Social Experiment

I was worried about tackling the details of my next job, at an Internet start-up outside of D.C., on this blog because there was just soooooooo much that wasn’t right about the environment that I wasn’t sure where to begin (or end for that matter). I simply decided to write a few things that popped into my head, primarily in list form. But the most important thing to me is that, despite the mayhem, it was a really fun job for a while. It felt fabulous to be a part of something that we all thought had tremendous promise and opportunity. I actually enjoyed pulling all-nighters and arriving home after the morning paper had been delivered (even if I was nine months pregnant) and I loved the majority of my co-workers. We really banded together through thick and thin. And by that, I mean:

• Fists pounding on tables with the founders screaming “heads are going to f*ing roll”
• The assistant to one of the founders telling everyone about items he was expensing – including the alleged, ongoing, “happy endings” he was receiving from his masseuse
• A corporate “meeting” in the Bahamas using VC funding
• The production manager taking kick-backs from his print vendors—including an all-expense-paid trip to FL
• Endless stories that would often begin at midnight and carry on for hours (with the inability for anyone listening to extract themselves without appearing impolite) about living the bootstrap, rags to riches, American dream told with ex-military bravado
• The dismissive hand-in-the-air and “whatever” leadership response to anyone’s ideas—particularly ideas coming from whatever VP or Director was the outcast of the month (very inspirational!)
• Playing favorites—and then switching them without notice
• Finger-pointing and attempting to position everyone against each other with destructive comments—even though we were all really close friends and shared everything with one another
• The clandestine meetings of the VPs and Directors (either behind the gas station, God help us, or at a local restaurant) to vent
• Providing “false positive” news that everyone knew to be untrue—and then remaining clueless to their own transparency
• Shifting direction on a daily basis when the end was near—and a) having everyone scrambling to course-correct and b) blaming everyone and everything (IT, marketing, business development, the market, etc.)
• Worst of all: heaps and heaps of lies between the founders about members of each others’ teams. Bold-faced lies that would come out randomly (sometimes months later) with no recourse available at that late date.

One evening, our boss called us into her office where she had placed everyone’s names from her team on the white board. We began weeding people out one-by-one based on our input. The funniest part was that it was being done with three VPs and two of us, Dave and I, managed different marketing functions (customer acquisition and retention). I finally said, “Well, you don’t need two VPs of Marketing with this reduced team; you should really let me go because our focus is no longer on acquisition.” And Dave responded, “No, you should let me go . . .” and this continued for a while—both of us lodging arguments on why we were the better candidate for elimination. It was the first time in my life I’ve actually asked to be fired. She finally put up her hand, told us to stop, and said that she wanted both of us to stay. I think this was the first event that solidified my friendship with Dave.

The clincher came when, near the end, I was sitting outside on the curb with Dave and our boss came running out of the building with her typical, “get in my office/you guys are in so much trouble” sneer that used to evoke terror. She proceeded to tell us that one of us (and we knew who we were) made Margaret, yet another VP, come to her in tears. It was so completely incongruous that, a split second after she said it, both Dave and I began laughing so hard that we couldn’t stop. It was the much-needed catalyst that broke the cycle of stress. Relief had officially arrived in the form of profound absurdity. We were laughing so hard we were crying. And it didn’t stop. What our boss didn’t know, is that Dave and Margaret had been living together after Margaret chose not to renew her lease in D.C. and were best friends.

An ex-coworker, who remains one of my best friends in the world to this day, used to say she wouldn’t have been surprised if we were all part of some bizarre social experiment captured on film. One where sociologists were studying human behavior under undue stressful conditions. If so, the one thing I'm sure they would have found is this: when all else fails, head toward the margarita machine. And start smoking. It helps.

Elie Elie Oxen Free

Since I seem to have gotten on a roll about my ex-bosses, it's only fair to share my next, positive experience: Elie.

After leaving the sex maniac (who I forgot to mention, not only got divorced but, I've been told, cannot visit his daughter without supervision -- God only knows what that's all about, if true), I immediately went into therapy. Why do I seek out, and find, such freakishly bizarre, often drunk, bosses? Do other people have normal work lives? If so, what does that entail? What is "normal"?

