Epic Fail

It was my fourth day of my new job.  My new job is kind of my old job with special sauce instead of Thousand Island Dressing.  By this I mean I am working with a lot of the same people I worked with for the past few years, but it is a spin off company with a for-profit bent.  I haven't had a dot com behind my name since the very early 2000s, but it was time.  After spending nearly 10 years in non profit, I had learned to run my organizations with duct tape (don't you want to say duck tape?) and safety pins.  Working for an organization that could actually afford to hire someone to clean the bathrooms (other than me) was a new experience.  I love science and this is a diagnostic company.  I love scientists and there are millions of them here.  I wanted to kick ass, I wanted to impress my new boss.  I didn't.

Starting every new job in HR, there are two things I always do - look at the files and talk to the people.  My first HR boss Ann told me, "the history of the people and the company are in those files".  She was right.  And, it is often the first thing an auditor or plaintiff's attorney will look at during discovery.  I audited the files and guess what?  Humans forget to turn things in.  Oh well, no one is going to die, we will just get everything updated.  I started making appointments to talk to the people.  Things were going well - I had a good rapport with most of the new folks and had been working with the veterans for a few years.  I was just about to meet with one of the team members when.....

I fell.  Flat on my face.  It is every woman's worst nightmare.  It is up there with the nightmare you have of showing up to school naked on the first day of class.  (That actually happened to me too, but I am not prepared to discuss it yet - I need more therapy).

I developed a taste for shoes early in life - they are one of my three guilty pleasures.  Four.  Five.  Maybe let's just call it an even 10.  When I turned 38 and my long term relationship unraveled, I learned how to wear heels.  I lost about 80 lbs in 2 years and decided to become a foxy 40 year old for the next phase of my life. 

As I mentioned, it was my fourth day of work and I was dressed to impress - matching funky suit and heels.  My favorite heels - Fleuvog's with a Mary Jane strap - yum!  I tend to walk fast anyway, but I was really booking to make this meeting.  My rubber soled shoes caught on the concrete floor and I went in to slooooowwww moooootion.  Noooooooo!!!!!  I recall thinking as I swam towards the floor.  Never underestimate gravity.  Or intelligent falling, as I call it. 

I fell.  On my face.  In a skirt.  In front of the Chief Medical Officer, Director of IP and Legal and General Counsel.  And the employee.  And the elevators. While the doors were opening.  I wanted, truly, to die.

As I tell employees, scandals last about a week before people switch gears to find the next big thing.  It has been a week, so my time in purgatory should be complete and I can talk about it now.  The awesome thing is when I told my boss, he high fived me.  My other boss said, "please don't stop face planting, every organization needs a face planter".  They were both serious. 

I love these guys which is why I turned down THREE offers for HR Director jobs in the first two days of consulting for them.  They know the employee morale impact of the HRD face planting in front of everyone and jumping up to declare victory.  They understand that part of what makes a team successful is how they treat each other after not just success, but epic, epic, failure.  They get that it takes failure and painful learning to be successful.  I love these guys. 

Working with these people again feels like I have come home.  From war.  The most beautiful thing anyone can experience is acceptance - particularly after an epic fail. 

I wear my humiliation on my shoulder like an indie rock button.  I wear my pride on my face when I tell people what I do for a living.  And I will never wear my Fleuvog's to work again. 

Humble

The last three days have been some of the most joyful and humbling of my life.  I had hit a little rough patch in my life, and was having my old, “screw it - I’m moving back to Hawaii to live in my dad’s basement with the roaches” fantasy that I have sometimes. 

My job search was uninspiring – both in some of the opportunities provided and on my interview evaluation forms.  My relationship fizzled and I was having a little pity party.

Then I got an amazing piece of news – my old organization’s spin off company, which I had the honor to assist in the set up of their HR practices, wanted to talk to me about coming on as a consultant because they were growing and needed some additional help.  I was completely overjoyed.  I love these people – they are smart and funny and professional and interesting as hell.  Not quite Burning Man interesting, but I could talk to them for hours, learn, laugh and even want to stay up past my bedtime (which is an incredible 10 p.m. in the summer!) 

I accepted with an agreement to start on Wednesday. 

