Words, words...words?!

Whether we are aware of it or not, the words we use and words received shapes reality. Right now, reading this blog is in some way influencing your reality. Conversely, leaving me a comment or sending me a message influences mine.

Giving something a name makes you powerful. It can give you power over others. People figured out a long time ago by giving things names you are able to control the message. The most obvious examples today can be seen in our political discourse and mass media. Activist judge.  Pink Slime.  Terrorist. Superstorm. iPhone killer. War on poverty. War on drugs. War on terror. War on kids. Each of these is designed to evoke emotions. Shortly after Hurricane Sandy, some media outlets started naming winter storms in the same way the National Weather Service names hurricanes. Why? To scare you. And for ratings, of course. This is what I have started calling reality re-engineering. See what I did there? By naming the thing I just took back from big media any power they may have had over me.

Reality re-engineering takes place in the corporate world as well. A few years ago some companies got mileage out of using the term 'rightsizing'. Moving work elsewhere as a cost-cutting measure became known as off-shoring. When a company and a union are unable to reach an agreement at the bargaining table, it's not a strike, it's a work stoppage. And my favorite: the 'ol reduction in force, or RIF for short.

RIF'd

A little autobiography.  I worked for a Fortune 100 company for over 11 years until this past July, when I was laid off. In short, I was outsourced. The organization I was part of was systematically being downsized, as work was being transitioned to overseas vendors at a dizzying pace. It was pretty clear that the ax would eventually fall my way, and during my last year with the company I sought to find another position internally but ran out of time. To be honest I was not looking aggressively at that point because while I was pretty sure I didn't want to work for this company anymore, I was conflicted. At the time I was thinking where else could I go starting off with a comparable salary, full benefits, and 4 weeks of vacation?

June 11:  my first day back into the office following an amazing two-week vacation in Europe. I had just logged in to my PC when one of my colleagues came over to my desk to let me know she had been laid off. As we were talking I noticed out of the corner of my eye an IM window pop up on my screen. It was my manager. She asked if we could meet in one of the conference rooms ASAP. I still remember an extreme tightening, an involuntary constriction in my lower back, which for a second had me paralyzed. Of course I knew immediately what the meeting was about, and once I regained composure, I began my via dolorosa to the conference room. I've never managed people, but I would imagine laying people off is among the most loathsome of managerial responsibilities.

“So basically what you’re telling me is I could have stayed in Europe longer?” I went with humor, and I think that made the ordeal better for both of us.

If you’ve been through this sort of thing, even if you expect it, it's still a kick to the gut. You feel like all your knowledge, loyalty, dedication—it means nothing. There is anger. But then you might realize the mistake in trying to relate to a corporation on a human level. After a while, you learn you can't take it personally. Corporations are not human (despite what a half-robot/half-man tells you). They are run by and employ humans but in the end everyone, including the CEO, is expendable. Corporations are systems—driven by numbers, not emotions. If you work for a company and feel like they don't care about your well-being, you're right.

What they will do, however, is appeal to their employees' emotions and values when it suits their purpose. My former company, for instance, required that we read and sign a so-called Credo: a statement of beliefs regarding our commitment to our customers and to our work. From the Latin, meaning “I believe”, Wikipedia refers to credo as a statement of religious belief, tracing its origins as far back as the Nicene Creed. Creeds often were employed by the church to settle controversy, usually of a doctrinal nature. To believe differently from the church was to be out of step with the Christian religion; in other words, believe what we tell you or you are a heretic. And we all know what happened to heretics.

Obviously, corporations have no religion (unless you work for Focus on the Family), but in the case of my former company, the implication of control seemed pretty clear—at least on a subconscious level. Beliefs are personal, and tricky in the workplace. It's considered taboo or at least unprofessional to discuss religious or political beliefs in the office. Yet the brand wizards (likely a consulting company the task was outsourced to) came up with a simple yet almost cult-like campaign to keep employees in line. Reality was bent to introduce corporate beliefs.  Read and sign The Credo. If you disagree you do not belong here. On our annual evaluation, an employee’s manager had to acknowledge whether or not the employee was adhering to The Credo. Often in departmental communications, executives would enforce the message by starting emails with, “As our Credo says...”.  Posters appeared in offices all around the world in company colors, with the statement printed in big bold letters.

