It's a pleasant starting point for conversation and usually gives rise to many questions or a lively discussion. It also allows us to measure and preliminarily judge each other. Until we really start to know someone as an individual, we tend to deal in broad generalizations and stereotypes. By learning what work a stranger performs, we start making assumptions about their values: education, social ranking, work ethic, and personal priorities. Meet someone and talk for a while and unconsciously you are assessing and categorizing, much based on occupational data. Meet a custodian, a plumber, a nurse, or an attorney. Notwithstanding your actual conversation, you have made character judgments that may have little basis in reality but which allows you to fit that person in a suitable niche in your mental organization.

When I can no longer say proudly "I'm a mechanic" or "I am a computer operator" my self-esteem plummets. Meet a stranger and admit that I am unemployed, perhaps have been for an extended period of time, and I watch my stature diminish in your eyes. I can talk about what I used to do but I feel somehow tainted and incomplete. I talk too much about why I have no job because I want you to realize that it's not my fault, that I really want to work, that there's nothing wrong with me.

The scourge of unemployment is what it does to our minds. We may have watched as our position moved overseas. We may have sensed that our department was running over budget. We may have known that company was seeking to cut costs. But unless entire company closed down, or relocated out of state, we believe in our hearts that we were selected for lay off, over someone else, for a reason. And, being human and vulnerable, we blame ourselves.