On Tuesday, I had a bad case of the blues and a friend of mine offered to come pick me up and feed and entertain me for the afternoon.  I am not a lot of fun to be around when I am sick or gloomy, so this was a very generous offer.  Very.  I slipped out $200 and shoved it under the sofa like a little cash Easter Egg.  (Last pillow on the left – kidding!)  Probably should have waited until later in the post to say I was kidding, just to see if he would look.    I was so humbled and grateful for this act by someone who has very quickly become a real friend and not just a party friend.  Plus, he made me eat chicken and crackers and makes me laugh my ass off. 

Wednesday I went in for my first day of work.  I know these folks, but I was still nervous as hell.  I asked one of my colleagues how I looked and he said, “like it is your first day of work”.  Great.  That will inspire great confidence in my abilities as an HR Director.  Hands shaking, sweating profusely, outfit all wrong, talking too fast (oh wait, that is how I talk).  Oh well.  It was going down.

They are housed with my old organization currently and former employees (many of them now friends although I know in HR Land you aren’t supposed to do that, but I don’t care – you don’t go into this business if don’t care about people).  But it is a business so sometimes you have to do things like fire your friends.  Which either makes me a good compartmentalizer or a sociopath.  Maybe there is no difference. 

All day, people kept coming up and hugging me, saying hello, sending others over – it felt like I was coming home from war.  Mostly it just felt like I was coming home.  But they don’t pay me to socialize, so I kicked off a very ambitious project and finished it that day.  I worked my ass off and my back is killing me, but I wanted them to know that they had hired someone who could kick ass, take names and do it in 3 inch heels.  They had a welcome party after work for some of the new employees and I got to meet the families of my colleagues and dearest friends. 

I went home feeling absolutely giddy, so I tortured my garden until I finally got tired enough to watch Jon Stewart.  This was not, however, before I showed up a week early and or late to plan a party.  I had gotten my dates all wrong when J answered the door, he looked absolutely bewildered.  He was as gracious as always - shoved a calendar in my hands, slapped me in the face and threw me out of the door. 

I was so excited about going to work the next day, I couldn’t sleep.  I kept jumping up in the middle of the night writing myself emails and developing tools I thought we could use to enhance the developing culture. 

I woke up at 4 a.m. and saw the sun start to rise.  I mean the light-ish thing that comes up behind the clouds.  I couldn’t wait to get to work! 

Thursday was even better than Wednesday because I now had a phone AND a garbage can!  I don’t know where to find a stapler, but I did locate the bathroom – just in time.

I embarked on another project that was also pretty ambitious, but it is a tool that will help me develop reporting and analysis.  HR people – I made an HRIS on Excel. You all do it, you know you do.  It is our dirty little secret.  You can buy an enterprise server HRIS thingey for $100k a year, but you know you are just going to download a report into a csv file and convert it into Excel.  You are. 

I kept running into old friends and colleagues from ISB, Amazon, SeattleBiomed – because I don’t have a private office and need to make sensitive calls on my cell which gets no reception, so my office is on a bench on the Amazon campus.  Hope they don’t charge me.  In the summer, I also prefer to conduct employee meetings, especially difficult ones, outside.  If the sun is out, you are just two people having a conversation about how to improve things instead of some terrified employee sitting across the desk from a scary HR person.  Then I buy them a gelato or a coffee and make jokes.  I think this is why there has never been an employment related attempt on my life.  Employment related only. 

After work, my trusty sidekick Max and I went out to dinner, (after I got a call from one of my bosses who asked me how things were going which was so freaking cool, I don’t even know what to do!) where he proceeded to tell such raunchy stories that I put my napkin over my head to cover my face so no one would know I was with him.  Because if you can’t see them, they can’t see you.  Unfortunately, I had dropped a giant chunk of palak paneer onto the napkin and it was dripping down my face onto my shirt.  Which now smells like Indian food.  So I am not going to wash it.  My shirt.  I will totally wash my face.  Then we walked around Greenlake and he did the same thing, but this time I participated because if you are moving fast enough, they can’t see you.  We were like insult ninjas.  Yaar!  I know that is a pirate sound, but I don’t know what Ninjas say.  (Then Jess called with a funny HR story from Boston and I loooooovvvee those.) 