I went through months of unemployment while trying to find the "perfect job." During that time, I barely interviewed. Instead, I would meet my friend Todd, who lost his job when Isaac Mizrahi went under, and we would go to the beach. One day, standing in Grand Central and feeling guilty as we headed to a beach in CT, he said, "Stop and look around. Notice anything?" I didn't. He then said, "We're the only two smiling."

Much to my husband's chagrin, I finally relaxed and began to enjoy not working!

It was right after this that I took a train uptown to 125th Street, boarded MetroNorth heading out of the city, and took a shuttle bus to a nondescript office park in White Plains for my interview with Elie. As I waited for him, I knew for a fact: this suburban asylum is clearly NOT where I want to spend my days.

But as we chatted, I was very honest about my search and my resolution not to repeat my past mistakes. (More on that later.) Little did I know, at the time, that he was a spiritual guru. He meditates daily, prays before meals, goes on months-long silent retreats, and gives up one (just one) vice every new moon. Not the right boss for many but the perfect boss for me. He completely understood that I was trying to redirect my path and, possibly for that reason only, took a chance on me.

And he turned out to be a wonderful boss. Unbelievably smart. Intuitive. Always knew what was right for our clients (not that they always listened). And he constantly tried to make each of us into better people, personally and professionally. I love him!

So what do I do? I leave a year later, of course.

A Cancer in the Organization

When I left the company run by one of New York's Worst Bosses, I was hired immediately by a well respected not-for-profit that was run by two co-Executive Directors: clinical and business management. The latter of the two became my boss.

During my interview, the clinical Executive Director warned me that my soon-to-be-boss told off-color jokes. I assured her that it didn't bother me in the slightest. I had, in fact, met him at a a Broadway show where he introduced himself as a proctologist. Not all that funny but whatever.

Everything at this job went fairly smoothly. He would leave around 11:00 a.m. every day to go to lunch and come back to the office around 3:00 p.m. drunk. Because he left me alone to do my job, his behavior didn't actually bother me at all. And the majority of his sexual innuendos were stated in front of others presumably for comedic effect. They usually elicited a chuckle from me.

One day he took me and my girlfriend, who was then working for People magazine, to lunch and began peppering us with all sorts of questions like "where is the wildest place you've ever had sex?" (She later confided in me that she made all of her answers up because her real life sounded too boring.) It was a strange lunch but not, for whatever reason, alarming. I think because he seemed so benign at the time -- and I was just grateful to be in a relatively stress-free environment.

A few weeks later, our institute held a black-tie, fund raising event at the University Club after which he invited me for drinks. I declined. The next day, he came into work still in his tuxedo and shared with me that he had gone to a neighborhood bar, picked up two young girls, went back to their hotel room and had a threesome. "You should have come with me."

Please note: this man had a wife and young baby in CT.

Finally, I started getting the creeps. He then began asking me to lunch and I kept putting him off until one Friday, I agreed, under the premise that we were going to talk about my performance and possible new initiatives.

We sat down at a two-person table with banquette seating. There were customers dining at tables on either side of us who were so close that they could have joined in the conversation. Instead, they just listened in.

My boss then proceeded to tell me that he loves making sexual comments in front of others because my chest heaves (ew!) and that he fantasizes about "doing me" in the Board room. Why I continued eating, I'll never know. What else was said, I cannot remember. I just remember the silence at the tables on either side of us. And his silence when I finally stood up and quit.

For whatever reason, we walked back to the building together in silence, and then road the elevator together with the silence punctured by my co-worker Lisa's friendly, "Hi guys!" greeting as we joined her.

Lisa later shared with me that I was one of a long string of women hired for that position. Same story; different girl.

She also shared with me that, after I left, this same man brought in a package of rub-on tattoos and told the entire staff that whoever put a tattoo in the most interesting place on his/her body would get a day off. He then sat in his office and screened the results, one-by-one, behind closed doors.

