new fake excuse! "times are hard...it's the recession, man"

Feb 13, 2009 10:13

just know from the outset that yes, i work at a bank that is constantly in the news and is laying off people for sneezing the wrong way, so when you hear me say the words "i'm broke, times are hard", it ain't an excuse, it's the truth.

however, not everybody else is as honest as me.


A Bad Economy Is a Good Excuse
By ALEX WILLIAMS
Published: February 12, 2009

THE recession may be nerve-racking, merciless, seemingly intractable. It may leave your job in peril, your 401(k) in shreds. But apparently, it is not without its uses.

Dani Klein Modisett, a theater producer and comedian in Los Angeles, was having trouble with her nanny. After Ms. Modisett gave the nanny a $500 Christmas bonus this December, she said, the woman came in the next day and told her she had to leave early on New Year’s Eve. “And I don’t mean 11 p.m., I mean 11 a.m.,” Ms. Modisett recalled.

She decided it was time, high time, to replace the nanny. But how to do it, while avoiding a confrontation?

The recession, of course.

Ms. Modisett told the nanny that she had to “downsize” her staff, due to the slowdown. She adopted an appropriately sober tone, like so many bosses these days when delivering bad - but unavoidable - news.

Soon after, she hired another nanny.

“It’s the silver lining in the recession cloud,” Ms. Modisett said. “In fact, it comes in quite handy.”

Lavish anniversary dinners, the destination weddings of second-tier friends, costly gifts for children, and, yes, obligations to nannies - so often we go along, even when, deep down, we would do anything to get out of them. Now, even if we can still afford such occasional obligations, the recession has provided something of a get-out-of-jail-free card: it’s an excuse with which few would argue.

Indeed, in a twisted way, the fact that the downturn is global makes it even better: it works for every time zone and, as one Manhattan woman discovered, every latitude.

Andrea Pritchett, 35, owns a company that designs maternity swimwear, and she also runs ultra-marathon adventure races in her spare time. She has showed up for grueling treks of more than 130 miles in the Amazon jungle and the Sahara, usually at the urging of her personal running coach, a close friend, who is a representative for a company that collaborates with the race organizers.

But recently, the coach tried to get Ms. Pritchett on board for a trek into the Arctic Circle in Canada. “I’m already having a hard enough time this winter,” Ms. Pritchett said. “And when I go skiing, after a couple of hours, my fingers are killing me. I can’t imagine 120 miles in below-zero temperatures.”

So she told the coach that she really wanted to do it, she really, really did, and was committed 100 percent. She just couldn’t spare the money on equipment and fees - because of the, you know, economy and such. The coach understood.

“She said, ‘Just keep training, things are going to get better,’ and I said, ‘You know I’m there in 2010,’ ” Ms. Pritchett said.

Letitia Baldrige, the etiquette expert, knows that Ms. Pritchett, Ms. Modisett and anyone else slyly using the economy excuse is tossing out a white lie, and that white lies are a cornerstone of good manners. “I never would have gotten through life without them,” Ms. Baldrige said.

The problem is that the recession excuse is a stink bomb wrapped up in a Tiffany box. “It’s a real downer,” she said. “If I’m giving a party and call you and you say you can’t come because of the recession, I immediately feel like I’m going against the recession and doing something wrong by throwing a party.”

The recession is such a powerful concept that even a child understands its gravity. Tony Abrams, the president of Four Hundred, a personal concierge service in Manhattan, said one of his clients recently told his four children, to little complaint, that they would be receiving Wii fitness systems, to simulate skiing, instead of their annual trip to Aspen.

A 28-year-old business student in Chicago admitted that he was using the recession to justify his cold feet in proposing marriage to his partner.

“It’s providing a good excuse,” he said. “I’ve been with my partner now almost three years, it’s coming up on time, at least in my traditional family values sense.” Since his original plan was to fly off to Paris or the Caribbean over Valentine’s Day to propose, it’s easy enough to leave the impression that it is worth delaying the trip in order to save thousands of dollars, given the state of the economy, he said.

Like many interviewed for this article, the business student requested anonymity because, essentially, he was admitting to being a fibber.

Nick Haramis, a magazine editor who lives in Brooklyn, had no such qualms.
He dropped the R-bomb on his boyfriend this year. “I’m usually a flowers-and-chocolates kind of guy,” he said, but this year, he is planning to use the economic downturn as an excuse to emphasize creativity over lavishness. Instead of a box of Vosges chocolates, he said, he plans to buy his boyfriend a single, ripe tomato.

“Some people refer to them as ‘scarlet love apples,’ ” he said.

Still, bulletproof as it is, the recession excuse can lead to a lingering unease for those on the receiving end.

“My art dealer blames everything on recession,” said Ike Ude, an artist who lives in Manhattan. “For my recent exhibition, he declined to advertise, finance the production of my exhibition in the least and was despondent of the unlikelihood of sales from the exhibition - all because of recession. I asked him if we should all kill ourselves since everything seems that bleak.”

One woman who lives in Queens said she and her boyfriend recently used the economy as an excuse to extricate themselves from a trip to Disney World with his family.

“When we travel, we like visiting international cities, going to museums, cafes, sitting in parks, so this really wasn’t our kind of trip to begin with,” she explained. “And as it turns out, you can basically spend a week in Europe for the same price as visiting Disney World during a school vacation week.”

Results of their approach were mixed. The family wondered why they could afford Europe in the fall, but not Florida in the spring. Some family members suggested they go along and just stay in a tent.

A number of novelists said they have used the prefabricated recession alibi without guilt pangs. Perhaps that’s because they make up stories for a living.

Diana Abu-Jaber, a novelist in Portland, Ore., recently purged her house of stacks of cherished books, including titles that were “lovingly inscribed” by friends.

“We used the market downturn to justify throwing a garage sale and selling them off, a quarter a title,” she said. “We called it our daughter’s college education garage sale fund, so we felt a tiny bit less guilt stricken.”

It can get complicated. Ben Greenman, a novelist and magazine editor who lives in Brooklyn, is using the recession as an excuse to try to reclaim an old sofa - a cherished piece of his bachelorhood. His wife had forced him to pawn it off on a friend to use in an empty guest bedroom. Now, instead of buying a new piece of furniture, he is arguing that getting it back would be more fiscally prudent.

“We had a love-hate relationship with it,” said Mr. Greenman, 39. “I loved it. She hated it. It was blue and soft and looked like someone hit a Muppet with their car and decided to cover up the accident by turning the victim into furniture. We hear all about how tough times force families to come together, and here is that principle in action: the couch and I may be together again.”

Clea Simon, a mystery writer in Cambridge, Mass., said she skipped a conference where she was supposed to speak, using the economy as an excuse to mask her real reason: shyness.

“Most of the time, I fear that people will be talking about some book I haven’t read or a speaker I missed and I’ll be trapped, fake smile on my face, trying desperately to catch up.”

With the downturn, she said, “I had the perfect excuse to stay home.”

The recession is even effective when making excuses to oneself.

Leonora Epstein, an assistant Web editor for a magazine in Manhattan, said she has used the excuse to put off joining a gym. She figured she could just run in Central Park instead and save the $90 a month.

It didn’t quite work out that way. “I have yet to take a run in the park, and know I’m now spending approximately 90 more dollars per month on cabs, dinners and drinks.”
Previous post Next post
Up