It was Twenty Years Ago Today

(with apologies to the Beatles)

Twenty years ago, on July 23^rd, 1993, I got fired from my job in public television.

While I didn’t quite leave the building humming my favorite Bob Dylan tune “I Shall Be Released,” it was, never-the-less, a real turning point in my life. I’m a very lucky guy.

The only other time I got fired was while I was in college. I had just gotten a job as the night clerk at a prestigious private men’s club in downtown Saint Paul. At that time, visiting businessmen could rent rooms on the upper floors of the building. My friend told me about the all night job that paid well and didn’t require much work aside from staying awake and answering the phone should any of the overnight guests call downstairs.

 

Unfortunately, my colleague (who got me the job) didn’t bother to tell me where the ice was stored back in the kitchen. My first night on the job, two very inebriated guests stumbled downstairs in desperate need of ice for their drinks. I couldn’t help them since I had no idea where the ice was stored. Consequently, the poor souls had to wander the streets of St. Paul late at night in search of ice. That offense was great enough to get me fired the very next day.

The classy manager didn’t bother to fire me directly. He just told my friend that I had been canned. I’ve never checked with the Guinness Book of World Records but less than eight hours on the job has got to be some kind of record!

My second firing, after thirteen years on the job, came out of the blue. Office politics has never been my forte. I’ve always naively assumed that if I did my job and did it well that I was safe. What I hadn’t realized was that behind the scenes all kinds of political games were being played and jobs were hanging in the balance. So I became an easy target to shift the blame away from my boss for short-comings in his department. It was all part of a much larger game of oneupmanship and palace intrigue.  Little did I know what a great favor he was doing me. 

 

It was the people back then and never the place. I’ve always loved and admired the role that quality public television has played in my life and that of my family, especially my grandchildren. In fact, in lieu of mindless time spent in front of the boob tube, I’ve taken to watching PBS documentaries on my laptop at night. It’s a refreshing change of pace and very informative.

It’s never pleasant getting fired especially from a job you love and folks you like working with. Of course, not all of my colleagues were keepers but there were enough of them whom I considered my friends as to make it hard to say good-by and move onto something different in my life. Many of those same folks gradually moved on themselves to other opportunities. Others have passed away. The old place isn’t the same. That’s too bad as well as being a good thing. In reality, the station was just a tiny capsule of time in a much larger equation called life. Unlike a lot of my colleagues, neither the place nor my work defined me.

With the firing my world was suddenly a very different place. What I hadn’t expected was the excitement and fear of being totally self-employed for the first time in my life. Suddenly I had become the master of my own destiny. No longer would I have to depend on the erratic behavior of my boss to second-guess where the political winds were blowing each day. No longer would I have to play the games that new CEO was cooking up as he tried to mold our business into the east coast model he had come from. No longer would I have to listen to the bitching and complaining that some of my colleagues engaged in as they sleep-walked through each day.

It would have been nice if I had taken that giant step on my own. If I had summoned up the courage to follow my heart and strike out on my own before that incident. But with two young kids and a mortgage, I wasn’t about to venture out into the wilderness of self-employment until the time was right.

Politics made it right and I’ve never looked back since. A friend once told me that after six months of self-employment, he had become unemployable. He just couldn’t see himself working a regular nine to five job ever again. I know exactly what he meant. Who says You get to be Boss.

‘WhatColor is your Parachute’ was my guide to future employment opportunities. I was determined to do what I wanted to do. The hours didn’t matter. I’ve never worked a nine-to-five job or an eight-to-four job or a morning-to-afternoon job in my life. Don’t intend to start now.

Like a phoenix I was able to rise up again. I was lucky.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.

                                                                                                     Confucius

Old age is far more than white hair, wrinkles, the feeling that it is too late and the game is finished, that the stage belongs to the rising generations. The true evil is not the weakening of the body, but the indifference of the soul.

                                                                                        Andre Maurois

I have a horror of not rising above mediocrity.

                                                    Robert Baldwin

I guess if it hadn’t been for those two drunks and a cowardly boss, I might have followed the same old path as most everyone else around me did. I was a very lucky guy twenty years ago today.

I’m still a very lucky guy.

Who Said You Get to Be Boss

I’ve had several good bosses in my career, a couple of great ones and a few who were outstanding. They knew how to provide leadership, focus and guidance to their staff. My average was probably no better nor any worse than anybody else who has been in the work force for any length of time. Luck of the draw some would call it.

Then there were those bad bosses.

I actually think the more valuable life lessons came from the adversity they brought to my life. Their number isn’t large but I’ve learned something from each and every one of them. Mind you they weren’t doing me any favors. I just grabbed their lemons and made nectar with it.

Boss # 1

It all started in Seventh grade with my first job; a paper route. We were just a bunch of hungry young entrepreneurial seventh and eighth graders working our first real job. They said we were in the newspaper business.

I thought no, I was earning money for high school and my frequent jaunts to DQ. That’s the only reason I was willing to get up at 4:30 in the morning when it was twenty below zero and don my rubber galoshes just to get a newspaper to some old retiree who had to have on his paper by 6:00am because he had nothing else going on in his life.

