I’m almost there

I woke up this morning thinking about Target, yeah the retail store. I started to wonder why the cashiers and floor staff make so little money and then realized I have no idea what they make. I’m probably right. They probably don’t make much above minimum wage but still, I don’t know. That got me thinking about things (again). Cashiers are your frontline face to your customers. They aren’t some marketing wonk sitting in a cubicle in a corporate building, they’re the ones that are either smiling and making eye contact or mumbling and ignoring the customer. Jeez, shouldn’t THESE people be making the big bucks (or the BIGGER bucks anyway)? And that got me thinking further.

If you’ve been following along you’ve been treated to my musings on corporate life and my desire for a change. I’ve been pursuing the most middle-of-the-road path in making any changes. I’ve been checking CareerBuilder.com, Monster.com and contacting headhunters. I’ve been doing some networking and letting folks know I’m on the hunt but beyond that I haven’t let my mind wander much into untrampled paths. Bummer. There’s a ton of stuff on those paths.

I had a bit of a mind expanding experience last night while working on a school paper. I was looking for positive effects of the recession and came across a site about theme parks. Actually a site dedicated to the theme park industry complete with a newsletter and updates like who was installing the newest roller coasters for the coming season. Wow! There are people who don’t just WORK at theme parks they’ve made them their careers! If you’re reading this and rolling your eyes and maybe even ARE one of those career theme parkers, please be kind. I’m here to tell you I’ve been an ass.

Me of all people should have been more insightful. My spousal unit works in an equity theater, he does sound and lights, he’s done over hire stage crew work for concerts and events and when I told a co-worker (yes, a CORPORATE co-worker) what he does she was surprised and confused and admitted she didn’t know people DID that. I was surprised because I couldn’t figure out how else the stage got set, the sound got heard and all that stuff. In other words, it was second nature to me.

There must be plenty of people who don’t consider their retail jobs to be anything less than a career. They aren’t hourly drones they are people who really enjoy what it takes to get the product out on the floor, turn over product for each season (despite the fact that the seasons are usually MONTHS off from the actual seasons). I worked in retail in my youth. I’ve worked the register at grocery stores in the past. Honestly I loved those jobs but they didn’t pay and I wasn’t smart enough to consider them careers and stick with them until they DID start to pay.

There’s a grocery store near me, I worked there back in the 80’s part-time. I loved it, but I had to feed into the notion that it wasn’t a “career”. Had I stayed there, I’m sure by now I’d be a front-end manager or a department manager and I’d have a career. There’s a guy that works there. He worked there back in the 80’s too. He’s the store manager now. I always hear him being paged while I’m shopping. He works hard (from what I can tell) but he always seems happy. I always see him with a smile on his face. He always says hello to regular customers and former employees (I’d fall into both of those categories). What was I THINKING?

There’s a clothing store near me that I shop in fairly regularly. There’s one woman who seems to be there every time I go in. The store carries nice clothes, not fancy but nice casual clothes. This woman is always dressed in a way that is almost a walking advertisement for the clothes available in the store. She’s probably around my age. She is lovely to deal with. I don’t know if she’s a manager or not but she is most likely a full-time employee at the very least. She seems to love her job and the people she deals with. What a lovely feeling that must be.

These people have been under my nose all along. I’ve clearly given thought to them but never connected my thoughts to MY wants and needs. Most importantly I never connected those jobs to the word “career” before. I have a friend who works at Costco. I keep joking that I want to go work at Costco. It’s near my house, you can wear jeans to work (crazy but that’s very appealing to me) I hear they have good benefits and I shop there all time. Everyone keeps rolling their eyes and telling me that I don’t REALLY want to do that, after all I’ve got college degrees, I’m a “professional”. Why is my friend working at Costco any less of a professional than I am?

I was under the mistaken belief that a career meant sitting in an office all day. I’m not that person. I like to be up and moving around. I actually (at some level) enjoy dealing with people. (Those of you who know me, don’t roll your eyes, I’ll explain.) I always tell people that one thing I liked about my grocery store job was that you only had to deal with each individual member of the public for a finite amount of time. They were in and out of your line (and your LIFE) in a few minutes so that squalling brat became nothing more than a memory in a few brief minutes. The upside was that you got to see a lot very nice people or run into people from your circle of acquaintances that you didn’t normally see. “Hey, Kim, great to see you, we really need to get together sometime” that kind of thing.