Needless to say, he was ultimately fired but I still can't imagine why he wasn't let go much sooner. When I told my story to the other Executive Director, her only comment was, "I warned you." No, you didn't. In my opinion, off-color jokes are vastly different than sexual harassment. Both, however, may qualify for dismissal.

I wonder what, if anything, he was holding over her head.

Do More

When I worked at American Express, I had some of the best co-workers in the world. Smart, driven, professional. We all worked exceptionally well together -- which was incredible given that our incentive structure actually encouraged us to compete against one another for the biggest piece of the "bonus pie." Regardless, one of my co-workers and I used to spend early Saturday mornings together, with our laptops, drinking coffee and compiling research at the now defunct DT-UT on the Upper East Side. And it was fun.

In addition, our senior management team was also amazingly strong. Very intelligent, strategic and fair. With that said, I believe Amex may have coined a "skips a generation" talent management ethos. Our directors were completely clueless, spineless, and devoid of inspiration.

One of my first directors used to ask us to go around during our staff meetings and share what we were working on. One of my co-workers stated, week after week, "Nothing. I'm bored out of my mind and you need to give me more work." No joke, one day he came in and announced that he had hired a new guy to offset our workload. No discussion beforehand. No input in the interviewing or hiring process. And a complete moron, to boot.

This same co-worker, Marsha, and I spent months working with HR (mainly her effort, not mine) to develop a new sales compensation model that was equitable, controllable and would drive the right behaviors. After presenting it to our team and requesting feedback, I stopped by my boss' office where he and Andrew, the new hire, were writing numbers on the white board. "What are you working on?" I asked. Their response, "We're assigning bonuses to the sales reps." Completely arbitrary. Pulling numbers out of their @#*. Not even a piece of paper to highlight anyone's performance. Nice work. I'm glad I worked so hard at nothing.

But my favorite boss at Amex was a woman who didn't give a crap what any of us did -- as long as we made her look good. She would sit in her office, feet on the desk, and shoot the breeze all day long with anybody/everybody. She told us about her weekend blow jobs, abortions, dates, bowel movements, etc. She would break in the middle of meetings and ask urgently if anyone had a tampon. And she insisted on repeatedly sharing with us how she personally molded Henry, a successful co-worker who had been with Amex for years, into who he was today. I'm surprised he never killed her.

The straw the broke the camel's back for me came when, after working hard all year, I had lunch with this woman. I drank iced tea; she had two glasses of wine. She was wearing blue jean overalls and Candie's shoes; I was in a suit. She proceeded to tell me that she fought hard for me to get a fabulous bonus but that two things worked against me: 1) I was too nice and smiled a lot and 2) I wore a brown sweater that was too big on me.

Note to self: stop smiling, wear spiked heals and start talking about my sex life. Or leave the company.

The Devil Wears Issey Miyake

My husband got "The Devil Wears Prada" DVD out of the library for me last week. Although I had read the book when it first came out, I was reluctant to watch the movie out of deep-seated fear that it would cause further nightmarish flashbacks of my ex-bosses. I'm thankful to report that enough time has passed where I am now, officially, flashback-free. I'm also embarrassed to report that it felt somewhat tame, to me.

One of my least favorite bosses was highlighted this spring on Gawker's online poll entitled, New York's Worst Boss. I didn't bother to enter my comments given they had so much disturbing fodder already; however, since she didn't win, I'm regretting my omission.

On my first day at this horrific firm, my boss looked me up and down and ordered that I get my hair cut and colored at her salon and that her assistant take me out shopping for new clothes. It was as if I interviewed well and then arrived at the office looking like Jerri Blank.

After I was hired, I was never directly spoken to again unless it was over the phone. Literally. She would relay messages to me through people while we all sat in the same room . It's almost comical if it wasn't so demeaning!

Lunches were free and catered daily. I had access to a car and driver but preferred to walk to work every day. However, we were expected to be at work from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. five days a week and to be "on call" all weekend. One Sunday, after an early morning conference call, I went to hang up and head off to church. My boss' comment? "If I had known you were a Christian, I would never have hired you." What a shocker.

