Recently I worked at a job with a wonderful woman. She had been a administrative assistant all of her career. So when I asked her to create a data base for our sales calls, she immediately turned it into a clerical function.

She created an Excel spreadsheet that had a lot of columns that was chock full of tons of details about every client and potential client. There was only one problem, it was like a file cabinet, it stored everything. It was unwieldy and almost defied you to explore our best prospects or do any real analysis of our sales opportunities.

I sat down with her and discussed my concerns about what she’d done. I struggled to find a word to describe the limitations. Finally it came to me, the data base wasn’t strategic. It needed a lot of work to become a tool that was nimble and flexible enough to guide our sales process.

This reminds me of a conversation that I had with a friend this weekend. She is bright, creative and very talented. But it appears that she is going through the motions when it comes to her career. It feels like she is filling a file cabinet with all the contacts and ideas for everything that she feels she should be doing with her career. But her entire search process seemed to lack a strategic element.

Most of us are raised to fill a box on an organizational chart. We have expertise and experience that allows us to do a heck of a lot more than fill a box on a chart. But that’s what we do, we gather data on the job possibilities that are out there for us.

But we need to be much more creative and directive in how we go about this process. Need I say, we need to be more clever in how we approach our job exploration.

Note I said job exploration, not job hunt. It’s really important that we sort out where we want to go before we start looking at jobs.

A job shouldn’t be just the way you pay your bills or pass the majority or the hours that you’re awake each day. I believe that a job should be your gift to the world. Really. It should be a unique contribution of your talents that only you can provide.

Sounds great. But it’s also difficult to dig deep enough within yourself to sort out why you are here. What your purpose is. But it is well worth the effort.

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

After fifteen years of writing Workplace911 and its predecessor Working Wounded I’ve concluded that there are a lot of myths about work. I thought it would be fun to tackle some of the bigger ones in this week’s blog. Check out my list below and send me some of your favorites.

It’s impossible to be overpaid when someone else signs the paycheck. Let me offer a short translation of this rule—as long as someone is willing to pay you a ridiculous amount of money to work for them, then you aren’t overpaid because they have established a market for your services. I disagree. Corporate salaries are absurd. Cost cutting, layoffs and a myriad of other organizational sacrifices should float more than just the boats of the CEO and a few top executives. I’m no Marxist, CEOs do deserve a big paycheck when they are successful. But this escalator only seems able to go up.

Greed is good. The biggest problem here is that when Oliver Stone came up with this mantra for his Gordon Gekko character in the movie Wall Street it was meant as parody. Yet I hear some variation of it whenever I talk to traders, salespeople, etc. Henry Ford, hardly a commie himself, once said that only a fool holds out for the last dollar. I think wretched excess is a terrible way to run a company.

The bigger the jerk, the better the boss. Probably my favorite quote on management came from President (and General) Dwight Eisenhower. He once said, “Hitting people over the head isn’t leadership, it’s assault.” Sure jerks do get your attention and possibly results over the short term. But most employees will flee at the first chance they get. There are just too many sane bosses out there to continue to slave away for a jerk.

You’ve got to be first to market. Microsoft seems to me to be the only company that consistently puts second-rate products on the market and lives to tell the tale. The rest of us have to pick our spots and often the first to market position can’t justify launching a crappy product. So it often pays to wait.

Innovation is the middle name of American corporations. Despite rising productivity, I believe that corporations in the U.S. are running on fumes. Don’t believe me? Listen to most people talk about the management of their companies. It’s not a pretty sight. I see far more innovation right now coming from abroad and from the not-for-profit sector and I think it’s time that corporations started walking their talk.

Corporations are drowning in regulation. Tyco, Enron, WorldCom, etc. left in their wake Sarbanes Oxley and a host of other regulations. Undoubtedly Lehman, Goldman Sacks, etc. will leave their mark too. There is a lot of talk now about how corporations are being held back by senseless regulations. I hate filling out government forms as much as the next guy, but these laws came into place because of abuse by corporations. And in order to maintain the trust of the average investor these regulations need to remain in effect, no matter how much whining you hear from big business.