I even like the more flexible schedules offered out there in retail-land. I don’t really like working Monday through Friday from 9AM-5PM. I don’t. I like the thought of working on Saturday from 10AM-6PM but knowing I’ll have off on Monday while the office wonks are at work. I like the thought that I could go out to breakfast on a weekday when the diners are less crowded and enjoy a leisurely breakfast and a good book (or my husband’s company if he’s off that day, too). Truth be told, I really HATE the regular predictability of office work.

Since the recession has hit and even before then, I’d have conversations with my husband that we don’t have jobs where we DO things anymore, we don’t MAKE things. We sit on our butts in offices and cubicles but what are we DOING? We’re going to meetings. My husband would generously point out that he DOES things when he goes to work. Yes, he does. I don’t. I really feel like I DON’T. Office work comes down to a lot of turf wars and projects to defend your turf and a lot of the actual work could be outsourced. You can’t outsource store personnel, even with those self-checkout lanes (which I hate) you still end up needing people to run some registers and to help out the folks bravely attempting the self-checkout. You have to WORK.

I’ve discounted these jobs for too long.

Of course my problem is finding a way to get into a job like this and still make enough money. Not a fortune, but “enough” and yes I do have a magic number attached to “enough”. For heaven’s sake what OTHER jobs are out there that I haven’t thought about yet?

As I ramped up my job search I kept saying that I wanted firmly “OUT” of the industry that I’ve been working in with the explanation that I didn’t want to do the same dance on a different stage. Silly me, the fact remains that if I stayed in a cubicle/office job I’d still be doing the same dance on a different stage. I want to do a different act altogether, what an AH-HA moment.

It’s funny but I credit my schoolwork for this ah-ha moment. How funny is that? I’m in a Master’s program for Organizational Leadership, very much the office gig type of degree. Who woulda thunk it would lead me down an entirely different path? I don’t know if I’ll be able to pull this off, I don’t know if I’ll find a way to get myself into a job that I actually WANT with enough money to live but I think I may be onto something.

Top 100

Forbes magazine does a list every year of the top 100 places to work. The list is very competitive, companies vie for a position on the list so they can recruit and retain the top talent in their desired fields. In these tough economic times and with the upswing of people trying out more flexible work arrangements since they’ve been laid off I’m proposing a new list.

The Top 100 Places NOT to Work in America!

This doesn’t mean these are bad companies to work for instead it means these are great companies to contract or freelance with. Many companies try the whole contractor thing but they just can’t measure up when it comes to doing it right. Companies want to be the parent and disciplinarian, they want everyone to show up for work each morning and put in a full and productive day. Most companies have not yet made it to an enlightened stage of development whereby they contract someone to execute a specific role on a project and then let them do it. America’s corporate environment is one of managing much but not actually WORKING.

Imagine that you have project management expertise. You are great at working with vendors, you can negotiate deals, meet deadlines, come in under budget and keep all the key players happy. You work best on your own delegating to appropriate team members and checking in once a week or so. In most cases corporations want your talents but they don’t want to relinquish their control over you. If they did that then perhaps all those middle managers would have to do WORK.

What I’m proposing is researching the top companies that can do this. They seek out experts to perform functions on a contract basis and let them do their jobs. Certainly there needs to be reporting and accountability throughout the project, it wouldn’t be a success if the project itself tanked in the end.

What would be required to make it into the Top 100 Best Companies NOT to Work for? Certainly fair pay would be high on the list since the person is basically self-employed and would need to provide their own benefits as well as paying themselves for days off. The proposed fee structure should also take into consideration that the contractor should use their own office space and office supplies as well.

The hiring company should understand that the contractor works for themselves, they are self-employed and as such shouldn’t be expected to be available Monday through Friday between the hours of 8:30AM and 5PM. After all, a successful contractor has other customers as well and needs to provide services to them so if your contractor doesn’t answer your e-mail immediately it doesn’t mean they aren’t working, it just may mean they aren’t working for YOU at that moment.

Here’s another item that would make a company good for contractors, if you offer your contractor a permanent job and they turn you down DON’T TAKE IT PERSONALLY. It’s very likely your contractor prefers working for himself instead of a big corporation. Don’t take for granted that everyone is bucking for their very own cubicle. When you DO get turned down, hire the person back on another project, if you thought their work was good enough to make them permanent then they’re certainly still good enough to contract with again…and again…and again.

