CareerMysteries

I had a really nightmarish supervisor at one of plants, I will call Matilda. Some people were never meant to supervise others. If she didn’t get her way, she would first get mad and yell, then she would try to punish people in her department. At one point, her employee, Sue, refused to participate in a departmental party. Matilda came in to tell me she wanted to give Sue a warning for insubordination, because Sue refused to bring a side dish for their pot luck lunch.

I told her no, this was not appropriate. Then she went to the President of the company to complain that I wouldn’t let her discipline her employee. He told her that he trusted my judgement in these matters and no warnings would be issued, unless she wanted to get one for herself for wasting the President’s time. (Now, he was a great boss).

Let’s talk about bosses for a minute. We all have a few horror stories in our personal vaults. I may have a few more than the next person, having been in charge of human resources for twenty-five years, which includes employee relations, I had to get involved in all kinds of crazy situations and mediations.

Regarding the bosses I have worked for in the past, I have to say that most of them were great folks with good people skills, high integrity and fun to be around, for the most part. Then there were the “turkeys”.

One, I will call him Osbald, was a first rate jerk. When the owners of the company were out of the office on Jewish holidays, he would go around the office, trash talking them and proclaiming loudly,”The killed our Lord.” When the owners returned, he would act sickly sweet to them, kind of like a Jeykll and Hyde act, only with deliberate, malicious intent.

Then there was one - I’ll call him “Sleezeball” - who wanted to touch me. He seemed particularly intent on touching or stroking my hair, and would try to sneak up behind me and grab a handful before I was aware he was there. I backed into him accidentally (of course) and my chair caster ran over his foot. It hurt for days, he said. My response was “S#$t happens.”

Here we go again, another black friday beckons. I think I will get up real early and hightail it down to the Christmas Tree Shop, gather all my made-in-China treasures in a big shopping cart and push and shove my way to the check out counter on the way out.

Are people just more rude in the Christmas Tree Shop or is it me? I walk in with the right attitude. I will be cordial. I will help rickety old ladies to reach their plastic snowmen and real metal icicles. I will not push my way through each meandering, almost random placement of narrow, congested aisles. I will be good.

And then, I get inside. On one visit to the Danbury store, there were two unruly six year old boys jumping in and out of the huge product bins on the floor, as their oblivious mother talked on the cellphone. I made my way as far away from that group as I could, but could still hear the woman screeching, “Marcus, Jared, cut it out now before I slap you silly!” (Paraphrasing here.)

Women were grabbing things and bursting through the aisles, heaving heavy sighs of disgust, just in case someone didn’t notice how perturbed they were by the crowds. Grown men sulking like babies, followed their wives from one sales display to another, muttering to themselves in a catatonic stupor, “It will all be over soon.”

Yep, happy holidays and remember, only 25 shopping days ’til Christmas!

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. This year should be very nice for us as we are traveling up to Saugus, Massachusetts to have the holiday at my brother’s house with his family as well as my Dad.

We will be bringing our favorite dog, Andrew Kingsley, who is looking forward to having a couple of beagles to boss around and bark with for a couple of days. There are no dull moments when you have three dogs in the house and it sounds like a kennel everytime someone comes to the door or walks by. And no scraps will reach the floor with the ever alert Beasley and Penny to snatch them up in mid-air. Beagles are definitely related to the pig family when it comes to eating.

But I will say one thing, on a sad note. Every holiday that I am fortunate enough to celebrate brings back sweet memories of my Mom, who died on January 3, 2005. How she loved to get together with family and friends and enjoy the food and festivities to the fullest.

This year also marks the passing of our beloved black lab Shelby, who would have been thirteen years to the day on Thanksgiving. My Mom loved to sneak food scraps to her when we weren’t looking. She jokingly contended that we didn’t feed her enough.

Have a great holiday of relaxation, enjoyment and giving thanks.

Photo courtesy of mybookofrai.typepad.com

We were talking about ways to banish the winter blues. Getting outside and enjoying the snow or cold sunshine is a great idea, if you can step out during your lunch break or whenever you feel like it, if you work-at-home like me.

Find ways to love yourself. This means you look in the mirror and find at least a couple of things you really like about yourself. Be thankful for your “haves”, and work on the good things about you. If you take pictures, set up a studio for this. If you are real good with crafts, change a room over in your house to make a workshop. I recently started working on crocheting blankets for the disabled veterans and it has really motivated me to complete projects that might otherwise have languished in the “pile of the unfinished”.

Keep your life and time balanced. If you are a hopeless workaholic, just say no. Put an end to dragging your “briefcase full of blues” home at the end of everyday and weekend and spending all your time working. For those with leisure time, balance your work stuff with fun stuff and get outside instead of sitting in front of a computer screen or tv set all day and night.

Winter will be over before you know it. Enjoy the holidays with your family and friends.

