Chapter 10 • 2001-2005 • The Bottom Drops Out

What goes up must come down. The high I had been on since the beginning of 1989 proved that Newton’s law of gravity applied to business as well as heavenly bodies in space. In 1998 when my favorite and most dependable client found itself in a corporate merger situation. As my former colleagues were picking up the pieces of their shattered plans, I was very much on the outside looking in. I knew they were grieving for a vision that would never be realized and a president who was about to be replaced. I was also grieving—for the same president, whom I liked and respected, for my best source of income, and for the feeling of being part of something meaningful and important.

The process took six months. When the dust settled, the VP of communications invited me back to work on a project. What I found was a changed organization. If an entire executive management team could be in state of depression, this one was. I would say the entire company, but most people had no idea of what had transpired. Even the next level of management was in the dark. The program we had been about to unveil was never announced. While most people knew the company was joining ranks with another industry giant, that’s all they knew. When two corporations merge, one set of executives has to go. Along with the president, who had spent many years working his way up through the organization, many other veterans of the business became casualties of the closed-door negotiations.

There’s an old saying, “It’s not personal; it’s business.” But when the lives and careers of good people are upended in a business deal, it feels very personal to them. I was devastated, but I was also wiser. I had been living in a kind of la-la land where everybody loved me and appreciated my work. I thought this mutual admiration society would go on forever. This experience taught me that nothing goes on forever.

My status with the company became much less secure. I had worked with three prior presidents who shared many leadership characteristics and with whom I felt a real connection. The new president had a different management style. Suffice to say, we didn’t connect. In such situation, the freelancer is the one who leaves.

The permanent loss of this client would have been bad enough if it had been an isolated event. But at the beginning of 2001, the economy experienced a serious downturn, and the bottom fell out of my little business. It was as if all of my clients assessed the situation, pushed the panic button, and fired all of their consultants (as freelancers had come to be called). There was no warning, at least in my case. One day I was working; the next day I was not. In addition to the client that had morphed into a new company, another one I had been associated with for sixteen years simply stopped calling. No goodbye. No announcement. No explanation.

To say 2001 had begun badly would be an understatement. The year was so bad, I don’t remember most of it … until September 11. If I was in a trance before, the events of September 11 threw me into a tailspin of shock and depression. Everywhere I looked, people were in the same shape. Americans were the walking wounded. In 1941, when Pearl Harbor was attacked, I was four years old. So, nothing in my memory was as horrifying as the images that assailed me day after day on TV. It seemed a tragedy without end.

The world as we knew it began to change immediately. I cannot think of any area of life or the economy unaffected by the events of that day. Nine years later, we are still feeling the reverberations. For me, everything came to a screeching halt. I had no work, no clients, and no plan. It would be months before I emerged from the haze long enough to realize the seriousness of my situation. I was not alone. I knew others who were in the same boat, but that was hardly comforting.

Sidebar

“As in any new relationship, we begin by learning. We want to know about your business, your people, and, especially, your vision. You want to know how creative, yet pragmatic, and how experienced, yet innovative, we are. We both want to know how well we would work together, how responsive we will be to each other’s ideas, ad how we can be certain that the ultimate product satisfies and delights you. Our job is to identify the problem and work toward a solution. The better we can define the problem, the better our solution will be. But we cannot do that alone. We need you.”

2001 • Corporate Brochure

What does one do when her only source of income ceases to exist? For almost a year, I had seen the demand for my services dry up, and the situation was not likely to change in the present economic climate. I was in trouble. Back in 1989, when I began this little venture, I told myself, if it didn't work out, I could always get a job. Thirteen years had passed. Somehow, I doubted I could simply update my resume and find a position as director of communications somewhere is corporate America. I had only one option: I would have to start over, from scratch.

I don’t want to give the impression that I immediately sat down and mapped out a brilliant plan for my future. I did sit down but mostly stared into space. It is one thing to know I had to start over; it was quite another to do it. To be honest, I don’t remember the process except it took a long time to get from point A to point B. My only nonnegotiable criterion was that whatever I did had to involve writing.

An opportunity presented itself (am I lucky, or what?), though I had no idea how it might fit into my new life. A friend of mine, who had been teaching a noncredit course at the community college for years, decided to retire. He suggested I take over his class on how to write and publish a book. The school was delighted, since it didn’t have a handy replacement; I was delighted since I was immobilized by indecision. My friend sent me all of his teaching materials and handouts, most of which were filled with information I didn’t feel qualified to teach. Since I was already committed, I redesigned the course and with great trepidation taught my first class.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will confess I was not magnificent. But I was hooked. I loved teaching! I remember two things vividly: I was so nervous, I read most of my lesson plans aloud, instead of just talking to the class; and I had such a terrible cold, I could barely speak above a whisper. Neither seemed to matter. My students were satisfied, and I was euphoric.

