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The Corporate Shit List: Taking Submissions

If you read my letter to Michael Dell, you'd know my battery conked out a day after the warranty was up. I don't want to spend another $1,750 to replace a one-year-old laptop, so I sucked it up and bought a new battery. After a grueling wait--how long does it take to pack a freaking battery?--it arrives; it's the wrong one.

The b-friend took up my cause for me, fighting it out with the customer service rep, then getting transferred to another one, then getting disconnected. I was too depleted to do it myself; I'd already been on the phone this week trying to sort out a cryptic SBC bill and filing a police report (my parked car was hit by a semi; needless to say there are damages).

I'm learning to get zen about these things. I temporarily supend my belief that I live in one of the most commercially savvy and powerful nations--one could argue THE most powerful--and pretend I live in Guatemala. Then I'm grateful just to HAVE Customer service. Si.

I don't believe that people are TRYING to screw me. Mistakes are human. But I do believe that companies should KNOW about mistakes. I believe we have an obligation to make them aware of things that don't work. Sure, we can tell companies about our pain through our purchasing patterns, but there are little areas where companies get comfortable because they own the market, or they know that customers are forced for multitudes of reasons to spend money on things they are hardly happy with. Dell knew I wasn't going to throw out a one-year-old computer for a dead battery, and they knew that when the wrong battery arrived I would just have to wait patiently for the right one.

When I wrote about my negative experience with Dell, I received mail and comments that supported my gripes, and I received comments about other products & services that failed to fulfill (Huh? And I thought it was just the products that I bought). I also noticed how damn good it feels to vent about bad experiences on my blog, and how useful others' comments were to me and potentially to others. (I sense ongoing writing material!)

My new blog column, The Corporate Shit List, will not be a bitch fest. Hopefully I will infuse some reason into my writing, even while I'm fuming. I think it's important for companies to understand the grief and not think I'm some crazy trying to pull together a griping militia. It will also be open to anyone who wants to send me a gripe--with one caveat: I want a story. I want emotion, and DETAILS ("Microsoft Sux" won't cut it). I want to feel your pain.

Despite my penchant for volume, your anecdote needn't be long, or well-punctuated for that matter. My objective is to create healthy conversations about products and services versus smear campaigns. I'll accept stories on any product, service, or company, provided they are not defamatory or SPAM shots meant to de-promote a competitor. I'll also accept links to blogs that tell a good story.

I'll also be thrilled to receive POSITIVE stories (I plan to write about how Geico, my car insurance company, held my hand through my little run-in with the 18-wheeler and how, another time, they made getting my car totaled a not-so-catastrophic event). If I get enough of these stories I'll start a Corporate IT List.

I've populated the category with some of my past blogs, to get things started. If we seem to generate some steam with this feature I'll blow it out by category. So come one, come all. Feel free to email me. I'm totally serious about this. I've even managed to talk the b-friend into designing a logo for this feature, so stay tuned, and send in your doosies.

In Defense of the Free Agent

I wondered for some time how Fast Company magazine was going to land once the economy went into a tailspin--on its back or on its feet. Would the mag pretend that it had never said "break the rules" or "quit your job?" Would it take the kamikaze route and print a final issue that instantaneously burst into flames?

It would seem the answer so far is that it's landed hard on its side, but not fatally. It's been skidding for the past two or three years, trying desperately to regain control of its editorial direction, but the original vessel that launched in 1995 is still intact.

FC now runs a monthly humble pie column, in celebration of its tenth year of publication, in which it dissects one of the high-flying mantras it threw out in the late 90s that it's still trying to live down. Frankly I think it's a smart move, as there are too many people who have been burned by the Play Doh approach to running business meetings and now want less--shall we say--progressive management strategies. On the other hand, that's what I've always loved about Fast Company--it's uncanny ability to stir the shit. Even if you balked at one of its bold 1999 manifestos, you read the piece cover to cover. FC made business fun. Just by arguing with a point of view you got pulled into a new realm of thought about what you did for a living. (Full disclosure, I've written for the magazine and will have material published next month; even so I'm just a 10-year groupie like the rest of the folks who've read every issue.)

But flipping through this month's FC has been, I don't know--unnerving. The Humble Pie column this month mitigates the Free Agent Nation Frenzy FC started in 1998, back when everyone and their mother could get a well-paying job at a Dot Com. I imagine there were people who worked offline--teachers, doctors, and the like--who felt a bit left out those few years, as the rest of us were blowing off grad school, getting on planes and negotiating stock options. Some of us were taking off mornings to grab a latte and a yoga class, then working till 2am. But now I'm feeling like the anachronistic outsider, as I see I've taken the Free Agent idea to heart seven years too late.

