Facebook Test Case

I have been in Human Resources for about 18 years.  I love my profession.  I love the mix of analysis, policy, communication, marketing and psychic abilities you need to do this job well.  I also love the weird things people do and trying to help them deal with the consequences without losing face.  I have often wanted to write a book called “You Wouldn’t Believe the Shit People Do at Work”, but I can’t bring myself to betray their confidences.

Over the years, people have confessed drug and alcohol addiction, mental illness, abusive relationships, extramarital affairs, desires to be another gender, their fears about the death or illness of a friend or family member, medical problems (in great detail) hatred of their job, their boss, their life, their spouse.  I have heard it all and I will take it to my grave because I respect their trust in me (unless I am legally required to disclose or investigate it as a serious violation of law, policy or safety).   That was a joke only HR people will get.

Studs Turkel’s “Working” is one of my favorite books because I am fascinated with how people make their livings.  When you die, there are many people who will come to speak at your funeral.  They will talk about the friend you were, the neighbor you were, the aunt you were, the volunteer you were and they will talk about the employee you were.  And they are all talking about different people.  You put on a different personality for each “person” you are in the world.  Or at least I do.  It is like putting on a uniform to wait tables at TGIF.  Which I did for 4 years and got written up for not having enough “flair”.  Yes, people, that is real. 

I am an employment law junkie – I read every piece of case law I can find and I memorize it so that I can impress people at cocktail parties.  Actually, I use it to train my managers and scare them into making appropriate decisions.  I was one of those people in high school that read the employee handbook I was given at the fast food restaurant and highlighted the rules and tabbed out the parts I objected to and refused to sign until I had clarification on the language.  I often corrected the manuals and sent them back.  Managers love that.  Especially from 16 year olds.  So, I have been drawn to this line of work since my paternal grandmother first asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I said, “A nurse with a purse or the president of the United States”. 

Ultimately, you spend more time of your life awake at work than you do with your friends or family and I need to make that a good experience.  I need to contribute to the world in that way – by making work matter, by letting people be authentic and have fun and by having people feel respected. 

That is what I remembered today when I read about an NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) decision to sue a company for firing employees about what they posted on their facebook pages.  I joked that I didn’t want to ever become the facebook test case.  This is an HR term that means “let’s not engage in any activity that could make us the Brown vs Board of Education of employment law”.

It brought me back and I remembered when I got fired in 1994.  I was 24 years old and had moved from DC to Seattle because I took a trip here and thought it was beautiful.  The people were cool, the music was amazing and I just felt home.  It was much more chill than on the East Coast.  I had gotten so wound up there I would chase people down in my car, scream at them and threaten a cage fighting match if they cut me off.  I was waiting tables, going to grad school, working retail on the weekends and interning for a congressman – I was nuts.  I mean, I AM nuts, but I was taking the Jen Keys experience to a whole other level. 

I moved to Seattle with no job, a crappy car, my cat Kitty, a few suitcases (I had my books shipped because there are some things one cannot leave behind) and about $3000.  I spent my first few weeks sleeping on the sofa of a friend whose grunge band had a studio in the basement.  One day I came home from job searching to find the lead singer of a now very famous band, clipping his toenails on the sofa and leaving the scraps there.  And the nights sucked except for when we played inline hockey at Cal Anderson Park. 

So I did what any reasonable person would do, I started temping.  My first temp job was for an organization I hope no longer exists.  They don’t know how badly they dodged a bullet because I didn’t want to go on 20/20 and I am not kidding.

I took a temp job doing what was supposed to be educational coordination work.  It was admin stuff, but higher level and similar to what I had been doing at the University of Baltimore and JHU – reviewing applications, working through academic credentials, checking the citations of papers, etc.   I didn’t have a good relationship with the staff which is rare for me.  It was a family run business and it was very insular.  They obviously thought of me as their chai walla (office boy), but I was a bit proud.  They would gossip and stare at me, they would all go to lunch and leave me to answer the phones, they would give me the grunt work.  OK, fair enough – I was the new kid and needed to do what needed to be done.  One day, they had me spend the day wrapping Christmas presents for their clients.  If anyone knows me, they know I favor large bags stuffed with paper because I can’t wrap a box to save my life. 

