I am starting to get used to my new surroundings here at the shiny new gig and so things are better. I still get disoriented when trying to navigate my way to conference rooms (the company occupies space in several different buildings all within a few blocks of each other. This is ok for now but once the cold and/or snowy weather gets here I may be declining meeting requests left and right).
This got me thinking it might be time for another installment of "Vocational Errors by Your Host Mark". Today's story is from 1999-2000. I had been working at ZDNet, happily plugging away at making little HTML files for the website when I realized that my boss at the time (a.k.a the mini tyrant) was not going to go to bat for me and get me the raise that I thought I deserved. I decided that I'd look for another position within the company and that's when I found out about a gig in the department some of my friends worked in. Schweeeeeet. I interviewed (like a champ) with the manager guy and after much inter-departmental red tape and ass kissing I got the gig (I had to straddle both positions for a bit too..I was doing two jobs for the price of one for about a month).
The position as it had been described to me by the manager guy I had interviewed with was right up my alley. It was sort of pseudo-technical with some support work and a dash of creative influence thrown in so that I didn't lose my will to live. Everything was hunky-dory for the first few weeks and then the he called me into his office to ask me if I was interested in going to San Francisco to meet with his boss and get a better understanding of what the peeps out there need from me. Say what now? Free trip to a super-awesome city where my ex-roomie lives? Fuck yea I'll go! I thought that I had finally "arrived". I felt all fancy.
Y'know what's not fancy? Business travel and then meetings with people who clearly suspect that you might be retarded (whoops! I meant "challenged"). The first night in town was kinda exciting if tiring. I got in around 7pm local time and after dumping my stuff off at the hotel I went downstairs to meet the grand-boss guy and his local flunkies. They were going to take some clients out to dinner and had invited me along. At the restaurant we all sat at this big-ass table (there was 8 of us I think) and everyone started chatting. Well, everyone except me. It was becoming clear to me that these people had waaaay more experience in business than I and, at this point, probably assumed I was just as successful as they. Best to keep my yap shut.
The grand-boss dude ordered up this stupidly expensive bottle of wine and talked about the giant house that he was renovating. I had just the year before purchased my house and I thought that this would be a good place to "connect" with him. Yea, turns out he was spending more than double what my house had sold for just on his restoration. I think I might not be able to relate to his "not being able to find a really good banister guy". Oh, plus keep in mind that to me it was the middle of the night since I was still on east coast time.
The next day I went into the office to meet with him and his pit bull in the form of this woman who right from the word "GO!" hated my guts (I was sitting here now trying to recall her name and I can't do it. I must have purged it from my memory...oh crap, I hope I didn't purge some stuff I need too). They proceeded to explain what my job would actually entail and it was light years away from what I had signed on to do. Basically it was all about running reports and meeting with clients and generating revenue streams and... HOLY FUCK!! I didn't even comprehend what the frick they were talking about. I just wanted to crawl under the desk and hope for them to go away. They wanted to know how many people were going to the website and what they were clicking on and if they downloaded and fuck me...it was awful.
I flew back to Boston and tried desperately to be the guy they wanted me to be but I'm just NOT that guy. I don't do marketing and strategy. I can't even plan a vacation for fuck's sake. It got so bad that I would dread seeing the little red light on my phone all lit up when I got into work in the morning. My heart would just sink when I saw that light. Plus, they were calling me with all these emergencies at 5PM California time. Hi guys? Yea, that's fucking 8PM here in Cambridge...I'm not in the goddamn office. There was talk of giving me a beeper but I was able to resist that idea luckily. I can't imagine being at the Pit Bull's beck and call 24/7. Every day I would go home and tell the Wiff that I'm going to be fired. And I wasn't kidding. I really thought that at any moment they would just throw up their hands in frustration and kick me out the door. It was one of the most stressful times in my life so far.
I just did not understand what it was that they wanted me to produce for them. They needed someone who could work closely with the clients that existed and then try to get new clients and drive traffic to the site and get the revenue to show growth and bloody hell I'm an introvert over here people. I went to the guy that I had actually interviewed with and basically asked him what the fuck happened to the job that I had applied for. He was so completely unhelpful in getting anything resolved with the California office. He essentially admitted that he had misinterpreted what it was his boss wanted and yet he either wasn't willing or able to fucking fix it. He still stands out as the worst manager I have ever worked under. So I went to HR to tell them that shit was all fucked up and I had made a huge mistake in taking this job. To their credit they didn't just kick me in the balls and tell me to "buck up, fattie". They actually worked with me to resolve the problem.
Cut to 3 months of hell later and, as luck would have it, there had been a re-organization within the old group that I had worked in. Out had gone the mini-tyrant who ran my little group as well as the perpetually bored, ineffective, Jane-Austin-loving woman that she reported into. In came this woman who had run the department when I first joined the team who was/is awesome, awesome, awesome (hooray for Laura Sweet!!). I found out that the manager position previously held by the mini tyrant was now open and I jumped on that mofo. I begged and cajoled HR and got an interview with my old manager. She asked me if I could do the job without fucking up too much and I said that I'd try (I'm paraphrasing of course). She took pity on me and hired me back. I am still so very grateful for that. She saved me and my sanity.
As a little post-script to this story, after I left that other evil position, they had a really hard time filling it. They eventually hired a few people to do the work that actually needed to be done. The description of that job was so poorly conceptualized that it took a review and rewrite to realize that there was enough work there for 3 separate people. And they had tried to get one big dummy to do all of it. Oh, and we were all laid off eventually. G'night!
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