After hours, the housekeepers would walk around with a tray of wine -- but everyone was forewarned to drink only the white in case, heaven forbid, any spilled. The owner, meanwhile, was out every night with famous politicians, luminaries and celebrities and would arrive home night after night stinkin' drunk.

This company had zero processes in place and employees were literally expected to be mind readers. The staff were supposed to pack the "briefcases" of the leadership team with information they may find useful -- even if they didn't attend the meetings and had no idea what any particular project entailed.

The owner would scream at people in the office if she got an incoming call and she didn't have information at her fingertips about the caller. "Why didn't someone run up here and give me a file on George Fisher?" Perhaps because we didn't know he would call? Maybe she should have hired Nostradamus . . .

One night she had dinner with two women from New Jersey as a favor to a client. The next day, she couldn't stop marveling aloud at their idiocies like the fact that they a) wore nude hose (how embarrassing!) and b) put an actual tape recorder on the table (vs. discretely using a miniature recorder). Needless to say, she was mortified to have been in public with them.

The company was a revolving door -- mainly of wealthy, young socialites. One really funny woman that I worked with (and who went to Switzerland on weekends to ski, as one does) kept vowing to "take her down." She had a plan, she claimed, that would ruin my boss' life for ever. It finally amounted to her FedEx'ing a package to one of our clients with damaging documents. Nothing ever came of it except, I found out months later, that I (me!) was framed for the act and my boss was, in turn, trying to take me down. No one remaining on staff had the guts to stick up for me, at the time, because they were worried that she would read between the lines and know that the entire company knew about "the plan."

When I finally resigned, my boss threw my resignation letter on my desk and stormed out of the building. No one would look at me for fear of what I could possibly have done wrong. Later that afternoon, I got a call from HR. "I understand that you attempted to resign but your resignation has been declined."

What? Nice try!

I Ain't No Saint but I am An Angel

Son #1 asked a while back if he could start calling me "angel" because I remind him of one. He doesn't do it often but he did call out to me as I was leaving the house this morning, "goodbye angel." He's such a sensitive kid.

This is the same boy who, when he was just a toddler, told me that he loves me so much that he needs 17 hearts to keep it all in.

If only there was a way to bottle all of that love and save some for when he's a teenager and wants nothing more to do with me!

I Wanna Be Sagated

The boys and I just spent the weekend at my girlfriend’s cottage on a nearby lake with her, another friend from college who came in from Florida, and their families. Somehow it came up during our campfire conversation that the following word was on one daughter’s third grade spelling list: sagacious.

What?! They had to tell me what it meant (as I am quite obviously not sagacious). This morning, I looked it up online and found that, as a vocabulary word, it’s more appropriate for high school juniors. This begs the question: do we really have to push our kids so hard?

Unfortunately, stories like these make me even more worried about Son #2 who, as the youngest kid in his school, was bumped up from pre-K to Kindergarten after our first parent-teacher conference last year. Suddenly, all of his preschool teachers’ words of advice, as they sat on the fence regarding his future placement, echoed in my head, “Just give him the gift of time.” Well, we gave him that gift and the school clearly thought we had made a mistake.

In an era when parents are holding kids back just so they can excel academically, be more mature (and therefore better) at sports, adjust well socially, or more effectively hone their leadership skills, our little guy is the odd man out. Although the immediate transition did serve him well in the sense that he instantly made friends and seemed to thoroughly enjoy himself, I’m already worried about the long-term ramifications of this decision.

A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a story entitled, “When Should a Kid Start Kindergarten?” which gave me more discomfort than reassurance. On one hand, a labor economist at the University of California, Santa Barbara found that the relatively oldest students are almost 12% more likely to enroll in four-year colleges or universities. On the positive side, according to James Heckman, a University of Chicago economist, “Skill begets skill; motivation begets motivation. Early failure begets later failure.”

I’m hoping that our little guy’s ability to read chapter books in Kindergarten, coupled with his early “success” in school both academically and socially, will beget later success, as well.

Only time will tell.