My central career story makes no sense any more. In the early 2000s, I was essentially fired for blogging. There was a time, back in the days before the Twitter president, when writing on the internet was novel and new and unknown and confusing. I jumped into the fray.
The short version is that I had been writing quietly. Journaling. Typing out the odd piece. Tucking it in a pile in my room and wondering if I would ever share.
I took an adult ed class on standup comedy to try to get out of my head and tackle my inner shyness. Ultimately, I took two standup comedy classes, because even though I did OK after the first one, public speaking still made me sick. Sharing my own words filled me with dread (and nausea and a little bit of a thrill, or I wouldn’t have tried again and again).
I actually had a boyfriend who after going to a comedy show said to me, “you’re funny, but you’d never have the guts to do what they do.”
Years later, I did it. I did it a lot. I went on stage. Sometimes I succeeded, sometimes I failed, mostly I got better. I definitely made some lifelong friends. I did, mostly, get over my intense fear of public speaking.
Blogging was something I heard about, and comedy friends had started writing in the brave new wilderness of the worldwide internets. I joined the nascent movement and wrote comedy vignettes and what I thought were amusing observations.
I ranted and opined and wrote a couple of funny things to an audience of like 20 friends.
Meanwhile, I was also a “career gal.” I had what seemed at the time a fantastic 9 to 5 gig (actually more like 7:30 to 7:30+). I managed grants and budgets at a research center and helped manage office space at a building that was slated for destruction. I had people reporting to me. I trained people. I signed off on things. I had a salary. My director encouraged me.
Let me back up, though. Before this job, I had had another one. I was at the quintessential in-between job (which I didn’t realize was bookended by two gloriously epic firings from ostensibly great jobs).
I was managing all of the research budgets and research and grant activities for a craptastically mismanaged collaboration of teaching hospitals. I think the CFO may have been cooking the books. The lead scientist seemed unengaged, at best. The worst was one crazy scientist who wouldn’t follow any guidelines for safe handling of tissue, tumors, animals, needles, pretty much anything that required safe handling.
Ain’t nothing like a call from building maintenance asking if those were your mice in the dumpster.
I persevered, but I knew this wasn’t my permanent solution.
Enter C. We’ll call her C., because it doesn’t match her real name and no reason to implicate her with my rambling.
C. worked at one of the nearby hospitals that collaborated with the center where I worked. She told me about an opening for a grants manager at her hospital. I applied, I got it, and C. and I became co-workers.
C. is younger than me. At the time, it was a ginormous age gap, as she was in her 20s and I, like Methuselah, was in my 30s, wizened and wise. We talked a lot, and she credits me with teaching her everything she knows about grants. She also credits me with dropping work philosophy gems, like “Don’t thank your employer for paying you or giving you a raise. That’s what they are supposed to do.”
Then, one day, my blog got me a visit to HR.
As the HR rep read through printouts of my comedy writing–pages and pages of printouts–she focused on a particular story where a disgruntled office administrator “shivved” a coworker over office supplies. AKA, high comedy.
I had been reported to HR as a risk for workplace violence. The notion was that these writings were my diary, and I was a burgeoning unabomber.
Sparing all of the details, what happened next involved my passing a psych exam, an informational chat with a counselor (who wanted mostly to talk about radical comedy and Lenny Bruce), lawyers, paperwork, anguished phone calls (off the record) with the director, who said I was ruining my life, faxes, more calls and finally a mutual agreement with my now former employer.
What I left behind was a messy office and a lot of work, but also processes and documentation. My colleague, C., who helped me find the job, picked up where I left off. Ultimately, she not just took over my stuff, but she became the center manager that I would have likely been had I not imploded. (There’s a whole backstory there with a wealthy donor and planned construction, which I would have helped implement.)
The person who reported me, as it turns out, actually was gunning for me. Or, in line with the story that sunk me, had intentionally shivved me in the back. He looked for flaws in my work, and failing that found my personal, comedy life. I believe, if I understood the ironic twist correctly, he had forgotten how much I had done for him at work, and he lost his job without my input.
Ultimately, I moved west and put the chapter behind me.
I didn’t know about my backstabber or C.’s career until she also moved west. We had a coffee and chat here in California and caught up on a decade or more of seeing how the story ended. Not only did she pick up my work, her career blossomed, and she developed a deep relationship with the director who once supported me. She honestly deserved/deserves it all.
One thing we’ve both shared in our careers is a reluctance to lead. Since moving to California, I’ve mostly managed to avoid managing. I was incredibly happy to take a job in which I would not have to manage people and had less responsibility and was really a 40-hour week not a 50, 60, 70-hour week.
C. came out here and ostensibly tried to also limit her management, but she’s failed at not succeeding. Despite what she claims is her best efforts to lay low, much like the work she inherited from me long ago, she keeps getting promoted.
Now here we both are about 20 years later. We are not the young career gals we once were. I’ve mostly steadily worked and mostly steadily avoided management. C. is a director at a major Silicon Valley place that funds research.
As of today, I am back working in the world of scientific research grants. As of today, I report to C.
It’s a story of redemption. Or it’s a story of relationships. Or it’s a story of burning bridges with organizations but not people. Or it’s a story of moving west like the Joad family, weathering twists and turns and ending up somewhere in California.
It feels like a wheel. And, maybe this time I’m spinning above the motion not under it.
Another March has rolled around on the calendar, after a March last year that I thought would be the March to end all Marches.
Here we are, still sheltering, as the world scrambles to get vaccinated now. The speed of the vaccine is an improvement. You can’t not think of pandemics and health emergencies past, and how they were handled. We now have new president, Old Joe, at the very least asking the country to behave. I don’t know that people had to be begged to be conscientious and careful for polio.
I still think of Pat, my mother all the time. Especially when I do things like buy a roll of green burlap and try to convince M. that I can make something with it for his holiday decorating. Crafting with bits and bobs and junk and trash and bailing wires and whatever else you have on hand, and visualizing that something might be possible in a pile of rubbish, was Pat every damn day.
Today, she would have been 92. She would have been a 92 full of so much to say about the past year.
I’m certain she would have hated Donald Trump almost as much as she hated Cardinal Bernie Law. Although, she’d always hate Law more for his role in letting little kids get hurt. Repeatedly. For years. Horribly. In Pat’s judgement there can’t be a hell big enough for the priest scandal and any child molester or person who looked away from the molester but did nothing.
I’m sure, if Pat were here, I’d be getting an earful on not working. Whenever I’m between jobs, I hear her worrying voice. Will I end up in some Dickensian debtors’ prison, if I don’t get a J. O. B.?
At exactly the same time, she’d be telling my husband that it’s a poor family that can’t take care of one bum. (The immortal words of her uncle Joe, opining on the unemployed.)
She’d have to admit that between the extended unemployment from the government, the craziness of COVID19 and the fact that M. is working, we’ll be fine.