Name a thing, and suddenly you have power. Repeat it incessantly and you can manipulate the masses. Propaganda.  Reality re-engineering. 

A Milestone

Even before I was separated from my former company, I started to apply for jobs. At first I was picky, then after the layoff I started to take things more seriously. A couple of months into unemployment I started to take things really seriously. There is nothing more demoralizing than conducting a job search. The amount of time and energy spent researching, filling out lengthy applications, tailoring/tweaking/revising the resume, striking the right tone in a cover letter, projecting confidence in a phone screening—there is very little return. If you happen to be in my situation you know what I'm talking about.  If it helps you, permit me to humbly share some pearls of wisdom:

·       Don't check the job boards every day. You'll make yourself crazy.

·       If applying via the web, know that a software program will likely read your resume first, and a human may or may not get it forwarded to them. Fill your resume with keywords, buzzwords, etc. for maximum results.

·       If submitting your resume to a company website, be sure to go back to the site every 3-4 weeks and refresh your resume. In doing so, you keep it toward the top of the virtual pile.

·       Recruiters are whores.

To keep sane and to give myself a mild sense of accomplishment, I keep things extremely organized. I use spreadsheets that easily help me track what is going on—taking a project management approach to the whole process, you could say. Given that I'm documenting each position I apply for, I know exactly how many applications I have put out there.

Two days ago I hit 100.

I guess it could be some sort of milestone, except that a milestone implies progress, or at least direction. In the project management world, a milestone is put in place before the end of a phase in a project so that it can be evaluated for any corrective action before the phase is closed. Projects are comprised of phases. Projects are temporary, with a beginning and end. So what is the significance? Am I halfway to something? I mean, it's just a number—a nice round number. Checking my spreadsheets over the past couple of weeks made me feel like I should somehow commemorate the occasion (because I have a penchant for attaching significance to the insignificant). What exactly would I be 'celebrating'? Bragging rights? 100 failures?

Around the same time I was considering blogging again—something I haven't done in nearly a decade. For me, the desire to express myself is like a disease you can never truly get rid of.  It flares up from time to time and can get pretty intense, and then it lies dormant for a while.  But it is always there.  What became clear is through this period I realized I had something to say and, now, the desire to say it.  To me this is about using what I interpret as failures and remixing them into something useful.  It’s the feeling of playing round after round a game I’m not good at and trying to win.  It’s dealing with the feeling of being beat down day after day. The myth of Sisyphus comes to mind. Trapped in an endless loop, you might ask yourself why he just doesn’t lay down.  I’ll tell you why.  It is when he walks back down that hill he is looking up at the heavens and saying fuck you to the gods.  He is saying to them, you put me in this situation, but you will not break me.  Never.

Clearly I’m not dealing with life and death matters here, and certainly I don’t plan on being in this so-called work transition period forever, but it is with a similar spirit I approach this space.  It is taking months of seemingly getting nowhere in this grind of a job search and choosing to defiantly press on.  And while I’m at it, I will create this place:  a repository for impressions, rants, rage, victories and ephiphanies.  Not only that, I will take what I have interpreted in my mind as an ominous 0-100 record and re-engineer its meaning.  And now we have a title.  Powerful, yes? 

I’m not suggesting that this blog serve as a chronicle of a job search; that would be boring.  Making this blog only about me—also boring.  I wrote a lot of stare-at-the-navel, nobody-understands-me musings when I was in my 20s, and the worst of it is out of my system.  What I am most interested in, dear reader, dear human—is us.  This first post is just a jumping off point. I’m just someone who got pissed off and started a blog.  This is a doorway, and now that I’m awake my intent is to simply distill pieces of human experience and put it here.

Word(s).