From the Fortune 500 company that paid for my MBA, to becoming a college instructor, to getting fed up with corporate America, to collecting unemployment, to being rejected from a job at the mall, to making minimum wage, and back to where I was at the start of my 12-year career.
I live in Arizona, and each year people die in the desert on the way here from Mexico to have a shot at what this guy is renouncing. And though I haven’t done the math, it sounds like he’s doing so because he’ll end up with $3.8 billion instead of $1 billion.
I can hear it now: “You’d do the same!” No. No, I would not. I am an American, and if that means I only get $1 billion, then I’m fine with that. And I’m not even one of those “tax the rich” fools. If I had $1 billion, I’m pretty sure I could live quite comfortably if it was only earning interest in a basic savings account. And my niece & nephew would be sent to the Ivy League school of their choice.
So would you do it? Be honest.
(I just realized the link isn’t very noticeable. Click the title “Disgusting.”)
Weird. I wrote this in June of 2011, and have almost no recollection of doing so. But I found it in the notes section when I was stalking my own Facebook. Yeah, I’m that much of an egomaniac. Anyway, I must have been sad this day. But it fits this blog’s theme, so I’m including it:
Misfortune 500
Today I saw a quote that depressed me. Five years ago, I would’ve said it was a lie. But it’s depressing me today because it’s true. Regarding whether or not to disagree with your manager at work:
“Obviously, this is a no-no, even if your point of view is correct. Those who would rather be right than promoted almost always get their wish.”
Frickin’ wow. For the past 12 years, if I saw a way to do something better, faster, or cheaper, I would’ve said so. If I saw a task as costly or wasteful, I would’ve said so. If a coworker wanted to raise a concern with management, I would’ve encouraged her to do so. But a few weeks ago, a coworker asked me just that, and I said “Don’t bother.” Yup, I advised someone to just shut up. Things will never change, and your manager will think you’re a pain in the ass. (For the record, she didn’t listen to me – and that’s a good thing – and her concern was disregarded.)
Another career killer listed by this article was the following:
“Assuming something other than your own hard work will take you where you want to Go: The only person who can get you noticed and promoted is you.”
I’m not sure, but I think that might be sarcasm. Sucking up and knowing the right people works. I’ve seen it. My former boss at my last big company got her job because she was best friends with a VP. Before I met her, the hiring manager asked me what I was looking for in a purchasing director. I told him “I prefer someone with a college degree, someone who has worked as a buyer, and someone who has managed people before.” He said “Well, she doesn’t meet any of those criteria.” And I responded with “Please keep in mind you’re hiring someone with less experience than me to be my boss.”
My personal favorite dysfunction in corporate America is rewarding the illusion of work. If you stay late and accomplish little-to-nothing, you are a hero. If you are efficient and leave on time, you are shamed. I’ve been at my new job for three months. There have been three times when I left at 5 pm, and someone looked at his watch and said, “Must be nice”. (Yes, three different people.) My canned response is, “If you’d like any advice on how to more efficiently manage your workload, I’d be happy to help.” For the record, I completed a day’s worth of work yesterday in two hours.
Let me clarify that this phenomenon is specific to the Fortune 500, so if you want to share a story about a small business you once worked for that was open to change, shut up. Also, if you want to tell me about a change you made in the Fortune 500 company you work for, I’ll tell you yours is the exception and not the rule. I’m on my 4th Fortune 500 company; I’m not speculating. I’m stating what I’ve seen and not seen. I realize some people enjoy disagreeing with what I post on FB, and I find that super weird. So for anyone ready to pounce with their disagreement, I have a canned response: I stand by what I write. And you might be an ass hole.
I have no words for how much I love this. I’ve had some stupid friends in my life, and one of them used to tell me everyone in her neighborhood “had money”. She’d go on about all the nice cars and toys they had. I told her they didn’t have money; they had debt. Case in point, she had a nice car and a nice home and was drowning in debt (see also: “poor”. That’s what I call people who can’t pay the bills they created for themselves.)
Turned out all the people she thought “had money” were, in fact, poor as well. Two years later, every other house on her street (each of which was less than two years old) was up for short sale or in foreclosure. Including hers.
I’ve never had this happen, nor has it ever happened to anyone I know.But the Internet says it happens, so it must be true:
People are asked to disclose a Facebook password in job interviews.
Good freakin’ grief.I don’t know anyone who thinks this is OK.Can an employer look at your Facebook site?Check out your tweets? Do some good ol’ fashioned Google stalking?Sure, have at it. But asking for a password?That’d be hilarious if it weren’t so ridiculous.
Why I am I anti?No, I’m not tailgating with a bunch of frat boys who are holding my ankles while I do a keg stand.My Facebook site is a pretty accurate representation of my boring non-work life (unless a potential employer is offended by swearing…and lots of it).My Facebook page will, however, disclose my age and whether or not I have kids.