I have to give equal space in my head for Pat’s worry about work with her equal conviction that you can’t let the bastards of any workplace bring you down. From everything she ever said behind your back, you’d find out that Pat was actually pro-fun and doing your own thing.
All of the above is pretty dull. It’s not a fitting way to honor her birthday. Let’s try some chestnuts from way back when, when Pat was alive and kicking. Really kicking.
One of the things that I definitely inherited in my DNA from Pat (although rumor has it my dad Earl probably had a dollop, too) is a willingness to add a little kookiness to any workplace. Sometimes begrudgingly, but always with gusto, she’d take on decorations or gifts or ceremonies, and throw in some straight out of her head crazy touch. Pat’s head contained Pinterest well before Pinterest was born.
When I left my old job, my first California job, my first job in a long time with a healthy run and leaving with goodwill, I left the familiarity to do wacky things. A group of friends, among the coworkers with whom I still try to stay in touch, we held impromptu contests and challenges and mini events. They weren’t official company events, but they were sufficiently goofy to not get stopped by management.
This time of year, it would be all about Peeps. Peeps are wads of sugar, ostensibly marshmallow, shaped like bunnies and chicks with all sorts of radioactive food coloring. Given their hardy, some would say inedible, structure, they lend themselves to construction projects.
The Washington Post had a famous diorama contest for 10 years. They killed it, coincidentally or not, with the beginning of the Trump Administration. At my old job, we maintained the tradition.
In the heady days of Trump’s first 100 days, I knitted pussy hats and handed them out alongside my sister and aunt and cousins and some of their families and friends in the streets of Washington, DC, while marching with thousands of angry women.
I also contributed to tiny little Peeps-sized hats, along with my coworkers, who also marched. We made an epic, historically accurate diorama, based on our lived experiences as marchers in despair at Trump’s ascendency. Had Pat been around, I believe she would have marched along with her sister, too.
If Pat had been around, I believe she would have found the source of Peeps with the ultimate discount, bargain, cheap (pun intended) rate. She probably would find a Peeps coupon.
And, she would have spitballed diorama ideas like no other. She’d probably pitch me ideas to use for future pranks and challenges at work.
I do miss that between my unemployment and the pandemic, there’s no place to pointlessly entertain yourself while earning your daily pay.
Pat would also embrace the pandemic. Not only would she not mind being forced to stay away from people — kind of a utopia for some of us — she would have figured out some angles for fun. I am certain, if you were Pat’s friend or family, she’d anonymously be sending you packages or leaving suspicious bundles with old shopping bags on your porch with something fun or tasty inside or maybe just something she bought on sale.
If anyone reads this post, try to carry on the goofiness that is still possible. Wear a hat on your next Zoom call, maybe even a balloon hat. Or change your zoom background to something out of the ordinary — not the Golden Gate Bridge or a tasteful Apartment Therapy interior — try a ball pit or bar or Chucky Cheese’s or PeeWee’s Playhouse.
Make something. Even if it’s lopsided or imperfect. Use a milk carton as a vase. Bring a treat to work, if you go to work, or send a treat to a coworker, if you don’t. Send an anonymous package or leave something on someone’s porch.
Fun is something you can make. Make something for Pat the Maker.
I had the worst first day at a new job, beginning the worst, first week. I’m part of an administrator affinity group on Facebook and posted the blow by blow all week to that circle of colleagues. Here’s the cut and post of those entries
Remember kids, work doesn’t need to steal your soul. There are also NO administrative emergencies. Even when I worked at a hospital, pushing paper didn’t save lives. Speak up and don’t take bullshit whenever you can. Worst case, they find another chump and you move on to the next adventure.
Here we go!
Posted Tuesday, 2/16/21
Sharing, just in case this helps anyone feel either a sense of camaraderie or maybe feel better about how well they do their jobs.
Literally started a new job yesterday. It’s a startup, so I’m mentally prepared for some intensity from a genius founder. Job description is the standard stuff, lots of calendar action, dealing with emails. Felt pretty good that by the end of the day, I had started to clean up a bunch of calendar conflicts and dropped scheduling requests.
Then, at about 5 p.m. I get a Slack. New boss wants to re-route a flight back home Wed. to add an extra leg to another city tonight for an important meeting. So, when I was just about to call it a day, I had to (1) figure out flights, (2) figure out Covid-19 quarantine requirements for the new leg, (3) book the new flight based on when he could get testing, (4) find and book a hotel, (5) fail to be able to change the flight home to be from the new location, so (6) cancel the flight home and (7) rebook a new flight from the new location. Then I woke up this morning, and he realized that the flight tonight wouldn’t work with the Covid test waiting time, so I had to rebook
ALL of this on Alaska Airlines and Southwest, which were clobbered by all of the snowstorms and bad weather. So wait times on the phone or texts were like 10 hours. (Alaska called me back at 3:30 a.m., per the bot that obviously got my voicemail.)
I lost track of the number of mistakes I made!
New boss may be convinced I’m slow.
I simply didn’t have any/all of the details I’d usually start with, couldn’t get through to the airlines, rushed because of the timeline, and generally just wasn’t up to my own usual standards. He actually only today gave me access to all of the logins in 1password.
Sadly, my Slack is now full of friendly nudges, like “in the future, please remember…” or “Let’s try to keep these details straight…”
I’m honestly insane on details, and I actually have a form I use to write down all of the frequent flyer, known traveler numbers, name, DOB, etc., etc. Just made the BIG mistake of thinking day 1 would be onboarding and setting things up and hadn’t sent to him.
I don’t even have my own work computer yet! I’m doing all of this from my personal computer.
Feels better to write it down for people who will probably feel my pain.
Posted Thursday, 2/18/21
TL;dr: The adventures of the worst onboarding ever, a short story.
Hey it’s me again! I should have a blog dedicated to just this new job. Thought you all might to hear the latest.
I very much appreciate the outpouring of virtual hugs, encouragement, understanding and humor. Hopefully you all will read this post like a short story of how not to start a job.
I’m timeboxing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeboxing) my decision on whether to quit. I’ll decide by mid-March. Fully prepared to cut my losses, given it was the worst ever first day of any job in a long, and storied, work history.
Meanwhle… Captain’s Log, Day 3 in the new job, Wednesday, 2/17:
New exec made it back and forth on all of the travel I arranged. He did almost miss two of the flights (one he blamed me, because I hadn’t put all of his travel info in his portfolio). For both flights, he arrived at the airport <30 minutes before departure.
He sends several scheduling emails, mentioning me by name as “Dennise.” I finally point out in Slack that my name is “Denise.” He blames spellcheck but does say he’ll watch it.
In our check in 1:1, I told the Ops person who is my manager “on paper” that I need a reset and a one-on-one with the CEO to kick off a fresh start.
I mentioned it was my worst first day ever.