I finished “wrapping” packages and the manager came in and berated me for doing a crappy job.  Well, yeah, I did a crappy job.  Why did you give this job to the girl that can’t draw a straight line with a ruler and vice grip?  So they made me rewrap the packages. 

I was pissed.  On my break (under which I was not given the appropriate allotment under the FLSA but the statute of limitations has passed, so you are off the hook, suckas), I wrote an email on my personal account to my boyfriend at the time complaining about the working conditions.  I perhaps used the phrase,  “I hate these people”.  The next day, everyone was looking at me strangely.  I was pulled into the manager’s office and told I was being fired for disloyalty.  They had gone into my personal email and read what I had written on my break.  There were no email policies at this time, it was brand new and I had a compuserve email that was like 0111000010000111000 kjdaljfa or some shit like that.  The passwords were just on your computer at that point.  I was on my break, it was my personal account, and they snooped it. 

I left and promptly called the ACLU.  Within days, I was getting calls from 20/20, 60 Minutes and the New York Times because I was one of the first test cases of email privacy and they needed stories and a poster child.  The only thing I want to be a poster child for is fantastic thighs (which will never happen and I realize this).  I was so afraid of being “that girl” that I didn’t stand up for my privacy rights.  I didn’t stand up for anyone else’s rights.  I crawled into a hole and made it all go away.  I declined all interviews because I didn’t want to be a test case.

I could have been the person that made email policies mandatory in the 1990s, but I all hedgehoged up and went on to make myself a strong figure in HR land.    

I have never shared this until now because I was ashamed. I was ashamed of being fired and ashamed of not sharing my story. After all, my career has been in HR and the last thing you want to be remembered for is the girl that was fired for her email featured by Morley Safer!  And, after all, I went into this business to change people’s lives for the better and I should have stood taller.   But I was scared.  I could have been famous.  At least for 15 seconds.

“Hey! I saw you getting fired on 60 minutes!  Want to administer our compensation programs?”

Now, HR people, this was almost a high school graduating class ago, so don’t hold it against me, but when I say I don’t want to be a test case, I mean it.  So facebook, good luck.  I personally hope you win on the case of free speech and employers stop worrying about what people wear while draped over the hood of a cop car (unless it is the cop, then I kind of get it).  Let people be who they are.  Let them be gay, straight, weird, tattooed, arty, nerdy, fat, ugly, and AUTHENTIC. 

But if it happens again (test case), I hope we all fall down on our swords, which ever side the fall on, and have the courage to do what we think is right and noble and could even get us on 60 minutes. 

Sick

Does anyone remember the Shel Silverstein’s poem “Sick” from Where the Sidewalk Ends? 

It starts out:

"I cannot go to school today,"

Said little Peggy Ann McKay.

"I have the measles and the mumps,

A gash, a rash and purple bumps.”

I have been channeling that for the last few days because I have been sick and I am a terrible sick person. Not a terribly sick person, I am just terrible at being sick. Really terrible.  As in I am a giant pain in the ass and an overgrown toddler.  The last time I had strep, I just crawled around on the floor following my ex and begging him to get me ice cream in sign language.  Then I wouldn’t eat it and would throw it all over the floor in big spoonfuls and kind of roll in it and cry.  Think of me as having the terrible twos whenever I am sick.  Poor me!

Oops!  My bad!  The Boi is going to see this and if I even have the sniffles, he is going to have me put into a giant bubble (mostly to protect the furniture) and then have to hire someone to read me The Pokey Little Puppy. 

Anyway, I am certainly not dying.  I mean, we are all dying, but I think I have a few good decades on me.  Hopefully while wearing Pradas.  I have never actually seen a Prada, but I am sure they are real nice.  I would probably be more likely to wear a Panda, but it sounded better to wear a Prada.  I don't want PETA after me.

 So I got a little sick and screwed up my body and that is probably what happens when you have been a vegetarian for 26 years but think that the four food groups are English muffins, brie, Boca Burgers and wine.  That just can’t be a balanced diet.   I went and threw my metabolism off really badly.  But at least I lost 8 pounds!  I know!  I see the positive in everything!

