The Princess Bride goes out into the working world

The question of the day on everyone’s lips seems to be – do you have a plan from where you go here?

The answer is an unequivocal, not sure.

I do know the role I want to play in a company –strategic marketing & business development. But what industry do I go to work for as I have made a decision that it’s time to move on from this one. I have not strayed from this industry for years and have really started to realize that the working world around me is a much bigger place than the small place I have been living in. From What Color Is My Parachute I was reminded that you can have a fulfilling job doing what you love in a variety of industries some of which are likely doing better than the one I’ve been in. When it comes to my next job and my next company and industry…I do have one key criteria that I am digging in my heels for –I want to be on a winning team.

I want to be a Yankee, a Jayhawk, a Wildcat, a member of a team that is known for being a powerhouse and that greets each year with enthusiasm for “where are we taking this from here!” Not every new year is greeted an Eeyore-like delivery of “how bad do you think things will get this year” punctuated with a biblical retelling of the challenges we face and the requisite how lucky we are to have jobs since people in our industry are losing jobs left and right. Ha!…well now they won’t say that to me anymore (Good! I always hated those emails).

I had thought the world was like this everywhere. I did because you immerse yourself in something and you work as hard as you can and love it and forget that there are other things, other companies, other challenges to meet and problems to solve and relationships to forge. It’s hard to keep perspective when you are trying to stay relevant to your company and as soon as you are cut loose, the working world shows a lot of possibility.

I can work hard doing this somewhere else and maybe find the rumored to exist 401K matching, educational credits, raises…and not be made to feel like Wesley from “The Princess Bride” whose captor The Dread Pirate Roberts would end each day with a “Great job today Wesley but I’ll most likely kill you in the morning”.

Sometimes you just gotta get it out in the open

I went to the dermatologist today because I have this weird spot on my shin that hasn’t gone away for like six weeks. When I say spot I mean it’s an actual red and pink spot that just showed up there one day and because I ignored it for a long while it got bigger and just finally demanded I go see a doctor. My doctor’s initial response was “eeww gross” and then she prescribed this cream for it. (Oh and I’ll also mention this is the same doctor who when I asked her about better ways to lose weight grabbed her prescription pad and wrote me a prescription for “more exercise, less food”—funny woman, not so helpful.)

Anyway so the dermatologist was completely unfazed and decided that the spot was going to take a few months to get better because the spot should be getting better but that it was “irritated”. Irritated? Worse yet, I’d been covering the spot everyday with Band-aids and they were actually making it worse. Trying to cover it up so no one would see it by applying and ripping off a Band-aid daily is apparently not that good for you. Some things you just have to expose gross things to the world and let them heal on their own.

I kind of feel that way about this place. Every day I come in here and have been working even harder than I usually do before I go on vacation to get things buttoned up, locked down, filed away, etc. I have worked diligently at maintaining a positive attitude which actually isn’t usually that hard for me and if I am annoyed or mad, I can usually thinly veil sarcasm to sound genuine which makes me feel better in a passive aggressive kind of way. I have permanently altered my vision for the worse creating a four page, 300 line, 30 column spreadsheet for our yearly audit. I have forced my team to put together training manuals and spreadsheets of their own projects and contacts so that whomever takes over our projects has some direction. We are consolidating all of our information into one computer folder and one three drawer filing cabinet and honestly it doesn’t seem like anyone really cares. So everyday we muster up our enthusiasm for this and everyday we rip the Band-aid off again when we realize that likely all of our work isn’t going to matter because there just won’t be the bandwidth here to give attention to our projects once we’re gone anyway. We’re lame ducks and everyone knows it. But until we’re all actually gone, nothing is going to change.

I’m here at least another week and a half. And while as much as I love indulging my analogies, the truth is I dig getting the chance to earn a bit more money, accrue a few hours more vacation and even if no one will look at all we’ve done—I love this place and what I’ve done here and really although it’s making me more bitter than I’d like, I want to make sure everything I can do is done. Besides I’m finding some of this anger to be good material.

It's not always easy to see the path you are on.

My younger brother called me yesterday to wish me a “Happy Secretary’s Day”. I was sort of taken by surprise and said “Why would you say that to me?”. His response was “Because you used to work as a receptionist and secretary at that job you had.”. I had that job ten years ago and try not to think of it very often. But his comment got me thinking about how I got here and where I’m going next.