She said she understood my frustration. However, he’s really a great guy when you get to know him, and that I’d get used to how his brilliant brain works. She advised if I meet with him to use “soft words” and be careful what I said. She then explained to me (again) about his special brain, how engineers work and how you get used to MIT types.
(Side note: Pretty sure she graduated college in 2018, and this job is her first non-internship/fellowship job. I’m in my 50s, graduated in 1985 w/~30 years relevant experience. I literally worked for years at MIT for MIT Faculty. My last job, I was part of the Engineering team at a startup. I text my science and engineering friends. They laughed and point out assholes are assholes.)
Day 3, Nighttime We were messaged along with the other execs: The CEO has a “family emergency.” He sent a complete list of what I needed to cancel/reschedule, tagging me by name in Slack and in relevant emails, and this time made sure I had all of the info.
I was not told the details of what was wrong and sent what I hope was a polite and caring note that I would take care of everything he asked of me and I could do more. Didn’t hear back (and knew his plane was just landing around 10 p.m.), so certainly didn’t press him w/questions, etc.
At around 10:30 p.m. the Ops person sent some passive aggressive notes about how she’d take care of everything, because I was new. She had started her plan – email people immediately (i.e., at 11 p.m.), cc me, tell them to contact me to reschedule, and I could handle the calendar later. I pointed out that since there were no meetings that weren’t internal until the afternoon, I could simply send notes in the morning. She stopped messaging me.
Captain’s Log, Day 4 in the new job, Thursday, 2/18:
By 10:30 a.m., I had everything in his calendar today and tomorrow canceled, and every person was sent options for rescheduling or a note that I would send times soon.
(Personal reflection — decades of admin have taught me that no one wants your 11 p.m. email about a meeting tomorrow. A canceled meeting is a blessing, and people don’t mind that news.)
Finally, someone gave me details around 11 a.m. about a major medical issue in the CEO’s family. Apparently, it was in some emails that the person who told me was like, “Oh, you should have been cc’d.”
Fresh 1 on 1 check in with Ops person. She asks me how I’m doing today, and I’m low-key. Nothing new to say, just worried about the CEO and his family. Vibe in the virtual remove is awkward AF.
She seems out of sorts, thanks me for the calendaring, but then explains why she was going to handle it and was just trying to do me a favor.
She brings up another thing I supposedly did wrong and over explains context (the context she had not given me, when I did what she originally asked).
She switches gears and says she hasn’t read a follow-up I sent on updating the annual company holiday calendar, because there were too many words.
“Let’s skim together, and {seeming exasperated to my ears} asks what the problem is.”
No problem, I say. I just wanted to review the holidays that fell on the weekend, and why a major federal holiday was skipped entirely. (My too wordy note was a bulleted list of dates.)
She argues that U.S. Labor Day is not a “real” holiday, News to me.
Finally, she reminded me of the “tradition” they have. New people have to present a game or activity at the weekly company social. She wanted to know if I was ready.
When I said I was surprised, given the CEO’s family emergency, I got a lecture on how he’d want us to still have it.
When I said I wasn’t sure what to do, since I hadn’t met anyone at the company at all, she got snippy, reminded me she told me about it my first day, and said she’d do it. She would need to know right away, if I couldn’t do it, since she’d need time to prep and do it herself.
Pretty sure her picture appears on Wikipedia next to passive aggressive.
I sent her a short version of a trivia game I wrote for my last job and asked if it was OK. She seems iffy, because I couldn’t answer how I thought it would work (since I’ve never been to their socials before). Oh well.
So, tomorrow, I host a social and trivia game for a dozen strangers. It’s really quite remarkable I’m sober right now (and still employed). If you read this far, I hope you enjoyed the journey. And please forgive my taking up so much space. And time. And oxygen.
Posted around 4 p.m. Friday, 2/19/21
TGIF y’all!
If you’re following my adventures in the worst first week, I’ll be updating my log after dinner.
(I actually wrote it all up on the company’s clock, but computer glitched and I lost it.)
Hope everyone is safe, dry, getting food and water, and is ready to rock the weekend.
Remember, they need all of us more than we need them. Afterall, we have usable life skills.
Posted after dinner. Friday, 2/19/21
Wine at sunset
Captain’s log: Friday, Day 5 of the worst onboarding ever. I’m back. And, I must confess it’s Friday night, and the picture shows the very real sunset from my very real first week on the job. I may have had >1 glass.
I haven’t loved this group as much as the enthusiasm I’ve gotten for my posts. You all gave me so much this week. The perspective has been to infinity and beyond, and it all really helped me feel grounded.
Thank you! Really, thank you.
So, here’s what happened today.
I woke up to finding out the CEO’s grandfather died. I sincerely feel bad about that, and with COVID19, it’s a big deal.
I’m given a list of what to reschedule and what the priorities are and, honestly, that’s where I am solid. I get to work with calendar voodoo and polite emails. And, since I’m not a monster, I want to help. So, I do.
On my last post, the big item was today’s company social. I had to host a “fun” activity for a dozen people.
Full disclosure, I’ve done standup comedy. I’ve hosted open mike nights. I’ve entertained drunks. This morning was definitely easier. But all in all, still crazy.
I found out that one of the reasons people were not friendly this week is that there’s a software deadline for a potential product sale that was almost missed. Missed by a long shot actually. Several people pulled an all-nighter for today’s deadline.
They were happy, though, and excited to have the social, because they pulled out all of the stops and made progress.
People were happily chatting and letting off steam at the “social.” It felt nice.
{Personal aside, why would a company social be at 10 a.m.? Is that a fun time?}
The main character in my last update was the passive aggressive Ops person. She was in rare form.
While people chatted and seemed to just relax at the social, Ops person had to stage manage. First, someone suggested (given the all-nighter) that we should start all weekly socials with shoutouts, thanks and acknowledgments. Anyone in Silicon Valley, and elsewhere, is familiar with all-hands meetings and offering gratitude.
Ops person made an awkward joke mocking the idea, comparing it to the Bachelor TV show and roses. The joke died on the vine. Visibly died. Like 12 people blinking into their Zoom screens.
The person who suggested giving thanks plowed on and thanked half the people on the call for their hard work and commitment.
Conversation resumed. It was fun. Ops person interrupted. She tut-tutted and shushed and said I would be presenting a game. TADA!
What you really never want for “fun” is an introduction predicated on shushing. But, hey, I’m flexible.
So, I present my trivia game, which started with a photo matching game of rare bird photos (that I took in a lot of travel). Before I can get it centered on screen sharing, Ops person asks me to make it bigger, blah blah blah.
People dug it. Everyone is speaking up, making guesses, talking about rare birds they’ve seen, guessing where the birds live. Three photos were from East Africa trips I’ve taken, so there was a lot of interest in those birds. It was kind of great and relaxed.