The class needed improvement and some serious marketing if I wanted to make any money. The community college paid $20 a teaching hour or $240 for six classes. I had spent so many hours planning and preparing for each class, I ended up losing money. And I still had no other source of income. Essentially, I was living on air (otherwise known as meager savings). I thought I could market the program to professional speakers and offered two of my friends a deal. I would help them write their books if they would help me polish my course. We both learned a lot. I learned that speakers don’t think like writers, so most of the time we were talking in two different languages. They learned that they didn’t want to write the books they thought they wanted to write and changed course in midstream.

Sidebar

“Professional speakers are often asked if they will be selling their books in the back of the room after their presentations. A product — be it a book or CD — enhances their credibility and commands higher speaking fees. Business leaders, subject-matter experts, humorists, psychologists, and diet gurus are all expected to share their knowledge in book form. High-profile CEOs often write books to pass along their business philosophies and practices to the next generation of leaders in their organizations; to articulate to significant stakeholders their personal visions for their companies; or to apply the hard-won lessons of their lives to the broader context of business, society, academia, or government. Whoever you are and whatever your motivation, when you are asked whether you have a book out or in the works, if the answer is “No, not yet,” what’s holding you back?

2004 • How to Write a Nonfiction Book:

From Concept to Completion in 6 Months

Despite the bumpy road, somehow I emerged with a much-improved plan; and they wrote two great books. I would love to take credit for their finished products, but I don’t feel I played that big a role in their achievement. Somewhere along the way, both of my friends went off on their own while I continued to polish my program. I finally decided I needed a workbook to bring it all together. How to Write a Nonfiction Book: From Concept to Completion in 6 Months was published in 2004.

The next phase of my personal reinvention was off to a great start.

Chapter 9 • 1990 • Going Solo

Being fired has a certain air of finality. Friday afternoon was the end of one life; Monday morning was the beginning of another. In between, I had reorganized the little room I used for my home office and prepared to test the job market. Despite my best intentions to think before I took any precipitous actions, old habits die hard. In the past, when I was out of a job, I had to find another one immediately. This time, I could afford to take a break, but I had not yet made the mental adjustment to my new reality.

As I thumbed through my Rolodex, I had doubts. One was that no one would remember me; the other was, to find a job at my level, someone would have to die. No one I knew was going to quit a perfectly good job unless they found an even better one, and I doubted there were many of them out there.

I made three discoveries almost immediately. People did remember me, very well in fact. I had been cloistered for ten years. I was amazed at how my peers out in the communications community had kept up with my career. More than one could recite my resume. The second discovery was that while there was a dearth of jobs, there were plenty of freelance projects just waiting for the right writers. Several people told me they would be thrilled to hire me as a freelancer whenever I was ready to start. I had been buried in the corporate catacombs for a long time, which to my mind was akin to being invisible. Not so, it seemed. An aha moment for me—the first of many.

The biggest realization of all was that there was a thriving freelance network functioning just below the radar, and the writers in that network were earning good money! I had been oblivious, but now a whole new set of possibilities presented themselves. What if I couldn’t find a job or decided not to continue looking for a job? Could I earn a living as a full-time, independently employed writer? I had no idea, but since I wasn’t getting anywhere with the job-hunting, freelancing seemed worth investigating.

I put on my researcher’s hat and changed my approach. I asked corporate communications and public relations executives if they hired freelancers and what kind of projects they were outsourcing. I asked writers if they were finding work, who was hiring them, and what was the going hourly rate. It was an eye-opening exercise.

I have a foolproof process for making decisions. I learned it years ago from a book called Psychocybernetics by Matthew Maltz. The short version is to consciously review every detail of the subject—pro and con—until I am on information overload. Maltz called this “feeding the computer” (the subconscious mind) long before computers became part of our daily lives. The key is not to beat the computer to the answer by thinking myself blue in the face, but rather to just walk away and forget about the problem. In the beginning, that was very hard to do.

Now that we know more about how computers work, the process makes more sense than it did in 1970 when I first read about it. Then, it was more an act of faith. What matters is that it works … every time. In the middle of thinking, or not thinking, about what to do with the rest of my life, I tested the theory by taking a vacation. It was out of character, under the circumstances, but when I got home, my decision had made itself. I was going to start my own freelance business.

I had no idea what it meant to “start a business.” I figured I would need an accountant and was lucky to find a wonderful guy who had only recently hung out his own shingle. He taught me the basics: open a separate checking account, keep track of time, income, and expenses, file all receipts, decide on an hourly rate, send out invoices, get everything in writing, save for taxes. Some I absorbed; some went right over my head. But at the end of every month, I turned in my numbers, and he did whatever accountants do and met with me to be sure I was on track.

The tough part of freelancing is supposed to be finding work. Rule number one is always fill the pipeline, so that when you finish a project, another one is waiting in the wings. For a long time through very little effort on my part, the jobs kept coming. I worked on an assignment, finished it, and received my lofty fee of $60 an hour. Then, another job would fall in my lap. So, I had work; I made money; I did all the things my accountant told me do; and I was happy as a clam, oblivious to what it meant to be “in business.”