Tomorrow is another project that will make them amazed (except they all hate this HR stuff which is why they hired me).  It would probably be more interesting if I just brought donuts. 

Three awesome days.  The only thing that can make a week like this (meaningful work, outstanding colleagues, real friends – friends closer than family, laughter – oh! And I went for a run!) would be a smart nerdy boyfriend, the ability to fit into size 8 pants and winning the shoe lottery.   I am a grateful girl. 

Humiliation, part one of several

I was talking to my former recruiter yesterday at his baby shower today (Stephen is going to be the best dad ever unless he takes his kid to a Hootie and the Blowfish concert which he would NEVER do, right, Stephen?)  Stephen is more likely to take Declan to an obscure jazz band from Patagonia anyway, so it isn't like I have to say anything.  Some people think the only good bands for children are like Hannah Indiana or something (who will likely be the ambassador to Panama by the time we can take Stephen and Ang's kid to a show).

On our old HR team, we would pass around really silly videos all day.  We worked hard too, but got a giant kick out of dumb animal videos.  He told me about this new video they had been schlepping about a woman on a dating site who was really into cats.  REALLY INTO CATS.  People also think I am REALLY INTO CATS because I have some of them and a tattoo and find them funny, but I don’t cry about them or get cat-themed dinner wear or earrings.  I might have an amusing t-shirt, but it was a gift.  The woman in the video started crying about how she wanted all the cats in the world in a giant basket on a rainbow. I am terrible at dating, I scare them all away in the first 5 minutes, but I know enough about it to know this - lady, do not bring up cats.  Ever. 

I like cats too, but that whole giant basket on a rainbow thing is messed up.  First of all, a lot of them would be crushed to death by the weight of the other cats in the little “basket”.  Second, who in the hell is going to scoop that litter?   Third, cats fall off rainbows because their claws can’t hold on to hope and love, so there is going to be mass carnage at the end of the rainbow instead of a pot of gold and I don’t think anyone wants to see that. 

So in addition to that image, this week was spent in total humiliation.  I couldn’t stand to eat anything other than Triscuits and sugar snap peas, my job prospects are not getting back to me with the speed I would like, I can’t manage to mow the lawn because it seems too hard, boys think I am creepy and one my friends tried to run me over with his Prius.  Although that was a staged shot and incredibly funny – except to the neighbor’s 3 year old. 

I actually think someone needed to film that - it was really funny - especially with me hamming it up on the sidewalk.  But I have weird stuff in my hair now like rocks, cigarette butts, PBR cans, some 13 year old from LA, post it notes and Ave Rats because I live in the U District.  I may have my first dreadlock though.  I know!

If I die by Prius, I want to make sure I have at least one dreadlock and am wearing Chuck Taylors just to stick it to the man.  And my Sid and Nancy shirt.  Feel that knife spin in your trust fund, man?!  Yeah, we punks on 8^th in our Craftsman houses are really telling you off now.  MOSH PIT! (with Nerf guns and protective footwear because we have to go to work on Monday.  Explaining the black eye thing every week is getting old and they are starting to not believe us).

So I digressed.  But this whole thing is about digressing, so don’t feel bad, I don’t even remember…….so this one time, at Jen camp…….

So back to the video - apparently it was supposed to be for a dating site.  It was weird because I actually worked in the dating industry.For two days. 

For two days, I was the salesperson for a video dating service because I was 21 and had big hair.  Aqua Net big.

I had just graduated from undergrad and was starting grad school and needed money.  I was waiting tables at night, working at the University of Maryland during the day, interning in DC every Tuesday and Thursday and working at Macy’s on the weekends.  I could piece this together to pay my rent because I got free coleslaw and biscuits from the restaurant, those little free shoe footies from Macy’s shoe department and an occasional congressman from DC. (KIDDING!  Although it was the Lewinsky era, nothing even remotely weird happened to me except when I would take calls from irate voters over "don't ask, don't tell").

I was offered a job in “sales” and I jumped at it!  I was told I could make as much as $35,000 per year! (which is more than I currently make despite having lovely credentials – this is the humiliation part.  I am about 15 minutes from calling my dad and asking if he needs the lawn mowed for $10 bucks an hour.  In Hawaii.  We don't have grass.) 

