Slob's Sole

Aside from the obvious lack of income (and the cessation of all activities that require money), the only downside I’ve found to being unemployed is foot pain. A couple of weeks ago, I started feeling like I had bruises on both feet where the arch and ball meet. It was painful to walk sometimes and there were little nodules that hurt if I hit them against something.

I told my husband about it and he reminded me that he had the same problem when he first began working at home. Other than on business trips and when he went running, he rarely wore shoes. I realized I had worn nothing but flip flops and/or gone barefoot for the past two months, with only a few exceptions. Apparently, like “tennis elbow” and “roofer’s knee”, there is a medical condition that I must dub “slob’s sole”. I have broken out the Crocs while inside the house and yes, friends, tennis shoes (gasp!) when outside for the last few days and it has seemed to help the problem.

Painful feet aside, not dining out, getting dollar cones and sundaes in the McDonald’s drive-thru instead of the local ice cream shop, and holding off on purchasing household items is a small sacrifice for waking up happy every day. I still get up at 6:15 every morning to get the kids out the door, but I don’t hit the snooze button three times then mope around with my coffee under a low-hanging cloud of dread. I don’t go to bed with a little ball of misery in my stomach. My husband doesn’t find me muttering to myself and scowling into space anymore. I miss our cleaning lady A LOT, but I don’t miss my job at all.

Will the satisfaction of fixing the message center/pen holder in our kitchen, replacing all the burnt-out light bulbs, purging girls’ socks that don’t fit anymore, and cooking from actual recipes wear off eventually? Maybe, but there is a huge stack of books waiting to be read and several hundred other projects – writing, drawing, photo organizing, painting, yard-taming -- I’ve wanted to tackle since before I had kids waiting impatiently for me.

I do miss my wonderful friends at work. On the other hand, I actually have more time to communicate with them now, and I’m slowly reintroducing myself to non-work friends I haven’t spoken with or seen in ages.

I am grateful that despite our family’s budget cutbacks and changes, we are OK. I lost my job and I am angry about how it happened, but we are fortunate compared to many, many families in Michigan right now. The recession hit here years before it hit the rest of the country, and the statistics are depressing indeed. In 2009, more than one-third (36%) of all Michigan children under age 18 were living in a household where no parent had full-time, year-round employment. Michigan currently ranks 47^th in the U.S. in secure parental employment. For a snapshot of how kids are faring here, see the Michigan League for Human Services’ summary of the KIDS COUNT report.

Arguably, this experience will build character and produce some positive results for my kids. Gratification will be delayed, we’ll eat healthier at home than in restaurants, the pace of our life is slower, and of course you know the old saying about “When Mama ain’t happy”. Mama’s been much happier lately. And of course, I’ve always been a bargain hunter.

I know our story is unusual, though, and I worry about the 280,098 other children in Michigan whose parents lost their jobs (and possibly their houses, their cars, and adequate food supplies) last year. The state’s response has been to cut unemployment benefits, make it more difficult to get food assistance, and cut over 11,000 families (with 30,000 kids) off from the Family Independence Program’s financial assistance starting October 1. I have heard of more companies hiring lately, but in many cases, like the outside vendor’s jobs that replaced mine, or the new Wal-Mart in a neighboring city, the pay is considerably less than the jobs that disappeared. I also feel guilty about the ripple effect of our personal cutbacks; we're no longer patronizing local restaurants, going out for coffee or ice cream, or hitting local festivals, which impacts the livelihood of small business owners and employees. 

For the last eight years or so here in Michigan, I kept hoping we had already hit bottom, but as it turns out we had a long way to go. Once you get so far down, it takes a lot longer to get up. There are lots of talented, dedicated people here waiting to climb uphill, painful feet and all. Of course, if they can't sell their house or afford moving expenses, they don't really have a choice.

Integrity is One of Our Core Values: Tips for the Outsourced

The most difficult thing for me about working in a corporate environment is the near-total lack of honesty. Everything is spun or watered down to the point of meaninglessness. Problems or obstacles have to be called “opportunities”, and you’d better make sure they are far outnumbered by “strengths” on your PowerPoint slide. Things that didn’t go well? They must be called “lessons learned”, and be innocuous and few in number.