Sidebar

“A good manager wears many hats: innovator, leader, planner, organizer, liaison between staff and higher levels of management, steward of resources, productivity booster, and developer of people. The latter two roles are the foundation of proficient management, which is, by definition, the ability to meet organization goals through and in concert with others. Over the years, tens of thousands of words have been written about the best methods and techniques for increasing productivity. Management literature has explored everything from the militaristic model to quality circles and self-managing teams. But recent literature has focused more and more on the importance of helping employees grow and develop on the job.”

1992 • Trainer’s Workshop

Years later that I read another little book called The E-Myth Revisited, I understood my mistake. I had what the author David E. Gerber called an “entrepreneurial seizure.” I assumed if I could write for someone else who would pay me, I could write for myself. That is the E Myth. The most important message in the book was this: Running a successful small business takes three people, or one person who can wear three hats: a technician, who creates something; a manager, who runs the office; and a marketer, who has big ideas and grows the business. I was a writer—a technician. Either I had to become a manager and a marketer or hire them. But I didn’t know that then, and even if I had, I had neither time nor money to fill the other two crucial roles.

If I had it to do again, I would sign up for a business course. Instead, I just kept on being a technician, never suspecting there was a better way. Somehow, I did OK for several years—OK meaning grossing about $50,000 a year in writing fees—sometimes less, sometimes more. Those were the good years; there were some not-very-good years in there.

When I glance across my office at the five shelves of binders filled with writing samples, I am amazed at the variety and volume of work I did during those first few years. Corporations were hiring freelance writers for anything that contained words—newsletters, articles, brochures, annual reports, training manuals, corporate identity, executive speeches, audio-visual training, employee benefits programs, and later Internet and intranet websites—a virtual candy store full of tempting assignments.

I didn’t know this wasn’t the way to run proper business. Whatever I was doing seemed to be working fine. Once again, I was meeting and interviewing executives. I was learning about industries as diverse as oil refining, hospitals, machine manufacturing, paperboard packaging, and industrial real estate. I was hiring photographers and designers and acting as liaison between them and company management.

Sometimes, the jobs dried up and disappeared. Corporations with huge magazine budgets moved to other cities, pulled the work inside, or decided they no longer needed magazines at all. Large training or advertising projects were completed and didn’t lead to follow up work. Managers changed jobs and brought in their own people. With each change, I adjusted and reinvented myself, like an actor who had to keep auditioning for and learning new roles.

Sidebar

“What do the waistline and the bottom line share? You may be surprised to learn that both are affected by what and how much your employees eat. Chronic health problems, such as high blood pressure and loss of muscular flexibility, can drive up lost-time and medical costs not only for older workers but for younger ones, as well. The reason is obesity. A recent study by the Rand Corporation indicates that obesity can significantly raise health care and medication costs for overweight people, as well as costs for other health problems, such as smoking. The study notes that some younger people are showing sings of premature aging because they are carrying excess weight that has the same effect as an additional 20 years on the their lives. In fact, the problems usually associated with aging are caused by the body working harder to perform its usual functions. A wellness program could help your workers achieve and maintain healthy weights and improve their overall lifestyles.”

Winter 2003 • Health & Safety News

Two major corporations remained my best clients for many years. For one, I wrote award brochures, training manuals, and a long-running safety newsletter. For the other, I wrote speeches for three CEOs and various other executives, a mission statement and new strategic direction, annual reports, and marketing materials for various divisions. In this best of all possible worlds, I was an insider, an ex-officio member of the senior management team. I knew what was happening behind closed doors long before most managers and employees did.

My unique position allowed me to witness the end of an era. The executive management team was on the verge of announcing a major change in the company’s operational philosophy. It was big, it was important, and it was gutsy. Our team had been working on the rollout for months. Less than a week before the official event, I was called in to a management meeting in the CEO’s office. Everyone looked as if they were about to attend a funeral. Something had died. That was obvious. In a heartbeat, everything we had been planning was off the table. The company the CEO had hoped to create would never come to be.

Some changes take place gradually; others blow people away with no warning. This was the latter kind. According to that morning’s Wall Street Journal, the company had entered into “merger talks.” Those two words—merger talks—hit the team like a bomb, upending plans, wrecking careers, and sending those of us in the room into a state of shock and grief. I was no longer a member of the inner circle. There was no inner circle, anymore.

Chapter 7 • 1982-1989 • The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

My next job, which turned out to be my last job, deserves a book of its own. On one hand, the company personified dysfunction; on the other, it was graduate school in organizational dynamics and marketing. The word “again” describes every aspect: starting over again, proving myself again, leaving under duress again.