The bottom line isn’t just the bottom line. If I’ve learned one thing as an observer of business and the founder of four corporations, it’s that there are many bottom lines for a business. In addition to economic there are also social and environmental considerations. The financials really only are a part of the picture. The sooner that corporations take a broader view of the bottom line, the sooner they’ll begin to fully reach their potential.

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. His web site, workplace911.com, contains a comprehensive archive of strategies for surviving today’s workplace. He is a fan of Workplace Fairness and can be reached via bob@workplace911.com.

Having personally responded to over 50,000 emails from workers and bosses, as you can imagine, I’ve received screenfuls of emails about awful workplaces—or should that be screamfuls of emails?
 
A few examples from my inbox—there was the guy who got a daily soaking trying to spray clean dumpsters with a pressure washer, the woman who had to work next to the guy who would have loud, long conversations with his wife totally in baby talk, the guy who had to inventory used underwear after fashion shows, the guy who wrote to me that he just goes to work hoping that he’ll come home with all of his body parts intact and the woman who worked for a boss who asked his assistant to type her own termination letter.
 
Ouch!
 
Woody Allen once said that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. And I think this is also applies to work. For every horrible, outrageous, over-the-top and borderline cruel workplace like the ones above, there are millions more that are miserable. Note I didn’t say “merely” miserable, because I believe that miserable workplaces have a way of building up in your system, like mercury in a fish. Over time this buildup can be just as toxic.
 
Still not seeing the distinction here? I like to think of horrible as a meteor that crashes to earth destroying everything in its path. Miserable? That is the pebble in our shoe that most of us must walk around in day after day after day. After being miserable for twenty years, admit it, there are times where you wish that meteor would strike, if for no other reason than to put you out of your misery.
 
Examples of miserable at work would include the boss who is always looking over your shoulder and second guessing everything that you do. The coworker who always manages to go AWOL so that you have to answer the phone or cover their work just when you are facing your own big deadline. The customer, who even after they’ve bought your product, is still pushing you for a discount or some swag. The accounting department that rejects your expense reimbursement requests on average three times. The coworker who is an expert on all parts of your job but dumber than a rock about doing his. The company that announces that it will be laying off thousands of workers, but not saying who for another six months. You get the drift, heck, you have your own stories of misery and woe at work.
 
So how do we survive? I’ve developed a simple litmus test. Are the problems that you’re facing the “right” kind of problems or the “wrong” kind of problems? Sorting out that distinction, to me, is the key to a satisfying career.
 
At least a couple of you out there are asking, why all the focus on problems? “Sure, work has it’s downside, but it also has a lot of virtues too.” And to that line of reasoning I would say, sure, life is good when you have a parking spot right next to the building, an expense account, a fancy title and a corner office. Yes, work can have its privileges. But for the overwhelming majority of us, work is a minefield of problems.
 
What are the “wrong” kind of problems? Demeaning bosses, unsafe working conditions, crying on a regular basis, getting lied to—yes, when people write to me describing any of these circumstances, I always say the same thing, start networking and cleaning up your resume.
 
The right kind of problems? Being frustrated because your bold new idea isn’t quite ready for prime time. Having to scramble each day because you are always learning and adapting to new situations. Feeling the weight of the responsibility and authority that your boss has entrusted in your hands.
 
If I had a magic wand I would put everyone in a position where they had the right kind of problems and a nurturing workplace community that would provide support during the search for solutions. But since I don’t have a magic wand, it’s up to you to escape the horrible and the miserable in search of the right stuff. Good luck in your journey.

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

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You found this blog, or return to it, because you’re interested in workplace rights and employers that follow the law to a tee, right?  Well, you’ll find the latest, best information on both and meet some dynamic business contacts to boot at Winning Workplaces’ 2009 annual event that will be held in Chicago on October 1-2.  We’re calling it the ROI of Great Workplaces Conference.

Click here to:

• View event summary
• Add event to your calendar
• Watch a short highlights reel from our 2008 conference
• View fees and agenda (note that the agenda is still coming together)
• Learn about the location
• Book your room at the event hotel at the special Winning Workplaces rate

Besides the short video of last year’s conference at the above link, you can get a sense of what attendees experienced by checking out my photo recaps on our blog here and here.