Ops person interrupts to say she’s going to keep score and asks how had I structured competing. I mention I’m a hippie and hadn’t structured as a competition. She starts announcing who’s “winning.”
We move onto the next part of my trivia game, straight up sports. Again, free flowing, joking. I give some hints for the tough ones. For one of the questions, the answer is Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. Ops person asks “What are the Bulls?” Much laughter follows and even the French guy laughs at her and makes a joke about the best basketball team ever. Kind of awkward when a European makes fun of an American about basketball.
I cut off the game when I realize part three, the anagrams, is too hard. I said I’d simply put that section in the Slack random channel. And I do. From there, it’s a relaxed, fun conversation. Weather, snow, skiing, children. Normal social conversations. Score one for me for not caving and for engendering a warm conversation.
I felt good about myself. After the social, I had a conversation with the only dude to reach out to me all week, who started last month. He told me the company is chaotic and could use me and hopes I’ll stay.
I get through all of my work. Ops person thanks me for answering emails. I think someone told her managing is always saying “thank you,” whether it sounds insincere or not.
Full of Friday afternoon not giving a shit, I sent a Slack message to the only executive still online, the third of the 3 cofounders.
I send him an emoji wave, and say, “I didn’t want to end the week without at least saying ‘Hi.'” He immediately replies and essentially apologizes for not initiating contact. I tell him that I understand the pressure. I continue that I have never experienced such a negative onboarding, so I just wanted to reach out, given that I felt quite isolated.
Coincidence, I think not — Right after that message, I get invited to a meeting on Monday with #2 cofounder. #2 then sends me a Slack message. We share pleasantries. I then tell him I am very much considering if I’m a fit for the company, and that I suspect the answer is “no.”
There was more back and forth, and he thanked me for being honest and telling him that I had issues. He claims the company values frank and honest feedback. I tell him that while Ops person seems like a nice human, she is not at all an appropriate manager, and therefore my experience has been untenable.
In the end, he asked I don’t do anything until we can talk. He also said that he will not bring up what I told him to the Ops person until he and I can talk. Also, from what I said he really does hope that we can work something out.
Meanwhile, he did ask for my help on rescheduling their board meeting. He seemed to really sincerely want my help. And, he seemed really afraid if I didn’t help, because they need help.
I promised as a professional and an empathetic human, I would do everything I could until we could talk.
Friday night. Some wine in my belly, at least I stood up for myself. Monday will be a new chapter…
(In case you’re curious, I plan to review with him my observations on all their dysfunctions. I will offer two solutions: (1) They retain me, assign an appropriate manager, structure things so I am successful, fix their glaring holes, and it’s all happy or (2) they pay me off as a consultant, I’ll provide a report on what I see are the gaps, I cover a quick transition to not leave them hanging, but then we call it a day. (3) is unspoken – we break up.) Hope you all are keeping on keeping on.
UPDATE Posted Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021
Hey Facebook universe, I have a job update sooner than I expected. If you saw my blog post or Friday post here, I had the worst first week of any job ever.
Now, I just resigned.
Here’s the post I shared with the admin group where I’m an active member. Holy Schnikeys, joining this company was a mistake.
****
I don’t know whether to laugh, cry or check to see if I’m in an episode of Black Mirror. This shit is so sideways, I’m gobsmacked.
I spent a lovely Sunday on a hike in the sun. My game plan was to write an agenda to keep on track for my meeting tomorrow with #2 cofounder. I was typing away on my computer, doing just that when I heard the alert for Slack.The CEO wrote me a loooooooooonnnnnnnggggg Slack message.
Started OK. Brief apology for the week being crazy sort of generally, you know, COVID, virtual, busy week for the company, yada yada. Like an apology for the circumstances, so not really an apology, more like a whoopsie daisy.
Then on to the meat!
Apparently, I’m terrible. I’m quite bad. Not proactive, poor communicator, passive aggressive. I may have kidnapped Lindberg’s baby. I’m not sure.
There’s a fun little corporate twist in all of his words. In their little corporate doc they say they “have a culture of overcommunication: there’s no such thing as giving someone too much information.” I reached out to management, when the CEO was rushing to his family home, and I shared how I felt. #2 cofounder dude said that kind of thing was welcomed.
Oops. Guess that’s not true. Among the CEO’s bulleted notes against me, it was supremely uncool I did that and evidence of my passive aggression. I was being wicked naughty and bumming people out by talking to them.
Meanwhile, his main beef is that I didn’t accomplish everything that first week. He really hoped I’d do all of the things. I think my favorite paragraph is this:
– A lack of proactivity. As I’m writing this, the state of my inbox is considerably worse than when you started, I haven’t seen much activity in Front, and the calendar has conflicts. I know your work computer has been delayed, but it’s not required for any of these areas.
It’s my favorite for three reasons:
(1) He hasn’t been checking his email, I only just started and now it’s worse. How do you think that could happen?
(2) I’ve explained several times that my personal computer is set up for my personal stuff, you know, because it’s mine, and I cannot get everything to work.
(3) His calendar doesn’t have conflicts, or at least it didn’t on Friday.
Strangely, it’s the first job in decades, maybe even going back to when I scooped ice cream cones at 15 1/2, that I’ve been told I lack proactivity. I’m actually kind of annoyingly proactive.
After several paragraphs of my inadequacies, he offers me two ways forward. (1) I admit all of my evil, quote, “internalize the feedback, work to improve…” and together we forge a new relationship or (2) not.
My dear husband helped proofread a couple of paragraphs that I sent as a reply in Slack. I wasn’t in the mood to match him crazy length to crazy length or tit for tat.
THEN, and gloriously then, I emailed my resignation letter to the lot of them. They probably won’t miss me at all. Yet, I can say with certainty, they will miss me more than I will miss them.
Some days, I figure I have a couple of things worked out, and I fancy myself clever for working to live not the other way around. Other times, the universe isn’t what you might call kind and kicks me in the head just enough to remind me I have to work any way I can.
Could be worse – I type type type in a cubicle not dig dig dig in the dirt or bleed bleed bleed to make one piece more. But, with my addictions to having food, clothing and shelter, rather than racing hungry and nekkid in the streets, work must be done.
That’s my preamble. That’s my reality when I pull on my bootstraps or whatever other cliche working stiffs are told and remind myself of all of the choices I made that got me here.
Truth is, somewhere around 1989 or thereabouts, I sorted out a pretty major truth for myself. I like doing something where I’m helping out on something useful and good, but I’m not the captain of the ship. I don’t want to be on the bridge responsible for saving lives, steering clear of the shoals or icebergs. I like being a reliable deckhand, pointing out the rocks up ahead.
In ’89, I had my first not-for-profit gig. In the dark ages, we–the world–hadn’t mapped the human genome, cloning mice was sexy and got magazine covers and tumor suppressor genes were undiscovered. In those same dark ages, grant applications were on paper and giant boxes with multiple copies to hand out to the peer review committees were mailed into government repositories for sorting by human hands.