My first interview was not in a business office but rather in a beautifully appointed living room of one of St. Louis’s historic mansions. The man who owned the house was president of a small training and development firm. Tony was charming and polite as he described what he was looking for in a writer. They already had a writer, he explained, who had been with the company since its inception. Sam had written everything—books, training programs, promotional materials—all in a style that was completely different from mine. I left with stacks of his work, took them home, and read every word. I didn’t like the way he wrote.

When I returned for my second interview, Tony asked, “Well, what do you think?” There was no sense beating around the bush. I said, “I don’t write like that. I can’t write like that. And I don’t want to write like that. If that’s what you’re looking for, I am not the person for this job.”

He was impressed with my honesty, he said, insisting that he did not want more of the same. He wanted “a fresh, new voice.” He had read my writing samples and thought they were excellent. I was indeed the right person for this job. Convinced, I began the process of touring the homey, one-story building in a St. Louis suburb; meeting Sam and the other significant players; visiting my workspace; and negotiating salary and benefits. Looking for a job can take months; being hired often happens overnight. One or two conversations, a handshake, a few papers to sign, and I became the newest member of the team.

If the lesson I was supposed to learn at the bank was don’t believe a thing anyone tells you when that person is trying to hire you, I hadn’t learned it. I believed what I was told because I wanted to believe it and because I had an uncanny ability to ignore anything that didn’t fit my preferred paradigm. Everything about the job was appealing. The location was closer to home; the salary was a quantum leap above what I had been making; the people I met were intelligent and friendly; and, though my office was a cubicle on a sun porch with one whole wall of windows. Parking was free; the benefits were great; promises of future raises sounded fantastic; and on and on. I wanted out of the bank and into this place. Tony sounded like he was so lucky to find me; he couldn‘t believe his good fortune. I certainly couldn’t believe mine.

If I had applied the too-good-to-be-true test to Tony’s sales pitch, I would have been suspicious. But I had just come through almost a year and a half of having my ego mashed into the floorboards, and I was basking in newfound adoration. To be honest, not everyone adored me. When I met Sam, I could tell he wasn’t going to be president of my fan club. In fact, he indicated that, while I may have charmed everyone else, he was not so easily fooled. To my credit, I recognized a red flag this time. When I accepted the job, I told Tony, “I do not want to report to Sam; I want to work directly for you.” He agreed to my terms.

Sam was a fixture. He was the voice of the company, and he wasn’t about to have his position usurped by some interloper. He viewed me as a threat to be neutralized, and he threw himself into the task. I was undermined and sabotaged with such shrewd subtlety, I didn’t realize what was happening.

Even though Tony began to believe he had made a huge mistake, he wasn’t about to admit his faulty judgment. I remained with the company in a variety of capacities for six-and-a-half years.

My first assignment was to head up advertising, an area about which I knew nothing. My background was in publications, not advertising, but that didn’t seem to matter. Ned, who came on board the same time I did, had years of ad agency experience and could have handled my job with his eyes closed. He was hired as a sales rep and told to keep out of marketing. Such was the convoluted reasoning of management.

The company designed, taught, and sold training programs and insisted that the new hires go through all of them so we would understand the products. Ned and I spent weeks participating in seminars until we were bleary-eyed and confused. How could anything be so complicated? There were seven programs of varying lengths and complexity, which we tried to keep separate in our minds. Then, one day we realized the obvious: there were not seven programs at all, only one program dressed up in seven different packages! And when we thought about it, that one program wasn’t so difficult to understand.

Nonetheless, Sam had convinced Tony that I was clueless and therefore couldn’t write about our products. That was sheer nonsense. I could understand and write about anything and had been doing so for sixteen years. I thought my job was to translate their arcane jargon into clear, conversational English. I was wrong. My job was to memorize the arcane jargon and write just the way Sam had always done. Nothing short of that would suffice. But I could not and would not do it.

The heart of the training was interpersonal skills. The programs were all built on a behavior model that explained why people behave the way they do and a step-by-step system for structuring potentially difficult conversations. I explained those concepts in every possible vehicle—ads, newsletters, articles, marketing materials, sales letters, news releases—except the actual training programs.

I subscribed to those skills. I learned them; I practiced them; I knew they worked. The irony was management, particularly Tony, did not. It was like working for a company that manufactured widgets but wouldn’t have a widget in the place.

Sidebar

“If trainers want to become an integral part of the business-planning team, they will have to learn to think more like business people and less like trainers. Too strong a statement? A lot of people in the corporate training community don’t think so. In fact, many of them wonder why anyone would debate the premise. Too long relegated to the role of policy followers, rather than policy creators, they are examining their own image.”

1987 • TRAINING

Every once in a while, for no reason anyone could discern, Tony would announce a reorganization, and suddenly we would all have new responsibilities and job titles. After several years of being a company writer, I morphed into an instant sales rep, a job for which I had no qualifications or prior experience. My territory was the East Coast, including New York, Washington D.C., Connecticut, and part of Pennsylvania.