My first two days were spent in uncompensated “training”.  Totally illegal under the FLSA, but the statue of limitations expired in 1995.

I was told to pretend I was a client.  That meant wearing something inappropriate and pretending to be a candidate.  Like when the EEOC investigates you and sends over someone awful as a test case.  Bleh.  So here is what I recall of my video.

 

"Hi!  I am Jen!  I moved to the East Coast from Hawaii so I could meet new people! Who are not in the service industry!  If you like pina coladas and long walks on the beach and are really into security briefs from the TCA and Bureau of Veteran's Affairs, call me!  867-5309."

I lasted two days.

Then I became a receptionist for 3 hours.

Things are not looking up. 

LOL Katz

I am spelling this in this fashion to avoid the legal team at the Chezburger Network.  BTW, I could have been your HR Director.  I would have taken you to new heights in hilarity like playing Double Dutch Bus at the start of every staff meeting (although that gets old after the first 15 times) and ordering donuts from Dunkin instead of Top Pot just to be egalitarian about it.

This morning I woke up with a mouth full of fur.  Or a mouth covered in fur.  I have had lipstick on my mouth consistently for the last 31 years – no kidding.  My friend, Paige, once told me that I looked like Holly Hobby and then she pulled my bangs back and made fun of my unnatrually large eyes and smallish mouth and then barfed on my shirt because she was laughing so hard.  Mostly because we had stolen a bunch of clove cigarettes from this store downtown and smoked them while drinking Robitussin.  

This brings back such fond memories that when I wake up in the morning, I steal a pack of cloves and then peel the cat fur from my lips. I hear it has moisturizing properties.  Which is why I do that.

Actually, it is because my cats need to sleep literally on my head.  There is an entire house here with 3 bedrooms, a living room, reading room and office, but they have to sleep ONLY on my pillow.  This is not only annoying, it is gross. 

I have an uncanny sense of smell.  I can tell who is smoking Virginia Slims in Wallingford or eating Doritos on Capital Hill.  From my house.  Oh, and I can see Russia!  From my house!  Why are you Russians eating Doritos and smoking Virginia Slims?  Just eat caribou jerky and do snuff, it is what you are legally obligated to do.  And don’t try to put the Doritos in a Ziplock and pretend we don’t know.  I do that all the time with my Pringles and pretend it is celery, but no one is buying it.  The people at Costco are so on to me. 

What it means in practical terms is that I can smell cat litter on my pillow at 3 a.m. from the dang furry things that sleep on my head and I DO NOT WANT this.  It also means I have to throw 15 small furry animals off my bed to get a decent sleep.  Or I could try Nyquil, but that seems like I am developing yet another addiction.  Bagels, Benadryl and baked brie are one thing, OTC meds and owl tattoos are quite another.

So nothing has happened in the last week other than the Boi (heart!!!!) has begun calling me back after I annoyed him to death with my constant annoyingness (yeah, that doesn’t really change much - sorry!) because I bribed his mother and said I was a lovely person and sent her a Hallmark store.  And I think I am going to go back to work with my peeps at the academic biomedical research institute spin off that I call home as long as they buy off on my proposal to stare at them strangely and audit files. Which is why this post (unlike all the others - snort! - makes no sense).

Today I read 13 books and ran from Seattle to Portland and back.  On my bike.  While doing laundry,  It is definitely time to get back into the swing of things and do some math for a comp survey or something.  The only math I currently do is just to calculate how I can pay my mortgage and not eat the giant Costco-sized brie that looks like it is encased in Styrofoam and keep buying my industrial sized ziplocks in which to store my Pringles.  

 Eww.  I think I am going to stop eating altogether to save money and not have to eat ishey food.  "Ishey" is a term derived from the Yiddish Language which means “gross” in Hawaiian.  

Kthxbye

Photosynthesis

I photosynthesize.  Literally.  Which is why I only have friends from October to March.  In the summer, I am up all day long – like right now!  Jumping on furniture and cats and having monkey climbing contests with Madeline and Emily (they are 9, so it isn’t a like a bunch of 40 year olds are hanging off the monkey bars at Cowen Park)  Just one, but I think the neighbors are used to me by now.  Like they are used to me mowing the lawn at 3 a.m.  Because the grass gets all long and stuff.

