SYNOPSIS

 

Great News We’ve Sold The Company covers most aspects of getting employed, getting re-employed, or staying employed depending on your current and/or future status. 

The book begins with a section about Writing Effective Resumes that will get attention.  We have considered that a Resume may be read by a cold and heartless electronic scanner to a Resume that may be read by a cold and heartless Human Resources Representative, or, if you really luck out, a Human Resources Clerk

We have blended some of our real-life experiences, from the sublime to the outrageous, to inform, educate and provide support to anyone “clawing their way into or out of middle management.”  We included concepts as abstract as Equal Employment Opportunity, occasional Equal Employment Opportunity practices, interviewing and discharges.  We have even included questions that you may be asked and questions that you may want to ask during an interview.  We also discuss the concept used by very weak and inept management called “At-Will Employment.” 

                We discuss compensation, overtime, and some of the laws under FLSA that help regulate these areas.  We discuss some of the pitfalls of taking cash for work performed so you can “cheat the government” and how that practice will come back to eventually bite your buttocks leaving nasty scars.

We discuss the “culture” of some companies.  We have seen people hook their career wagons to others that seem to be rising above the din of the monotony and tedium of everyday corporate life and then begin to burn up when re-entering the earth’s atmosphere after their star begins to fall.

                We go where the faint of heart dare not go and talk about motivation.  We talk about what it is, who creates it, why, or vice versa.  We tell what some companies do to promote motivation within their own ranks whether or not it works.

It is said that the topics of politics, religion and sex within the corporation are to be avoided.  Moreover, you are not allowed to quote any lines from Seinfeld! We know that and we have some interesting views and experiences. 

We have included a number of stupid human tricks for your own reading enjoyment.  You could call it humor without uniforms, but we all wear a uniform whether is real material or just the thin veil of the corporate culture.  To paraphrase FDR, “The only thing some companies have to fear is hypocrisy itself.”

corporate life is pretty much the same regardless of the corporate name and logo under which you are employed.

You can spin off the ladder and land on your head or your feet.  You can get fired, and discover that it was the best thing that could have ever happened to you.  We discuss some of the angst that you may feel while “between jobs.”

                We discuss how to negotiate a severance package for yourself and what rights you will have to give up in order to get a deal that you like, or that you may not like.  Good or bad deal – it all depends on your circumstance and your status as a member of a protected class.

                We included a section about Unemployment Benefits & Unemployment Hearings and, worse case scenario, appealing a Disqualification of Unemployment Benefits.

                And finally, we discuss your life after corporate America has left you standing on the side of the highway of life with a cardboard box of your favorite possessions in one hand, scratching your head with the other, and wondering what the hell just happened.  The odds are that you did not do anything wrong, you just happened to be in the way of someone else.  You have options and you have activities to begin, so put your nose to the grindstone and brace yourself. Now is the time your resilience and bounce will be severely tested so stick out that hitchhiker’s thumb and get with the program – your own program.

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

“It has always been a mystery to me

 how men feel themselves honored

 by the humiliation of their fellow beings!”
                           

                         - Mohandas K. Gandhi

 

 

WHO / WHAT ARE CORPORATIONS LOOKING FOR?
 

Some large companies may no longer want experienced employees as managers because their length of service

 

may have created higher than average wages, and more costly benefit and retirement packages and if a company

 

is trying to posture itself to be sold, one way to appear attractive to another buyer is to have low payroll

costs.  Companies are also concerned about greater risk of major and/or pro-longed illnesses with older employees.

 

  However, these same companies hire their retirees as “provisional or temporary employees” because they provide

 

a reliable and experienced workforce at drastically lower payroll costs and without the expense of company-

 

sponsored benefits.

 

How we got into this position in Corporate America is not so complex and it may be based on the history of one

 

of America’s largest corporations. Upon the founder’s death his grandson took control of the company and hired

 

a man considered to be a financial genius.  Later on this man and his buddies earned the title Captain Jack’s

 

Ivy-League Whiz-Bang Kids when he and his colleagues became Presidential Cabinet Members.  This person brought

 

in his own team of self-absorbed accountants / financial analysts / consultants and in a relatively short

 

period of time changed the philosophy and the ethical conduct of the company, its culture, and the general

 

direction of most large companies, i.e., producing “X” quantities must result in “Y” outcomes; acquire, be

 

absorbed or disappear.  They made a few mistakes in the selection process for equipment for which they had

 

absolutely no first hand knowledge.  Their arrogant attitude led to the deaths of many young American soldiers

 

when it came to the M-16 Rifle and its ammunition.  One of their theories was that shooting “X” number of

 

M-16 ammunition must result in “Y” numbers of enemy casualties.  That may work in a sterile controlled

 

environment but on the battlefield it won’t.  He later wrote a book to apologize for his mistakes and

 

probably another chunk of money because of his fatal mistakes – fatal for others.  This could have been

 

prevented if they had listened more carefully but then sometimes too much education, pride, power and

 

arrogance gets in the way of right decisions.