So my poor, poor, doctor had to take a blood draw from me two days ago to figure out exactly what my problem was and how to fix it.  I explained that she should just pick one to three problems from the handy list of check of boxes I carry around on a notepad when I meet new people.  “Nice to meet you!  I’m Jen!  Can you fill out this form so I know what is wrong with you right off the bat?  I hate taking the time to figure it out on my own.  All answers will be kept confidential.  Thanks!”   But she insisted that she needed to get some blood.  So I handed her a knife and told her stab me and just get a Dixie cup to catch the drippings. 

I am so scared of needles that when I turned 18, I decided to refuse any blood work, shots, immunizations, etc. for the rest of my life.  Then I pierced my belly button and got a bunch of tattoos, but that was different.  I don’t know why, but it is.  So I would step on a rusty nail and just say, “meh”.  You don’t need a tetanus shot.  I know this because one time I stepped on a rusty nail and didn’t want a shot so I looked it up on the internet and it said you only have a 10% chance of dying if you were a healthy adult and got tetanus.  So I rolled the dice and took my chances.  And I lived, so the internet was right AGAIN!

I had to make an appointment with an infectious disease specialist to figure out all of the things I needed for my trip to India – malaria meds, typhoid, hep A and hep B, MMR, influenza, tetanus.  Tetanus?!  Do I look like a loser? 

Last year, I had to (GOT TO!) go to India for work.  The problem was that I needed about 10 immunizations.  That is not going to go well.  For anyone.  However, I am not going to NOT go to India just because of some paranoia.  Ultimately, I am going to get over my fears to get what I want, even if it requires support staff.  This did.  I explained to the infectious disease guy with two PhDs and an MD (after I threw myself at him and asked him if he liked long walks on the beach and pina coladas and he kindly but firmly said no), so, I engaged him in the tetanus discussion.  I told him you only had a 10% chance of dying, blah blah.  He looked at me like I had just dropped out of Chico State and said, “There has only been one documented case of someone surviving tetanus in the history of research.”  So I did the math.  OK!  I am getting a tetanus shot! 

As long as I could have 35 valium, a personal handler and a service animal.  He agreed and I arrived for my appointment slugging valium, with my personal handler, my service otter (he is stuffed), a mouth guard, blackout mask and noise canceling headphones for the nurse.  Oh, and my straight jacket.   It all went over fine and then I giggled uncontrollably and had to be escorted from the office and kept cracking inappropriate medical jokes because I turn into a jerk like that when I am hyperventilating.

So back to my current illness - yesterday, some chick just strolled in and informed me she was taking some labs.  “What the hell are labs?” I asked.  “Oh just some bloodwork and a sample.”  Fine, lady.  I will pee in your cup.  I’ll pee anywhere, it doesn’t freak me out.  I had to pee in public in India like everyone does because they don’t have toilets, but you better call in fucking FEMA if you want to get a needle near me.  She ran off screaming and my doctor came back and I explained my little needle phobia.  She didn’t have a service otter or a straightjacket, but she did give me a handler and jack me up on valium.  I only screamed for like 5 minutes and 3 minutes into it they kept screaming, "we took it out 2 minutes ago!". 

Last week was a weird week – I had a number of friends who got really sick or injured, another's mom died – it was generally an off week.  Worse than Mars in retrograde, that only causes drama.  Believe me, I know.  My day job is as an HR person and I watched that astrological calendar like a hawk.  That doesn’t mean I didn’t apply solid management, legal or morale principles to my employee relations work, it just meant that I watched for extra signs of weird during those times.  And it was fairly reliable. And I avoided Scorpios in October. 

So I have been on some meds that are finally starting to lift off the part of my brain that controls the Frontal Snark Cortex.   Which means the blog is back and the Jen is hyper.  Who wants to go ride bikes and issue fashion citations? 

Dance Fever

I love that my friends write this erudite poetry about me and all I can pull off is inane pop culture references from the 1970s.  I am not sure why they still talk to me. Solid Gold, Dance Fever, Denny Terrio – oh yeah, I pulled that one out of my deck and played it!  Suckas! 

