The number hit Wira like a sledgehammer to the gut:
twenty-nine. Just a number, folks might say, but numbers have power. They crawl
inside your head at three in the morning when the rest of Depok sleeps,
whispering that time’s running out. And Wira knew all about time running out.
(Wouldn’t you know it?)
The job listings on his laptop screen blurred together in
the pale glow of his desk lamp. Each one ended the same way: “Maximum age: 25
years.” Like a door slamming shut, over and over and over again. The sound of
opportunity dying, one click at a time.
Christ, he had the experience. Anyone could see that. Top
salesman at GDC Real Estate, the kind of guy who could sell oceanfront property
in Kansas if you gave him half a chance. The plaques on his wall proved it—not
that anyone was looking at those plaques anymore. Funny how fast those golden
moments tarnish when the world decides you’re past your expiration date.
The COVID beast had come through like a tornado through a
trailer park, leaving nothing but wreckage in its wake. Wira had watched his
career spiral down the drain like so much dirty bathwater. But he wasn’t the
type to lie down and die. No sir, not him.
(At least not yet.)
He’d reinvented himself, diving headfirst into the
shark-infested waters of digital marketing. Watched every YouTube tutorial
until his eyes felt like they were bleeding. Joined those online forums where
everyone pretended to be an expert. Even spent what was left of his savings on
fancy courses that promised to unlock the secrets of the digital kingdom.
These days, he was what folks called a freelancer. Started
with friends, expanded to friends-of-friends, building his little empire one
social media campaign at a time. But freelancing was like trying to build a
house on quicksand—the more you struggled, the faster you sank.
“It’s all burnout in the end,” he’d typed to his friend one
night on WhatsApp, the green chat bubbles glowing like toxic waste in the
darkness of his home office. “Doesn’t matter if you’re chained to a desk or
working from your couch. The monster’s always hungry.”
His wife—God bless her soul—had pushed him back into the job
market. “You’ve got to try,” she’d said, her eyes full of that fierce hope that
made him fall in love with her in the first place. So he tried. Oh boy, did he
try?
But there it was again: that magic number. Twenty-five. Like
a guillotine hanging over every application he submitted. He’d started
collecting these job ads the way some folks collect baseball cards or stamps.
Dozens of them, each one a perfect little snapshot of discrimination wrapped in
corporate buzzwords and professional formatting.
“Why twenty-five?” he’d ask anyone who’d listen, his voice
taking on that slightly hysterical edge that comes from talking to walls. “What
happens at twenty-six? Do your brain cells suddenly start committing mass
suicide? Does your experience expire like yesterday’s milk?”
The truth was older than Wira’s twenty-nine years, older
than the pyramids themselves. Back in the time of pharaohs and stone tablets
(when age discrimination probably meant getting tossed to the crocodiles),
recruitment was a different beast altogether. The bigwigs in Mesopotamia didn’t
care how old you were as long as you could dig their ditches and build their
temples.
(Ain’t progress grand?)
The whole system had evolved like some kind of twisted
creature from a horror movie. From ancient Egypt’s papyrus scrolls to medieval
guild systems, from Industrial Revolution factory floors to today’s AI-powered
hiring machines—always finding new and improved ways to sort people into neat
little boxes.
The modern recruitment process, barely forty years old
according to some fancy Oxford handbook, was like a sleek, well-oiled machine
designed to crush souls with maximum efficiency. Sure, they had LinkedIn now
instead of stone tablets, and JobStreet instead of town criers, but the song
remained the same: some people were in, and some people were out.
The irony wasn’t lost on Wira. Here they were in the age of “diversity”
and “inclusion,” where every company website looked like a United Nations
meeting, but God forbid you be a day over twenty-five when you applied for that
entry-level position.
Technology had made everything faster, smoother, more
convenient—and somehow more soul-crushing than ever. AI programs scanned
resumes like digital fortune tellers, spitting out judgments based on
algorithms that probably couldn’t tell the difference between experience and
expiration dates.
(The machines are learning, all right—learning to
discriminate more efficiently.)
The statistics painted a picture darker than a midnight
stroll through a cemetery. Some fancy survey by MyPerfectResume found that 99%
of workers over forty felt the cold hand of age discrimination on their
shoulders. Ninety-nine percent. That’s not a statistic, that’s a death sentence
with a decimal point.
In the land of the rising sun, elderly Japanese workers were
shuffled into temporary positions like unwanted furniture being stored in the
basement. South Korean companies showed their older workers the door with all
the ceremony of taking out the trash. Even in the good ol’ US of A, with all
its laws and protections, the discrimination machine kept humming along, smooth
as silk and twice as slippery.
And here was Wira, stuck in the middle of it all, watching
his self-confidence crumble like an ancient tomb. Each rejection email (when
they bothered to send one at all) chipped away at his soul, piece by piece,
until he started to wonder if maybe—just maybe—they were right about him after
all.
The cursor blinked on his screen like a judgmental eye,
waiting for him to make his next move. Another application? Another rejection?
The game was rigged, the house always won, and the dealer wore a name tag that
said “HR Department.”
But what choice did he have? The bills kept coming, regular
as sunrise. The world kept turning, indifferent to his plight. And somewhere
out there, in the vast digital wasteland of job listings and corporate portals,
maybe—just maybe—there was a chance. One company that didn’t care about the
number. One opportunity that saw the person instead of the age.
(Keep dreaming, buddy.)
The clock on his wall ticked past midnight, each second
another reminder that he wasn’t getting any younger. Wira clicked on another
job listing, his fingers moving automatically across the keyboard. The maximum
age requirement stared back at him, mocking, but he filled out the application
anyway.
Because sometimes, that’s all you can do. Keep moving
forward, even when the path leads nowhere. Keep fighting, even when the fight
seems lost. Keep believing, even when belief feels like a cruel joke played by
an uncaring universe.
After all, what’s the alternative?
(Tick tock, tick tock.)
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