Recession sandwich

A guy wearing a sandwich board inched his way along a downtown Chicago sidewalk through the rush hour torrent, and he actually had the gall to announce aloud a fear that was on everyone’s mind but that few dared utter: The recession is taking away my livelihood.

His body signs were written with some panache, though. “I’ll buy a job interview,” it read. It directed the curious to his website.

I spotted this face on a WGN news show out of Chicago, unusual because a) I don’t usually watch that channel, b) I knew the guy personally, and c) I’ve never been to Chicago and don’t know the people who live there.

But there, in a close-up shot answering a TV reporter’s questions, stood Javier Pujals, son of Cuban-born parents who, like me, spent his formative years in small-town South Louisiana.

His attire for the big interview: a sharp navy blue suit and a sandwich board.

We graduated from high school more than 25 years ago in Thibodaux. I’d lost touch with him years ago, but now he’s the Depression reborn, in my living room and looking out from the TV. You know that 1930s look: a ratty hat, bony cheeks and vacant eyes searching for a job, food, hope.

But Javier looked prosperous, and he spoke with confidence, and without irony. If not for the sandwich board, he’d have passed for an exec explaining his company’s latest merger.

A few days later I phoned him out of the blue only to find a successful, goal-oriented family man with a wife and five children. He’d risen to the top echelon of Chicago’s residential real estate market, but one too many closings fell apart at the 11th hour last summer. So rather than waiting until the market got saturated with unemployed real estate professionals, he charted his own new course.

Why wait until your drowning company of 1,200 employees shuts its doors and you find yourself competing against 1,199 other people in your town and with similar skill sets?

Reactions to his personal marketing effort ranged from confusion to skepticism to empathy. “I may be next,” one guy told him.

WGN taped the interview the same day the feds arrested Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, so Pujals figured his story would melt away.

Wrong. Dozens have phoned offering interviews, including some company owners and CEOs. He’s gotten four legitimate job offers.

Whatever he, his wife and five children decide to do, they will benefit from Pujals’ pro-active approach to the trouble ahead.

“There will be a lot of shakeup in the workforce,” Pujals says. “People will be replaced, they’ll be relocated, there’ll be shifts in what they’re doing. You can either fight it, get upset and curl up and do nothing, or you can embrace it and move forward.”