If the Top 100 Best Not to Work companies got their names AND their contracting techniques out there in the public view it may actually help other companies with more traditional mindsets to open up and change their policies to embrace changing times a bit more. It may not really be the best idea to try to recruit and RETAIN the best talent, sometimes new blood can bring positive changes to a project or department.

Let’s shake things up a bit. I bet there would be plenty of work to go around and people would really need to WORK and not just “manage” others to do the work. Contractors would actually eliminate the need for so many managers and make individuals more accountable for the job they do. Let’s face it if you work for yourself and you need to keep generating work you will work hard to get the job done. In a corporate environment shit just trickles downhill without much work getting done but with individual accountability more work, less shit.

Forbes or Entrepreneur magazine, I’m putting the proposal out there and I’m willing to do the work on getting the word out about the 100 Best Places NOT to Work in the US!

And the award goes to…

I do performance art and I make a living at it! I’ve done it for 10 long years. It’s amazing isn’t it? Who would think that a performance artist could stick to it for 10 years and make a living at it but it’s true and I’m here to tell you so.

Where do I perform? I have a running show in the halls of corporate America. Who would think that a corporation would hire a performance artist; I’ll bet they do it all the time. Oh yes they do. They don’t know they’re doing it, they just do it. My job title doesn’t say “Performance Artist”. I don’t get to sit in a shop window in a flesh colored leotard and pick my nose and stick it to the window; though that often seems more appealing than what I do in my routine.

I have to say that I hate my costumes but what can you do? Part of it being Performance Art is that it isn’t who I really am or what I really stand for so of course my costumes would need to reflect that. Performance Art for 8 hours a day is EXHAUSTING work. I think the nose-picking routine would actually be more believable but that’s not what I was hired for so I can’t switch things up now.

Despite the original nature of performance art there’s a lot of structure surrounding my act. It’s what the producers demand. They pay the big bucks to get the show they want. The first few years seemed okay but as the years slip by the rules become more restrictive and tougher to navigate. I hate when they make me take my show on the road, I’ve done the road show all over the world and it’s as painful elsewhere as in the confines of the day-to-day space.

One thing I can assure you of is when I leave this gig it will be to get very far away from this type of work. I need to stop the insanity and leave it all behind. I can’t say that I will look back fondly on most aspects of this gig but I will certainly look back on it from time-to-time.

Some of the other people seem to really embrace this work and all it entails. They are buoyed by their supposed importance and believe they are somehow making a difference in some odd way. Rest assured, they are not making enough of a difference to cause even the slightest shift in the direction of the universe but still, they do what they need to do to serve the master or demons they’ve created.

So I gear up each morning in business casual outfits and a neatly coiffed hairstyle; conservative make-up patted on my face. I trek out for the morning commute toting my cuppa joe and my briefcase; I slip on a magnetic ID badge (just can’t wait ‘til they find out these things have been giving women breast cancer for the past 20 years or some other equally horrible revelation) to let me into the theater I perform in every weekday.

There needs to be an end in sight for this gig. I need to know that somehow I’ll be able to leave this stage behind once and for all. Kick out the footlights with the toe of my beat-up Doc Martens and twirl out the door in a haze of relief and confusion.

I wonder if anyone else feels this way? I wonder what the reaction would be if someone from there read this, would they have an “ah-ha” moment, would they be surprised, angry, hurt? Would they think it was funny? I doubt that humor would be a factor. My findings tell me that the corporate stage is a mostly humorless environment. I can’t see my boss, or HR reading this and laughing out loud at my antics. I can’t see getting high-fived in the hallway by the VP, but wouldn’t that be fun? It might even be a little honest.

I know that if I were doing a job I loved and had meaning for me I wouldn’t be doing performance art anymore. It would be real. I would be alive and in the moment. I do share the current stage with some people that actually appear to buy the myth. I’m fascinated by them. They use the word passion when they talk about their cubicle lives and I’m baffled by it. I want to know what drives them. I hope they genuinely feel that way for some reason. They may not want what I want but I want to understand what they want. I hope that they feel a connection and a sense of meaning about what they do because if they don’t, well, they’ll keep performing on that stage like trained chimps.

I’m not done yet. My run continues in the theater of the absurd but I can finally admit to what I’ve been doing. I can own it now. In 12-step programs they say that the first step to healing is admitting you have a problem.