Copies I made and collated and put in boxes, narratives I edited and budgets I helped craft and checked and re-checked with long strands of old-fashioned calculator tapes were a tiny contribution to science. In small ways I contributed, and in more significant ways, I did too. I helped post docs decode their first grant applications. I sat on the floor and collated appendices alongside a young scientist who was the first to map the Y chromosome. Shit, I even fought another genomic rockstar when his brand new Mac computer was an allowable expenditure under government rules, but he’d have to pony up the cash for KidPix and other software for his kids.
It was fun. I got to hang out with smart people. I got to carve out a corner where I was smart and reliable people myself working alongside them.
When a crazy chain of events ended one job, it was amazing to realize how many friends I had made with the scientists. Real friends, ones where we broke bread, drank beer and danced at weddings together. We joked about putting a special sign in my condo that the leading lab in the country working with listeria had shat in my tiny bathroom. The most senior of the senior scientists called me at home to let me know he’d be a reference for whatever gig was next.
After that, my grants voodoo had me writing budgets for grants discovering the BRCA1 gene, lumpectomies that spared countless breasts, the statistical underrepresentation of African American women in cancer studies and overrepresentation in death. My strength is and was being able to connect what people wanted to do with aligning the bureaucracy to make things work.
Never has anyone said, “Boy howdy, that was some interesting science, but those forms, they were filled out flawlessly.” But, still in all, I have met a lot of people, I have trained a lot of people, and I helped move some stuff along.
I’ve mastered most administrative tasks and gravitated toward supporting executives who run centers and teams. Today the science is social and the work in different areas.
Here’s the thing, though, by definition good administrative support is invisible administrative support. When text reads how the scientists intended and their fingerprints overlay whatever I touch or people remember the meeting content not the dimensions of the conference room or that food, water and caffeine were plentiful but unobtrusive, I’ve done my job well.
When directors are well-prepared and organized or know every detail and bump in the road when they walk into the meeting, even if it’s minutes after a red eye flight, no one has seen me compiling the information they have in hand. When a few hallway chats or emails quiet work teams concerns, no one sees the ghostwriter. When departmental leaders trust me and my team, it’s through relationships I have steadily built. It’s not a coincidence in three decades of work, I’ve beta-tested, gotten equipment early and have special access from every IT department I’ve encountered.
Even when I have had major career setbacks, my performance feedback has been complimentary, and I’ve made friends at every level of the organization. In my current job, a senior manager told me I’m seen as an honest broker, willing to help others and speak up even on the hard issues.
And, even as I do well, including bonuses and other recognition, some people flat out dislike me or disagree with me or my style. I plug on — Mostly, the good outweighs the bad, and no one knows my shortcomings better than me.
But always there comes a time when–because my work is invisible, systems I’ve created are working and second nature or information I’ve created or complied is used by others and absorbed into the tissue of the work–there comes a time when my contributions are forgotten. Coming into work, newer people or growing teams see me only as today’s veteran doing daily work seemingly by rote.
It’s not just me. I see it around me with others like me — middle-aged workers in support roles, because we like it and are good at it and are actively contributing. We are not too stupid or ambitious to have done more with our lives.
Now when people see me, new people, younger and younger people, they don’t really see me. They don’t see my value as a mentor, because on their career paths they self-assuredly know they will do better than me.
Managers see my inevitable, all too human mistakes, which are mostly rare, in a harsh light, because the bar for me is higher, and they no longer afford me the patient tones provided new recruits. Performance reviews evolve and paragraphs are spent on what still can be tweaked rather than all the forgotten moments when things went well or smoothly.
My sisters (they are all women) in arms, other career administrators, face the same challenges. We talk in hushed tones in corners about our jobs. We wonder to each other how to work with new people and come up with plans both formal and blessed by leadership and informally. We give each other advice when new managers come in and smile as we train those with higher salaries and more prestige who will soon also not see our invisible work.
We back each other up, providing advice or a shoulder, when the very thing we took part in creating is torn down or taken, or others casually insult the nature of what we do by choice or actually like to do. We commiserate when someone comes in with a “new” idea and is praised vociferously, an idea that we tried or suggested years before that hadn’t taken root.
We notice when no one asks for our input about things we know. Right now, as I face a management change, I can see in calendars, my teammates’ meetings to discuss what to do. I’m not invited and no one has asked for my input or my colleague’s, even though she and I were put in charge of a similar change in years long past.
Over time we watch how people stop asking us questions on how things work. New people assume we only know the simple tasks or only are driven by maintaining the status quo. New committees form, and slowly my dance card empties.
In my current job there is no special recognition for years of service. Some people are term-limited and the company ethos focuses on them. It’s the only job where I have not gotten even a certificate or paragraph in a newsletter or simple thank you at 5 or 7 or 10 years let alone a gift or bonus. So, it’s no surprise younger and newer workers don’t even learn the veterans’ names.
I brace again for change, and I have to look forward to a new manager. It’s simultaneously daunting and refreshing to face a clean slate.
All I know is I’m not “just an administrator.” I’m an administrator. Somebody’s got to do it.
It’s not unusual for me to think of my mother. She was a force to be reckoned with and from feminism and progressive politics to arts, crafts and approaching the mundane with a creative flair to just wanting to be a contrarian, she formed a lot of who I am today.
With the hot fucking mess that is Donald Trump in the Whitehouse and the latest wave of Catholic scandals, she’d be on fire. Her acid wit would burn holes in the atmosphere as she would undoubtedly be glued to CNN fueling an internal flame of discontent. “Me too” would likely create rants of how is it that men have stayed in power this long and why not give women a chance?
Lately, though, there’s a restlessness that has me thinking, “What would Pat do?”
I keep wondering if I’ve stayed too long at the fair in terms of employment. She’d totally understand my simmering thoughts about appreciation. Much more basically, she’d probably remark casually that the longer you stay anywhere the easier it is for your contribution to become the status quo, and everyone forgets how hard you work. You know, she’d say laughing, “Familiarity breeds contempt.”
But, at the same time, she’d be the worrying voice that tells you to keep a good job and not take any chances. My worrying voice about money, work, the mortgage, all of it is her voice.
Yet, we both know, she knew when she was here on earth, that I probably shouldn’t let myself become too complacent. We’d fight, of course, and she’d find many, many ways to tell me that I’m crazy. And, she’d be absofuckinglutely right.
But, yet, there would be a glint of appreciation. Some pride. And, she would agree,
And, for you, Pat. For everything you’ve taught me, I still tilt at windmills to mix a literary metaphor. I still fight the power. And, I always just laugh at the absurdity of it all.
