now moving forward, much to the chagrin of employers across the country. (more…)