Exit Strategies

It's been a long day and night.  I'm sitting here at 11p on Monday listening to The Breakfast Club play in the background, laughing every so often and then feeling a stab of guilt when I do.  I have a friend going through the fire at his job and it makes me sad.  I've known him for over 10 years, watched him rigorously apply himself - wringing every bit of knowledge he could out of two graduate degrees and countless hours of study all the while working to pay his way.  He's been at his job for 3 years and just so happens to be employed by a corporate robot who doesn't have the first clue about people, what it takes to work with them, or how much my friend has done to build the division he is in charge of - and friends let me assure you - he has gone above and beyond what is required of him. 

So when I hear scenarios/lines like (here's a couple mild ones - I'll spare you the ugly): 

-My friend was at the airport leaving on his business trip to a remote part of the Middle East where he would not have internet access for a week, and X was emailing him (as the airline attendant asked him to turn off his phone) demanding that he have certain irrelevant figures regarding the American side of the business emailed to him on 3 separate days my friend would not have internet access - which X knew good and well.

-"While I was overseas on business X fired one of my people and threw them out of the building without consulting me at all."  When I asked what the person did and discovered he just held a different belief on how something really insignificant to the business could be done and that there hadn't even been discussion over it, just an immediate termination I felt ill.

I've worked in business long enough to know that this is what the corporate big boys and girls refer to as "coaching someone out of their position" aka making someone question their work ability, destroying any desire they may have to do their job well, and bullying.  The "coaching someone out of their position" technique is used by people who don't have the human decency aka "balls" to tell someone they don't want to work with them anymore.  More often than not this type of person is very threatened by the person they bully out and/or cannot control them into becoming a clone.   Pardon me while I gag.   

At times like these I can't help but be tremendously grateful that I wake up and work from home every single day.  As much as times are lean right now, I don't have to deal with the additional stress of a controlling employer.  (Thank God!!)

 Instead this is my alarm clock.

And  my Assistant.  Sure my desk is a little messy, but I eat chocolate 

bars and leave the wrappers strewn about with zero micromanagement.

And the most inter-office drama I deal with is cat hair on the lamp shade 

while the Chef sides with the cat.

The only gossip I overhear is the Chef saying to the cat:  

"You're making fur lampshades now, aren't you?

  That's your specialty.  You're going to run Jonathan Adler right out of business." 

True story

Sure my job might have looney-tune sidebars, but at least I'm not working with people who are certifiable.

Control freaks scare me.  

I hope none of you ever have to endure this kind of treatment - or be trained to believe this is the way to conduct business in a professional manner.  Honesty will always go a lot farther - everyone appreciates and deserves it.

*I'll go back to talking about clothes tomorrow.*