Here’s more incentive to attend: Be one of the first 100 people to register and get $100 off your registration.  Just click here and enter coupon code FRSTHUND when prompted.

Some of my favorite moments at this event happen when I meet new business people in between sessions.  This was the case last year when I was finally able to meet and sit down with your host on this blog, Paula Brantner.  I hope I’ll be able to do the same with you this year.

Register now for this event.

About the Author: Mark Harbeke ensures that content on Winning Workplaces’ website is up-to-date, accurate and engaging. He also writes and edits their monthly e-newsletter, Ideas, and provides graphic design and marketing support. His experience includes serving as editorial assistant for Meredith Corporation’s Midwest Living magazine title, publications editor for Visionation, Ltd., and proofreader for the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy. Mark holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Drake University. Winning Workplaces is a not-for-profit providing consulting, training and information to help small and midsize organizations create great workplaces. Too often, the information and resources needed to create a high-performance workplace are out of reach for all but the largest organizations. Winning Workplaces is changing that by offering employers affordable consulting, training and information.

I n looking back on growing up, I always remember 1957 and 1958 at “the two good years,” They were the only years my working class redneck family ever caught a real break in their working lives, and that break came because of organized labor. After working as a farm hand, driving a hicktown taxi part time, and a dozen catch as catch can jobs, my father found himself owning a used semi-truck and hauling produce for a Teamster unionized trucking company called Blue Goose.

Daddy was making more money than he’d ever made in his life, about $4,000 a year. The median national household income at the time was $5,000, mostly thanks to America’s unions. After years of moving from one rented dump to another, we bought a modest home, ($8,000) and felt like we might at last be getting some traction in achieving the so-called “American Dream.” Yup, Daddy was doing pretty good for a backwoods boy who’d quit school in the sixth or seventh grade — he was never sure, which gives some idea how seriously the farmboy took his attendance at the one-room school we both attended in our lifetimes.

This was the golden age of both trucking and of unions. Thirty-five percent of American labor, 17 million working folks, were union members, and it was during this period the American middle class was created. The American middle class has never been as big as advertised, but if it means the middle third income-wise, then we actually had one at the time. But whatever it means, one third of working folks, the people who busted their asses day in and day out making the nation function, were living better than they ever had. Or at least had the opportunity to do so.

From the Depression through World War II the Teamsters Union became a powerful entity, and a popular one too because of such things as its pledge never to strike during the war or a national emergency. President Roosevelt even had a special designated liaison to the Teamsters. But power and money eventually drew the usual assortment of lizards, and by the mid-fifties the Teamsters Union had become one corrupt pile of shit at the top level. So rotten even the mob enjoyed a piece of the action. The membership, ordinary guys like my dad, was outraged and ashamed, but rendered powerless by the crooked union bosses in the big cities.

My old man was no great follower of the news or current events, but he tried to keep up with and understand Teamster developments. Which was impossible since his reading consisted of anti-union Southern newspapers, and the television coverage of Teamster criminality, including murders, and the ongoing courtroom trials.

All this left him conflicted. His Appalachian Christian upbringing defined the world in black and white, with no gray areas. Inside he felt he should not be even remotely connected with such vile things as the Teamsters were associated with. And he sometimes prayed for guidance in the matter. On the other hand, there was the pride and satisfaction in providing for his family in ways previously impossible. He’d built a reasonable working class security for those times and that place in West Virginia. Being a Teamster certainly made that possible. But for damned sure no one had handed it to him. He drove his guts out to get what he had.

There were rules, and log books and all the other crap that were supposed to assure drivers got enough rest, and ensure road safety and fairness for the truckers. Rural heartland drivers saw it for the bullshit it was, but it was much better paying bullshit. For a little guy hauling produce from Podunk USA to the big cities, it still came down to heartburn, hemorrhoids, and longer hauls and longer hours than most driver’s falsified log books showed. And sometimes way too much Benzedrine, or “bennies.”