I was supposed to go to the bridal shower of one of my oldest friends today and I had a flat tire.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a donut (because I am cheap like that) and can’t really cab it because it is in Olympia and I live in Seattle.  So I compromised and bought her insanely expensive wedding gifts.  You can throw money at guilt like you can at bad termination decisions – everyone is a winner.  Really.  But I still feel like I suck, I am sorry Tracy!  I hope you like the new car – it is a DeLorean or Mazerati or something!  (I am so poor, I can’t even spell those words – I am not permitted.)

Last night we had a dinner party at an old friend’s house.  I don’t know why he thinks that just because I used to work with him, I still work FOR him, but he put me to work cooking.  For his party.  It was fine because I got all nuts and made this bruschetta that had manchego cheese and dates stuffed with fig jam.  As well as some other stuff, but he is totally weird and doesn’t like mayo (which is creamy white heaven), so I had no options for the salmon cakes other than ketchup, pickle relish and mustard.  I was hoping to make an aoli, but instead it tasted like crab hot dogs.  Oh well! 

With enough wine, the party turned out great, despite my participation. 

By about 9 I was getting hyper.  I usually don’t do sugar, so wine makes me more “active” than normal.  I challenged everyone to a dance off.  By this, I mean, I made everyone dance with me to ABBA.  We had the oddest mix of people there – an IT director with metallic silver pants, a hippie double PhD with a penchant for caftans, the CEO of a company who likes mash up a little too much, an insanely smart bureaucrat/southern writer/married to the coolest woman ever and me. 

So we are talking a total train wreck here, people.  But it was fun.  And we all had the “white guy overbite” which is when you bit your lower lip while dancing.  Don’t freak, white people, everyone does it.  Walk it out.

When they read your obituary at your funeral, do you want them to say you were a great dancer or a good technician?  You were a dedicated accountant or that you made everyone laugh at work during staff meetings?  Do you want them to say that your house was really clean or that you went out of your way to give money to buskers?  You were financially solvent or your friends loved you enough to vote for you for president even though you would do a terrible job?  That you went to the gym every day or the people in the neighborhood knew you by name and you remembered their kids, dogs, spouses, partners, high schools?….  Yeah, I want to be the second kind of person.  Even though it isn’t profitable. 

So last night I danced my ass off to ABBA with a bunch of freaks (including me) and today I should be at a bridal shower but I am a dumb ass and don’t take care of my car, so I am just wishing you and yours a Gordon Lightfoot/Greg Gilles day, because that is what you deserve.  In a good way. 

One of my best friends wrote this, I think it is beautiful

The laws of friendship bent around her picket fence becoming lost in the garden. Wayward bees from the hive, we descended through streetlight into her yard, passing over the sunflower threshold.

I remember. The first time she opened her hand and anointed me with glitter. It was the first time I stepped beyond the judgment horizon. Everything changed.

It’s complicated and hard to explain. Unless you’ve been fragmented.

Anyway. In the garden they gathered. Her friends. Proudly wounded. Hopelessly intertwined. Microsoft pandas, loose ends, life segues and love nomads. The garden buzzed with exchanges decorated by subcultures and memes beyond my experience.

Surely these were princes of some domain far off the interstate grid.

I couldn’t wait to be alone with her. This Transparent Girl. Parts of her were completely missing. Ionized. Her sustenance were simple impossible rules. I vaguely remember from childhood. She sang them to me.

40 is the new 40!

By all rights, I should have cried myself to sleep last night.  After all, technically I am 40, single, unemployed and have two cats and a bit of a muffin top.  Things couldn’t look much worse. 

However, I am a very optimistic person!  By this I mean hyper, so I am not going to let that stand in the way of my special day.  Because I am special.  My mom thinks so.

My friends have joined forces for a two day birthday extravaganza, I had two fantastic phone interviews Friday afternoon, a new guy in my life and the best real and chosen family anyone could ask for.  My core friend group is called the New Bardo Hotel and Conference Center.  It resides at the home of one of my best friends and is named after the Bardo in the Tibetan Book of the Dead.  It is a beatnik reference.  Bardo means “transitional state”.  We have been transitional since about 1997. 

