Foot in Mouth

Last time I was out of work, I stumbled on a headhunter who got me the best job I've had in my life. I might be bitter about how I was let go—hell, if this wasn't a Right to Work state, I'd have a solid wrongful discharge case—but it was a great job.

The guy worked for a placement agency at the time, one I've got a resume in to in fact. But my first thought was not the agency, it was this guy in particular. I had his card. A couple years after I'd worked with him, I met him at a trade show, and he'd gone independent. He asked me if I was looking and I said no, which was true. I would have said no anyway because he asked me this right in front of my boss at the time.

But I kept that card.

My first impression was of a sleazy salesman. But he told it straight, said things that didn't fit the impression. In fact, he ultimately struck me as improbably decent for someone who's job included advertising and sales.

When I reached a crossroads in my great job, a time when it didn't seem so great and I had to decide if it was worth it to keep going, I called him. The job market was tight, brutally tight, at the time. This was the trough of the 2000-2001 stock market crash.

What did this headhunter say? A guy who stood to gain a commission if he could peddle me to a new employer, even if it was a worse deal for me than what I'd get staying put? What would you say?

"You got a job," he said. "Keep it."

I did, and I also kept him in mind as my first call if I was ever out of work or deeply unhappy with my job. And when the time came, I couldn't find his card. Or any other evidence of him in a Google search, a yellow pages search, etc.

I wondered if he'd moved to another market, or if the slump had been bad enough to push him into another line of work. Or maybe he got bought back into another recruiting agency.

So tonight I found out that he did indeed get out of headhunting because it got too lean for too long. I found out at a meeting of an organization he helped inspire, the founder of which told me she thought of him as a mentor.

So then I asked the worst possible question. "Is he even still alive?"

I meant this to be light. He wasn't particularly old, maybe early 50s by now. I meant it in the way you might tell a friend who's been scarce that you'd been checking car trunks for his body.

But no, he's not still alive. He died of esophageal cancer about a year ago. I feel like I should have kept in touch better. And like I should know better than to jest so morbidly.

And like any notion that I have troubles just because I need a job is just ridiculous.