Bennies were a type of speed commonly used by truckers back then because of the grueling hauls. As a former doper who has done bennies, I can avow they are some gritty nerve jagging shit. Their only virtue is making you wide awake and jumpy, and after you’ve been awake on them a couple days, which many drivers were, crazier than a shithouse rat. Nearly every truck stop sold bennies under the counter. Once while hallucinating on bennies Daddy nearly wiped out a roadside joint. He recalled “layin’ on the jake brake, down shifting, and watching hundreds of the witches like in The Wizard of Oz come down out of the sky in the dark.” Somehow he got 30,000 pounds back onto the road while several folks inside the diner were pissing themselves in the windowside booths.

My daddy ran the eastern seaboard in a 12-wheeler — there were no 18 wheelers yet. It had polished chrome and bold letters that read, “BLUE GOOSE LINE”. Parked alongside our little asbestos sided house, I’d marvel at the magic of those bold words, the golden diamond and sturdy goose. And dream of someday “burning up Route 50″ like my dad.

Old U.S. Route 50 ran near the house and was the stuff of legend if your daddy happened to be a truck driver who sometimes took you with him on the shorter hauls: “OK boy, now scrunch down and lookinto the side mirror. I’m gonna turn the top of them side stacks red hot.” And he would pop the clutch and strike sparks on the anvil of the night, downshifting toward Pinkerton, Coolville and Hanging Rock. It never once occurred to me that his ebullience and our camaraderie might be due to a handful of bennies.

Yessir, Old 50 was a mighty thing, a howling black slash through the Blue Ridge Mountain fog. A place where famed and treacherous curves made widows and truck stops and cafes bloomed in the tractor trailers’ smoky wakes. A roadmap will tell you it eventually reaches Columbus and Saint Louis, places I imagined had floodlights raking the skies heralding the arrival of heroic Teamster truckers like my father. Guys who’d fought in Germany and Italy and the Solomon Islands and were still wearing their service caps these years later, but now pinned with the gold steering wheel of the Teamsters Union. Such are a working class boy’s dreams.

I have two parched photos from that time. One is of me and my brother and sister, ages ten, eight and six. We are standing in the front yard, three little redneck kids with bad haircuts squinting for some faint clue as to whether there was really a world out there, somewhere beyond West Virginia. The other photo is of my mother and the three of us on the porch of that house on route 50. On the day my father was slated to return from any given run we’d all stand on the porch listening for the sound of airbrakes, the deep roar as he came down off the mountain. Each time my mother would step onto the porch blotting her lipstick, Betty Grable style hair rustling in the breeze, and say, “Stand close, your daddy’s home.”

And that was about as good as it ever got for our family. Daddy’s heart later gave way from a congenital defect and he lost everything. He was so scrupulously honest about debts he could never recover financially. Unable to borrow money, uneducated and weakened for life, he set to working in car washes and garages. After his union trucking days were over, we were assigned to the margins of America, a million miles from the American Dream, joining those people never seen on television, represented by no politician and never heard from in halls of power.

Now it was only a little house by the side of the road with not enough closets and ugly asbestos shingle siding. But it was ours, just like the truck and the chance to get ahead that it offered. And we had felt like we were some small part of America as it was advertised. All because of a union job during the heyday of unions in this nation.

It was also a period of Teamsters Union corruption, replete with criminal moguls such as Dave Beck, George Meany and Jimmy Hoffa. Yet the history of the few top lizards on the national rock of greed is not the history of the people.

If a few pricks and gangsters have occasionally seized power over the dignity of labor, countless more calculating, bloodless and malevolent pricks — the capitalist elites — have always held most of the cards, which is why in 1886 railroad and financial baron Jay Gould could sneer, “I can always hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” And why a speaker at the U.S. Business Conference Board in 1974 could arrogantly declare, “One man, one vote has undermined the power of business in all capitalist countries since World War II.” And why that same year Business Week magazine said, “It will be a hard pill for many Americans to swallow — the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more. Nothing in modern economic history compares with the selling job that must now be done to make people accept this new reality.”