 

 

The big question that was often heard when my employer was about to be consolidated, merged, acquired, etc.,

 

was this, “Is the new CEO an accountant/bean-counter?”  If the answer was yes, then we knew that the only

 

concern about the company was “return on investment – return on invested capitol - stockholder’s earnings”

 

and a vast array of financial spreadsheets.”  The people that made the company generate profits were often

 

left in the dust cloud created by a whirlwind of planners’ spreadsheets, financial analyses, multiple scenarios

 

of financial what-ifs and multi-faceted corporate reorganizations.

 

Don’t delude yourself into thinking that you are immune or possess some special skill, higher education or

 

hold a title that places you in a different category than the other employees.  We are all susceptible to

 

systems employed by companies to increase the appearance of productivity and revenues, to make costs seem

 

much less than reality (but 11 billion dollars – WorldCom accounting – only the United Nations can top this one),

 

 or to cut costs (payroll and benefits is usually the biggest cost for an employer), which equates to your

 

existence as an employee!

 

Doing a good job is not enough!  Being a nice person is not enough (being nice means you may never be able

 

to merge into speeding traffic)! Being smart is not enough! Being well educated is not enough! To advance or

 

even remain employed requires job knowledge, experience, skill and awareness of your surroundings and the

 

players within it.  In other words, knowing who can and will help you and your career; who can but won ’t

 

help your career; or worse, what person may deliberately attempt to sabotage you and your goals in order to

 

further their own objectives.

 

The old school of The Golden Rule and other now apparently out-of-date concepts once taught to attain

 

business success have evolved into a new and different type of ball game! The key for success is acquiring

 

the knowledge necessary to survive in the midst of your equally ambitious co-workers and to be aware of the

games that are being played.

 

Some of us have probably sat at the same desk in the same building for the last ten years, but have had

 

three or more different employers; five or more different supervisors/managers that were usually a generation

 

younger than ourselves, if we were lucky!  And then maybe some of us got real lucky and were down-sized and

 

forced to find a better job, or we created a better job or perhaps we opened our own business.  Sometimes when

 

a door is about to close or closes another door opens.  Make sure you can see both when they happen and then

make that leap of faith.

 

“Not only are we all in the same boat,

 

 but we are all seasick!”
 

                             -   G.K. Chesterton 1874-1936

 

Most of us know what it is like to work in a department where you are twice or almost three times the average

 

age of your coworkers.  Your younger co-workers have no idea how silly and childish they may seem to you and

 

vice versa.  The more experienced the employee is the more emotional maturity they possess.  Maturity usually

 

manifests itself in regular attendance, dependability, productivity, responsibility, helpfulness, job-knowledge,

 

consistent and solid ethical behavior.

 

 

“EARLY RETIRED?”
 

If you have been laid off, down-sized, involuntarily early-retired, displaced, reorganized, right-sized,

 

redesigned, restructured, retitled, reduced in force (RIFd), job-redesign; job eliminated, just plain fired,

 

or your job description has been changed along with a reduction in your pay grade it only means that the Board

 

of Directors, CEO or COO were not effective in their responsibilities.  Usually their ineffectiveness costs you

 

and many others their jobs.  It may also mean that your CEO has a brother-in-law in the outplacement business.

 

 Or even better, the outplacement agency has your company’s Christmas party picture negatives.

 

“Don’t take it personally.”  That is what I was told to tell people when I had the unfortunate task of being the

 

last one in the corporation to speak to them while I walked them towards the front door with their desk toys in

 

a cardboard box.

 

DOING THE RIGHT THING

I don’t want to downplay the importance of doing a good job, but sometimes knowing how to play office politics

 

is more important.  This is antithetical to what Peter Drucker was saying about “doing the right thing versus

 

doing things right.”  
 

Moreover, it may be more financially beneficial for you to learn and practice the politics of the corporate

 

culture than to do a better job.  That is a sad indictment for the workplace environment of today but in light

 

of recent revelations from Enron, Global Crossing, WorldCom, Tyco and others of their ilk, but perhaps the “shoe

 

fits” very well.  Would like to wear these shoes home?