Fired Like a Clay Pot

It was a strange week at work last week. A co-worker had gotten fired on Wednesday, and management hasn’t said anything more on the topic other than “She doesn’t work here anymore.”

The remaining employees are whispering to each other in the cubicles, speculating about what had happened to my colleague. I gather that the firing occurred at the very end of the day, when the rest of the staff had gone home. Her office is empty, and the feeling at my workplace is sad and strange.

It brought be back to the time I had been fired from a job. At the time that it had happened, 10 years ago, I was completely humiliated by the experience. I didn’t tell my friends I’d been fired. I didn’t tell my family. I didn’t tell anyone, yet here I am telling you on the Internet. It was a horrible experience that took me several years to fully get over. I had nightmares about it, and fantasized about what I would say if I had ever bumped into my former boss.

I was working for one of those “next big thing” dot coms back in the summer of 1999. They just secured a crapload of venture capital money, and were supposed to be all the rage. (They closed their doors a year after I’d been let go.)

I was called into a meeting where I sat across from the VP of my department and the guy from human resources. They told me to bugger off, and I stood up and numbly left the room. I went back to my desk to pack up my belongings. It was an open cubicle setting, so it was rather obvious that I was leaving. I held it together reasonably well, until a co-worker helped me take my things out to my car. (Which I appreciated so very much at the time because I wouldn’t have to make a second trip back to my desk. A humiliating second trip.) At that point I burst into tears in front of a woman I barely knew over a job I’d had for a month or two. She, obviously and understandably uncomfortable, wished me luck and hightailed it back into the office.

I always wondered how my firing was handled on the day after. Did they have a staff meeting to explain my absence? Did they send out an email? Did they take advantage of the space that once was my desk and put the photocopier there? Or an espresso machine?

The day after I was fired I had to go back to the office. I had a personal package Fedexed there, and of course it arrived the day after I’d been fired. I couldn’t stand to go back in there one more time, so I waited in the car while Todd went in to get the package for me.

It felt like it took him an awful long time. I sat behind the wheel, the window down because it was a hot summer day. One of my co-workers came out of the building, spotted me sitting in the car and came up to say hi. I didn’t work too closely with him, he was the VP of Business Motivation, or some other bullshit dot com era job title.

He leaned against my car and expressed his condolences to my boobs. I thanked his face for his concern; he told my boobs that they’d be sure to find another job soon. Pretend Me sat up straighter, lifted the front of her tank top and said, “Do you want me to just show them to you so we can settle the mystery?” Real Me warned, “Don’t even think about it, you’re gonna see this jerk again. It’s a small world, and you are looking for a job.”

Real Me won and I kept my shirt on. Real Me seethed about how this man’s 15 year old daughter was a summer intern in the office, yet there he was ogling some 25 year old in the parking lot. Real Me wishes she had the courage to lift her shirt that day and humiliate that guy as badly as he’d done to me.

Can I Take That Back?

Recently I saw an article on cnn.com about workplace embarrassments. Luckily, I haven’t had any major embarrassments at work (or if I did, I've blocked them out). I’ve done stupid things like send the wrong document to the wrong client, and stuff like that. But nothing really humiliating that has made me not want to go into the office again, ever.

But I know someone who did. And it was big. And juicy. When I was in my 20s I worked for a variety of dot.coms in the Boston area. It was an interesting environment to work in. The big thing about the late 90’s workplace was that the management was younger and more laid back. People didn’t dress up for work, yet they worked with a cult-like devotion. At more than one of these places I worked I heard the phrase “We’re onto something big here, I can feel it!” uttered about whatever people-will-never-live-without-it service that the company was touting on their site. Ultimately many of the companies I worked for at the time failed. Despite the fact that they were “onto something big,” they lacked a revenue generating business model.

At the dot.com I worked for when I was 24-25, the management went through a radical change. One CEO was told where to go, and another was brought in. The new CEO brought in a devoted group of his followers, and the company that I had liked working for turned into a club for the new CEO’s cronies. The new VP of Sales was the CEO’s best friend, and actually had performed the wedding ceremony when the CEO married his wife. Yeah, they were tight. Meetings with these people left me feeling like I needed to shower afterward, and the people who were not in “the club” were left uninformed and “out of the loop.” And because of my penchant for not wanting to be “one of them,” I had intentionally stuck myself on the outside of this exclusive club.

One day the CEO and his best friend the VP had interviewed a woman for some bullshit VP position. I cannot remember the exact title, but it was something ridiculous like “VP of Business Motivation.” (These were the dot.com days, remember? Job titles were made up in an effort to make one workplace cooler than any other.) The VP of Sales sent around an email to announce that this woman would start in this new position in the coming weeks, and that we were to all make her feel at home.

The CEO replied to the email, intended for his best friend to read it, but stupidly clicked on the “Reply to All” button.

The first thing to arrive in my email inbox was an Outlook request from the CEO that said he wanted to withdraw his email. I deleted that. Then the actual email from the CEO came through a second later. Naturally, my curiosity got the better of me, and I wanted to know what CEO said that he so desperately wanted to withdraw.

