From the category archives:

You-are-not-your-job

Conan’s firing highlights iniquitous U.S. hiring practices

January 22, 2010

And the question is: Who should really be fired?
OK. So the man is getting $33-million dollars and sure, that’s something.
Good for him. His future might be up in the air, just like the George Clooney (movie) laid-offs. But at least he has the means to plant his feet back on the ground. (See back [...]

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What about when you ARE your job?

January 14, 2010

AT SF Moma yesterday, on the Fourth Floor, listening to museum curator Gary Garrels tell us about the art in the Focus on Artists exhibition. He mentions that at some point, he returned to SF MOMA (from where, I don’t know, and the back story is not of consequence to where my thinking went — [...]

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I’m outta here! When resigning is harder than getting the boot – Part 4

January 10, 2010

Continued from Part 3 of When resigning is harder than getting the boot.
Baskas is well aware there are a lot of people working jobs they hate — and that common for people to be have their identity so invested in their job that they stay there.
“I know some people don’t have choice. But many, [...]

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I’m outta here! When resigning is harder than getting the boot – Part 3

January 10, 2010

Continued from Part 2 of When resigning is harder than getting the boot.
Shifting gears — and the Big Question plus the answer that directed her new career.
“After I finished the one big deadline project I had when I left the radio station, I sat down and thought: ‘If I didn’t have to work, what [...]

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I’m outta here! When resigning is harder than getting the boot – Part 2

January 9, 2010

Continued from Part 1 of When Resigning is harder than getting the boot.
Baskas says it took her a year to leave. “It was hard,” she remembers.
Looking back, she says she can see that she was afraid to walk away.
What nagged her was: “If I don’t have that structure, the title and the authority, then [...]

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I’m outta here! When resigning is harder than getting the boot – Part 1

January 8, 2010

Choosing to leave your job can be tough when it’s who you are and not simply what you do.

I met Seattle–based journalist Harriet Baskas in New Zealand. The pair of us, along with four other journos, were invited guests on a media trip covering an Air New Zealand promo (see Sex, Social Media and New [...]

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You’re fired! And — is the ‘at will’ clause the cause of the bad boss syndrome?

December 24, 2009

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. [...]

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You’re Fired! Same as when you’re retired, if you’re your job

December 17, 2009

A direct result of my first firing is that I moved to the other side of the world. This is quite a mind blast, if I think about it rationally, which I confess I don’t very often.
The thing is, I find it difficult to get to grips with the fact that I gave up a [...]

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Princeton crab, Maverick’s surfing — and leave the mother

December 13, 2009

A foghorn’s haunting call. A person — this is amazing to watch — skidding across the water, way out back beyond the lines of tied up boats, but inside the Princeton harbor wall. The zipping figure is kite-boarding.
And there’s a second person, on a sailboard.
The kiteboard’s sail is a bulging splash of red and [...]

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You’re Fired! How could it be? You tell me.

October 30, 2009

We were given the boot around noon.
It came as a shock.
Does this happen to you? At times in my life when something unexpected occurs that I haven’t confronted before, it’s like I watch as my mind begins a search. I become a spectator as it runs through scenarios and offer me options.
In a sense [...]

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