September 21, 2003

Media and Marketers Hound 'Last Gen-Xer'

An Engineer, 27, Who Has No Credit Card or Cell Phone

An Albuquerque, New Mexico man identified last week as the last member of Generation X in North America who doesn’t have a credit card or cellular phone says his life has become “a living Hell” since his unusual lifestyle choice received national news media attention.

David L. Hardy, 27, said he has been unable to go to work, mow the lawn of his modest bungalow in a usually quiet residential neighborhood or even go to the grocery store for a carton of milk.

“Sometimes there’s been as many as a hundred people in front of my house wanting to get in,” he said during an interview conducted through a four-inch crack when he opened the door to answer a reporter’s questions.

“They want to sell me something or give me something or get me to try something,” he said. During the interview, the incessant yapping of several small dogs just behind the door could he heard and at several points Hardy used his foot to push them back and spoke sharply to them.

Hardy said that since his name was revealed by the news media ten days ago, he has received 3,457 offers of credit cards, 231 cell phones that automatically open an account in his name if he turns them on, 2,468 invitations to endorse products ranging from a knife sharpener to the Segway Human Transporter, six proposals of marriage (two from males and four from females), feelers from New Mexico political leaders from both the Republican and Democratic parties to run for various state offices in the 2004 election and offers of free automobiles from six Albuquerque dealers if will drive a car with his name and the slogan “America’s Gen-Xer” painted on the doors.

Hardy also said someone from President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign had called to ask Hardy if he would come to Washington and appear on national television when President Bush singles him out during his State of the Union speech next January. Hardy said it wasn’t clear to him what point the President might use him to illustrate.

The ten-minute door-crack interview with Hardy was arranged through an Episcopal priest who is a friend of Hardy’s family and offered to provide him with daily counseling to cope with his new-found and unwanted celebrity.

“Basically, they ‘outed’ David by revealing enough about where he lived and other details of his life so that the media and every marketing expert in the country could zero in on him,” Father Edward Doolittle said after a visit with Hardy, who is a solid waste compaction engineer with an Albuquerque engineering firm, Waste It Not Consultants. “It’s clear to me there should have been some confidentiality here.”

Hardy’s ordeal began when a team of anthropologists from the University of North Central Cincinnati announced three weeks ago that after a three-year study of Generation X, those Americans who turned 20 in the mid-1990s, they had discovered a Gen-Xer who didn’t own a credit card or a cell phone. When it began, the study had been limited to credit card use patterns among Gen-Xers, but was later expanded to include cell phone usage.

The researchers used a complex protocol that involved national telephone surveys, a variety of publicly available databases, national telephone number and address databases and “other data sources” which the researchers said they were barred from revealing.

They announced their historic finding at a press conference during which they revealed the city, age, sex and profession of their last “deprived Gen-Xer”. The news release said only that the Gen-Xer’s profession was “engineer.” But in a question and answer session with reporters, Roberto Finnegan, a professor of anthropology at the university and the lead researcher, let slip that their discovery worked in “garbage and stuff like that.”

The existence of a Gen-Xer who had no credit card and cell phone caused a stir among the national news media, prompting front page articles in newspapers, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The publicity unleashed a frantic search in Albuquerque to identify the anthropologists’ subject.

It didn’t take long for Albuquerque media, as well as the small, close-knit group of solid waste engineers in the city, to identify Hardy.

“He’s famous for being unreachable because he doesn’t have a cell phone,” said a colleague, who asked not to be identified. “Plus, Dave’s always bumming cash off of you because he doesn’t have a credit card to pay for things. So when I heard Gen-X and engineer and no cell phone or credit card, I said to my wife: Dave Hardy!”

Hardy said he hopes the furor will die down soon so he can return to work. He wouldn’t talk about his work, other than to say he “had some calculations to do” and that “I have an important test to take.”

Asked if, as some editorialists for national publications have suggested, that it’s “odd and a little weird” not to have a credit card or a cell phone, Hardy abruptly said, “Interview’s over,” and slammed the door.

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