The Best Part About Changing Jobs

Today was the first day in about two weeks that I had to buy my own lunch.  Ever since I gave my notice, it’s been a whirlwind of happy hours, lunches, breakfasts, coffee breaks, etc.  First with the old job, and then this week with my new colleagues.

There was the Adele-planned happy hour at the Union Grill.  Complete with champagne (and a margarita for me!), great apps, and really nice and thoughtful gifts.  Then there was a delicious lunch at Eleven, where I had the best burger I’ve had in awhile.  Both of these excursions were PC…they included some people I am less than fond of, so it started another wave of events for just people we like

On one of my last days, two of my most important and favorite internal customers took me to Lucca.  I hadn’t been there in awhile and never for lunch, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect.  I had the turkey club sandwich, and oh my God, was it good.  It was enormous and came with lots of chips and a really large side salad.  (Just a note, if you’re a club sandwich fan, check this cool new blog out:  http://clubsaretrump.blogspot.com/ – it’s really neat!)  I also had the tiramisu for desert, and well, that was just a disgrace to tiramisu everywhere.  Over all the lunch was excellent both in taste and company.

My very last day, two of my fav co-workers and I went to a restaurant off the beaten path so we could enjoy a few cocktails.  A couple of glasses of prosecco later, and I was feeling GREAT as I handed off my badge and everything to HR.

Then I started the new job.  Day one was a retreat, so even though it wasn’t all for me, I can pretend it was.  Breakfast, lunch, and ice cream sundaes!  Day two and three…more lunches with new, interesting and great people.  One place we went that I really liked was the cafe at Phipps.  I had a great chicken salad…it was a good size too.  Not overwhelmingly large, but I left full.

Today…a quick bagel at Einsteins.  Not that exciting, but filling.  It’s fun changing jobs

Mean People Suck

If you want something from someone, it’s so much easier to get it when you ask nicely.

Yesterday, a person I work with – who we’ll call Joey B. – went out of his way to be mean and power trippy over the smallest thing.

Joey B. needed web stats to give to his boss, our CEO. Instead of Joey B. looking them up himself like every other competent person we work with, he always asks me to do it for him. Fine, it takes all of 4 minutes and that’s fine.

Well, yesterday Joey B. decided that he wanted to receive the information in a new combined format with a fancy Excel chart. I have about a million other things to do that are actually important and my work – not someone else’s – and I’m not an Excel chart whiz, so I put all of the data in the spreadsheet (per usual) and NICELY explained that I didn’t know how to make that chart, but here’s all the data, if you make it, I can update it next month and so on.

Joey B. proceeded to email and call me yelling at me like I was a worthless human being. He then went on to nastily yell that I need to also put the information in a powerpoint slide for him so he can add it to his presentation. Um, ok…I don’t work for you, so no I don’t think I should be doing your job for you.

I told him I’d figure out how to make the cart (not part of my job – you want information about stats, that’s one thing – what you do with them is not my concern) and hung up b/c he was being so rude. I actually pretty easily figured out how to make the stupid chart, plopped it onto one of his slides and sent it off. I purposefully left off the title he asked me to include…just b/c he was so mean, and I wanted to see if he’d yell at me for that. He did. I got another angry email stating that I didn’t include the title and to please add it.

I don’t know where people get off. This guy has no right to a) tell me what to do or b) yell at me. For anything. I’m not his – or anyone else’s – assistant/bitch. It’s not my job to do his job.

Yet, the thing is, had he asked me nicely to put the information into a slide to help him out and acted like a decent person when I said I didn’t know how to make the complex chart, I’d happily have done it all for him.

Being nice will get you so much further in life. Being mean about stupid things is just well, stupid.

I found a cleaning lady!

I’ve been without a cleaning lady for several months.  Until today! 

My boyfriend’s mother recommended this Portuguese woman and her sister, and today we had our initial house clean.  It took them seven hours to clean EVERYTHING…baseboards, walls, behind the fridge, cabinets, closets - and then the normal dusting/vacuuming/scrubbing.  The house is so clean.  Impeccably clean.  I am so happy. 