Here comes winter to the northeast and we are already besieged by extremely cold temperatures, more typical of January than November. Many people suffer from SAD - Seasonal Affected Disorder, a depression that sets in when you experience less sunlight. There is therapy available for severe cases, but for many of us who have a mild version of this and/or cabin fever in the winter months, we start to feel down in the dumps.

Some tricks I have used to make myself feel better include getting outside in the fresh air and sunshine or snowfall, whichever happens to be occurring. Skip the freezing rain and sleet outings, or you’re liable to feel even worse.

There is nothing more likely to make you feel like a kid again than a rousing snowball fight with the dog or racing down the hill on a toboggan. When you come back inside, have a pot of peppermint tea and a nice fire in the fireplace. Burn some apple or cherry wood which smells delicious when it is burning.

Scents are a marvelous thing. Just as hearing a familiar old song on the radio can elicit emotional responses from you that you had forgotten you could feel, so odors also have a similar effect, by triggering reactions in the brain and activating endorphins.

Whatever you enjoy, find time to do it during the SAD months if you can. More tomorrow.
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We talked last time about the trauma of getting laid off in this very unstable economic climate. Dealing with being let go is a psychological quagmire in that you really need to keep yourself upbeat and motivated and you feel anything but hopeful.

One good way to make things a little easier is to set up a “work” schedule for yourself to keep busy job hunting preferably during the normal business hours when people are more apt to be reachable by telephone.

Setting specific goals for yourself on how many resumes you will send out and how many phone calls you will make is another excellent strategy that will give you a viable goal that you can increase as you become more efficient.

At the end of each week, do something special for yourself. This might be going to a movie or dinner with your partner or inviting friends over. If solitary activities are your favorite thing, do them on the weekends and take a break from the job search.

A friend wrote last time about the importance of applying for unemployment immediately, which is good advice. Be sure to bring the documentation you received from the company when you go including information on vacation pay outs and severance. Keep your head up and remember, you are not alone.

No, not that L-word, I mean layoffs. If you personally are not affected by downsizing and closings, someone in your family or friendship circle will be, statistically speaking. Try not to blame yourself or lose confidence because you get laid off from work. A positive attitude will get you back on track more quickly and with better results.

It’s okay to take a day or two to curl up in a ball and sleep with the shades drawn, feeling sorry for yourself. But within 48 hours, you need to dust yourself off, along with your resume, and get moving on the job hunting trail.

If you can spend close to eight hours a day on job hunting activities, you will be more apt to find a job quickly. Divide your time between the internet, the telephone and actual networking by going to visit employers, job fairs and business events that may help you get an inside track on job openings.

When you have been working hard and getting results in the form of phone calls and interviews, reward yourself for your efforts. Job hunting is not only hard work, it is a ego-bruising process where rejection is the norm. Don’t feel guilty about getting that massage or taking a weekend excursion.

Keep yourself healthy, eat right and excercise while you have some free time to reinforce these good habits. Be assertive about following up on job leads and you will prevail by finding an even better opportunity than the one you left behind.

A hundred years from now, truth be told, the history books will point to corrupt, greedy CEOs AND greedy, corrupt unions for the fall of the mighty three. Demands by the unions for any semblance of job security - which is frankly a nonexistent and ridiculous request for something that has not been realized in the capitalist society - ever, have finally driven (sorry for that pun) the stake into heart of Detroit

So now they sing the Motor City Blues in an off-key cacophony. The saddest thing is, millions of people will be personally affected by this downfall. Almost all manufacturing companies make something that has some relationship to the auto industry. When Detroit goes down, it will take big chunks of the eastern seaboard with it, as well as bits of the south and pieces of the west.

All that being said, I feel for the families. I feel for the laid off workers who will be out there looking for jobs that no longer exist. There is nothing quite so glum as facing the holidays broke and jobless, with no prospects.

Watching CNN the other day, they talked about how people in the Detroit area are abandoning dead bodies at the morgue and the funeral homes because they can’t afford to bury their dead. And this is all before the collapse has even occurred. I pray for those people. They need all the help they can get.

Today was one of those hectic run around and do this and that days. In the process of doing things, I had to have eye exam because I have a rare disease of the choroid of the eye that runs in the family. Both my mother and her sister were/are legally blind from this since they were teenagers, so it is serious stuff.

I am a very visual person and a visual thinker. Other than losing my mental faculties, losing the gift of sight would be one of my greatest fears for what remains of my lifespan. So on this day, I really don’t mind the drops and injections of dye or the discomfort of dialated pupils for a few hours, since it gives me a little piece of mind.

I do have another problem in one eye, as it turns out but we are considering the options of another surgery or medications. It does look like we caught it early, so that is something to be thankful for at this Thanksgiving time of year.

I am thankful for a lot of things: my family, my friends, my loving puppy and the four walls I call home. I am also very thankful for the fact that though I am disabled from work, I can afford to have a nice holiday with my family and maintain a comfortable living.

And I am thankful for the health that I do enjoy, even though I have my problems. I know that many people would give anything to have the love that surrounds me in my life.