When I’ve worked for managers who could take off the corporate mask in the face of some of our less meaningful tasks and say, “Yeah, this is redundant and stupid, but we have to do it or we’re in big trouble,” I’ve got no problem laughing about it, and then producing the requested result. When I’ve worked for managers who can’t put the company pom-poms down and continue to parrot the party line in the face of overwhelming logic and facts to the contrary, I find myself extremely demoralized. When people sound as if Corporate Communications gave them a script for every conversation, a part of me screams mutiny.  I need to understand the value and meaning of my work; if there is none, I have to hear some acknowledgement of that fact in order to be really engaged and productive. 

Having worked for a couple of managers recently who actually asked for input and then listened (or at least were polite enough to pretend) when we answered, I was lulled into a false sense of feeling human. Unfortunately, our current team of managers weren’t interested in viewing us that way at all. We were supposed to be supportive and compliant and go to great lengths to make sure our jobs disappeared in the most successful way possible.

Learn from my naïveté. Here are some communication tips in case you find yourself being outsourced:

• When the department manager asks if anyone has any questions or wants to talk about the outsourcing during the bi-monthly meeting, he/she doesn’t really mean it.

• When the department manager and HR call a meeting to ask everyone how we can all “stay engaged” over the next twelve weeks, you are not supposed to say that your paycheck is the only thing keeping you engaged. The only acceptable answers are:

a)     I’m excited about this learning opportunity! (yes, someone actually said that)

b)     Going through an outsourcing project will be great experience for future job interviews!

c)      I really want to help make this a successful transition for the good of the company!*

*Lest you forget, these are statements coming from a room full of people who are being replaced by an outside company that pays half as much and outsources many of the jobs to Argentina and India. We have not been encouraged to apply for jobs with them, and haven’t been introduced to or contacted by the new company. Essentially, we’re being discarded, unless we’re able to scramble and find another position within the company while the clock is ticking. And despite all this, we are still expected to come up with inane positive statements about how AWESOME this all is.

• On a related note, the department manager does NOT want you to point out the real definition of “employee engagement” and the contributing factors (none of which are present in your organization). He/she has defined it as “being positive and productive”, and that’s the way it’s going to stay.

• If your manager tells you the new company has great technology and are experts in their field, chances are he/she doesn’t appreciate you pointing out that you’d have a lot more expertise if all your training, benchmarking and professional organization membership hadn’t been cut several years ago. Not to mention having to use an antiquated, barely functional system you’ve been begging to get replaced since 2002.

• When you speak to anyone else outside your department, you are not allowed to talk about the outsourcing, no matter how long you’ve worked with those people or how well you know them. If they DO somehow find out about the outsourcing, you are not allowed to talk about how the outsourcing is going. The official answer is, “It’s going to be great! The technology and expertise the vendor is bringing to the table will really take us to a whole new level!” Most of all, never mention that the person doing your job will be seated in Argentina.

• If you ask questions during meetings or try to correct errors in the process maps, you won’t be invited to any planning meetings with the vendor, even if you have the most knowledge of the systems and process. When the project launch is delayed (thus prolonging the misery) and you ask why you weren’t invited to share your information, you’ll be told you have a “bad attitude”. (Even though you helped them pass an audit they should have failed, organized and shared all your files and historic data, and have given all vendors’ employees access to the systems and instructions on how to use it.) People losing their jobs are supposed to have GOOD attitudes (defined as extremely compliant, agreeable and not concerned with logic).

I hope you can learn from my mistakes, and go down a silent martyr instead of one of those annoying people who care too much and ask too many reasonable questions. Of course, your head may explode from all the repression, but you will get a nice pat on back as you are being kicked out the door.

The First Wife Syndrome

I've explained (ad nauseam) how this outsourcing feels with this analogy: I feel like the first wife who worked two jobs to put her husband through law school, only to get dumped for a younger, hotter woman when he started making real money. For most of the time I’ve been at this company, money has been extremely tight. We practically had to get a vice-president’s signature to get new post-it notes, and scammed pens and stapler refills out of departed co-workers’ desks. Travel was extremely limited, there was no training, matching on 401Ks was suspended, etc. Several large waves of layoffs swept through, and each time I updated my resume and tried to formulate a Plan B.