They’re going to start coming every two weeks!!!  I really feel that this is the best cleaning quality imaginable.  And, there are all of these really nice touches – the toilet paper is wrapped into a flower at the end…same think with kleenex and the towel display in the bathroom look like they belong in a hotel!

If you live in Pittsburgh, and need a good cleaning team, please let me know.

Ways to procrastinate at work

Lately, I’ve been a really great procrastinator. Here are the top 10 ways I’ve been spending too much time at work. How do you procrastinate? Add your’s in the comments section!

(Note: My productivity will get better. I’m determined.)

In no particular order:

1. Make a Starbucks run. (Or two, or three)

2. Check perezhilton.com repeatedly. Despite the fact I find the majority of his comments to be rude and arrogant, he does update frequently.

3. Visit people.com. Not as many stories as perezhilton, but fun photo galleries.

4. Find out what’s going on with the world other than celebrity news at cnn.com.

5. Play around on facebook.

6. Blog.

7. Chat with work friends.

8. Pay bills. Somehow it feels better to spend “work” time doing this…

9. Shop online.

10. Job hunt – because it’s always good to keep your options open.

Clarification: the road to (my) happiness

When I blogged today about my twenties being over, I hope I didn’t leave the impression that I’m unhappy. Because I’m not. I have a really good life – an awesome boyfriend of almost seven years, family, lots of friends, the world’s cutest puppy, a job, my health and so much more.

The purpose of examining where I’m at right before I reach 30 is to make sure I’m on track to remain happy. I used my career as an example to show how I got to where I’m at and if I’m happy enough where I’m at to keep going along the same route. Yes, today, I am happy with my career and how far I have brought it over the last six years. But for me to be able to answer that question the same way two, three, five, ten years from now, I think I need to consciously be aware of where I’m at and where I want to be.

Does that make sense? This was a lot of reflection for one day…

Who stole my 20’s?

Earlier this month, I started the last year of my twenties. Except for the occasional conversation with Gabby about how we should celebrate my 30th in Vegas, I’m not handling the whole getting older phenomenon too well.

I am now obsessing over different aspects of my life, like my career, relationship and financial situation, and starting to wonder where the hell my twenties went. Some days, I feel like I’m happy and right where I should be, and others, I want to cry for hours over the fact that I’m going to be 30 in less than a year and don’t have a whole lot to show for it.

Take my career for example. As I mentioned before, I majored in political science. I chose this major because I was going to be a foreign ambassador and speak several different languages fluently. Well, those language classes took up a ton of time, and the credits didn’t go towards fulfilling requirements, so I stopped taking them. Then my attention switched to law school, and I decided that I was going to be the next great prosecutor and put all the bad guys away. A personal situation involving the criminal justice system was enough to make me run away screaming from that potential career path – and to never look back.

Then, my senior year, I took a political communications class and fell in love with it. It combined my interests in government, politics and the law with my natural ability to communicate. I wanted to be a political consultant and work on campaigns, write speeches, deal with the press and all of that other fun stuff.

When I graduated, I decided to stay in Pittsburgh – and since there really aren’t too many political consulting jobs here – let alone entry level ones that paid, I had to figure something out and fast. I had always been good at marketing and PR and had done a lot of volunteer work in those fields. So, I thought I would pursue “communications” as a job to get experience in that part of political consulting.

I spent a year and a half in a horrible job as a marketing assistant for an insurance brokerage firm. It was straight out of Office Space. They didn’t have a lot of marketing needs. I was constantly bored and made things up to do, and the older women in the office treated me like garbage.

My next job was perfect – on paper. I did marketing communications and online business development for a large media company. I got a ton of really great experience, met smart and respected people in the field and built up a pretty decent portfolio. I left after three years for two main reasons: my boss was a narcissistic, micromanaging, menopausal bitch and the industry’s stability was constantly in question – therefore my salary and benefits weren’t great.