Finally, for the tulips at the top, a friend–who also remembers and needs herself to be reminded sometimes to never allow yourself to be ground down–shared them for the ides of March and esprit to guerre. Maybe somewhere in the infinite space the spirits of those who make this date important to each of us are sharing a joke.
I’m a day or three late. Maybe more. Blame Comcast their lack of faith that our internet truly shit the bed. After begging and weeping and prayer, the tech came and left a new modem and cables behind.
Late I may be, but it was worth being late, or at least I tell myself that my lateness is good lateness. It’s better than telling myself I’m tardy.
The Ides of March have come and gone. The day I think of my mother, since she would have been 89 on March 15, had she not decided to not be. I think of her all the time really, not just on her birthday, and she left about 17 years now. Maybe 17. Time flies, and she’s remembered.
Every year since she died, though, I like to remember how they broke the Pat mold and haven’t built another one like it. I remember to not let the bastards grind me down (which I wish was illegitimi non carborundum).
Because of Pat, I remember that non-creative small minded people kind of suck. I remember that there’s both honor and wobbly steps (I edited that from treacherous steps) in not conforming, following, acquiescing, going gently into that good night. Most of all, I remember that like Pat, I am a square peg in a world of round holes, and so it is.
But, that’s not today’s adventure.
Today’s adventure is about work, the thing I have to do. We sell our skills and brains on the open market to live.
I have the shoulder to the wheel thing down, but sometimes I outstay my welcome, or that’s what the authorities at past workplaces have told me. I outstayed my welcome, when a director was boning two women in the office and they all hated me for my non-office-boning knowledge, and they told me I just had to go. Or the time when after about 5 reorgs, the jackass above me was minutes away from being unmasked as a doer of nothing who couldn’t balance a bake sale, and I was shown the door to go.
I’ve always thought of my working as having a shelf life, and my expiration date would come soon enough.
Through all of the trials of the workaday world, Pat’s voice in my head says, “Just keep your mouth shut.” She knew I ultimately wouldn’t keep my mouth shut. And, she’d worry as I lost another job. Albeit lost a job and gained a great story.
I also suspect she was a bit proud of my inability to keep my mouth shut and dodge a fight. Sure, I need to work, and she always needed to work, but she respected that I have some fight in me.
Friday, despite her having been gone so long, her voice was loud and clear in my head, “Just keep your mouth shut.” Here in California, the strange land where I work, in a company that is more earnest than ironic, I’m doing alright with a big mouth and ingrained, East Coast bred sarcasm.
Pat’s head would be blown.
She would say “keep your mouth shut,” but she’d be confused by the work company I’m keeping. I’m working among lawyers, the kind that read and talk about the law not hang out in courts. Until now, the only mix of work and lawyering was when I hired a labor lawyer to help me out of my last employment jam.
On Friday, I was parrying wits with someone who used to be the head of one of the top schools in the country and clerked for a justice from the SCOTUS, while in the company of a double Ivy grad from Yale Law. Magically for Pat’s daughter, they asked me to speak up and no one’s getting fired.
So, I marvel at what a fucking crazy world it is. That I’m me, that she was she, and of all of the things she taught me to worry about or be cautious of and the kind of authority she feared. I’ve ignored her lessons of fear and aversion, and I live on to tell the story.
Here’s the Hemingway version of the story:
People who give away money for a living and run an organization for the purpose of giving away money are asking my opinion on how to make that workplace work better. They are paying me to not keep my mouth shut.
And for two hours, the day after Pat’s day, I got to share openly with the authority figures I was taught to avoid, and I’ve only just begun.
She would have been suspicious and recommended cautious. But, still and all, I think she’d be proud that I have a voice. For her, speak up, speak out and don’t let the bastards grind you down.
I’ve been thinking about my mom, but I can’t figure out the angle here. Well, there’s the anniversary of her day of birth. But, maybe it’s this: After getting my perfomance reviewed at work — corporate America’s annual dance or bloodletting depending on how you are doing–I keep wondering if she’d be happy or pissed at me.
First week of the month, I was going full-on existential postal. I can’t think much about where I am in life before I start thinking of all the places that I am not. I am not rich, famous and beautiful, and I’d be good at all three, goddamnit, so I should be. The crisis du month, though, was the triple-decker pileup of my birthday, my performance review and this thing at my place of toil that I can’t describe but involves sharing stuff about yourself.
Amid the self-loathing caused by age and excess self reflection, I had a fleeting thought about my mother. A point I will get to after I set it up with too much detail.
Some days, I think I confound some of my coworkers. The environment of my paycheck generation is well-educated and high performing. It definitely charts about the curve by most definitions, or it’s proof positive that with the right motivation and circumstances, and money to pay for it, anyone can get a graduate degree. There’s a metric ton of letters after people’s names.
I was too desirous of money and the associated purchases — groceries and rent mainly — to stick around ivied halls any longer than I had to do to get my bachelor’s. I wasn’t burning for any more learning of the formal sort circa 1985.
From 1985 almost to the day she died, Pat, my mother, reminded me I could still go to grad school. I let her down on that decision for decades.
Today, I am docorate-less and masters-less in a sea of masters and doctors. I have more years of relevant experience than many, though, so I hold my own with common sense and moxie. Hence the confounding, I just don’t defer to not knowing shit, because there’s a lot of shit I know even without the sheepskin to prove it.
it’s a bit like the end of the Wizard of Oz; I grant myself a doctorate of thinkology.
Now here’s where Pat comes in… That woman worked hard, year after year, helping to educate other people’s kids. That hard work full on cramped the woman’s style. Some of the other teachers and the school administrators crushed a bit of her creative sparkle. She was a little pounded down. By retirement, she was caved in by it all.
She indoctrinated me into a fear about work. A fear that you could lose your job for many types of infractions. She had near perfect attendance over years and years. She carried out all of the side jobs and extra tasks asked of teachers with nary a complaint — bus duty, after hours tutoring, grading papers on her own time, mentoring young teachers and helping with banquets and school events in the evenings.
I learned and listened and I have almost perfect attendance and do a lot of good citizeny extras at work. But try as I might I can’t bury my non-conformist tendencies. I am a good worker bee in a happy hive, but I’m a square peg in a round-holed world.
Problem is, I like it.
So, I work in a job that is easy for me. I sacrifice some pay and will likely never have a good title, but I know everyone in the building. My days are laid out with honkingly wide swathes of leeway and not a lot of having my clocked punched by somebody else.
It’s a trade off. It’s a choice. And, it’s a little bit of anxiety. If I got the gig where I got the pay that meant I have to manage stuff, I might fail. I might have to leave my sneakers at home. I might have to be at my desk for geometrically larger periods of time than I am now.
I think Pat might see the genius of my choice. For good benefits and a not awful paycheck, the man isn’t keepnmg me down and the thoughts inside my head are free to breathe.
Outwardly, she’d tell me to do more. She’d ask about promotions and growth opportunities. She’d worry.