Now here we are in the black again. One would think it would be time to exhale. Our reputation is up, our profits are up, our leadership is well-respected inside and outside the company, bonuses are being paid, hiring numbers have skyrocketed…and that’s when they decide to dump the whole lot of us. It’s a little difficult to explain to your friends and family. “But I thought Company X is doing great!” Consequently, this situation has been more painful than it would have been during hard times. After all I’ve done for you? I keep thinking.  I’ve had a while to get used to the idea, since I’ve figured out they were outsourcing us a year ago. But there was always the dangling carrot out there – It’s not been decided yet; we may just outsource a portion of the process – that kept us working, thinking we’d be the indispensable part they kept.

Lest this be my own selfish lament, let me share with you, as a public service, the red flags that were snapping in the cold wind of the corporate air conditioning.

1. After years of headcount cuts and insane micro-management of budgets, we suddenly gained a few extra people on our org chart. They just showed up. Never mind that they had no discernible skills or interests related to our function, and were very close to retirement. When we pressed for explanation, we were told one was “really good with strategy” and another was “experienced with IT projects”. Perhaps they were here to help us transform ourselves around our new IT system? Unlikely.

2. We were asked document everything to death. In the midst of a particularly frenetic part of our annual cycle, completing flow charts and work processes took precedent over our main responsibilities.

3.  People who had been trying to move out of the department for (literally) years were almost evacuated simultaneously to new assignments elsewhere in the company. One moved in two days. In the glacial-paced world of a huge company, it’s usually more like six weeks from the time the announcement is made until the move is final.

4. As people moved out of the department, the remaining suckers were shoved, willy-nilly, into the vacancies, regardless of desire, experience, or skill set. Thus we had six people in the same position, with the same title, at four or five different salary levels and classifications. For example, a full time management-level employee, a part-time no-benefits employee, a full time non-management level employee, and a full time no-benefits employee were all doing the same job, with a salary differential of about $70K. Not to mention some got paid holidays, vacations and bonuses and some didn’t. A highly flammable situation like that had to be temporary. If you count over a year as “temporary”, then yes, it was.

5. During meetings to choose a new IT system, one of the mysterious new additions to our group, who was supposed to be leading the project, kept wandering out of the room to take phone calls, didn’t take any notes, and would often dismiss people’s questions and concerns. Once, I made a remark about a feature of the new system and he said, “It doesn’t matter. We’re going to blow this whole thing up anyway.”

6. The new buzzword became “core competencies”. Our department’s raison d’être was not on the list of core competencies. People trying to transfer out of our group suddenly found themselves stuck, because they hadn’t worked in a “core” area in several years. To get back to the “core” and out of our group, they would have to pass an assessment.

7. And of course, the most obvious red flag: there were lots of meetings with closed doors.

These, of course, were just the hints that our function was being outsourced. Once that was confirmed, there were a few months where we were waiting to see which, if any, individual jobs would remain to facilitate between the vendor and the rest of the company. For your edification, here are some strong indicators I picked up on that let me know I was not going to be part of the glorious new republic.

1.  I was asked to train the admin of the larger organization to take on my IT-related duties. For many years, I had (by default) managed access to our systems and shared drives. Since I was one of the only people left who understood the system, being asked to train someone completely unfamiliar with our processes and baffled to boot was a huge clue.

2.  I was in a meeting where “Phase One” of our outsourcing would include the role I was filling. It was hastily explained that they weren’t sure if the vendor would take it completely or they’d need an in-company liaison, but come on.

3.  The governing branch of our larger organization started avoiding me. Previously friendly and chatty people seemed a little uncomfortable, as if trying to figure out how much I knew.

4.  I was randomly chosen to participate in a national television show as a representative of my company. I had a “speaking part” and felt I did well. The next day I heard from a lot of co-workers and former colleagues from throughout the company. However, the managers in my own department barely acknowledged my participation – no questions, no pat on the back, no joking around. Hmm, I thought. That is quite odd.

