A friend — I’ll call her Suzie (and more about people not wanting their names used around lay-offs in a future post) — fell victim to a recent round of layoffs in San Francisco.
I say victim, but she felt less victimized after she left than when she worked there.
Why?
Simply put, she was not her job. She had a sustainable life. She had balance.
The major part of her life that was not working — although she was too up-close-and-involved at the time to see the effect this was having — was the work part.
Even though she was not her job, her relationship with her job was clouding the rest of her life.
Keep reading and you’ll get it.
On the work front, Suzie was:
1. Bored by her job.
For many, a layoff is a blessing, even when it’s a shock. It can give you the kick in the ass you need when you’re stuck, but not doing what’s required to get unstuck, which generally involves:
- Getting a resume together and starting the hunt for a new job, which as any of us who have worked full-time know, is time-consuming, and the last thing you feel like doing at the end of a long day, especially when you don’t like your current job, which is a debilitating and tired-making place to be; or
- Jumping ship without the anchor of a new job, the prospect of which freezes many into inactivity; or
- Doing what it takes to become self-employed.
2. Suzie couldn’t stand her boss. They’d had a series of confrontations. Suzie had told me stories of her bossy boss; how when she (Suzie) tried to question or discuss things, she (the bossy boss) got irritated and antsy. “It’s like I shouldn’t have opinions or like I’m questioning her authority,” Suzie told me. Several times. “So I just shut up,” she added.
Bad relationship. Passive-aggressive. Walking on egg-shells. Hey, and this was her fucking boss; not her boyfriend.
“Is she from this country?” I asked first time Suzie told me about her work situation, meaning, was her boss from the USA. And sure enough, she was.
Now, I was not born in the USA. And I have not always worked in the USA. But I have worked for a long time in the USA.
And I have a theory about bosses in the USA.
Namely, bosses in the USA are protected by the “at will” clause of US labor law.
If you’re a good boss, then lucky staff, and I’m sure there are a few.
I must have met a couple — and maybe even worked for one or two. Let me think about that …
But — a theory started to make sense to me, thinking about Suzie, and bosses I’ve had, and the number of times I’ve heard people give examples of the bizarre behavior of their bosses, past and present.
I reckon the “at will” clause was conceptualized, and put into place, by a lousy boss, or several lousy bosses.
In the United States, you are not required to be a good boss. You can, in fact, be a terrible boss. This is because the general practice is that, at any time, you can summon anyone on your staff and say: “You’re fired.” No cause needed. No reason. Just be sure they can’t prove ageism, sexism, racism or something as direct as that, and you’re protected.
(You must know? The employer is free to discharge individuals “for good cause, or bad cause, or no cause at all.” Click on this Nolo link for the full scoop and to learn that, except in the state of Montana, if you are employed at will, your employer does not need good cause to fire you.)
When I was going to hire a senior editor on a publication and was concerned that while he was a good writer, he might not be a good senior editor, my boss said, “Well, you can just fire him.”
More on bad bosses — and this boss of mine — later.
But needless to say, the way things work, with the boss Suzie had, she was caught by the short hairs.
3. Back to Suzie’s termination: She was bored by her job and she had a godawful boss.
On top of this, while she liked the focus of her work in that she handled environmental issues for the city, and while sustainability was a value and where she wanted to be working, given the constraints imposed by the bossy boss, (which were contributing to her boredom), she knew she was making less of a difference and having less of an impact than she wanted.
