Do you have online friends that you've never met face to face? I do and Anters is one of them. My life is richer due to my friends in cyberspace. I'm pleased to be able to share with you a piece he wrote recently about suffering through a job reorganization at work.
I wear shoes sized 8, on a good day, that is to say when I’m feeling light. Why is this important? I’ll get to it, if you’ll bear with me.After what I’d considered a successful three months, my department got “re-orged”. That’s corporate-speak for “you’re not needed anymore”. For non-execs, we think it means “we, the execs, screwed up, but you, the peons are screwed.” Taking it one step further, that means we needed to find another job.
I thought it was stressful to place all my employees, and it was. Basically, nobody wanted to leave the group and they wanted a desirable job, boss, department, … you name it. We had also developed good relationships, professionally as well as personally, and dang it, we also did some good things.Anyway, I’m starting to vent prematurely and off on a tangent. So, everyone managed to land on their feet and now it was my turn. I was feeling pretty confident I’d be okay as well. My confidence was buoyed by colleagues and subordinates telling me that I would find something quickly. (It turns out that this is part of the encouragement ritual that we all had with each other. Since I did it to others, for the life of me, I don’t know why it didn’t dawn on me that the same would be done to me.)
Well, as I assessed my “skills”, I had to honestly categorize myself as a jack-of-all-trades and that really meant master-of-none. Let me tell you, if anyone ever bestows this title on you, run, duck, hide, pull out the old “I’m rubber and you’re glue, …” etc. Do whatever you need to do, but do not, I repeat, DO NOT accept this supposed accolade.
Can you tell me why? No? Well, I can. While there are job postings for analysts – financial, business, process; techies, controllers, … there is no job description for a “jack-of-all-trades” in a corporate environment. So, contacts were called upon, but connections couldn’t be made.
Vacations!
Let me tell you, vacations are overrated! Have you ever gone on vacation and felt rested? I mean to go on a real vacation, not visiting your family for the umpteenth time where you won’t need to get up early, sightsee or ski all day, stay out late, and repeat the process again day after day until it’s time to go home.
Oops, off on a tangent again. So week after week of vacations perpetuated my joblessness and now depression and anxiety hit me like last year’s winter. Aah, I can go off on another tangent here, but I’ll spare you and more importantly, me the details. Let’s just say it was long and cold. But really, would anyone complain if winters were short and warm?
Finally, kids are back in school. I get to sit behind school buses, still, it’s not a bad price to pay because at least now everyone will be back at work. Life is good, or make that life has a chance to be good again.
A phone call here. Voicemail. A phone call there. Voicemail. Doesn’t anyone return phone calls anymore? With my anxiety starting to peak, I decided to try email, WITH RETURN RECEIPT. Hey, at least I haven’t resorted to drugs yet.
Oh hey, somebody read my email! Excitement quickly soured as it dawned on me that the person was at his desk, but he chose to NOT answer my phone call. Caller ID. Gosh darn that caller ID.
If one person doesn’t return your call for a couple days, you rationalize. When more than three people don’t return your calls, you start to wonder if they were the target of your recent road rage. Just kidding on the road rage, I don’t own a gun, yet. Yeah, yeah, you say “just call them again”. See, this is where I curse caller ID because they’re obviously there, since they read my emails, and if I call again, they’ll know it’s me.
It’s not that I wasn’t desperate. I was. But one thing you don’t want to do is to pester senior management and execs. They may be so peeved that you won’t even get a chance to talk to them.
This is not a rant with an unhappy ending. They did return my calls eventually and I did land on my feet, although I’m not sure what apparel I’ll need more for my new position, - a life jacket or running shoes, for I’ll have to ramp up quickly.
So I wear size 8 shoes. I make sure I remember this so that I’ll return phone calls promptly when some bloke is calling for a lead for a job (even if it’s to say that I’ll get back to him tomorrow or the day after). Folks, when you’re at work, and you see an extension and person’s name, rest assured, it’s not a telemarketer.
Anters
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