5. Instead of filling positions as people transferred out and moved on, they brought back retirees to fill in.

So it’s been a painful process that’s gone on for over a year now. It’s like ripping off a band-aid terribly slowly. I keep asking for an end date, so I can focus on when this will be over. I’ve been told they’re not sure, because they can’t do anything that would “compromise the mission”. The original ball-park end date has come and gone, and I’m still dragging myself to work each day, knowing that nothing I do is important or meaningful or appreciated. I’m just filler. To make matters worse…no, I’ll save that for another day. It’s a long story. 

Great Moments in the Hamster Cage, Part I

Twelve years ago, I was thrilled when a former colleague called to see if I’d be interested in a part-time position at a huge company. When I interviewed, I was told my schedule would be three consecutive ten-hour days per week. I was eight months pregnant and thought it would be perfect. The offer letter stated a monthly salary, which I assumed was for the thirty-hour workweek I had agreed to (don’t even say it…yes, “assume” really did make an ass of me. I had worked in staffing for two different companies and we never used monthly calculations for offers). Despite several voice mails, I hadn’t heard back from the recruiter until a week before my start date. By this time, I was a little frantic (not to mention sleep-deprived and hormonally imbalanced due to my seven-week-old baby). The recruiter said she hadn’t received my paperwork (which I had sent in a few weeks earlier) but that she would stop by my house so I could fill out a new set. This struck me as a bit odd, and filled me with panic, as anyone with children can understand. At no time in your baby’s first year are you prepared -– house-wise or hygiene-wise -- for spontaneous guests, especially those affiliated with your new employer.

To make a long story short, I never did clarify that the monthly salary was for thirty hours. As you might have guessed from my bitter tone, it was based on a FORTY hour work week. I had given up a full time job with fantastic benefits and normal hours for a job paying the exact same hourly rate with absolutely no benefits. No paid vacation. No holidays. No healthcare. To top it all off, the whole three ten-hour days schedule rarely, if ever, happened. It consisted of randomly scheduled 12 to 14 hour days, anywhere from two to five days a week, starting at 6:30 a.m. and involving near-constant motion.

This went on for almost a year, until a new director arrived in our department. She had radical changes in mind and a blank-check budget to make them happen. Soon things took a turn for the worse. Her British accent and Veruca Salt foot-stamping soon reduced almost everyone to sniveling, shivering baby rabbits. We began developing a cutting-edge web-based tracking system -- truly the frontier at the time. Her vision was to roll it out globally and sell it to other companies. Concurrently, we started putting on huge events once or twice a month, which required almost the entire 100-plus-person department to work around the clock. People were literally wearing the same clothes for three days. She got them hotel rooms at the venue so they didn’t have to leave. She hired babysitters at the hotel so that a lack of childcare on a Sunday morning was no excuse not to be there.

I worked 16 hours straight with no food one Saturday. (We put on an event in a building with no food service. Meals were brought in for the guests, but none were allocated for us.) I finally snapped a couple of months later after working 26 hours straight. I had stayed all night long with four or five others cranking out schedules manually for the several hundred invitees arriving the next day. Two ridiculously pompous managers breathed down our necks and strode around like prison guards all night. I drove home at 9 a.m. the next day, nearly delirious. The others had actually stayed to work the event that day, but I was done. I said I wasn’t planning to be there and hadn’t scheduled a sitter. Besides that, I had had it. Sucked dry. Depleted and defeated. And I had a beautiful and energetic little 13-month-old waiting for me.

It was so commonplace to work insane hours that there was no pat on the back or thanks for that all-nighter. In fact, the director hosted a huge luncheon at one of the most expensive hotels in the area to thank our recruiters. The staff was invited as well, perhaps to quell any simmering mutiny with white tablecloths and shrimp. She got up to speak, dressed in one of her signature Easter-egg-colored sheaths and long jackets, and said, “I am pleased with the outcome of this conference, but I have to give our team a C for effort.” Rage flooded me until I just about went blind. C??? What would it take to get an A? Staying up for an entire week straight? Disowning our families and forgoing our paychecks for the cause?