At my first job, I had a wretched boss who was the non-profit, dumpy version of Meryl Streep’s character in “The Devil Wears Prada” who actually said things out loud like “I make $30,000 a year so you need to be doing what I say”. I had just graduated college and thought well, this must be what first jobs are like. To definitively answer that question first jobs are not all like that and not all bosses treat their employees like pledges during hell week. I hated that job. I hated being where there was no opportunity. I pretended I was doing ok but everything in my being just told me I was not happy. I was so jealous of everyone I knew not living in that town and working in jobs they felt trapped in. It wasn’t the thirty pounds I gained. It wasn’t the crying on the way home from work most days that got me. It was on Secretary’s Day that a group of lovely and very well meaning people gave me a big present and said they were so glad I had found what I was good at so early in life so now I had a path. I quit the next day. Since then I've been to Boston and worked with international volunteers to renovate low income housing, sold $10,000 stereo systems, created marketing plans, delivered newspapers (well once but it was cool) and quite a bit more.

I think I know why they call it a career path, versus a career street. The word path inspires thoughts of windy, wooded, meandering slow-moving adventures. Take a look at your career and I'll guarantee that you also see why the path thing makes a lot of sense. My next step is likely around the tree and over the bump in the road that I can’t see past just yet.

I’m planning on enjoying finding out my next step. I’ve got spring weather coming (sometime soon I hope) and would like to spend a bit of time having some fun. I also want to spend some time sharing more of myself with my family (yeah nieces and nephews), my friends, and also hopefully doing some good. I am also going to be working with my Mom to advance the cause of a new program she is working on.

Here are the details:

SIGN: has the mission of creating equality of fracture care
worldwide. Fracture care and the need for it extends throughout the developing
world. Traffic accidents, working conditions, war and natural disasters can all
contribute to catastrophic injury and this program trains doctors to be able to
provide real care to patients helping them recover and be able to return to an
active life. If you are one of the billion people
living on
less than $1 a day in the developing world, that fracture is
likely to have a devastating effect on your life. Because you will not be
able to afford proper fracture treatment, you'll be left permanently
disabled or bed-ridden for life, no longer be able to work.

We will be working together to explore options for reaching out to
the media and potential corporate sponsors to increase awareness and hopefully funding.

I think the path from here will actually be a great one.

A friend in need...

One of my very best friends called me today to give me a (deserved) hard time about the fact that she had to hear about me losing my job from my blog (I had sent her the link in an email with the subject line “What’s new with me?”. Why is it so hard sometimes to talk about what is going on with some of the people who are closest to us…what are we afraid of?

The day I got the news I felt very uncomfortable calling some of the people closest to me. It never occurred to me not to call them right away but I felt almost guilty telling them. I know this has absolutely nothing to do with me, and as my Dad was quick to point out “welcome to the 80,000 that have been laid off…” but that didn’t help me feel that the shiny independence I had so loved proving to everyone I had earned was in some way tarnished. I have spent so much of my adult life working so hard pretending that I actually am the wizard that I hated to give up another piece of me that hinted at the tiny person behind the curtain. (That’s a Wizard of Oz reference in case your favorite roommate wasn’t from Kansas and didn’t make you watch it at least a few times a year while you lived with her).

Getting yourself laid off is just like any other situation in which you find yourself knocked down. You’ll get up but these are the times when it’s a lot easier when people help. And they want to…it’s an amazing thing – friends and loved ones actually like being there for you. There are a lot of people who surprise you with a thoughtful word, an unexpected email—even the work colleague who wanders into your office and just hangs out there silently, mumbles a “that sucks, I’m going to miss you” and wanders back out. It’s really when you’re down that you can be completely overwhelmed with people just caring about you. I have always loved birthdays because people treat you on your birthday like they should treat you all the time but don’t have time for. I imagine funerals to be where they say all of the wonderful things about you they never got the chance to say to you when you were alive. I have found myself in a situation that is a bit of both of these things – I had no idea how much love there is around me. I wish I hadn’t been afraid to share my news with even more people because in as often as I like to pretend everything is perfect…I have found out that when you open yourself up, that everything actually seems a bit shinier and better than it had been all along.

Maybe I’ll end up just a bit better for going through this after all…and prove those best friends right.

Fortunately there is a Match.com for job seekers.

I’ve always maintained that for most of us, our relationship with our job is similar to a romantic relationship.