Then I heard it. A gasp from a co-worker on the other side of the cube wall. An “Oh my God!” from another down the row from my desk. A giggle from another cube on the other side of the hall after that. I opened the email, which left me with my mouth hanging open:

“Hey Bob,

What a great ass on her! Imagine getting a piece of that!”

The CEO never left his office for the rest of that day. The VP of Business Motivation started her job a few weeks later, and I wonder if anyone ever said to her “Don’t worry if you make a mistake on the job. Just bend over and shake it, and all will be forgiven.”

Who Are These People?

I’ve always had a bit of a rebellious streak. It used to drive my mom crazy when she’d go to a parent-teacher conference and my teacher would say something about how I deliberately didn’t follow directions. My mom would come home from the conference and ask “Why do you do that? The teacher tells you to do something and you do the exact opposite.” Then of course I wouldn’t answer her question, just to do the exact opposite in that situation too.

Largely I’ve tamed the behavior that used to make my mom crazy. Though there are still times when I’ll do the exact opposite of what was asked, for any number of silly reasons. Over the course of my career I’ve purposely opted out of activities at work just so I didn’t have to be “one of them.” At the gigantic insurance company that once employed me, I routinely tossed out the morale boosting mail out of my mailbox before reading it. When asked to take one of the dozens of required online courses, I didn’t bother to read the course material and instead just jumped to the exam at the end and guessed at the answers until I got them right. At another place of employment I was awarded a red polo shirt with the company logo on it after passing my 90 day probationary period. Never one to wear clothing emblazoned with the logo of my employer (with the exception of my own company), I left the polo in its cellophane wrapper in the bottom drawer of my desk until my last day. I gave it to my office mate before heading to the elevator with my box of stuff.

I view morale building activities with suspicion and disdain. When presented with a dress code, I test the limits of it until my employer gives up on asking me to dress to the code. When given required reading at work, I toss it aside until it ends up, unread, in the trash or in a drawer after a desk cleaning binge.

I was just given a required reading assignment by my employer this week. I bristled as the book was presented to me. I felt a “baaaaah” sound try to escape my lips as I imagined my co-workers in sheep’s wool clutching their copy of the book and quoting it at every possible moment. I set the book aside on my desk, with the intention of never cracking it open. The all familiar and comforting suspicion and disdain came flooding back to me as I consciously set the book aside—in a prominent location to make it look like I was actively reading it, yet not so prominent that it’s not in the way.

Then I picked it up.

Then I opened it.

I thumbed through the pages, resisting the urge to snort and roll my eyes. “Oh great, more touchy-feely business crap…” I thought to myself. Who cares what color my parachute is, or who moved the cheese? Why are people moving cheese instead of just eating it with some crackers, anyway? Then I straightened my shoulders and said “What the hell, Beej. Give it a whirl. You do love reading, after all.”

Over the last few days I read two chapters of this book. Somewhere in chapter two, the author talked about wanting to build a workplace at which people were excited about working for. He wanted to create a workplace at which people would wake up and get excited about going to work. I’ve known dozens of entrepreneurs and managers who said this very same thing.

Are there people out there who actually do this? I thought back to the gigantic insurance company that once employed me. I recalled the bland row after row after row of cubicles, and pictured mine with the pink flamingo lawn ornaments on the top of it—the only flash of individuality and color in the vast expanse of the cube farm. I wondered about this concept when I worked there. Were there people who went to gigantic insurance company truly excited about getting to work? Were there people who worked there who were actually and sincerely excited about insurance?

I like my job right now. My workplace is probably the only place I’ve worked in the last 10 years that I’ve actually liked (other than my own company, of course). The people are nice. The work has purpose—there is more purpose to what I do now than there ever was in marketing widgets, insurance, or developing content on a technology news web site and whatever else I’ve done in the last ten years. Does that mean that my alarm goes off in the morning and I leap out of bed excited about going to work? Hell no. If I hit the lottery the first thing I will do is quit my job and live my life on my own terms. I’ve always viewed my job as a means to support my lifestyle and as nothing more. I do the work, I complete my tasks, and overall I like dealing with my clients and I try like hell to make working with me fun and easy. But at the end of the day, I do this job so I can afford to do other things.

So, who are these people who get excited about waking up and going to work? Are you one of them? I am genuinely interested in what makes you excited about going to work?

Unemployed in Rhode Island? Listen Up

Recently a friend of mine posted a job opening on the local job web sites. The other day he frustratedly showed me the resumes he received in response. Let me just say I am shocked at the lack of effort these job seekers have put into their resumes and cover letters that they sent. The unemployment rate in Rhode Island has reached something like 9-10% , the second highest rate in the US.

Understandably my friend was flooded with resumes. There are more candidates than jobs right now, and the competition for employment is very stiff. This means that job seekers should be playing on their A game right now. Right? Not from what I saw in my friend’s inbox.