Yeah, that.
I’ve had multiple business owners tell me in confidence that they don’t like hiring moms.Sorry gals.I don’t agree with it, but it is a fact.And if an employer sees you posting updates from Junior’s soccer tournament this past weekend, don’t think for a second that said employer won’t use your perceived lack of availability outside of business hours as a reason not to hire you.They’ll never tell you that’s why, but it might just be the case.My current job asked me during my interview, “So what hobbies do you have outside of work?”It took all I had not to answer, “Oh, don’t worry, I don’t have kids.”
I’ve also had someone say to me in an interview “I’m looking for someone on the young side…when did you say you graduated college?”Yikes.So what is young?Is young 30, or is young someone fresh out of college?He didn’t ask how old I was directly, but I didn’t get the job.Who knows if it was because I’m 30something.
Employers know just how desperate today’s job-seeker is.Someone who is desperate for a job probably isn’t going to say no to a request for a password.Where does an interviewer draw the line?Want my email password?Care to thumb through my text message history?I’ve had criminal background checks done by employers before, and if I pass that free and clear, I see no reason why a potential employer needs to know my 5k time or which movie in the Twilight Saga was my fave.
What on God’s green Earth are these ads trying to convey?
Low mortgage rates in Arizona:What the hell?Why does that picture of the weird dude gazing slight right go with that ad? What exactly does Creepy Creeperson in the yellow polo have to do with mortgage rates?
Mom who is 57 looks 25:Well it would’ve been a better sell if there was a pic of said mom.Because both of the chicks in that pic look 57.And is that even the same woman?
Sigh.I went unemployed in this state for ages, but someone who created these unintentionally hilarious ads (or the program that generates them) had a job.
Bah! I just looked at yellow-shirt-guy again. *shudder*
I recently took to the Facebook to ask the question “Your dream job has been posted online. Now what?” I’ve gotten some good feedback, some dirty feedback, and some cockeyed-optimist feedback.
Most of the feedback mentioned getting a resume into the hands of the hiring manager and/or finding someone who works there who can help get your foot in the door. Good suggestions, though it’s not always that simple.
I’ve worked at jobs where I’ve helped look through resumes, conducted interviews, and assisted in hiring decisions. That being said, I’ve seen the fine line between persistence and pestering. Examples:
Sending your resume to the hiring manager: Persistent
Calling three times and then having your husband call to yell at the hiring manager: Pestering.
So what would you, dear reader, do? How far would you go to land the job but not be a pain in the rear? Send a resume? And then call? And then show up? Where do we stop with the “And then”? After all, it’s a dream job.
And to my readers (do I really need the “s” on readers?) in HR, what are some of your pest stories? You know you’ve got ‘em.
I’ve never known a meme to gain speed the way the “What people think I do” meme has. I’d never seen it, then one day I saw at least 10 of them. And boy did they cover every job, hobby, and/or genre you could think of. That being said, I felt left out. What about those of us that are uber boring and have lame jobs?
Fear not! I’ve jumped on this bandwagon and created my very own “What Cubicle Jockeys Do” pic. Enjoy.
Where am I today?Back in a cubicle in the Fortune 500.I went from being a great fit at my last job to being the chick who gets spoken to about her attitude with regularity.(My record is three times in one week!)
The management staff recently gathered us up and gave us one of those “Our doors are always open” speeches.They told us that if we see a way to do something better, please speak up, for we are all empowered to make change.This little pep talk is in direct conflict with the one I got from my manager at the end of last year.I was told “We can’t change the way things are here.This environment is rigid.That goes for me, my boss, all the way up to the plant’s manager.None of them can make change.And if you’re looking for ways to improve the way things are done around here, you really need to consider if this is somewhere you really want to work.”
Yes, fuckin’ really.
So what would you do?The constant critic and former business instructor in me would like to let my boss know that he has truly failed as a manager with this speech.It is cheaper for a company to keep an employee and do all they can to get her on board with the company’s culture.It wouldn’t work, but he should try.Getting rid of an unhappy employee would be costly.The company doesn’t have the manpower to train a replacement, and that would take hours out of my boss’s day.He wouldn’t give those hours to training, so the new hire would struggle, and the customer would suffer.This is not my opinion; this happens every day at my job.
So what would I have done?It would go a little something like this: “It’s clear you’re frustrated with the way this department is run.We operate according to a strategy that is set by our corporate office.I’ll see if one of the more senior employees here can sit with you and explain why things are so complex. It’s possible you just need a better understanding of our processes.”(It would help here if I mentioned that I was never trained.)The problem with the “what I would’ve said” response is that I have since gotten some training, I fully understand corporate’s supply chain strategy, and I’ve learned that it is comically flawed.If the process made sense and worked properly, my response would be entirely different.