Dragging heavy sample cases of video cassettes and training manuals, I found myself racing though airports, hailing cabs or renting cars, staying in one hotel after another, and calling on people who bought training programs. I was constantly lost, going the wrong way on unfamiliar highways and ending up miles from my destination. When I realized I was heading north to the Poconos, instead of south toward Philadelphia, in a heart-stopping maneuver, I made a U-turn on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

My strength as a salesperson was in “eliciting needs,” in other words, interviewing. I soon discovered I was not very good at the rest of the selling process—closing the sale. Despite being as far removed from writing as I could get, I enjoyed the job. I met a many great people, walked around Manhattan, toured the Smithsonian in Washington, and jogged from the posh Four Seasons Hotel to the art museum in Philadelphia. Just as I thought I was getting pretty good at this selling business, Tony announced another reorganization. I thought for sure, this time, I would be reorganized right out the door.

Instead, I was promoted to marketing manager, given a private office with a window, and put in charge of a staff. I never knew what prompted that decision. Ned, who had begun as a sales rep was now VP of marketing and my new boss. Together, we created the first real marketing program the company had ever undertaken. I can’t possibly quantify all that I learned from those years in marketing. I had come in as a writer with expertise in feature writing, publications, and corporate communications. In this latest position, I acquired an abundance of knowledge and skills that would define the rest of my career.

I became a good manager, helping to create the only department in the company in which everyone was motivated, collaborative, and happy. I was also a very successful PR person, getting the company’s name in print every month for a year, including on the front page of The Wall Street Journal. What a shame that management considered public relations a waste of time and resources (I was the only resource involved), but then Tony had no idea what we were doing or how important our efforts were to generating sales. The list of our achievements was long and impressive. I was doing the best, most challenging work of my career—developing multiple communications systems; writing punchy, persuasive promotional copy; placing articles in leading trade publications; and providing hands-on assistance to the sales staff. None of these marketing efforts had ever been attempted before.

Sidebar

“Try this scenario on for size: You’re a manager. Your staff respects you and works hard for you. Your projects are well planned and efficiently executed. Your boss gives you positive feedback. But every time you try to get a project off the ground with a peer, you botch the job, and you don’t know why. As a manager and a professional, you do know that to do your job well you need cooperation form colleagues, especially those whose efforts directly affect your own, but you don’t always seem to be able to get it. You are not alone. The best managers often find that they have problems managing relationships with those over whom they have no formal authority—the very people they must work with if they are going to succeed in their own jobs.”

1987 • Working Woman

During the last reorganization, I had been assigned to a new boss, the sales manager, who knew nothing about marketing. That made no sense, of course, but few things did. Still, I felt I had finally mastered my job and was accomplishing great things for the company. Tony did not agree. He had finally accepted Sam’s contention that I could not write. The next reorganization was my last. At 3:30 on a Friday afternoon, with no warning, I was fired.

I wasn’t really shocked, perhaps because I had been waiting for this particular shoe to drop since not long after I arrived. I was also tired of proving over and over again that I was good at my job and that people could actually understand my writing instead of having to fight their way through ten times more words than were necessary to make a point. That was a widely held view in the company, but one that was never communicated to Tony. So, Friday afternoon, I packed my things, cleaned out the files, took down my pictures, and disinfected my office. When people arrived on Monday morning, there was no sign that I had ever been there. A bit dramatic perhaps, but I took some pleasure in forcing my new boss to explain why I was gone.

I had spent twenty years working for other people in non-profits, corporations, and privately owned companies. I had always loved my work but not the circumstances in which I was paid to do it. For once, I had enough of a financial cushion to think through my options without panicking. That was exactly what I intended to do.

Chapter 6 • 1980-1983 • Corporate Squared

I had been unemployed for 12 weeks and was feeling quite desperate by the time I reached the Corporate Communications office on the eighteenth floor of the bank building. This was the largest, most influential bank holding company in Missouri, with facilities all over the state. It was involved in all sorts of city expansion plans and civic activities. Its CEO had been the chairman of the RCGA board when I was at Commerce magazine. Still, I knew nothing about banking in general or this bank in particular. I would be in for another steep learning curve, but that was something I had tackled many times in the past. After all, at my last job, I had been working my way through more than 100 companies in six disparate industries. How hard could banking be?

This is what I learned: When someone offers you a job, there are ten imperative rules to follow before you accept. (This will probably give away the plot of this chapter.)

1. Interview the interviewer.

The cardinal rule of job hunting is to research the organization before the interview. I should have learned as much as possible so I wouldn’t sound like I just fell off a turnip truck when I walked in the door. But there hadn’t been time. The phone call had come at 8:00 in the morning on a day full of job interviews. I was breathless and wired by the time I arrived at my last appointment. Now, of course, I would approach the whole thing more scientifically, armed with rehearsed answers to every possible question an interviewer might ask, as well as a long list of questions I would ask. That day, however, I walked in cold.