In the summer, I turn into a complete spaz.  Which is why if you came into my kitchen right now, you could literally eat off the floor.  What makes it worse is that I have been unemployed or marginally employed, for the past few months.  This was fine when I was in Indonesia and Australia traveling and running from large insects, but now that I am home, I am driving everyone nuts. 

I even stopped drinking caffeine and start every day with a run.  Nothing helps.  I should probably volunteer with a iguana shelter or something, but I hate iguanas and I don’t think those probably exist.  Iguana shelters.  I think Iguanas probably do, although it seems unnecessary.

I do have the best friends on earth.  I got shirts made for them (no one wears them, they just smile awkwardly, say “thank you” and go back to the iguana shelter to help the homeless parrots).  Just because one time I bailed them out of jail in Reno, they are willing to put up with neurotic calls from me like 35 times a day.  Although I probably shouldn’t press my luck.  (Jess, wear the BLACK one, it makes you look sexy!)

My ex boyfriends are also very kind to me.  I am not sure why, but I only have two exes (and let’s not get into the numbers game, I DID date the entire wrestling team).  EWW!  Did not!  Did not! Out of pure fashion snobbery, I did not.  MAYBE soccer, or skate boarding teams - that hate me (boyfriends, not sports teams).  The two that do I think might actually be mentally ill.  I am a pretty good girlfriend and a really good normal friend and I don’t really hold grudges or put people in fucked up situations and frequently buy dinner, which is why I am going to spend the rest of my life convincing these two guys to like me.  Except for the restraining orders.  (All I did was bring you a six pack and a bagel dude, was that really necessary?)  At least he lives in Portland and I can’t drive that far to stalk him regularly because I am too lazy.  He is only the second person to de-friend me on facebook.  The first was a trumpet player from the south that had an adorable accent and lived on a sofa around a bunch of PRB cans in lower Queen Anne.  I met him at a show and he had a great hat.  What is my attraction to alcoholic musicians?  Am I trying to support Sound Garden? 

**Note to the attorneys for Sound Garden, this is satire and, therefore, protected speech, so chill.  And I can’t even list a song your guys sang.  And are any of them single?

Anyway, I think I am going back to my old company’s spin off company next week.  It is going to be weird not being the head of HR for a big organization, but I have to do something here.  The next door neighbor is really sick of me offering to tweak his resume.  Although he did mow the 87 year old guy’s lawn last night at like 9 which was really charming.  Hey neighbor, next time, take *off* your shirt.  Because you are like 21 years old and gorgeous.  This sounds pervy, but I live in the city and you can’t help notice your neighbors when they are like 5 feet from you.      

So Corbin (my writing coach) needs to get back from her iguana saving mission in the rainforest, I need to go to bed and my friends need to throw my phone in the lake so I don’t call them any more.  My ex used to just walk by water (ocean, lake, puddle) and whatever electronic device he had on him would just jump out of his pocket and commit electronic suicide – it was funny until he left me in Lake Washington after a canoe tipping incident in which three Asian guys pulled my big white ass out of the water by my shorts.  And I don’t have a big ass.  My thighs could kill you in a cage fighting match, but my ass couldn’t even scrape Betty Crocker’s arm.  Because I am all Irish and flat assed.

Kymmer’s birthday today - gotta pick up the sake.  Love to Gina and Madeline and Emily and the British Chick and the guy with the red shirt that helped me round up the kids at the park and Jess and Paul and Karen (because when I walk down the street, people know my hairdresser cares about me – and my hair looks good!)   (and I think your ass looks hot in those jeans, Karen, own it!) and Roxaneimal and Eli and Choo and Carol and Fred and Clover. And Paigey.  And, mom, I am sorry for hitting you in the face over my childhood because you are dead and don’t feel it that much so it doesn’t count and I am really sorry I am kind of a bitch about it.  You were a good mom.  That is why I keep you in my house next to my signed copy of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  And hitting you in the metaphorical face is a sign of respect in our culture.  Yeah.  In Brooklyn.  We are from the old country.