Here I am, quietly home alone. OK, not so quiet, considering the Rolling Stones are playing. And, I haven’t quite nailed Virginia Wolff’s:
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
For a few hours it is a room of my own. And, with my lemon trees in constant bloom and fruit, fluttering with birds, it is a room with a view.
The last few weeks of my employment have brought me closer to the employment of others, or their aspirations thereof. Yeah, less pretentiously, I’ve been interviewing eager hopefuls for a job. Not all that eager in truth. Here are some minimum requirements to keep the conversation not the potentially fruitful side:
Know the name of the company that is on the phone or inside of which you sit
Know the name of the department, as above
Have some kind of vague notion of what it is we do and, therefore, what might be asked of you
Don’t make me cry with boredom.
The last one is actually much simpler than you might think, even if I am a bitch. I love stories. I love imagining myself in other shoes. I love picking up tidbits of humanity as I chug along.
I only pretend to hate people. But I just might be the one who smiles at you and shares conspiratorial chatter in a long grocery line or unruly crowd.
In a job interview, I really, really, really want to like you. I’m incentivized out the ass — there’re piles of work of both the shit and not shit variety that I’m meant to be covering, because we haven’t met you yet. I already have a full-time job, so doing yours alongside my own is just the reason I want to hug you and squeeze you and bask in the salvation and glory that your hire will be.
I need you for my very sanity.
It’s a pretty minimal bargain this boredom thing. A low bar, in fact.
But, I’m not going to write about my experiences. The universe knows that the gods of Google have not always smiled warmly upon my face and shoulders, so I will leave the above as guidelines only. As they say in movie land, any resemblance to real people and real anything really is coincidental. My thoughts from my head.
However, I will mention an experience told to me. In comparing notes with another person doing an entirely different job search, she mentioned a phrase that has stuck with me for weeks.
In response to the worn, tattered, clichéd intro question “why are you looking to leave your current position?” the person’s response was just the kind of philosophical conundrum that rolls inside my echoing skull for hours of navel-contemplation fun. The reply about her current gig, and despite the quotes, I wasn’t there, so I’m either paraphrasing or making it up:
It’s OK, but some days it’s like it’s just an insult to my intelligence.
Let’s leave aside that this statement was uttered in a job interview. While I tend to do well enough I suppose in a conference room full of interrogators (well enough to get jobs, it would seem), I’ve said enough monumentally stupid things in the workplace to not feel like casting the obvious stone.
Instead, what’s killing me, the riddle I can’t fucking solve or information I ain’t parsing — What the fuck really is an insult to one’s intelligence?
OK, OK, reader thus far, there is my prose. I’ll give you that. Although, it’s less of an insult to your intelligence and more a cry that you could have done so much better with your synapses and your time than to have read this far.
Earlier today, I put spoons and knives and toast plates and coffee mugs into the dishwasher. It did not challenge me. The thoughts inside my head were dull and plodding not glimmering and profound. Was filling the dishwasher an “insult to my intelligence.”
At work some days I tick little boxes. I collate. I answer phones. I do things for other people that I don’t feel like doing for myself. I remember things like telling my boss that we should have cookies for a festive little reason. I buy plane tickets. I cancel plane tickets. I spent ungodly amounts of time in Outlook calendar moving squares around in infinite patterns.
Some days I ab-so-fucking-lute-ly hate it. I have to remind myself that the first world joy of office work is M&Ms and sodas, mini-cupcakes and the internet. Dear, sweet, timewastingly infinite internet.
And, there are assholes. Insulted I have been. But my intelligence, she is still there even when the assholes try to shake my convictions.
So, if you got this far, do me a favor. Give me an example of what might in the glare of fluorescent lighting and computer screens be an actual insult to your intelligence.
So here it is, the beginning of what will mark half a hundred years on the big, blue marble, that’s half a century or 50 years or a whole boatload of hours and days. Even saying “big, blue marble” has old written all over it. Ah, the ’70s.
I haven’t written in eons. Why? Because I’m lazy. And television has gotten better. Mostly because I’m lazy.
The view from almost 50 years is a tad less melodramatic than past decades, I fear. Good in the long run for mental health, I suppose, but shitty as hell if you’re scouring your synapses for a bit of bullshit to share on the web. I had to will myself into a fury about something, and in the end it’s not so much fury as irritation. Thoroughly mature of me, I guess.
So’s here’s a few words on said irritation. Chafing, if you will.
The sheer torture of the way I have made money to pay the bills the last quarter century is that by it’s very nature the best and brightest and the youngest and the most precious of well-scrubbed spawn of the elite universities come to hover. Turns out the life blood of research institutes and non-profits are fellows, scholars, and eager grads. I’ve even worked in the belly of the beast, universities themselves, where students are unavoidable.
Now the straight up benefit of toiling among these folks is a low bar on all things related to corporate dress codes. Short of naked skin or hole-y pajamas, not the lord’s pjs but ones with gaps between the threads, I think I’ve worn it to work. Above are my current favorite work shoes.
I came to not-profits honestly enough. I temped, matching invoices to packing slips at a teeny improvised desk next to the accounts payable manager. It was a job, and with my mad alphabetizing and counting skills I was a colossus of temp agency legend.
Before that historic moment, however, I had worked in a couple of more legitimate career realms. I started out a transfer agency for a mutual funds company. Since that offers no visual, think any corporation in the universe with the imaginative flair of banking or insurance. Day in, day out, it was a sea of skirts, suits, pantyhose in shades of beige, gray, black or navy.
A friend got taken aside for wearing espadrilles and told by management that she was destroying her chances for success.
Career suicide. I think the jute was offensive to all that was good in the banking class.
Next up, I worked in publishing, well the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature. We were a bullpen of writerly and librarian types, who all dressed like writerly and librarian types. The editors, I think all editors, wore suits. Never did I have a job that was so conscience of the clock (many a morning I faced an inquisition at the coffee maker as Michael the editor inquired as to why I had not logged into my computer at 8:02, 120 minutes past expectations). Never did a job feel so buttoned down in a room of the least buttoned down poets and scholars that could be gathered up and put to work.
One day, the editor just above me in the hierarchical food chain, who may have been called Terry, offhandedly discussed clothing. I believe her intent was directed to me, as I was in earshot matching the description she was providing. The curt upshot – she herself would never wear so much black, as the different pieces never matched properly (and absolutely).
At a non-profit, working away, matching invoices in a little corner of a biomedical research lab in my earnest temp hopefulness for permanent employment was a turning point. The only sartorial concern in a lab that’s affiliated with MIT is not exposing flesh to radiation, biohazards, acids and bases. The dress code consisted of not smelling, and even that wasn’t an immutable law.