The new reality is here, and has been since 1973, the last year American workers made a wage gain in real dollars. Hell, it’s been here so long we accept it as part of America’s cultural furniture. Only about 12% of American workers are unionized and even with a supposedly union friendly Democratic Congress, unions are still fighting to exist (although government employees are unionized at 36%, because the Empire allows some leeway for its commissars). In fact, things are worse than ever. Employers can now force employees to attend anti-union presentations during the workday, at captive audience meetings in which union supporters are forbidden to speak under threat of insubordination. Back in 1978 when I was working to organize the local newspaper, the management was not even allowed to speak to the workers on the matter until after the union vote results were in.

Then there’s President Obama, the guy soft headed liberals think is going to turn this dreadful scenario around. He talks a good game about unions, when he is forced to. But Obama is working on the things that will “create a legacy,” such as health care (which is simply a new way to pay the insurance industry’s blackmail) or the economy (by appointing the same damned people who fucked it up to fix it), and immigration reform, a nicely nebulous term that can mean whatever either side of the issue wants it to mean. Obama’s not going to publicly ignore the unions. But he’s not going to sink much political capital into this corporatized nation’s most radio-active issue either. For him, union legislation is just a distraction from the “legacy building” of a very charming,savvy, and ambitious politician. That is the assessment of Glenn Spencer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the most anti-union institutions in America. (Many thanks to Washington writer Ken Silverstein for publishing Spencer’s astute observations).

Things are changing though. Union membership climbed 12 percent last year. Twelve percent of twelve percent ain’t shit, but at least it’s forward motion. At that rate it will only take us 21 years to get back to the 1956 level of union membership. We can expect no miracles, top union leaders are still among the Empire’s elites. And they are still technically accountable to whatever membership will still have jobs when the 2012 elections roll around. The least they could do is make it harder for Obama to lick off those millions of hard earned union support dollars from the top of the campaign contribution ice cream cone as he did in ‘08.

But who can be sure? Because the new union elites and their minions are lawyers and marketing professionals. They’ve never come down off the mountain with both stacks red hot, or gathered on the porch of a crappy but new roadside bungalow, proud because they owned it, and stood up straight because, “Boys, your daddy is coming home.”

I’m not going into the current brouhaha about the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) or the “card check” bullshit here. Because what it’s gonna take to restore dignity to laboring America, ain’t gonna be more legislative wrangling. What it takes won’t be pretty, maybe not even legal in this new police state, and sure as hell won’t be “within the system.” Because the system is the problem.

So it will be up us, just like it always has been … the writer, the Nicaraguan janitor, the forty year old family man forced to bag groceries at Walmart, the pizza delivery guy, the welder and the certified nurse…the long haul trucker and the short order cook. And they will snicker at us from their gilded roosts on Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.

Some people are bound to get hurt in the necessary fight. In fact, people need to be willing to get hurt in the fight. That’s the way we once gained worker rights, and that’s the way we will get them back. The only way to get rid of the robbers’ roost is to burn the fucker down.

Anyone got a match?

About the Author: Joe Bageant is author of the book, Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War.Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance from the Heartland (AK Press). A complete archive of his on-line work, along with the thoughts of many working Americans on the subject of class may be found on ColdType and Joe Bageant’s website, joebageant.com (Random House Crown), about working class America.  He is also a contributor to Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance from the Heartland (AK Press). A complete archive of his on-line work, along with the thoughts of many working Americans on the subject of class may be found on ColdType and Joe Bageant’s website, joebageant.com.

This article originally appeared in Counterpunch on June 19, 2009. Re-printed with permission by the author.

Okay, I have a confession to make. I’m still a big Soprano’s fan. So this week’s blog is going to combine the number one question that everyone in business needs to ask themselves with a short homage to my favorite Jersey family. Capiche?

“Whaddya Gonna Do?”

This question is the closest thing to a mantra on the Sopranos. Business turns south, someone goes after an important customer or suddenly the feds are wreaking havoc. Inevitably one of the characters shrugs, grabs a drink and blurts out, whaddya gonna do?

Unlike a certain organized crime family on TV, most of us do have plenty that we can do. But we are so mired in the fog of our jobs that we fail to see it.

