For many, recovery means lower expectations

Associated Press

PROSPER, Texas

Advised by a Walgreens superior that a promotion was “very highly likely” if he transferred to the drugstore chain’s Dallas division, Chris Cummings uprooted his family and bought a spacious house in this hopefully named suburb.

“The sky’s the limit,” he was told.

But instead of a promotion, the company for which Cummings had been an assistant manager three and a half years cut his hours so drastically that he had to take a second job. In March, he was laid off, and his part-time second job became full-time.

And so that is how a 40-year-old father of four with a master’s in business administration from the University of Notre Dame finds himself bagging groceries at Sprouts, a local health-food store.

“I never thought I’d be here with the education that I have and that I’d worked hard on,” Cummings said before a recent shift in the checkout lane at the Sprouts in nearby Frisco. “Probably where the frustration comes most is when I get the alumni magazine and I see what my classmates are doing. And that’s not a good feeling.”

The federal government says the “Great Recession” is over — has been for months now — and that we’re well into the recovery. But don’t tell that to Cummings, who has seen his income cut by three-quarters and can’t afford health insurance for his family.

Or Af Shirinzadeh, who went from a $100-an-hour chiropractic job to part-time work as a docent in an Atlanta museum that features plasticized human cadavers.

Or many others.

Yes, the stock markets have largely rebounded. Housing and car sales are back up. And though job creation isn’t robust — last week, the Labor Department reported private employers added just 41,000 jobs, down from 218,000 in April and the fewest since January — the economy is growing again.

But, if “recovery” means getting back to where you were before things fell apart, many aren’t even close. Af Shirinzadeh holds out a preserved human lung and smiles as two young women make grossed-out faces.

Step on up,” he says. “There is no teeth on this one. It doesn’t bite.”

The joke draws the women in, and within seconds they are holding actual human organs while Shirinzadeh talks to them about the science behind what they are feeling. He beams.

As a docent in the “touch booth” at “Bodies ... The Exhibition,” Shirinzadeh gets to lay his hands on human bodies, albeit dead ones.

“I’m so grateful for this job,” says the 38-year-old suburban Atlanta man, who was laid off last year from his job as a chiropractor and spent six months on unemployment looking for any kind of work.

The job pays a tenth of what Shirinzadeh made as a chiropractor, and it’s only three or four days a week. The layoff has forced him to rethink his plans for the future — and re-evaluate his past choices.

Shirinzadeh’s wife, an elementary school teacher, has gone back to graduate school to get a credential that will give her a bump in pay. Shirinzadeh would do the same, if he wasn’t already saddled with considerable college debt — and if the couple could afford regular day care for their 2-year-old son.