Tag Archives: work

Memo to Joe Breda

Posted on by under Health Care, Loss

“Matthew – I hope you are well. I’m writing for two reasons:”

So began an email from the head of my division at work, my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss. A guy named Joe Breda.*

He continues: “First, while I know you have made a partial leave request with HR I do not have any information about the circumstances of your leave. It is not necessary for me to know any of the details, but if there is anything I can do to assist please let me know.

“Second, I want to make sure you are aware how the company’s RTO (return to office) policy applies to your situation. Obviously, you are not expected to be in the office on days you have been granted leave. However, you should be in the office – up to three days per week – for days that you are not taking leave. If this presents a hardship, I’m advised that you to consider applying for full leave. Please let me know if you have any questions.
JB”

This email arrived on the eve of my wife being discharged after three and a half months in the hospital.

Me at Johns Hopkins Hospital in February 2022.

In January of 2022, my wife suffered a ruptured cranial aneurysm. After emergency surgery to save her life, she remained in the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore — first in intensive care, then several weeks as a regular inpatient — until late April. She needed months of physical therapy to recover, and she is still disabled today.

This was an incredibly difficult time for me and my family. We all faced hardship, stress, and worry over this entire period of time.

So to receive this heartless, tone deaf email from upper management did nothing to ease the strain.

In fact it made it worse.

Worse because I applied for and received authorization for 12 weeks of protected leave under FMLA. Joe Breda not only seemed to not know this. But also, his insistence that I adhere to the RTO requirements contradicted what I was previously told by HR, namely that those requirements did not apply to anyone currently exercising their FMLA rights.

Worse because the the uncertainty surrounding the day and manner of my wife’s discharge made it necessary for me to be flexible with my schedule, able to travel to the hospital or discharge facility on short notice. Being required to be physically in the office made that very difficult.

Worse because I was running out of leave. So Joe Breda’s glib, uninformed comment that I “may want to consider applying for full leave” is empty and meaningless.

This email from Joe Breda has eaten at me for close to three years. In all the time since this email, Joe never once inquired about my wife’s health or asked how I was doing.

His offer of assistance — especially since he claimed to not know what was going on — was complete self-serving bullshit.

He kicked me when I was down, using the power of his position, and never apologized or even acknowledged my situation.

So I now realize why this eats at me so much.

It was an abuse of power disguised as a “clarification of current policy.”

It was forcing me to concede when I was vulnerable, something that thugs do.

It was bullying.

Joe Breda has left the company and no longer is in a position of authority over me.

So I now want to take the time to say what I have been wanting to say for three years.

Fuck you, Joe Breda.

*Yes, this is his real name. A Google search will bring up some information about him, including the company where we both worked. But I won’t say more than that.

The Dream Works Only if the Team Works

Posted on by under Career, Connection

In the past couple of years, several of my colleagues have simply vanished from the workplace.

No announcements made. No fond farewell. Just gone — some of them temporarily, some of them permanently.

I have to resort to alternative means of finding out what’s going on. Are they still in our email directory? Are they still on LinkedIn? Because asking direct questions of management or coworkers is discouraged, arouses suspicion, and often results in getting no meaningful information.

Two people’s workspaces were left as-is for months, as if they were going to return. They never did. (Finally someone was assigned to box up their personal effects and ship them home.)

Here’s the thing: we are directed by the company to think of ourselves as part of a team. Managers are even called “team leads” rather than “managers.”

But this is no way to run a team. Because teamwork requires a reasonable, bi-directional flow of information.

Imagine being a member of a sports team. One day, you show up for practice and ask “Where’s John?”

Everybody shrugs.

You ask your coach. “I can’t tell you,” he says.

Game day rolls around. “Where’s John?” Nobody knows, or nobody is talking. And this continues for most of the season.

It’s creepy and it’s unnecessary.

And it undermines trust.

Trust, of course, is essential to teamwork. To continue the sports metaphor, if you pass the ball to a teammate, you trust that they will make the effort to receive it with the overall goal of winning the game. You trust that your teammates are watching out for you to avoid injuries and pull off the win. You trust your coach to not be giving you bad advice or dangerous substances (although trust in coaches has been diminished by some very serious abuses on recent years).

In the book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, the writer Sebastian Junger explains that the essence of trust and connection is the belief that the individual is willing to sacrifice for the benefit of the group and the group is willing to sacrifice for the individual. It is a reciprocal understanding.

Here, that ain’t happening.

Which leaves me to wonder what is behind all this secrecy. Laws and regulations? Company policy? Distrust of employees? Wanting to keep employees unsettled and always guessing?

Because of it were just a matter of simple human decency, there would be more information, not less.

The Professional Network

Posted on by under Career, Family

By his own admission, my father had a great career.

He spent three decades, through the 70s, 80s and 90s, as president of a major commercial printing operation in San Francisco. Customers included many of the city’s important businesses as well as several of the new Silicon Valley companies such as Hewlett Packard and Apple.

He successfully steered the company in the face of rapid change throughout the industry brought on by computer typesetting and graphics.

My dad’s business card.

He retired at just the right time, before commercial printing in San Francisco became essentially a thing of the past.