There were so many questions I should have asked, but Richard, the charming man who had waited all day to meet me, was intent on telling me all about the job and trying to ascertain if my resume was fiction or fact. Other than inquiring about benefits, which would have been reason enough to take the job, I don’t remember asking a single intelligent question.

2. Be suspicious of your first impressions, especially if they are glowing.

Richard was so genial I couldn’t believe he was real. He was warm and funny and complimentary and eager. Where was my head? I had been in the job market for three months and hadn’t met anyone who embodied even one of those characteristics, let alone all of them. I kept thinking how great it would be to work for this man, and the more he courted me (that’s what he was doing), the more I thought it. I was practically in love by the end of our meeting. Obviously, this is a cautionary tale. The Richard who interviewed me and the Richard I went to work for a week later were not the same person. I don’t know what happened to Mr. Nice Guy, but he was replaced by a look-alike who had no personality, ranged from blah to cold, and appeared to find nothing even remotely funny. I had been duped.

3. When your inner voice talks to you, pay attention.

Richard had to get clearance from the vice president of Corporate Communications before he could hire me. This was reminiscent of the hiring process at Commerce magazine. Richard’s boss was tall and distinguished looking, but not at all warm or funny or complimentary or eager. In fact, he seemed to be doing me a favor by agreeing to meet with me. The interview was brief, and when it was over, I knew more about him than he knew about me. As we walked out of the office Richard looked a bit embarrassed, and I felt a fleeting catch in my chest. I ignored both indications that this job might not be all that it seemed.

The VP, however, was exactly what he seemed—self-absorbed, insecure, and domineering. He terrorized everyone who worked for him, especially Richard, who suffered from high blood pressure and mood swings. The best course of action was do your work, don’t make waves, don’t expect credit for anything, and never forget who is in charge. All information had to flow through the VP, so that whatever anyone wrote was edited within an inch of its life to reflect a single point of view—his.

4. Take time to get the feel of your workspace.

My tour of my future office consisted of a glance inside the door as Dick flipped the lights on and off. Of course, it was empty and lacked the grace notes of a place with a live-in occupant. It had a desk, a chair, a bookcase, an electric typewriter, and a window overlooking some part of downtown. The feeling was dark, but then it was already dark outside. We breezed by it as Dick showed me to the door and practically hugged me goodbye. By the end of the first week, I knew It had not been sufficient to merely see where I would work; I should have taken the time to sit at the desk and spent some time there. Had I spent even 10 minutes in that room I might have realized the energy was as dark as the sky and the metal furniture. This place would take more than pictures on the walls to warm it up.

5. Clarify exactly what your job responsibilities will be.

Richard had explained that I would be launching a new employee communications program consisting of a statewide quarterly magazine, a monthly newsletter for St. Louis employees, an occasional press release, and other little tasks as necessary. One of the reasons he had hired me was that I had just gone through the same process in my last job. I could choose my graphic designer and photographers, though, of course I would be expected to take pictures as well. He was thrilled that I knew how to handle a camera. I would get to travel, again to hotspots like Bowling Green and Sullivan, Missouri, and to write about their banking affiliates. There was only so much one can write about a bank building, so I thought it would be better to write about the communities in which these buildings resided. Getting approval from the VP was not easy, but Richard and I figured out how to make it seem like this was his idea.

The pace was brutal. As one publication was going to press, I was already writing the next one or two. There were no breaks in the activity, and the occasional press releases turned out to be daily because this was the year interest rates went through the roof. The “little tasks, as necessary” sometimes became big tasks. I had never worked so hard I my life, even when I was running a magazine.

Sidebar

“A walk through the quiet streets of Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, is much like browsing through an old and well used photograph album. There is a pleasant sense of nostalgia in the carefully restored old homes, in the easy way people greet each other, and in the unhurried pace that seems to characterize the tempo of the town. The 5,000 residents of Ste. Genevieve think of their hometown as a small, rural community, and that is exactly the way they like it ”

1981 • Mercantile Quarterly

6. Ask if you will have help or if you are the whole staff.

Since I already knew it was going to be a huge job to create, write, and produce several publications, I wondered aloud if I would have an assistant or a secretary. (Three of us had shared a secretary at my last job) “Well, no, not officially,” Richard admitted, but “unofficially” there were two women in the front office—one was the VP’s private secretary—who would be available when I needed help. That sounded pretty unconvincing, but I could hardly ask, “Are you sure?” Later, it became obvious it would take a court order to get any administrative assistance, but by the time I figured that out, I knew that Richard’s glowing descriptions of the job and working conditions had been wildly exaggerated.

7. Check out the logistics (cost and location of parking, etc.)

The main bank and headquarters building were located in the heart of downtown St. Louis far from the highway. So, not only was I commuting 50 miles a day in stop-and-go traffic just to get to the edge of downtown, I also had to crawl through crowded one-way streets to reach the parking garage and then walk several blocks to the bank. Parking was expensive, and I didn’t even get to park my own car. Garage employees would take it from me and peel rubber as they sped up the ramps. This played havoc with my transmission.