First there’s the resume. It’s like your best going out with your friends outfit – you highlight your best features to help you stand out from the crowd. Then there’s the interview. You wear your best first date for a job outfit, you’re on your best behavior , you and the interviewer are trying each other on to see if there’s potential.

And then you get the job. The first three months are so new and everything is exciting. Then, if all continues to go well, you fall into comfortable routine and on your anniversary you usually receive a present (a raise, an evaluation, more vacation)—see how this works?

I've never been great about looking for a job while I have one. It always feels like cheating to me. You have to lie to someone about where you are going and you feel guilty when you get back. It’s too much and really when you are ready to leave your current job for the next you have to break up – It’s not you it’s me. It’s me having found something better with more long term potential; something that better reflects who I want to be in the future.

What if they dump you though?

Here we were going along and then they dump you. And “it’s not you it’s them” –their financial status, their restructuring whatever it is hardly makes you feel any better. You're suddenly adrift.

I’m finally starting to look for another job and I actually was sitting here thinking “but I liked that job. I thought we had a future”…and the truth is, over the past week I’ve started to see where the cracks were forming for quite some time. Their subtle comments about maybe we don’t have a long term future with our current direction. My own straying eyes and seeing what else is out there. My illicit meeting with that other job recruiter. I was so blind.

I’m back out on the market. Getting my resume pressed and ready, getting into interviewing shape. Because the reality is, like it or not, when you’ve been dumped, the best thing to do financially and personally is just get back out there.

My not so ambitious legacies

So today I figured that someone will be having my emails and phone calls forwarded to them once I'm gone. So I've spent some time subscribing to email groups and alerts today that I hope that person enjoys...

That and signing up for a few timeshare groups to my direct phone line should just about do it.

Two weeks and counting...

Today is officially my two week mark – in my head I’m realizing it’s two weeks + 1 day until I don’t come here anymore.

What to do until then? I think I’ve addressed the fact that I have a lot of work to do:
- Get my team to write procedure manuals for the work that they are doing that is now going to be done by someone else. That must suck to do but they’re troopers and are powering through it.
- Let my vendors know they are NOT going to make money this summer at least from me and cancel thousands of dollars worth of income for them.
- Update my resume
- Yuck
- Bleagh!

It’s not all awful though. I’m sure there will be lots of parties. I have said that I did NOT want a pot luck. I hated them while I’ve worked here and hell if I’m going out on a pot luck day. My old work had a pot luck for me the day I left there—three different crock pots full of assorted ethnic meatballs, one dubious egg bake that had spent the morning in someone’s car and I believe one plate of banana flavored brownies. Oh and a basket of scented soaps as a going away present. In case anyone is wondering, I’m always happier with a well-timed happy hour.

The next two weeks should be about having at least some fun. This morning I went to a meeting that I’m not longer really invited to. It’s a marketing meeting where since I don’t have a job anymore here and my team is gone I don’t really have anything to contribute but I went anyway. Actually I had to climb four flights of stairs because the elevator was out and I am in really high heels but it was on my calendar so I can’t cross that out and not go. Plus, if I can’t contribute, I’ll at least make people uncomfortable. I got to make some jokes and doodled a cute dog on my agenda and planned out my outfit for tonight so all in all a solid use of time.
I think the rest of the day I am going to go into my Outlook and find all of my recurring meetings and cancel each individual meeting one at a time. That way when my friends and former colleagues miss me they can delete my cancellations one at a time. It’ll be like I’m at their desks bothering them for hours.

I’m also going to go into the lunch room and leave dishes in the sink. I want to make sure that whoever makes the posters that say “It’s all of our lunch room, remember to put away your dishes” and the very strongly worded “If you don’t clean your dishes, they will be thrown away” will have something to make new signs about.

That should roll me through 4:30 and then I’ve got a going away happy hour to make it to anyway.

Time flows differently when you know something is ending

I wonder how common it is for companies to give people notice and then have them work through a certain date versus those people who are laid off and are met at their desks by security and a box for their stuff and that's it? Is knowing the end is near better than just having the end hit you in the face? Are the people here for the short term bad for everyone else?

I don't really know. I once gave an employer my two weeks notice and was shown the door that day which left me feeling like I had left so much undone and me feeling in a bit of a freefall because they changed the rules and they said it was because it would be too hard for them to have me be there.