Living Without a Net; An Odyssey into Self-Employment (Chapter X): Enjoying the Silence

It's been a quiet week; quiet for me anyways. I've had all the time in the world to do what I had planned to do when I quit my job--write and think. The silence is deafening, terrifying.

I woke up in the morning, read email, went to Starbucks to work on an essay, came home, heated up soup, looked at my calendar, and then it hit me. My usual list of people to "ping" was empty. Was this a mistake? I checked the batteries on my PDA.

Nope, still working. Maybe, I thought, today is a holiday.

The b-friend was in the other room. His grad program is on spring break. I can hear Rocky IV in my living room.

"Yo Adrian!" b-friend yells. "You're missing me cwush da Russian!"

"I'm not coming out there, you hear me! I'm working!"

"Wanna go to Costco?"

"It's business hours!"

Single Employed Female: The Invisible Years

I used to work at one of the largest corporate behemoths in the world. As small and insignificant as it can make a person feel to work at a company this size, there were certainly perks. The first year on the job I had three weeks of vacation--one week more than the typical two I'd had elsewhere. Half of my gym membership was paid. The cafeteria food was actually good, and subsidized. Our department had an automatic coffee machine with good coffee; the pantry was full of an unlimited supply of fig newton bars (the Fat-Free ones, as per my request). I was outfitted by an ergonomic specialist and had black puffy things surrounding my work area. I was paid more than I had asked to be when I interviewed. I suppose they couldn't go that low in good conscience, even if I'd asked for it.

The first year I wasn't yet aware that I hated the job. I was a magazine addict and fed off one of the other major bennies of the company, free subscriptions to the company's 20+ titles and heavily discounted CDs. I went to shows at MOMA for half off. And, by virtue of working at this media behemoth, I could attend parties, and people would talk to me, thinking I might get them published. It took nearly two years before I realized how tired I was from nights of insomnia, particularly on Sunday nights, and that I was a jaw-dropping size four because my nerves burned off more calories than I consumed.

"It's hard to believe you were so unhappy," my girlfriend tells me, when we remember those days. "You looked phenomenal!"

Looking phenomenal was, in fact, my job, not being an editor, per se. I'd made enough money at that point to step up the wardrobe and look, for the first time in my life, like a woman, not just a girl. I had a bevy of professionals to help me, including a hair stylist, a colorist, a career coach, a massage therapist. There was one professional that I was lacking, however: a mentor.

In Defense of HIStory and BlogHERcon

Back to my Monday blog topic before I was so rudely interrupted by my PC.

I'm amused by all of the brouhaha between the guys and the girls. This issue has heated up in both the print and online realms, with discussion over the alleged blogger gender divide and lack of female political commentary in major metropolitan newspapers.

I'm split over this debate, the woman in me fearing the evolution of one of women's only free playgrounds into a Boys Club, the realist in me knowing that, ultimately, people gravitate toward GOOD CONTENT, regardless of who wrote it.

A Letter to Michael Dell

Dear Mr. Dell,

I've followed your illustrious career for a long time now--I even read your book!

I'm impressed by the way your company has revolutionized the customized, distribution model for such complex products as personal computers. Dell makes it easy for residential and business customers alike to compare features and determine the best product to fit our needs (I love those milk-gallon icons you guys use to illustrate the weight of the computers--very helpful for those of us who shlep their laptops with them wherever they go.)

I've worked at companies that praise your employee devotion and focus on development. From a business model and management perspective your company is at the fore.

I was so impressed by your company and how easy it was to buy my laptop that I ordered laptops for the small business I was staffing from Dell as well. I convinced my boyfriend to buy one. I've told everyone asking me who to buy from to log onto your site and place an order.

Now, I'm sorry that I did.

Accepting Men in the Flesh

I went to my girlfriend Beth's place the other night. For several years now she's held small soirees for her best girlfriends, once a month. Beth is our common denominator; most of us didn't know each other before attending her parties; pockets of us worked with her at former jobs, or were in her camp at Burning Man. Some of us are married, some of us are perpetually single, and some of us are happily sleeping with multiple people. Some of us have kids, some of us have pets, some of us have plants. Some of us are in our 20s, some are in our 30s, some are in our 40s. Some of us are executives, some of us are grunts, some of us work for ourselves. We have a name for our Community: Bettie June's Sewing Circle, named after Beth.

There are no restrictions on Bettie Juners; well, just one: you must have two X chromosomes, though if that rule were hotly contested I'm sure we could drag in a man or two. Other than that there's not much required of you. You show up to a Sewing Circle soiree when you feel like it; though if you do show up you must bring a bottle of wine or something for the Bettie Juners to nosh.