Of course, I didn’t realize any of this when I took the job, and, while it was hardly convenient, it wasn’t terrible until winter hit. St. Louisans don’t seem to know how to drive in snow, traffic was a nightmare, and driving in bad weather terrified me. By the time I got from the cold garage to the bank I was frozen solid. I never knew how long the commute or parking would take, but I did know I had to be at my desk at 8:30 sharp. Since it often took an hour and a half to drive 25 miles, I had to leave home very early.

8. Clarify flexibility or rigidity of rules (starting and ending times, lunch), especially when you are a salaried employee.

Since I was managing employee communications, I assumed that meant I was a manager. Managers don’t punch a time clock. If they are a few minutes late in the morning or returning from lunch, it’s OK. Right? Wrong. Apparently, I was not a manager in that sense, and it was not OK to be a few minutes late. It was Commerce magazine all over again. The leash was inappropriately tight for the position I held. I found it frustrating to be asked, “Where were you?” and “You do know what time we start work, don’t you?” I viewed this as corporate Mickey Mouse and bent the rules whenever I saw an opportunity.

9. If possible (it rarely is), ask your predecessor why he or she quit.

This is, of course, a fantasy. If I had met the person who inhabited my dismal office, he would not have told me why he left. He undoubtedly would have said something about a better offer or a great career opportunity. He would not have confided that a general mood of misery pervaded the department, which was run by a paranoid, petty tyrant; that everything about the job was depressing and stressful; and that he was overworked and underappreciated. Those would have been good things to know.

10. Find out if there are any little perks no one has mentioned.

There did not appear to be any extras, though I did ask. Senior management was about to introduce a new benefit package, which turned out to be the best part of the job. There was no deductible, and it paid 100 percent of everything. I didn’t realize at the time how over the top that was as benefit packages go. I discovered the best perk of all while I was researching a story on exercise. The bank would pay 50 percent of the membership fee, as well as the cost of any class we wished to take. I interviewed the senior vice president who had initiated this program and several people who were even more stressed out than I was. They swore that joining the Y had saved their sanity. I signed up.

Not only did the exercise and running relieve stress, it also helped me avoid rush hour traffic. The class I signed up for was in the morning. Participation meant getting up and 5:00 a.m., driving the practically deserted highways at 6:00, and hitting the gym floor by 6:30. I conquered my fear of driving in snow, avoided other crazy drivers, and made it to work by 8:30.

Sidebar

“If keeping fit is the latest great American pastime, the rallying cry of its fans is, ‘Keep moving!’ On the main roads and on the side streets, on courts of every size and description, in rural areas and in cities, people are doing just that. They are on the move, and their methods of getting in shape and staying there run the gamut of possible physical activities. ”

1981 • Mercantile Quarterly

While working out helped, it didn’t improve the atmosphere of the office. It was maddening to love my work but hate my working conditions. I was beginning to realize that this was a corporate anomaly: Hire an expert to do a job; then make it almost impossible for the person to do that job. It was still winter; it was still cold and snowing; and the environment was still depressing. Then, I got a phone call that gave me reason to hope. I had been referred to a small company for a writing job. Was I interested in meeting the company’s chairman?

By March, after only 16 months at the bank, I was gone.

Chapter 5 • 1980 • Fear & Freelancing

Shock is a good thing, especially after a profound loss, such as being fired with no notice. Shock/denial, in fact, is the first stare of the grieving process. One walks around in a fog thinking this can’t be happening. I don’t believe it. I’ll wake up, and it will all have been a bad dream. Shock/denial dulls the pain until a person is ready to deal with the loss. I was not ready.

Numb worked for me, especially since I was moderating a panel that night on—irony of ironies—“Where the Jobs Are.” After the presentation, people in the audience, who had somehow learned I’d been fired, told me they had never seen anyone so cool under the circumstances. I was not cool; I was drunk, since the whole department had adjourned to a neighborhood bar because we didn’t want to go home at 4:00 in the afternoon.

The shock phase lasted a while. I sort of stumbled around with no particular sense of purpose or direction. About the only thing I accomplished was cleaning my house. This was therapeutic, but not a long-term solution. It took teeth-gritting determination to pull out my resume and update it with one additional job. My previous job had lasted only 14 months, the shortest tenure on record, and I feared I would be labeled a job hopper. It was time to make the dreaded phone calls.

My Rolodex was pretty full, since I had met a lot of people since 1972. I began with the “A”s. Everyone seemed happy to hear from me, but it only took a few calls to figure out the reason. The mass firing of our department by a national corporation was NEWS, and I had the inside scoop. Inquiring minds wanted to know every sordid detail. There weren’t many sordid details, or if there were, I wasn’t privy to them.