Now in his 90s, he has maintained relationships with people he met throughout his career, and he remains almost universally well-liked.

I had hoped my own career would come close to emulating his. Unfortunately, I have fallen very short of the mark.

There are a number of reasons for that, which I have discussed before. One that I will discuss here is the cultivation and maintenance of business relationships.

My dad was from an era when those relationships were everything. There was no social media or internet. Relationships were maintained through time spent in person or on the phone.

We didn’t go on vacation with the families of his colleagues. But we did have dinner at their houses, and they came to dinner at ours. He had lunch almost every work day with a colleague. (In contrast, I usually eat alone.)

My dad also had connections with many people not in the printing business. He kept in touch with former classmates, with other business leaders, and was active in the local chapter of the Rotary Club. All of it was important to him.

He once told me that, if one of his friends or colleagues said to him “My son needs a job” he would find that person’s son a job at his company. And he expected the same consideration in return.

Whether that was common for the time or just something my dad did, I don’t know, but that sure as hell isn’t what’s happening today. I admit that I have not cultivated relationships the way my father did, but I know people and I have former classmates. And this has been my experience:

Over a decade ago I began to think about a career move. I had some ideas and I started talking to people. I went to lunch with a experienced lawyer and asked for help with a career change. The most he did was look over my resume and say “Washington is an information town. I’m sure you will find something.”

I sent my resume to a member of my church, asking for help with getting a job in her organization. All she did was suggest that my resume should be formatted properly.

I sent an email to the then-managing editor of the Atlantic, James Bennet, asking for help landing a position with the magazine. This was at my dad’s suggestion, since he somehow knew Bennet through his network of connections. Bennet emailed back to say that he forwarded my resume to his HR department. I heard nothing further after that. (At least he responded. Some don’t have the courtesy to do even that.)

When I got laid off in 2009, my search for a career change took on a new urgency.

A friend put me in touch with a friend of theirs at the EPA. I scheduled an appointment to meet and ask for help landing a job there. He looked at my resume, but all he would offer was to say “We are always looking for smart people here. ” I never heard from him again.

I tried contacting someone locally who went to the same law school as I did. I didn’t know him personally, but I recalled my dad’s words about all it should take is to say that I went to the same school to open doors. I sent this guy emails and regular mail. I never heard back, not even to acknowledge receipt of my mail. Literally no response.

The sister of an acquaintance worked at a firm that placed temps in law firms. I met her for an interview. I never heard from her again.

And so it has gone, time after time.

I’m not entirely sure where I veered off course. Maybe I should not have asked for help, been more bold, told people what I can do for them, all the things that career coaches say to do.

But help was what I needed, and I wasn’t too proud to ask.

Which raises questions about the culture of work in America today. Much has been said (too much in fact) about how “no one wants to work.” And yet when someone is literally begging for assistance getting a job, backs are turned.

Maybe I was seen as a bad risk. I will never know for sure. No one is talking to me.

*****

Epilogue: Once I told a friend that I felt as if I had been blacklisted. He said “How can you be sure that you’re not?”

 

 

Take a Survey: Attitudes about work and life

Posted on by under Career, Dreams

People have various attitudes about work and life. Some are enthusiastic about their careers while others are much less so. Some are optimistic about life while others find it a struggle.0206150838

Individuals, of course, are the product of a complex set of unique variables. But larger groups, affected by similar social and economic forces, tend to share similar views (called the “cohort effect”). These generations may collectively have attitudes about work and life that are noticeably different from each other.

Below is a link to a quick survey (three questions) that I hope will shed some light on this.

Take My Survey!

Let me know what you think in the comments section of this post. I will share the results at a future date.

Where Do the Days Go?

Posted on by under Loss, Self

If I had work where I felt fully engaged, where I felt that I was using my skills for some helpful purpose, where my efforts were recognized and appreciated, then I would be able to go home each night with a feeling of accomplishment, satisfied with the knowledge that I’d done good that day. Evenings would be relaxing down-time, and I would be available for whatever was needed, whoever needed me.

As it is, I feel that my work hours are wasted time. I feel that I’m making the trek each day to fulfill an obligation, waiting for the time when I can go home and when my real life will begin.

Unfortunately, the daily ritual, in all its unsatisfying ways, grinds me down, so that by the time I reach home again, I’m running on a nearly empty tank.

If we have something planned for the evening — a school activity, my son’s baseball game — then I go with it. It will provide meaning for the day.skycranes

When there’s nothing, though, I drink some wine before dinner to recharge. It helps to bridge the gap between my lost work hours and the precious few that remain in the day. And I find that I need to seek out a task. Many people plop down at the TV for the rest of the evening, but to me, that’s more time wasted.

So I pay bills or balance the checkbook. I help one of my kids with homework or organize my desk. During summer, when the days are longer, I’ll mow the lawn or do other yard work.

And when there’s none of that to be done, I’ll want to play my guitar. Except that my nails will be too long, so I’ll have to cut them. Then I don’t want to bother with pulling my guitar case from the corner and tuning up. So I don’t.

Or I’ll think of all the great writing I could be doing. But I don’t.

I just sip my wine and wonder where the days all go.