Take a lousy boss. Whaddya gonna do? Well you can go boss shopping. Start looking inside and outside your company for a boss that you can trust. Yep, trust. Get creative with using conference rooms for taking calls to potential employers, using fake doctor’s visits to go for interviews and using letters from clients for references. Serve on committees that will increase your visibility, find excuses to meet with potential new bosses (example, by serving on a United Way committee) or just hang out in the executive bathroom until your top executive prospect hears nature’s call.

Take a crummy paycheck. Whaddya gonna do? Ask to meet with your boss to discuss a raise. After they give you a ton of reasons why it won’t happen, smile and ask for specific performance targets you’d need to hit to get a raise. Specific is the key. Find out what it will take, document the conversation then put all of your creativity to work to hit the target. But don’t just play inside your company. Start shopping your resume outside of it. That is the quickest way to getting a bump in pay, because your company will never pay you what you’re worth until you have a firm outside offer from another company. Never.

Take not having enough hours in a day. Whaddya gonna do? For most of us, the key to getting more done isn’t about squeezing more stuff into your already full eight or nine hour day. The key is to ensure that you’re focusing your best efforts into the areas of greatest opportunity for both you and your company. I’m a big believe in the 80-20 rule. I try to always put 80% of my best effort into my most important projects. It’s tough to do because the urgent always has a way of trumping the important, but you’ve got to resist that temptation and keep your eyes on the prize.

Take being scared of being laid off. Whaddya gonna do? People write to me all the time describing a lay off that came out of nowhere. And yes, that can happen. But more often than not there were subtle clues about what was going to happen. The company suddenly started cutting the budget, sending important projects to other departments and transferring the starts to other departments at your company. We all have to be careful about getting too comfortable and keep our eyes on what is next for our industry, our company but most of all ourselves.

Whaddya gonna do? Plenty. Because you don’t have to be stuck with the mob, you can chart your own course of action.

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author, award-winning journalist and popular speaker. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com .

I read a great article on Karl Rove, a.k.a. the ex-President’s Svengali. In the article it talked about the fact that in politics there are two kinds of people – “lumpers” and “splitters.” Lumpers try to build the biggest possible coalition to get the policies they want while splitters use wedge issues to divide and conquer the electorate.

Anyone who has wandered the corporate hallways knows that lumpers and splitters are not limited to politics, they’re alive and well in today’s workplace.

Let’s start with splitters. The classic splitter move is to be hyper-focused on the people above you in the chain of command. They’re the ones that you have to sell for you to get any new budget or more authority. So what do you do? You present your arguments to the boss in terms of an attack. You attack competitors. You attack existing initiatives. But mostly you attack your coworkers. In short, you get where you need to go by applying negative energy. I think Bob Dylan summed it up best when he sang, “…Cares not to lift you up any higher, but rather to get you down in the hole that he’s in.”

Then there are the lumpers. Consensus builders. People who subject themselves to endless meetings to try to get “buy-in.” The people who take the time to talk to the people on the fringe. But as we all know, “buy in” is expensive because it costs time and political capital. Working the halls sure sounds great, but who has the energy or inclination?

Sure it sounds nice to be a lumper (the philosophy, not the word). But the reality is that splitting is a short cuts also have costs—they’re just not as apparent.

Okay, let me make a confession here. I’ve been a splitter for most of my career. I would attack, I would criticize, I would do whatever it takes to win. I found that negative energy, just like negative campaign ads, works.

But I’ve realized there is a different way. A better way.

I learned that working the room has its benefits because the more minds you get involved the better the result. That fighting over the last piece of the pie is silly. It’s smarter to put your energy into figuring out how to make more pies. That the best ideas usually come from others.

We need more lumpers at work. Is there anyone out there ready to join the lumpers team?

QUOTE.