Next up – my current job is in online marketing and public relations at a very well known institution. It’s been great on several levels. I can take graduate classes for free at a prestigious university. My hours are flexible. I get paid competitively. But, I’m doing marketing and pr for an organization that, for the most part, doesn’t want publicity or exposure. And the few programs that do want and desperately need marketing, have no money to pay for it. I’m good, but I’m not so good that I can magically and for free accomplish what a $50,000 (or more) campaign could do.

This whole debacle got me thinking about marketing, pr, advertising, etc as a whole. Is this really what I want to spend the rest of my life doing? Spinning products or news to make something look good or stand out? The answer is no. Unless it was for something that I really, truly believed in.

So what do I want to do with my career? I spent my twenties saying, “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.” That seemed to work. It was true, and in the marketing field, there are a lot of different options of what you “can be.”

But now it kind of feels like I should have it narrowed down to more of a path or two. I’m just not entirely sure what those paths should be. I like to write. I think I’d like to teach college courses. But write what? Teach what? I have the opportunity to get my Master’s FOR FREE – but I don’t know what I want to get it in…I don’t think I want to pigeonhole myself into this marketing field too much more. I’m interested in other things like history and public policy, but marketing is where my experience is.

I’m panicking about this now because I’m completely afraid of waking up one day and being 40 or 50 and not happy with the career – and life – path I chose.

Back to Reality

Returning to work after a vacation is never fun. This blog pretty much sums up what happens when you return from a long weekend.

My work inbox had 236 unread messages this morning. I was actually surprised there weren’t more…I think a lot of people took time off over the 4th. I only have it down to 79 unread now – and it’s already 2pm. It’s hard to even start to figure out what needs to be accomplished to get your head above water when you spend all morning in meetings. Luckily, my meeting this afternoon was canceled, so perhaps I will be able to start sorting through the mess.

All of that said, I wouldn’t give up one second of my five day paradise vacation in Naples. It was amazing. I didn’t think about work once. There was really, really great food, lots of sun, fun times with family and friends and time to relax.

We found a new favorite restaurant, too – Trulucks, right off of 5th Ave, was good beyond words. My boyfriend can’t stop talking about the quality of the menu – he had a really tough time choosing, but loved his ahi tuna entree and some type of crab as an appetizer. (I don’t eat any type of seafood, so the different kinds of crab choices just flow right over my head.) I had a filet – prepared extra rare, and it is now my second favorite steak in Naples. It was wonderful. And the parmasean mashed potatoes were the best I’ve had in awhile.

I also read 2.5 books – Chasing Harry Winston by Lauren Weisberger…one of my new romantic comedy favorites. I read Lauren’s first book, The Devil Wears Prada when it was released a few years ago, and liked it, but this one was better. The characters were more developed, the story flowed really well, and the different character perspectives kept me really interested. I am also now completely jealous of her career. The first book she wrote accomplished more than most authors or writers could hope to accomplish in an entire career! Now, she’s written a third, and in my opinion, even better book. Did I mention she’s only 31? Yeah, thinking about that over a birthday weekend marking the near-end of my 20s was not so fun. But it did make me really start thinking about writing a book. I’ve always wanted to be a published author, and there’s no time like the present, right?

The second book, The Last Time I Was Me by Cathy Lamb, was also good. It took a few chapters for me to really get into it, but I kept wanting to find more about the main character and her nervous breakdown, so I kept reading. Then once she was running along the river naked and ran – literally – into a new love interest, I was hooked. The writing was witty and honest, and although the story wrapped up a little too neatly for my tastes, it was a really great story about facing your fears, rediscovering your self and facing a tragic past.

I’m almost finished with Ellen Baker’s Keeping the House. I’ll let you know how I feel about it once I finish.

If only I was still at the pool or beach with a frozen raspberry margarita in hand…

My degree is useless?

I graduated with a BA in political science in 2002. For the past six years, I have worked in marketing and pr. I’m a decent writer and pretty good at what I do – especially online marketing. I have also taken grad classes in writing and have a 4.0

Recently, my company announced a new job opening for a conference series writer. Since I already do the marketing for the conference series and understand how desperately they need someone who can write to market the conference (marketing copy v technical writing are very, very different and should not be intertwined!), I threw my name into the mix.

I talked to my boss, and she gave me really positive feedback by basically saying, “You’d be perfect for the job. In fact, people have already asked me if I thought you’d be interested.” Plus, I’d still report to the same boss, so it wouldn’t be that big of a change…just a better job, the chance to travel, and the opportunity to really help out this conference series.

HR scheduled the 5 rounds of interviews and added them to my corporate calendar. But, as it turns out, someone at my company really didn’t want me to get that job. Or even interview for it.

The job description states education requirements as: Bachelor’s degree in public relations, corporate communications, marketing communication, journalism, technical communication, English, or equivalent.

Well, my boss’s boss, for a reason I now believe to be he has someone in mind for the job, decided that since my degree is not in English or writing, I should be bullied out of even interviewing for the job. Apparently, he doesn’t understand the definition of “equivalent.”

How it went down was like this (I pieced this together after talking to several people who knew about the situation) – my boss’s boss, who we’ll call Fisher, called my boss into his office. He basically told her that she had to talk me out of interviewing for the job because I was not qualified since I only have a BA in political science. My boss didn’t want to do it, but did it anyway. And let me tell you how fun that was…to sit in a meeting with someone who you have liked and respected for the past 14 months and have her tell you these things about how unqualified I am to write since I was not formally educated in writing. (Funny how part of my job is writing, and they don’t seem to have a problem with that.)

I don’t know if Fisher understands what a political science degree entails, but all I did in college was write – papers, essays, arguments, etc. And to this day, through multiple job searches and interviews, no one else has ever questioned the legitimacy of my degree (which is from a pretty good school, I might add). In fact, it has mostly helped me in my career – successful political science majors are thought to have excellent communication skills and comprehensive and accurate research skills – among other things.

Besides, my degree isn’t the only thing I’ve ever done – but do you think Fisher ever asked me about my prior experience or accomplishments? No.

So, I backed out of interviewing for the job. It was quite the scandal at work for a week or so. The person doing the hiring wanted me for the job. So did the people who the “writer” will work very closely with.

Work can be so political sometimes.

Productive Day!

I had a productive work day for the first time in awhile.  (Read about the fun I’ve been having in meetings!)  And you know what is the funniest part of my productivity today? It only happened because I left work for three hours and went home. 

My boss is on travel, and since I can’t seem to get a thing done in the office without being interrupted twenty times, I left.  I brought my laptop downstairs, turned on TNT (love Las Vegas, Without a Trace and Law and Order daytime!) and got to work.  I also kept Bruin entertained and made spaghetti sauce for dinner tonight…all at the same time! 

The result?  I got more accomplished in those three hours than I have at work in the past two weeks.  I even got back to the office earlier than I anticipated.  I wanted to just stay home and work, but there was a 4pm meeting I had to go to….

Starbucks Doubleshot on Ice

I’m addicted to Starbucks. It’s not necessarily that they have the best coffee (Dunkin Donuts’ Hazelnut Coffee wins in my book), but Starbucks is right down the street from my office. It provides the perfect procrastination-caffeination combination.

My mornings at work usually start out sometime between 8:30 – 10am (gotta love flexible work hours). Then I find my favorite co-worker, Adele to see if she needs to go to Starbucks. Thankfully, her answer is always yes.

Our walks down the street are just as re-energizing as the coffee…we gossip, we vent, we make each other laugh. Adele is my sounding board at work. She understands work-related frustrations – as petty or small as some of them may be – because she is entwined in this institution, too. It’s also our tradition to read our daily horoscopes while we’re there…mine has been pretty bad lately.

Anyway, my usual Starbucks drink is a triple venti skinny caramel latte, extra hot. It costs me $4.95 a day. So, I’ve been looking for some more economical choices that were still yummy – plain coffee sometimes is a bit boring to me. This morning I tried the new Starbucks Doubleshot on Ice. It’s amazing (I did add four packs of splenda to it, just like I do to any coffee beverage)…and I think I found my new summer coffee drink. And, at less than $3, it makes financial sense, too!