My celebrity status, however, did get me a few interviews from people who probably wanted to hear the story right from the horse’s mouth. It was only two years since my last foray into the job market and not much had changed; there were still no jobs. We did get a pittance of severance pay, negotiated by our boss whose husband was an attorney, but that wasn’t going to last very long. In the meantime, I was trying not to panic.

My friend and mentor, who had given me the corporate survival guides, worked for Monsanto, one of the largest and most prestigious companies in St. Louis. She introduced me to the person in charge of Corporate Communications. He like me; he liked my work; but he couldn’t hire me because of something called “head count. But he did have a project for me. Thus began my temporary freelancing career. It was amazing how quickly my anxiety subsided as I slipped back into the groove of interviewing very important people. One project led to another, and I almost forgot I was unemployed. This was what I was meant to do, I thought, and it was nothing like my former freelancing days when the most I had been paid was $50 for an article. This was real money.

Sidebar

“This may be the age of television, but most St. Louisans wake up the sound of radio. Whether it is switched on automatically or manually by a barely conscious listener, radio begins the day. It sets the mood and provides information about the weather, the world, and what life is like out there. It entertains us from the moment we hit the deck until we pull into our parking spaces at work and reluctantly turn it off to get down to business. For many of us, the first voice we hear in the morning is that of our favorite radio personality, disc jockey, or newsman. And it is the same voice every day, for few of us switch our radio dials once we have found our station. Waking up to the same person every morning is one of life’s more intimate relationships, and that makes our choice of a station extremely significant.”

1980 • St. Louis Post-Dispatch

I could get used to this, I thought. Maybe I should give it a whirl. But when one of my daughters became ill and I was close to the end of my insurance overage, I came to my senses. Get real, a little voice whispered. You need benefits. You need a job. Freelancing became a sideline as I turned looking for a job back in to a full-time job. I’d forgotten how much I disliked the process or how hard it was. I had leads and possibilities and even probabilities but no tangible offers. Time was running out, and I was beginning to feel desperate.

My daughter ended up in the hospital, and I found myself running back and forth between job interviews, story interviews, my typewriter at home, and visiting her. On the last day of my severance pay and insurance coverage, I found myself standing in the most depressing room at Children’s Hospital, staring at the peeling paint on the ceiling and thinking, Oh boy. This is serious. I must confess I am not a religious person and don’t believe in asking God for favors but desperate times call for desperate measures. “I need a miracle,” I whispered. “Just one little miracle.” And I went home.

The next day, I had four job offers. Four!

The fourth one was at the end of a job interview with someone who had called that morning. I had to rearrange three other appointments to find time to meet with him, but I managed to schedule a meeting at 4:00 p.m. Richard was the director of Communications for the largest bank holding company in the state of Missouri. I think he had interviewed every other writer and editor in town. He was clutching a copy of my resume in his fist when I arrived.

“Are you as good as you look on paper?” he asked. “Better,” I said and almost looked around for the ventriloquist who had usurped the conversation. “Here's what I’m looking for,” Richard said, having memorized my last job description. “You’ve found her,” I replied. Where was that coming from? I had no idea. “What will it take to get you?” he asked. I was out of work in a buyer’s market, and he wanted to know what it would take to get me. A number appeared on the inside of my eyelids—a big number. “Twenty-seven five,” I said. There was the briefest silence before Richard said, “I’ll have to create a new job classification, but I don’t think that will be a problem. Let’s go meet our vice president.”

I met the VP, but I wasn’t conscious, so I didn’t register anything about him except perhaps for a tiny flutter in my chest. Later, I realized that the flutter was my Jury of the Deep saying, “Uh oh. Watch out,” but I wasn’t about to listen to a naysayer at that point in the process. We went back to Richard’s office, and he could barely wait to say, “You’re hired!” vigorously shaking my hand and grinning.

The rest was a blur. “Here’s your office ... Meet your next door neighbor ... Come in first thing Monday morning and get squared away with Personnel ... Welcome aboard ... Have a good weekend.”

Starvation had been averted, fear banished. I drove to the hospital in a fog. $27,500. Where on earth had I come up with that figure? I have given myself an $8,000 raise! And I would be doing what I knew how to do—launching a series of employee publications, from scratch. When something seems too good to be true, it usually is, but that never entered my mind.

This would be my third corporation. That in itself should have given me pause.

Sidebar

“A young tennis player watches as Ilie Nastase ‘flips the bird’ in a universally understood gesture of anger. Nastase’s desire to win has been diverted from his forehand to his middle finger. This is the highest level of tennis, the quintessence of competition. And, in a sense, it has become a prototype of behavior, in perfect harmony with the popular philosophy of ‘winning though intimidation,’ ‘looking out for No. 1’ and countless other bromides that glorify the king-of-the-hill position in sports and in life. Competition, long considered a healthy pursuit that raises group and individual standards, and winning are not the same.”

1980 • Tennis Press