So what will I do?Nothing.My boss is spread too thinly to actually manage a team, and he would not be responsive to my criticism of him as a manager even if I could frame it in a non-bitchy way. (Which would be impossible for me.)And as much as I wish upper management knew that the message of “accept that this place ain’t changing or get out” was being communicated, no good would come of discussing it.
Lucky for me, I’ve gotten myself into a state of indifference, and it’s been bliss.Despite my efforts, that place will continue to have the problems it has.Lucky for me, I am not in a customer-facing position, so I don’t have to hear about it when we fail them.I intend to hang on as long as I can so I don’t give Jon Acuff a run for his money in the quitting department.
In all seriousness, how do you handle dysfunction in the workplace?What would you do in my situation?Discuss.
It’s February of 2011. I got a job offer for a job I didn’t want, but for some reason I had hope that my current job would offer me a livable wage so I could stay. I wasn’t trying to get rich. I just wanted to be able to pay bills, contribute to 401k, and build my savings again. And have I ever mentioned that I’m pretty fucking cheap? I don’t have a lot of hobbies, I refuse to get cable, and I hardly have any expenses but for a house and car. This means that for me to live comfortably, it doesn’t take much.
There was no way in hell my company would match the new offer I got. And though the idea of a comfortable salary was refreshing, I had to come to a number that I would accept if I were to stay. It wouldn’t be a “comfortable” salary, it would be a “good enough” salary. Every MBA’s dream. Ordinarily I don’t talk salary because I find it tacky. But I’ll do it here for shock value. For me to stay at this job, I was requesting that they pay me $42,000/year.
Depending on what part of the country you’re in, perhaps that sounds like a decent salary (or a damn tragedy). And it is a decent salary…for a young professional. It’s what I made when I was 25. It’s not a decent salary for an MBA with management experience. My best friend is an elementary school teacher (without a master’s degree), and she makes 5-figures more than that. And by the way teachers…please don’t. If you’ve been teaching for 12 years, have a master’s degree, and you make $42,000 to work about 10 months a year, then you’re still better off than I.
The conversation with my boss went something like “Is that a fucking letter of resignation in your hand?!?” Yeah, it was. She was upset. She didn’t want me to go, and that is flattering. But it wasn’t up to her. It was up to the asshole. I gave her my salary number, and she took that to the asshole along with her idea of expanding my job so it could justify this “huge” number.
The asshole made me wait a week. I had to call the company that gave me my new offer and push out my start date. It took him an entire week to come back with nothing. Nothing at all. Not an extra $5000, not a cost of living increase, not a dime. And to think I actually had hope.
It was official: I had to go work for the awful company. I hated that place when it was my customer, and I hated it before I walked in the door on my first day. It’s almost a year later, and I’m still working for this company. And I hate it more than I can write. I mean seriously…they actually have a policy against speaking ill of the company on various forms of social media. Which really is too bad. Oh, the material this place has provided me.
December of 2010 ended with me realizing I had to get a new job.I once before had to quit a job I liked, but I was a few years older now and knew that finding another job I like would be a stretch.I’d be lucky to find one I could tolerate.But I needed to be able to pay my bills, contribute to retirement, pay for medical benefits, and start a savings account.Yeah, those were my financial dreams.Dreams!
At first I didn’t look very hard.But then I got a letter from the state saying they made an error when I was on unemployment, and I owed them $2800.
Breathe.
I’ll spare the details and just say I flipped my shit.To sum up, the state paid me from the emergency fund instead of the regular fund.Not my fault; Just my problem.Getting to speak to a human at the state is a feat greater than conquering Everest.When you call the state, you don’t even get to sit on hold.You get a message saying “We have way too many calls.Call some other day.Oh, and don’t come down here.We won’t help you if you come down here.”After many days, I got a man on the phone, and he fixed it.If I knew who he was, I’d find him, buy him dinner, and get him blown.
This is all relevant because had I owed that money, I’d need to get on the hunt for a new job and mean it.I knew that to make a livable wage, I’d need to go back to the Fortune 500.I hate giant corporations.Let me clarify:I hate working for them.There are some of them that I think make a great product or provide a great service.That being said, each and every giant corporation I’ve worked for has pretty much sucked nuts.My friend was working for a company that was one of my customers at a former job.They had a horrible reputation as an employer.I called her and asked if she could get my resume in the right hands.
She did.They called.I interviewed.They made an offer for almost double the salary I was making.I knew my employer wouldn’t match the offer in a million years, but I was still hopeful…oh so hopeful…that they would throw some money at me to get me to stay.It’s really not like me to be hopeful, but the idea of going back to a cube jungle where it’s all blame-game and dysfunction made me want to cry.
And in fact I did.I know, that sounds so fucking lame.But it’s a big deal.I almost never cry.