When the New Bardo first formed in about 1997, there were three nerds from Microsoft (and I have the pictures to prove it) an arty chick and some bureaucrat that worked for the government (that is me).  We just wanted to embrace the weirdness of the Pacific Northwest and explore different subcultures.  We tried out cultures like the Goth Scene (my Goth Name is Obscuria and my outfits came from Hot Topic and Mercury),  the Rave Scene (yes, it gets capitalization and my Rave Name is Star-Sparkley because stars are shiny and my outfits came from my sewing machine and young children’s cast aways), Burning Man, the Swan Ice Sculpture Community, the We Are Waaaayyy to into Cats Community, and the Smoothie Community.  We laughed our asses off (mostly at Jess) and supported each other through deaths and births and breakups and personal crisis. 

 Because, when you became a card carrying member of the NBH, you joined a family.   

A chosen family.  I mean, we were drunk when we picked each other, but we still picked each other. 

 

In the mid 1990s in Seattle, there were several “tribes” in these subcultures.  The Church of Mez was the most prominent.  I heard it referenced as “an internet sex and drug cult ” by a conservative blogger which is hilarious.  The founder was a pioneer in the tech world, a fantastic human being, and a good friend whose friends decided to give him a church for his birthday one year because he already had everything else.  Our closest allies besides Mez were Spice Alley, Inertia Labs, Fey Abbey, Seventh Maze, etc.   

We had fun.  We were all professionals but in our spare time we would do things like throw epic parties including Phoenix Festival, Poop (don’t ask – it was at an undisclosed location in the forest), Earth Dance,  and even started a non profit called Dance Safe that educated young people about recreational drug use and provided harm reduction services at parties.  If you Google me, you will see references to our work in The Stranger, 20/20, MTV and the Seattle Times.  I am proud of what we accomplished – we worked hand in hand with King County Public Health, the Seattle Police Department and the media.  Special shout out to Chief Kerlikowske who handled the shooting deaths of several of our friends by a lone gunman on Capital Hill with compassion and extraordinary grace.  Although we didn’t always see eye to eye on the need for a safe place to talk about harm reduction, he accepted our work and presence. 

 

The truth is that through that this process of discovery and creativity, my friends scratched off the giant scab that settled on my soul.  I had become closed to possibilities and the universe and of the many things of which I was afraid. 

I believe that everyone has a critical time in their lives when they are able to make a decision to be who they want to become and chose the life they want.  Since the price you pay for being who you are is your life, you should take that seriously.  When the bill comes, I hope you got what you paid for. 

There are some moments that stick out in my mind:

 

J1 getting lost in his sweatshirt for 2 hours at a party in the forest and we had to tether him to the tent so he wouldn’t get lost.

 

J2 and I hugging it out on the floor of 2424 with Goldfish Bunny (umm, there is a back story here) and all the years since attending fund raisers and over bidding on beaver suits (umm, back story part two)

 

The night I met T and we discussed Ethan Allen vs Ikea furniture on the floor of a party at the artificial limb company, and the years we spent supporting each other through everything (Perl vs C ++?)

 

The unsuccessful behavioral based interviewing techniques for potential roommates with N that left us with roommates who, somehow, managed to get beans on the ceiling of the kitchen and all of the bizzaro HR questions we passed back and forth

 

The awesome years I spent laughing my ass off with N’s mossylocks impressions, the time he bent to kiss me and his construction hat fell on my face and broke my nose, the support he gave me through my mom’s death and the friendship he has offered me since we decided to part ways

 

Post date night post-mortem breakfasts with Max and runs to Home Depot (Do you only like me for my car, dude?  J)  And, I am the BEST wing man ever!

E, M and M – you are the best friends ever! You taught me how to chuck rocks and run and swing and have fun

B – my life has incredible possibilities with you.  I am head over heels (and I wear heels mostly to impress you).  I think you are funny and smart and sexy and gorgeous and can’t wait to discover more. 

 

Ice Castles and cats with laser pointer improvs with my colleagues, silly hallway dances and lots and lots of LOL Cats, laughter and hopefully professional tips

 

The people we lost, the cats we lost, the minds we lost…….

 

I have an amazing life.  I am grateful and humbled every day by the people who chose to call me their friend.   And in return, they can consider my love for them unconditional.

So happy 40^th birthday to me, I can’t ask for anything richer and I am grateful and humbled.