Occasionally Beth will throw in a theme. We've had clothing swaps, jewelry sales (featuring the work of a Bettie Juner); baby showers--we painted designs on nappies for three Juners who were expecting; and a Get Over Him Party, when Bettie June herself was stuck in London and upset about breaking up with her boyfriend. She couldn't set up the usual monthly event, so we had it at my place, baking dozens of cookies and making paper snowflakes that we shipped off to her with a note to drop the man like a bad habit.

There are some common themes in our monthly conversations. We like to talk about sex, the raunchier aspects of it; we like to remind each other of how lucky we are to be where we are, in good health, in better relationships, with new avocations. A topic that seems to be blipping on the radar a lot lately is online dating.

Living Without a Net: An Odyssey into Self-Employment (Chapter IX): Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

“I hope you’ll think about taking on some projects with us,” my most current former boss (Boy, that sounds funny) said to me the day I resigned from my full-time gig. “Can you afford to go on your own, cold turkey?”

His kind offer reminded me of my mother’s (“If you get hungry, call me.”) when I left home to take my first job in New York City. I appreciated the gesture, but it made me feel--I don’t know--dependent, incapable of feeding myself literally and figuratively.

Still, it's a common reality for solos who have recently jumped ship; someone throws a life preserver over the side and you almost hope no one notices you coasting, tied to the back of SS Old Job. I mean, you left for a reason, right?

It’s unfortunate: I actually like the people I worked for before going solo; they make it easy to come into the office at the drop of a hat. When I've despised former bosses the door never hit me on the ass on the way out—by the time it was shut I was out of the building and halfway down the block, never to return. Common corporate wisdom dictates that you never burn a bridge, but sometimes NOT burning one means little things creeping back over to your side--vermin-like memories of unmotivated lethargy that you mistake for security, small what-ifs that whisper, "Why not take a project with them? You know the landscape. It's easy money, and it's ONLY part-time."

Living Without a Net: An Odyssey into Self-Employment (Chapter VIII): On Becoming a Financial Pariah

The first--no wait, the second--time I'd left a job and become self-employed was somewhat of a forced situation; my employer had gone under. Still, the writing had been on the wall for a good, long time--long enough to allow me to prepare financially. My stock options were worthless, but I did get some money back when they were liquidated. Plus I'd made enough to save well. When I received my pink slip, the few of us who were left at the company went to a bar to celebrate. It just didn't SEEM like a sad day.

A week later, however, it was another story. Registering for unemployment was like being told to go to the end of the line at a David Hasselhoff concert in Germany--a WAIT. It was San Francisco in 2002 for Chrissakes--you could throw a rock into the crowd at Golden Gate Park and, if it bounced, hit two Dot Commers on unemployment. I feared, by the time I got someone on the phone to answer my questions, I'd be in debt or I'd have a new job.

Then I experienced the indignity of trying to buy a car. I figured, now that I have some time on my hands, and now that I may have to stretch my job search to--God forbid--something outside the Media Gulch area of San Francisco, I should probably own a vehicle. Nothing fancy. But, as this would be my first car (Lay off! I lived in New York City for years! I'd taken cabs for so long I would have sprung for a driver if I could have afforded it) I wanted it to be new, warrantied, and as hassle-free as possible.

I could have paid for the car in full with the money I'd saved, but I thought against it. Who knows how long unemployment in SF would last? Who knows if this little black Jetta would eventually have to be both my mode of transportation and my apartment in a few months. I applied for financing, but apparently people without jobs can't get financing. I tried to finagle.

"I'm not UNemployed, I'm self-employed," I said. I was, potentially, going to make money taking on odd jobs. I was lined up to staple packets at my friend's office for $12 an hour.

"Same difference," I was told.

I went to my bank to get a loan and was pissed: I figured that my status as a premium client (as told to me on every piece of direct mail I'd ever received from my bank) with a perfect credit and checking account history would earn me something a little bit better than a whopping 11 percent finance rate. By the time I paid it off, I calculated in by head, you'd think I'd bought a Mercedes.

Pissed as I was, my hands were tied. I accepted the loan terms. But, slap me again, my application was denied. I must have shuffled hundreds of thousands of dollars through this institution over the past several years, but now I was being denied a $13,000 loan because of a simple shift in my employment status. All those stupid letters about how my bank was my financial partner in all stages of life; really they meant all of the GAINFULLY EMPLOYED periods. Where's the faith?

As a final insult to injury, my bank began charging me $5 a month for not using direct deposit. I called them in protest,

"But I don't have anything to DEPOSIT!"

I guess that was the problem, not a compelling reason.

I learned that the world makes it HARDER for those they perceive as out of work. And as much as you might try to alter their antiquated definitions of employment, unless you have a W2 or two-year work history to wave in front of them, you could be Paris Hilton and still get denied a line of credit.