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Training Leads To Job, But Life Takes Another Turn [The Hartford Courant](Hartford Courant (CT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Oct. 24--WATERBURY -- Deborah Klein couldn't find a job as an administrative assistant no matter what she tried. She tried temp agencies. She sent out hundreds of applications. It seemed like life had been on a downward slide for a half-dozen years. First, she lost her "career" job, as a manager of tenant relations, leasing and marketing for a technology office park in Tarrytown, N.Y. Then, after six months of fruitless searching, she took a job at the Apple store in Stamford at half the wages she'd made before. From 2006 to 2008, she worked full time in the retail job. In 2008, she took a job as a marketing specialist for a software company in Westport and continued working part time for Apple for a bit. After six months, when she'd produced lots of promotional material for the company, she was let go in July 2008. So she started searching for administrative assistant jobs. She collected unemployment for years, both on the marketing job and, once that was exhausted, on her work for the Apple store. During that time, she moved to Waterbury to be with a serious boyfriend. That relationship ended in late 2011, and Klein didn't know what she'd do once her unemployment ran out in February 2012. She had no savings. She wasn't quite old enough to collect Social Security. She turned to the state Department of Labor and was granted a spot in a pharmacy technician training program, paid for by federal money. In the late spring 2012, she finished the five-month program with a high GPA, she said, but had a hard time finding a job. By then, she was 62, and she wonders if age discrimination played a role. She said she went to CVS, to Rite Aid, nothing. Finally, an official at the Department of Labor asked a pharmacist on the regional workforce board to help. In September, Klein started work as a pharmacy technician at CVS. It paid $11.50 an hour, less than she'd made at the Apple store. "At that point, I had given up on making a lot of money," she said. She had started collecting Social Security as soon as she was eligible at age 62. "Too early. You lose a lot of money when you do that," she said. Sounds like a success story, more or less -- long-term unemployed person gets training for a job, gets a position in what she trained for. But that's not how it felt to Klein. The job seemed more like a cashier than a skilled job. She worked the pickup desk, finding customers' bottles and asking them if they understood the instructions. "They weren't letting me do anything," she said. At the Apple Store, she said, she'd gotten to train people on software and help them understand features on the merchandise. By this point she had moved in with her fiancé, so financial pressures were less than they'd been when she started the pharmacy tech program. After three months on the job, she quit. "That probably wasn't one of my smarter decisions," she admits. "I was very unhappy there." The next year, she worked part time at Pier 1 during the Christmas season for $9 an hour. In 2014, she got a call from Associates for Training and Development, a nonprofit that helps low-income unemployed people older than 55 by getting them placed in part-time, paid internships at nonprofits or government departments. (The agency pays their minimum-wage salaries). The agency had helped her in 2012, and the regional coordinator, Bruno Kolakauskas, thought she'd be a good fit for a case worker job. Kolakauskas said he'd had two employees before her that weren't good fits. One was afraid to drive to some neighborhoods in Waterbury. Another didn't have the desired patience with the clientele. He said of Klein: "She's motivated, very empathetic, she enjoys her work, she does a lot." "You really have to have a passion for this job," he said. Klein said she is lucky to have the 34-hour-a-week case worker job. Her face lights up when she talks about how the clients change when they get the internships. "They feel so much better about themselves if they get up every morning with somewhere to go." Financially, it doesn't do much to get her back on track -- the job pays $12 an hour -- but Klein is saving at least $300 a month toward retirement, which she plans at age 68. With the support of her fiancé, she said, "I'm lucky it doesn't have to be about the money." ___ (c)2014 The Hartford Courant (Hartford, Conn.) Visit The Hartford Courant (Hartford, Conn.) at www.courant.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |