make it work

I’m toying with the idea of going back to work full time and letting Shaun do a stint as stay at home Dad.  Or at least hire a nanny or something.

When I say toying with, that’s what I really mean.  I know that with the heart problem and the migraines, that I need a very flexible environment and I also know that I can do the best for our home and children by being here.

I just REALLY miss working.  Not only is it 10,000 times easier than this SAHM deal, I miss figuring out problems.  I’m one of those people who has a knack for making abnormal things fix what needs to be done.  I like instruction manuals because if you read them with a critical eye you can find the ways to… adapt it to your purpose.  There, that’s a nice way to say “open door.”  If there isn’t a manual, that’s ok too.  I’ll figure out how to break it into its parts given enough time.

Tim Gunn would say I make it work.

I just hacked a mop.  I’ve been painting my Circa discs with nail polish.  Later today I’m going to turn a computer desk into a table for my sewing machine.

I even scheduled laundry days for everyone and color coded the hampers (they’re really rubber bins from the garden department at walmart) to match their water bottles and their toy boxes.  They also match their junior Circa journals.  (Which the therapists promptly copied and started using for other kids they treat.)  And yes, when the kids are on a scorecard/reward system – those will match their colors too.

I miss feeling like I’ve done something worthwhile at the end of the day.  Well, on some days.  Other days I came home feeling like I was the captain of the good ship WTF.

Ok – I miss being able to say “I can provide a service that you aren’t going to find anywhere else.”

xkcd today says that the average internet user SAYS they have an IQ of 147 and has a 9″ penis. I may not have a penis, but my IQ is a bit higher than that.

I used to say “if you can teach it, I can learn it.”  Now I’m more likely to say “if you can build it, I can break it.”  Then again, I also say “if you need a better mousetrap, you may as well just start naming the mice and congratulate them on their upward evolution.”  You can either make the problem work for you or you can buy a cat.  I’m a big fan of making problems turn into assets.  “That’s not a defect, it’s an unexpected application!”

Then I get a call from the teacher saying that my child is screaming that if the teacher doesn’t make it so that she isn’t in trouble, then she’s going to make life living hell for everyone.  I can hear her screaming in the background at the top of her lungs.  And it’s good I’m only 5 minutes away from the school because I know how to fix her, too.

This is the part where people laugh and say “a good smack would fix her!” But no, my daughter is not an Apple nor does she suffer from chip creep.

I know how to make it work because her IQ is a little lower than mine but still higher than 90% of the people in her school.  I don’t talk to her like a child and I don’t dumb it down.  If she can manipulate you or out-think you, you’ve already lost the game.  I’m probably the only parent you’ll ever see saying to a 6 year old kid “I don’t appreciate you trying to manipulate your teachers.  You can’t change the past but you can stop making it worse.  Your part on the team is to take care of yourself and keep your brain turned on.  If it’s not smart – don’t do it.”

She has the mental capacity of a child twice her age.  I get pissed off when someone talks down to me and I don’t expect her reaction to be any different.  (And yes, we’re both Capricorns.)  It’s best that she learns objective and logical reasoning skills now.

OK – off the tangent.

Another problem I foresee with going back to work is that I don’t have a degree.  I have several certificates from several colleges.  I have some co-op experience at a different school.  I have a year of actual college down but I got REALLY bored with it.

I was one of those kids who was hired directly out of high school into a dotcom because of my “special” skills.  Financially, it was the right decision because I was smart enough to put a little in real estate and made some well-timed stock sales.  It’s enough to make it where we’re able to live off of one income as long as we’re frugal. It just meant that I turned down a scholarship (and it’s accompanying student loans) to take the road less traveled.

Not having a degree wasn’t a problem with my resume as long as I stayed with that company because I could bank on my reputation alone.  Now that I’m looking at jobs equivalent to what I did for that company, they require a BS or a BA.  Only one listing I saw said “or equivalent work experience.”  Now, if the company does their own hiring, it won’t matter but if they’re using a recruiter or head-hunter I’d be hard pressed to get an interview.

THEN, once I did do the initial interview, I’d probably decide that the company didn’t fit my “niche.”  I’ve tested the waters and applied to a few places since quitting and here’s how one of my interviews went:

Nice Lady: I need to be sure you know <name of certain retail book keeping software.>

Me:  I haven’t used that particular one before, but I do have extensive experience designing and reporting with many of the more complicated financial systems.  <I named a few that I’m sure she’d never heard of.>

NL:  But you’ll need to know how to enter the data from our invoices into this program.  You really need to be experienced.

Me:  By the time we speak again, I’ll have learned enough about it to make it do exactly what you need it to do.  I just have a knack for software.

NL:  I see that on your resume you have experience coordinating teams and schedules.

Me: I do.  I’ve coordinated a team of 34 people and designed reporting systems on several hundred team members that were hand delivered to all levels of management.

NL:  You will, if you get this job, need to greet people as they walk in and also handle the schedules for myself and my husband.  You’ll also keep the files orderly and handle invoices and incoming phone calls.

Me:  Ma’am, your ad said that you were looking for a coordinator and manager with experience in financial systems.  Isn’t that correct?

NL:  Yes…

Me:  It sounds to me that you’re looking for a receptionist.  If you need someone to create reporting systems or work out a specific problem then I’m your girl.  However, if you’re looking for someone to smile at customers and do basic data entry, you probably need a different applicant.

NL:  Um… ok… thank you for your honesty.

Me:  You’re welcome.

This was all over the phone, thank goodness.  I doubt she could have looked at me and been as polite.  All my tattoos cover up and I clean up very well, but I’ve been told that I’m rather intimidating when I’m talking.

I’m the secret agent girl. 😉  I walk in to a meeting, looking young and well-dressed, carrying my signature bomber jacket Circa and a few documents disguised as simple files.  I get mentally written off as a girl who got hired to do grunt work and be an art piece for the male and lesbian contingent.  Then I wait for a lull in the conversation of “power players” and I say something outrageous.  All eyes turn to me and I open the file to my supporting document and prove to everyone that I’m right and I am going to get what I want.

Smart managers know how to use that to their benefit.

Not so smart managers are either enlightened or pissed off.

Neither matters.

Because THAT is what makes work worth going to for me.  I’m not looking for money or acclaim or to climb the corporate ladder.  I could give less than a damn about a vertical promotion.  I love solving problems in interesting ways, making them work, and convincing people to support the solution.  My thrill is in creating harmony where there was none and in turning data into a language people can understand.

who told people the recession was almost over?

Seriously.  I want the person who told people – out loud – that the recession would be over by the holiday on my doorstep.

Whoopdy doo – good news.   Yay for money and jobs!

But really now, we’ve come head to head with my love/hate relationship.  Advertising.  I like ads for the most part, but they should be in their place – not hidden inside magazine articles or designed to look like instructions on something that should be useful.  Holiday editions of magazines are THE WORST.  It’s not like they’re showing a shopping guide (I like those.)  It’s that 3/4 of the magazine is advertising and the other 1/4 is so badly done that the ads are more attractive.   It’s not like someone just announced that suddenly it was going to be Christmas in December and it’s this new thing we need to rush around for.  Come on now, isn’t there like an archive of something or other you can set aside say sometime in July?

I was 3 pages into a decorating article before I realized it wasn’t just another shitty ad from Pottery Barn. (Really, have you just caught on to the whole “people decorate with brown and a pastel” trend yet?  My bedroom has been two shades of brown with “pops” of color for over 5 years now.  Even all my Ikea furniture matches.)

Last year, magazines were slender because advertisers were using their cash efficiently and thriftily. I have a tiny shelf unit in my bookcase that holds 18 months of Real Simple and a year of Architectural Digest.  It’s maybe 18″ of shelf space.

This year, they’re 200 pages with 50 pages of actual content that’s squeezed into half a page because of the Hellman’s mayo ad taking up the opposite page and spilling over.   My Real Simple came in the mail and is an entire inch thick!  (I measured it.  It really is.)  I got home from the hospital yesterday and saw it on the edge of the couch and Shaun said “it’s huge!  It will take you a week to read it!”  But no.  It was mostly advertising.

See – the sandwich method is being fucked up!

The Sandwich Method is an informal rule you’ll probably only learn person to person in the breakroom at work.  It’s a bald-faced manipulation tactic that is used mainly on evil supervisors or stodgy neighbors.

Here’s how it works:  when you give someone bad news, first you say something good then say the bad thing then immediately follow up with more good news.  It goes like this:  Hey Jimmy, I noticed that your flowers outside bloomed while I was checking on the soft spot in the grass.  It turns out your septic tank is leaking.  Hey, did you hear about the 50% off sale at Home Depot?

Your target is still getting the info – the septic tank is leaking – but you at least have a pleasant lead-in and a get-away plan.  The sandwich method is not to form an action plan.  It is meant to inform and escape.  Then after the escape, your target can think about what you said in the middle at their own pace.

This is also the basic theorem of advertising within content.  You have 10 minutes of TV, then 2 minutes of 30 second commercials with the expectation that if you sit there and watch them, soon you will get 10 more minutes of content you care about.  If it’s any longer of a time, the target will run away or take up under-water basket weaving or something.

Because what you want the customer to SEE is the middle.  That’s the meat.  What the customer is there for is the package – the sandwich.  What your advertising should be is the MAYONNAISE!  The customer takes a bit thinking “wow, turkey and bread are great, we should do this more often.”  Then they taste the mayo and go WOW, mayo is awesome!  Then you keep slipping in stuff and they start to expect the cleverness and interest your mayo adds to their experience.

The problem is when your sandwich comes with 6 oz of mayo, a thin slice of turkey, and a handful of croutons that were graciously called “bread” last week.   Then your customer is not only gone, but they’re pissed off.  When they think of your brand they’re going to think of a giant, goo of white fat that has overtaken the awesome memories of a plain ole turkey sandwich.

What you have said is “Jimmy, I got out of my car and noticed your yard was sinking into a puddle of shit.  Your flowers look nice, but that’s only because of the “extra fertilizer.”  Here’s the name of the most expensive guy in town and he’ll even beat you with a monkey wrench if you complain about the bill.”

And now advertisers have money again and they’ve forgotten about their role as unexpected, awesome goodness that’s needed as a layer of fat and flavor in between actual content.

Magazine editors – you should be ashamed of yourselves!  You cheap floozies!  So yeah, we toughed it out for a while, but if you’re going to suck this bad just sell the company to the advertiser and let them frame some made-up content with pretty pictures.    It appears that your skilled writers and photographers all work for the advertising companies now.

I can honestly say that in this 200 page magazine I just finished had 2 interesting things in it.  (Normally I flag 30 or so things to follow-up on.)  It was a giant mayo glob with poo pellets and some regurgitated wheat germ.

This is also an apt analogy from one of my favorite movies, Robin Hood:Men in Tights

(apparently my rant has now turned into another episode of the “free business analysis for how to not suck” segment of my blog.)