“A little reciprocity goes a long way.” Malcolm Forbes

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

Having written a column entitled Workplace911 and Working Wounded for fourteen years, as you can imagine, I hear from a lot of people with terrible jobs. Last time I addressed a few of my favorites, this week the worsts continue:

• Worst Interview (some worst jobs start even before you get the job)
• Worst Coworkers
• Worst Boss
• Worst of the Worst

WORST INTERVIEW
 
“I applied for a job as a researcher. I was informed before the interview that the director was chemically sensitive. She said I shouldn’t wear any scented products or even wash my hair before the interview. I complied, but when I arrived at the office, the director pointed at me from across the room and said, ‘She’s here, Bill. Could you sniff her?’ At which point, this big, hairy guy proceeded to do so—very up close and personal. Having passed the sniff test, I was allowed to approach the director and begin the interview. I later got a call saying I got the job, which, of course, I didn’t take.”
 
I’ve heard references to the “sniff test” at work, who knew that some people took it so literally?
 
WORST COWORKER
 
“The last straw for me was the guy in the next cube who would have long, loud conversations with his wife, totally in baby talk.”
 
Okay, admit it. The dumpster cleaning gig isn’t sounding so bad right now, is it?
 
WORST BOSS
 
For many years I included a worst boss contest in my speeches. I asked over ten thousand audience members for their stories. I heard some whoppers. But by far the worst all time boss story was told to me by a guy in Los Angeles.
 
“The worst boss I ever worked for? He asked his assistant to type her own termination letter.”
 
Ouch, you’ve got to be really tough to survive today’s workplace.
 
WORST OF THE WORST
 
“I had an office mate who muttered to himself and constantly interrupted me. I complained to our boss, but he wasn’t moved. His desk was directly under an old ceiling fan. One morning I left an oily machine nut on his desk. During the day I caught him glancing up at the fan. The next day I put a rusty bolt on his desk. The next, another nut and a screw. That afternoon, HE went to our boss and asked to be moved.”
 
This email gives an entirely new meaning to the phrase just dropping a hint at work.
 
Wait a minute, you’re probably saying to yourself. This guy used creativity and guile to get what he needed. How does this qualify as a worst job story?
 
Should someone really have to work that hard just to put themselves in a position to do their job? And that sums up the insanity of today’s workplace. And this guy’s not alone. Watson Wyatt, a management consulting firm, did a study that found that 62% of us report that we don’t have the information that we need to do our jobs. And another 57% report that we’re not given the skills to do our jobs. 
 
The most important lesson we can take away from Worst Jobs is not from the few really awful jobs out there, but that so many of us aren’t given the simple things we need to make ours a great job.

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

Let’s start with my qualifications to discuss “Worst Jobs.” For the last decade I’ve written an internationally syndicated work advice column called Workplace911 (formerly Working Wounded). With a name like that, you can imagine the emails I receive on a daily basis. One example, “I decided to put a photo of my family on the wall of my cube. I got out a pin to attach it and suddenly I heard screams from the other side of the wall. Turns out my neighbor was bleeding and quite displeased.”
 
Let’s face it. We all get “stuck” once and a while at work. It’s inevitable. But this blog is about the very worst jobs out there, at least according to my email. I broke them down into the following categories and include an example for each:

• Worst Working Conditions
• Worst Assignment
• Worst Employee (yes, bad employees can create a nightmarish job, too)

DISCLAIMER: A construction worker once emailed, “I’m just happy to come home each night with all my body parts intact.” The truly worst jobs are those that present a clear and present danger to your health and safety. Each year, according to the government, fishing and mining are usually at the top of the list of most dangerous jobs. We chose to not include dangerous jobs in this article because they’re just not that funny.
 
Worst WORKING CONDITIONS
 
“I once had a job steam cleaning dumpsters.  It was even worse than you imagine. I had to climb inside of these dirty dumpsters with nothing but me and my steam gun. This was before the days of protective clothing. As an aside, many of your readers have no doubt seen corner reflectors hung on sailboats, designed to reflect radar energy back to the source so that the boat will be easily seen. It turns out that directing steam into the interior corners of a dumpster works pretty much the same way. Everything that was once stuck in the corner of the dumpster gets blasted out and comes directly back to you—covering you from head to toe in an instant. A sort of putrid tsunami.”
 
This email sums up the real value of reading about someone else’s truly terrible job. It makes each of us feel so much better about our 9-5.
 