That was the event that made me take a huge step back. I refused to be part of the madness. I rightly assumed she didn’t even know my name, and went back to my relatively cushy twelve-hour days. No more Saturday nights bleeding into Sunday mornings. Fire me, please. As it turns out, she was too busy making her direct reports’ lives hell to pay much attention to my under-the-radar rebellion. From calling “emergency” meetings at her house on Mothers’ Day, to phoning a manager at his father-in-law’s funeral, she scorched the earth in every direction she breathed. When a colleague from the UK got in a fender-bender and had to go to the emergency room to get checked out, she moved the meeting to the emergency room waiting area, PowerPoint and all, so as not to lose any time. She had her administrative assistants go to her house to clean for a holiday party. In response to complaints about work/life balance and never seeing our families, she suggested we make contracts with our children and schedule time with them – for instance, she contracted to wake her ten-year-old daughter before she left for work for a chat. At 6:00 a.m. I’ll leave it at that. I’m sure you can imagine the endless affronts to humanity she managed to squeeze into her two year reign.

It’s funny that despite the many, many changes in leadership in the years since her tenure, I never felt that devalued and degraded again. Until now. I've spent the last eighteen months killing myself, missing dinner with my family, softball games, community meetings, and canceling doctors' appointments and get-togethers with friends. I cranked out an enormous amount of work, including some huge deliverables, for no recognition. Zero thanks. Not one "good job" outside of my supervisor. I'm not looking for endless pats on the head, but flat-out disrespect is not OK. Unfortunately, it seems like a perfect circle. That’s how I know it’s time to leave. 

Forcible expulsion from the hamster wheel

Well, between the time I set up this blog and when I actually had time to start writing it, the title “Escape from the Hamster Wheel” has taken on a whole new meaning. Originally, I intended to write about traveling with my family. We love to go on adventures big and small to escape the tedium of daily life (permission slips, laundry, parental shuttle duty, softball practice, PowerPoints, alarm clocks, dress shoes and deadlines). My husband, two daughters and I LIVE for our next vacation. As soon as we return home from a trip, we’ve barely unpacked and my husband is trying to figure out where we can go next, and when. We’ve accumulated some tricks and tips along the way, both for traveling with kids AND traveling on a limited budget. (More on the definition of limited budget in another post.)

Since I titled my blog, my position with a Fortune 10 automotive company has been outsourced and as a result, quite soon I will be without a job for the first time in sixteen years. I have worked part-time, with stretches of full time plus, since my oldest daughter was born. Rather than escaping the hamster wheel, it seems I am being forcibly expelled from it. Though upsetting, it’s not necessarily heartbreaking. My organization had become a miserable place to work, with little to offer besides good friends and a paycheck. (More bitterness later.) I don’t want to apply for a job with the vendor. If my company already doesn’t respect our organization and individual employees, I can only imagine the level of respect we’ll get as employees of a supplier company. The same management and leadership will be setting the tone and calling the shots. So though I feel devalued, disrespected and bitter, I can’t say I’m all that sad. I am hoping we can make it on one income for a little while until I can figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life. I’m burnt out on my current line of work after the last couple of years, and tired of forcing my trapezoid-shaped peg into a round corporate hole. And puckering up and kissing that hole.

I’ve always been a budget traveler (trained by my dad, who took us on a lot of good trips on the rather un-luxe salary of a bank branch manager and a teacher). I appreciate that he showed me that travel isn’t just for the wealthy, and that you can venture off the I-75 track between northern Michigan and Florida. The challenge, now, is how to travel on a more limited budget. Though my husband would be happy traveling with a tarp, some toilet paper* and a tub of beef jerky in the trunk, I'm partial to hotel rooms. Preferably hotel rooms where you aren't afraid to walk barefoot and come equipped with a coffee maker.

We are fortunate that my husband can work almost anywhere – he’s either working at the kitchen table or traveling rather unpredictably. Now that I’ve been cast out of corporate life, we may have a little more freedom. This blog will probably veer between our obsessive desire to travel and the often-comical outsourcing process I’m going through. Bear with me while I vent my frustration. I’ll try to do it with humor.


*Note - he'd probably be fine without the toilet paper, too.