I also don't know if I really get that it's all ending. I mean I know I do, I have been talking about it for over a week but I keep slogging away at my work and chatting with my friends and coworkers and maybe I'm in denial. I've been told I'm taking it well which makes me wonder if I should be more upset or more mopey or more something? I'm just doing my thing. I mean T-day happened and it's T+9 (if you count weekends) and that's not going to change so don't you just move forward?

Guess we'll wait and see...

I have thought of my next job...

Getting ready for work today I was slowly overwhelmed by a sense of malaise about the whole thing and after watching the same weather report four times (who was I kidding--I was really watching The Golden Girls and it was the one where Stan and Dorothy inherited an apartment building and hijinks ensued)...I realized I was going to be late. I actually had a lot to do this morning --today I was going to go over my group's project load and starting the plan for what will happen to our stuff after the people that do it are gone. Seeing all of my team's projects laid out alphabetically on a spreadsheet and color-coded made me sad. The final result of the transition is to have my team put everything from the last few years filed into one three drawer filing cabinet so that in the future if anyone needs the info they'll be able to go find it. They can go kick rocks

So really though, everyone has been asking me if I'm looking already for another job. I did think of the job I want. There are at least several openings a week. No benefits but a GREAT hiring bonus and it's really about what you do with the opportunity. It's totally the best position for a self-starter, energetic, team player (well not so much) -- I want to be lottery winner. How awesome would that be!

I should approach this scientifically, like a job search. When I Google “How to win the lottery”, I get 747,000 results. If there are that many, it must be legit! However if you Google “How to get a good job” you get 15,500,000 results—two to one but I’ll be SOME of those have “lottery winner” in them somewhere. Plus according to Wikipedia there are over 79 state lotteries each week. That means there are AT LEAST 79 new winners a week. That is more than new marketing managers hired last week in Seattle…the chances sound OK. Not great but you can’t win if you don’t play.

There are always the naysayers and I already hear them…To address the boo crowd out there, here are the bad facts about the lottery and my chances of winning.

CBSNews.com Excerpt

The outcome of the purchase of a Lotto ticket is based on objective probabilities, but people still play. What are the odds?

• If one person purchases 50 Lotto tickets each week, they will win the jackpot about once every 5,000 years.
• If a car gets 25 miles per gallon, and a gallon of gas is bought for every Lotto ticket bought, there will be enough gas for about 750 round trips to the moon before the jackpot is won.
• It is three times more likely for a person driving ten miles to buy a Lotto ticket to be killed in a car accident than to win the jackpot.
  You have better chance for the following events to happen long before you ever win the lottery:
  
• Dealt a royal flush on the opening hand in a poker game (1 in 649,739).
• Killed by terrorists while traveling abroad (1 in 650,000).
• Die from flesh-eating bacteria (1 in 1 million).
  

OK but if it’s all the same to CBSNews.com, I’d rather win the Lotto. And since I don’t play poker, and won’t be traveling abroad because I don’t have a job neither of those things matter anyway. The flesh-eating bacteria thing…I’m just gonna ignore that one.

And before you say it’s a waste of money, blah blah blah. It’s a dollar AND I don’t drink coffee, or smoke, so I can invest a dollar in my new chosen career. I'll need to keep receipts though because I heard that expenses related to your job search are tax deductible.

I don't wanna go to work!

So it's Wednesday morning and I have to go back to work today. The same work that told me on Monday that they were shutting down my department and that I was really valued but there wasn't a place for me at this time in the company. The same place where everyone found out, after I left, that I had been let go. OK to have some perspective I wasn't the only person but this is my blog so I don't have to talk about everyone else.

Anyway so I need to go in and it's 8 am and I'm still sitting at home. I'm really nervous to go in. I don't want to see anyone but at the same time I want them all to see me--like when you know you're going to run into an ex or something. I want to make sure I look like I'm one hundred percent together. I'm wearing one of my most put-together outfits and my hair looks really good and I look really professional and at the same time really cute. I may not have a job in a month but I'll look good today damnit! Now if I could just get off the couch and get the nerve to go there.

The good news is at two I get to go to a meeting about "where do we go from here--moving forward with all of the changes". My contribution will be "well I'll be at unemployment". I won't say that though--working on keeping it together.