WORST ASSIGNMENT
 
“My job was to sort through used men’s and women’s undergarments after lingerie shows across Europe (instead of discarding the unmentionables once the shows were over, the undergarments were shipped back to Winston-Salem, presumably for tax purposes). The problem was that each was different, so they needed someone to type up a description for each pair of panties, briefs, and thongs, which numbered in the hundreds. I was put into a cubicle with a computer and Hefty sacks full of the ‘inventory.’ I was assured that the garments had been washed. Scraps of paper were pinned onto each piece written with names like ‘Jean-Pierre’ and ‘Bridgette.’ I soon found out both by sight and smell that the laundry had NOT been done. I became intimately familiar with both Bridgette and Jean-Pierre and gained much unnecessary insight into French toileting habits. Because no one in the office could find me a pair of rubber gloves, I continued my task by pinching each undergarment by the least offensive part I could find and learned how to inhale through the mouth.”
 
Finally, an explanation for the question we’ve all pondered—what was Victoria’s Secret?

WORST EMPLOYEE
 
“I once asked one of my people to stop reading a People Magazine at her desk and to get back to work. She began to cry and went on disability for two days.”
 
That’s what I’d call people who really need people!
 
Next time I’ll return with more worsts:

• Worst Interview (some worst jobs start even before you get the job)
• Worst Coworkers
• Worst Boss
• Worst of the Worst

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

To everyone who has been laid off I have three things to say. It’s not fair. It’s not your fault. And, you’re not alone.

Recently I took a big financial hit when I was let go from a job I’d had for twelve years. I’d like to talk about it this week in a very personal way. Hopefully my journey will help you to cope when the shrapnel hits you at work, and unfortunately, the odds are that it could.

I wrote a column and a blog for over twelve years at the ABCnews.com web site. Twelve years working for a dot.com makes it sound like I was right there when Al Gore invented the Internet. Not quite, but I do remember the strange looks from colleagues when I first put my email address on my business card, especially one guy who called it “unprofessional.”

I had a sense that storm clouds were on my horizon when my editor at ABC wrote me a terse note saying that he had “problems” with my column. Despite multiple calls and emails to my editor, the “problems” were never identified to me.

Like reading in the newspaper about a big layoff at your company, getting let go is often the antithesis of The Donald’s “Your Fired.” No, it’s much closer to an enhanced interrogation technique, where it almost seems like they bring in consultants to maximize your pain and disorientation.

Shortly after getting that email, I got a call from another editor who I never had heard of, or talked to, before. I nicknamed her the “assassin.” She announced to me that after repeated attempts to “improve” my column, ABC was going to have to drop it. I asked about those attempts, but again was told that I’d been fully informed of what they were.

Does my little dance in a parallel universe sound familiar? Problems that are never explained, discussions about the problems that never happened. Being let go would be painful enough if they treated you with dignity and respect, but clearly that is out of the skill set of most in management today.

I have no problem with anyone making the decision to drop my work. It’s just that after twelve years, I just thought I’d earned the opportunity to receive feedback so I could get a shot to renew our vows before I was shown the door. Okay, maybe I’d been to Disneyland one too many times, but I thought I was part of something after all those years I’d put in.

So what did I learn from this experience? A corporation is a corporation and not your mother. Or friend. Or distant relative. In short, they don’t care. So it’s silly for you to care. There were many times where I’d been approached by other media outlets and turned them down because I had a “home.” Now I know the true meaning of the phrase “giving you the business.”

My second big lesson was that the anger that you feel when you are dumped is a powerful force. It can eat you up inside or it can drive you to find new opportunities. Luckily for me, it led me to a much better place, Workplace Fairness.

Accept that you’re angry. Accept that you were treated unfairly. Then use that as fuel to rise above where you were before the body blow took the wind out of your sails. Recovering will probably take longer than you want it to, but living well is always the best revenge.

It was embarrassing to tell this story. But I thought that if it even helped just one person, it was worth it. I rose from the ashes, and you can too.

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About the author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. He has been called “Dilbert with a solution.” Check out the free resources available at workplace911.com. You can contact Bob via bob@workplace911.com.