At 49 years and almost 11 months on the planet, reams of reading in my brain, thoughts from the Feminine Mystique to Joan Rivers, a thousand different observations, I dress how I feel. I dress for comfort. And, I dress as an extension of the baby shoe steps my mother Pat had taken in choosing footwear.
Now, a billion or so pointless words into this little essay, I endeavor to get to the point.
I work with people in the formative years of their careers. They are delightfully enthusiastic and forward thinking about their own hopes and aspirations. I no longer see myself as a “career gal” on the rise. I see myself as a strong swimmer back floating in the ocean of making a paycheck. A good day at the office has mini-cupcakes and a couple of amusing interchanges with the nicer of my colleagues.
Now my cross to bear, and by cross to bear I mean thing to make me whiney in an otherwise comfortable existence, is the youngsters and their kind advice. No less than three women in my office imply they could help make me over. Well, one of them is not actually young, she’s more of a contemporary, and I don’t think she actually believes I should dress like her. She just likes to bust my chops, a stance I respect.
The others, though, they want to field trip me over to Anthropologie or Ann Taylor or wherever the fuck young women shop. Maybe the dreaded Forever 21, which I vow to put out of business with my own Forever 49 chain.
They want me in the heels I never could walk in at any stage in my life. Now, with the arthritic pain in my spine a constant reminder of my mortality, I would choose even less to teeter in pumps, mules and sling backs.
In adolescence, I tried. I clicked on unsteady legs like a colt. In my 20s and 30s, I couldn’t quite get the rhythm of dressing up in heels with drinking, and opted for flats to avoid skinned knees. Although, at various moments in my own hopes and aspirations, I tried hard to wear the uniforms and dress for success. By my 40s, I embraced flats, boot heels and, under duress, low-heeled pumps for funerals and interviews.
I don’t want fashion advice from adorable 20-30-year-olds. As adorable as they are, they cannot understand that I once was adorable, too.
I haven’t given up. But, if I can choose anything at this age, it is to be myself. So, fuck it, here I am.
Every year, well more frequently than that, I think about my mother. I think about her on the Ides of March, the portentous day in which Brutus stabbed Caesar and my mother was born. Not the same year, mind you, as I’m not tapping this out on my ancient Roman computer.
Actually, it was portent upon portent for old Pat. She was born on the Ides of March the year of the stock market crash for the Great Depression. She was meant for great things.
So, another anniversary rolls around.
I like to remember the ways in which Pat stood out from the crowd. Or in my warped and selfish and self-absorbed brain, the ways in which Pat affected me and stood out from the crowd.
Today’s memory is tied to the current season of my manual toil. OK, typing and sitting at a desk isn’t manual labor, but some days it grinds you just the same. I got callouses on my tappy type finger tips.
At work these days the pesky little papers (now computer files) that once a year worker drones planet-wide, or at least U.S.-wide, bemoan are due — the annual performance reviews. The neat little report where you and your boss get to write out how you’re “meeting expectations” and otherwise doing what a cog does when one is employed.
You say to yourself right about now, I can hear you breathing and thinking, you say, but how does that relate to Pat. Surely, she was not your boss, apart from the sense in which we are all subordinates to our mothers.
Well, here’s the thing. I might be one of the only people rambling around that has written their own performance “self reports” for the decades that I have been employed as a grown up adult, who got their start years before they were allowed to work.
Pat, enmeshed in some heavy duty politics and just short of Brutus-like backstabbing in my town’s school system, turned her typewriter over to her precocious daughter one fine day and asked for her help in word smithing her review. She had to describe her classroom contributions, and since she floated around helping learning disabled kids within other people’s classrooms, she had to talk about that too.
By nature, she was a mix of fierceness on some opinions and topics (ahem, Catholic molesters) and shy reticence on a whole lot more. She complained to those nearest and dearest, but she was way too polite to complain to anyone or anything with any authority, including a cashier at a convenient store. (Although, the school teacher might pop out at any time if said cashier couldn’t do the math to make simple change.)
Real humility, not the false stuff that often passes for humility, was part of her core, and she could not find any words at all to describe what she contributed. She knew what she did, but she couldn’t spin it to advertise her brand.
I could do that for her and with some nudging to not get carried away with florid prose extolling her greatness, together we spoke about her patience with kids in the classroom. Her vast experience. Her gentle but persistent nature. Her true and deep caring for children and learning and education. Her mastery of basic skills and pedagogies and learning methods. That she could set and meet goals until the sun rose and set a hundred years.
She was a champion to a whole lot of kids fumbling in classrooms with dyslexia, a host of other syndromes and disorders, and simply poor study skills.
Pat was also a drill sergeant. No misplaced modifiers, misspellings (which I incidentally just mistyped), prepositions dangling at a sentence’s end, no math not shown happened on her watch. For the stuff where there is a right and wrong way to do it, by god she was going to teach you the right way or die trying.
All of her skills, the ones that made strangers come up to me in high school and beyond and say they knew my mother and that she was great, they were in her heart effortlessly as a teacher.
But, she did suck at telling management what was up. I helped do that for her. I was a kid and it was a fun writing assignment and in truth I had no feel for the politics or fear of the consequences, so I could write without inhibition. She could not. It became an annual ritual in her later years of work.
Now, about a thousand years later, or maybe just shy of that, I have to do the same kind of reports for myself.
So, I sit at my desk and return to the game that I had done at my mother’s typewriter. I right fast and furiously, and I have learned how to advertise my own brand but temper it with a soupçon of self-reflection. I allow for the things I do not know, and I hammer out my strengths. I find the notes of self improvement that are surmountable and demonstrate my good attitude.
I try very hard not to by cynical. But, for that to happen, I do not dwell, I do not agonize. If I spend over 15 minutes on the thing, at about 10 minutes in, I walk away until my head is in the game and I give it only 5 minutes more.
It’s impossible to tell your boss that in addition to my 25-30 years of doing the things for myself, I might have done 10 years more. We breeze through the things, the virtual online handshake is done and another year will pass.
And my highest proof of mastery were the words of my attorney, the one I hired on account of my work at the time not really feeling the love, the labor lawyer who helped me out of a jam. That besuited gentleman pulled all of my Human Resources records out of the belly of the employment beast, and he went through each paper with the loving care that an hourly fee will get you.
Upon sage and learned analysis, he proclaimed that while many a person had come through his office doors with a sad story to tell about the workplace, almost all of them had some marks in their permanent records. But my file, the years of reviews and meetings, they were a pristine and glimmering example. He said in all his years of lawyering he had never seen such stellar performance reviews.
Some days, I figure I have a couple of things worked out, and I fancy myself clever for working to live not the other way around. Other times, the universe isn’t what you might call kind and kicks me in the head just enough to remind me I have to work any way I can.
I’m a day or three late. Maybe more. Blame Comcast their lack of faith that our internet truly shit the bed. After begging and weeping and prayer, the tech came and left a new modem and cables behind.