When my friend showed me the resumes he’d received, I sat there with my mouth hanging open. I lost count of how many cover letters didn’t even bother to acknowledge my friend in a greeting. There was no “Dear Mr. Smith” or “Dear John,” or even “Dear Hiring Manager” greeting at the top of the email, despite the fact that his name was in the ad in the form of “Send your resume to John Smith.”

I was stunned to see how many cover letter that started with “I seen your ad on thislocaljobsite.com.” I seen your ad. Or worse yet, “I seen your add.” What?

Then there were the blatant misspellings. The “I spetiolize in Microsoft Office…” instead of “I specialize in…” The “I complited my program at the University…” instead of “I completed my program…” Well, if you were so damn good at Microsoft Office, perhaps you would have known that there was a spell check feature in Microsoft Word, right?

In response to an ad for a Computer Technician position, a candidate reported that he can “do computers good.” Well, that’s nice. Let’s try doing English now, shall we?

And what happened to citing the job description in the cover letter? For example, “I see that you are looking for a marketing specialist. I have 5 years experience in marketing and public relations…” No, instead he got a lot of "I seen your ad, here's my resume" emails. Delete! Delete! Delete!

I have had my share of employment dry spells, and in those times I have composed hundreds of cover letters. In my last bout of unemployment I averaged at least 1-2 interviews per week, and I sent out 1-3 cover letters and resumes per day. Each cover letter was written specifically for each job, and I spent hours painstakingly composing, proofing and editing each one. I will now share with you all what I have learned.

1. Use spell check. Then use it again. Then when you’re done with that read your cover letter to yourself out loud to make sure that it makes sense.

2. If you lack confidence in your writing skills, ask a friend or family member to help you proof read your cover letter and resume. What’s more embarrassing? Having to ask for help or sending a cover letter riddled with spelling errors, typos and nonsensical sentences?

3. Learn the name of the hiring manager and use it. For example “Dear Mr. Smith” or “Dear Ms. Jones.” If you are unclear about the spelling of the hiring manager’s name, try looking it up on the company’s web site, or call the company to ask an employee how to spell it. If none of that helps, either address it to “Dear Hiring Manager” or “Dear Sir or Madam.” Also, pay close attention to how they spell their name. I once made a dumb mistake of addressing an email to “Teresa” while the hiring manager’s name was “Theresa.” On the phone she asked me “Would you say you have a good eye for details?” Of course I answered yes, and she said “Then if you are good with details, you probably already know that you spelled my name wrong.” D’oh! Bye bye job interview!

4. The hiring manager wants to know in the cover letter how you will meet their needs. Read the ad. Then take the required skills from the ad that you know how to do and write in your cover letter that you know how to do them. For example, if the ad says that they want someone who knows how to write a press release, and you know how to do that, say so in your cover letter. “In my past position at Such and Such, Inc. I have composed numerous press releases and other marketing materials…”

5. Do not assume the gender of the person you’re sending it too. I once made the dumbass mistake of assuming that Lee Smith was a man, so I addressed it to “Mr. Smith." Wouldn’t you know it? Lee Smith was a woman. And she probably threw my resume straight into the trash. If I couldn’t be bothered to do a little research on Lee Smith, then I probably wouldn’t do a good job, right? I remember at my internship in college my boss, a VP at a public relations firm, was a woman. She routinely received resumes addressed to “Mr. Johnson” even though she was “Ms. Johnson.” She didn’t bother to read those resumes, and they went straight into the trash.

6. Be polite in your cover letter. The words “please” and “thank you” will go a long way. For example “Please feel free to contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss the position and my credentials…” or “Thank you for your consideration, I look forward to hearing from you.” Don’t say “Call me on my cell to schedule an interview…” You’re in no position to command the hiring manager to do anything. You are, however, in the position to ask the hiring manager to call as their busy schedule allows.

7. When attaching your resume, name it something like “Resume of Your Name.” My friend had received attached resumes that were named “Document.rtf” Not only does this file name not label what’s in the document; it makes it look like you are sending the hiring manager a poorly executed email virus. Help the hiring manager keep your resume straight from all the other ones he/she is getting by using your name as the file name. I’ve used my name and the position as the file name “Jane Smith-Marketing Specialist” as well. (This file naming method also adds a level of subliminal advertising. Maybe the hiring manager will get used to seeing my name with the position by seeing written that way.)

8. Keep a log of where you have sent your resume, which employers have called you back, and which ones you’ve visited for interviews. Keep track of dates, the names of the people you’ve spoken to, and what you spoke about. Print out the ads and job descriptions for the positions that you have applied to, and keep them in a folder. When the hiring manager calls you back you will need to have the job description in front of you so you can speak intelligently about the job and why you are qualified for it. In this market you need to sound like you are prepared at all times.

These tips might not land you the job, but I can guarantee that they will help keep your resume out of the trash can. If you can stay out of the trash can you just might get the interview, which is your biggest chance to impress the hiring manager. But first, you have to impress them with your cover letter and resume.