T + 1 - That's what I'm calling today

I woke up this morning happy for a bit...I slept like a rock. Oh except for I had this dream where all my hair broke off and I was worried no one would recognize me. I figured it had something to do with losing my job. I also woke up super early and laid there unable to sleep so I watched the news to see if my company's layoffs made the news - they did. I feel badly about everyone affected.

So I walked around my house for a few minutes and got really really mad. I know everyone keeps telling me anger is a normal feeling and I get that it's ok to be mad but I don't feel it's good for me to be mad because it won't get me anywhere. Oh and I know about the five stages of irritating stuff and just want to be over it.

I decided to call today T+1 (termination plus one). It sounds really proactive doesn't it? Like here's where I go from here. I feel kind of excited because maybe I am at the forefront of great things for a while. Then I watch reruns of The Nanny, Golden Girls and it's the one where Rose loses her pension, Frasier and of course it's the one where Frasier loses his job -- I set Tivo to record "Days of Our Lives" and go out to lunch.

I'm mad though about this job thing. I wanted to figure out what really is bugging me and of course it's in no particular order -

• I'm dissappointed
• I am mad at everyone
• I like them all which is why I'm mad because I feel like I hate them
• I'm worried about what I'm going to do next
• I'm worried I won't do anything next
• I have no idea what the next month is going to be like going to work with people who weren't laid off and managing a team that was...

I decided not to go to work today...what is the worst that can happen? Oh yeah, we got our tax bill yesterday. Why does stuff happen all in one day. That's another story

So what am I going to do today...be mad, and clean my house. I can be a homemaker and have a clean house. But my place is only about 550 square feet so cleaning it doesn't take that long. I don't want to start looking for a new job yet. I'm not over being pissed about losing this one.

I was driving home from lunch I had to drive by my work. It was so that same feeling like when you get dumped and you drive by your ex-boyfriends house late at night to see if he's home. i was like "oh I hope they don't see me" and then I thought well I do still work there for a while anyway.

Everyone is being really nice to me and I've been able to have great talks with everyone in my family and a few of my close friends. I haven't told anyone else though. The sad looks from my friends at work who are staying are going to be hard enough.

I Got Laid Off this morning...

OK it's Monday and I just got laid off. Who gets laid off on a Monday. Doesn't this usually happen on a Friday? Security meets you at your desk with a box of your stuff? Not in my case.

I just got laid off...just today. This morning I checked my email when I first got up, which I normally do and there was an invitation from the VP of my department requesting all managers attend to discuss immediate changes. You know, these things come up and I had a very vaguely uneasy feeling but figured it was unfounded.

When I got to work, my friend at work and I exchanged the following emails…Weird huh?
me: Hey there!Just a note to start you off on a new week that I am sure will be much much happier and more fun than last week :)

my friend: ummmm, you got the same ominous msg I did about the 11am mtg, right? I am hopeful...we shall see.

me: Yeah I did and frankly I'm a little concerned but am trying to focus my energies on other things until then.

my friend: you're good like that. I would think if it impacted any of us directly, we'd have been taken aside PRIOR to the meeting…I mean they wouldn’t get rid of a whole department without anyone knowing

me: I was thinking that too but can't help but shake the weird feeling. I guess we'll know soon enough.

OK so right as I wrote that last part my boss came into my office and asked me to come talk to she and her boss for a few. I didn't really know right at first but felt really stupid carrying my little notebook and pen that I carry to meetings when they told me "We're letting your whole team go". I was looking at them and listening to them explain to me why this was happening and the state of our industry and I’m thinking I know you’re saying words but I’m fired? OK so this is Monday morning and I’m fired on a Monday morning? And my last day will be in a month on Cinco de Mayo?

So they sent me home for the day and I called my husband and I called my Dad both of whom I totally felt like I was letting down giving them this news. It was so dumb to feel like that but that’s what my first thought was. My husband immediately was telling me jokes and cheering me up. My Dad was totally the same way. I then called my sister and my brother and friend after friend and just sort of told them what was up.

I had a range of emotions this afternoon though. I was euphoric and upset and really just stunned. I went out for a few drinks and to watch some basketball and watch KU win. Oh the highlight of my day…I won my bracket. Go me.

Am exhausted though and need to go to sleep. Don’t want to hear anymore how this really is going to be a blessing/it was time/etc. Probably true but damnit. I loved my job and I had just gotten promoted to manager. Now as the manager, me and my team are outta here.