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This Is No Time For Complaints
David Hirsch hasn't forgotten the unhappy phone calls he used to get from clients back in 1998 and 1999. A director at Credit Suisse Private Banking USA in Chicago, he was carefully investing clients' money in blue-chip stocks, earning them 15% to 20% in annual returns.
But that was a time when some investors were earning 50% or even 100% returns in tech portfolios. Some of Mr. Hirsch's clients pulled their money, grousing that he wasn't serving them well.
Today, though his clients' portfolios are down 35% or more, 'I'm not getting complaints,' Mr. Hirsch says. 'People aren't asking, 'What did you do to my portfolio?' They're asking, 'What do we do from here?''
There may be a positive byproduct of our troubled times: a decrease in the urge to complain. People who still have jobs are finding reasons to be appreciative. (It feels unseemly to complain about not getting a raise when your neighbor is unemployed.) Homeowners are unhappy that home values have fallen, but it's a relief to avoid foreclosure. And yes, our portfolios have plummeted, but most of us can say that at least we didn't invest with Bernie Madoff.
Even if grumbling is only on hiatus, it's clear that in many quarters, we're seeing a return to Depression-era stoicism and an appreciation of simpler things.
Job satisfaction is actually up, according to a December 2008 survey by Yahoo! HotJobs. Almost 38% of respondents said they were 'very satisfied' with their jobs, compared with 28% in 2007, a likely sign that people are grateful they're still employed. And every week now, we hear reports of workers accepting pay cuts or furloughs without complaint -- some of them acts of solidarity to protect jobs elsewhere in their companies.
There is also a growing 'noncomplaining' movement that touts the belief that whining doesn't work as a strategy, and that happiness can be found through rituals such as writing in 'gratitude journals.'