Our boss was a twenty-something wise ass who drove a brand new convertible and loved to catch us at the newspaper drop for a quick lecture and hard driving sales pitch. He sounded like some gravelly-throated football coach when he spoke. He’d remind us that his next raise depended on our reaching a certain sales quota. His words fell on deaf ears.

If you’re going to try to rally the tiny troopers, know your audience. He never understood that meeting his goals wasn’t a priority when homework and being home before dark took precedence over his corporate aspirations. Our boss never understood seventh grade enticements. Hint, it wasn’t earning points for a trip to the Dells.

Lessons Learned: Treat everyone with respect, even kids. They’re people too. And some of them are smarter than you are!

Bosses # 2

The Army had a plethora of good and bad leaders, none stood out. Even the obligatory hard ass drill sergeant and sloth in olive drab were just doing their jobs. I learned early on that if you did your job and didn’t cause a problem, things would work out just fine.

Being invisible in a sea of khaki isn’t a bad thing. It gives you time for the more import-ant things in life instead of KP or guard duty.

Lessons Learned: Be a leader yourself before asking others to follow you. Lead by example. Oh, and keep your mouth shut.

Boss # 3

One of my early bosses was a station manager, a pillar in his community, a deacon in his church and a racist. His façade has been honed and tempered by his all white high school and private college that feed his misguided beliefs. He truly believed in the superiority of the white race and didn’t mince words (in private) about it. His God was not color-blind.

I was embarrassed and saddened to hear him ramble on about those people. He also wasn’t much partial to Yankees, East Coast Types, and of course, those folks out West who were just plain nuts. Women didn’t fare much better with him either.

Lessons Learned: Look beyond your small world to the larger world beyond. Don’t let religion blind you to what is fair and just.

Boss # 4

The old man, dressed in a younger man’s skin, was 25 years old. 25 going on 65. His attitude, demeanor and state of mind had calcified well beyond his physical years. He should have been a monk in medieval times. It would have suited him much better.

His idea of fairness was couched in a sanctimonious, haughty attitude that he somehow had a closer tie-in with God. He wasn’t a priest but he should have been. He thought his ticket said: ‘Heaven, non-stop.’ He misread it. In fact, he was just a minion and a puppet to the powers to be who also thought they had a straight shot up to heaven.

Lessons Learned: Open your mind to new thoughts and ideas. Your providence is much too small to help you make good value judgments. Either that or join the cloisters.

Boss # 5

Stumpy had a Napoleonic complex; loved creating his own crisis environment at every opportunity, was paranoid beyond belief and probably the most unstable person I’ve ever had to work for. I did learn to take copious notes while working for him. He loved to grill me on the tiniest of details and would pursue his questioning until he could catch me on some minor error or misstep. Then he delighted in correcting me and praising himself for his intuitive nature.

He once spent an hour and a half after work chewing me out for my shortcomings he’d documented over six months. Must have been a slow night for him at home. It was his idea of an exercise in humiliation. But I was the one feeling sorry for that pathetic excuse for a human being sitting across from me that night.

Lessons Learned: Get psychological help for your boss (or yourself) if possible. And take very good notes.

Boss # 6

Moneybags was a corporate wannabe who never quite made the grade. His idea of fairness was to make sure he always ended up on top. If I reached my financial goal for the year, he got a bonus. If I didn’t make my goal for the year, he still got his bonus.

It was win-win for him and win / lose for his associates. Hardly seemed fair. Especially when he didn’t support me in attaining my goals. I once made a huge sale the last month of our fiscal year. So he promptly upped my goal for the year by the exactly amount I had just brought in. Thus effectively erasing what would have been a substantial gain over my stated goal. His reasoning…he thought it came too easily to me, ignoring the fact that I’d been working with that client for almost a year to land the contract.

Lessons Learned: If you accept the title and take the money, do what your title entails even if you don’t like to do it. Or don’t pretend to be a boss when you’re not up to it.

But there’s a happy ending to this story.

I got fired.

There have been several turning points in my life. This was certainly one of them.

Whether it was age discrimination as I still suspect or just internal politics (another very real possibility) it was my very good fortune to be fired without explanation. It was to change my life. My wife’s response (and I’ll always love her for it) was very simple: “Good, now you can spend more time with your kids and focus on your business.”

Less than four years later, my son was accepted into Notre Dame and I had increased our net worth four fold. And I was making more money in my own business than I had at my old job. Good fortune can come in very strange packages.

Boss # 7

Being self-employed meant long hours working for myself. I was probably harder on me than any other boss I ever had. The old adage that you are your own boss is totally wrong. Everyone else is your boss. But I was lucky. I had some wonderful clients, great projects to work on, and thoroughly enjoyed working with my daughter as host of my cable series.

Lessons Learned: Attention to marketing is as important as doing the job itself. I’m learning that now as I struggle with finding the time to write new material while focusing on my own program of self-promotion.

Bosses # 8

Frick and Frack presented a good opportunity for me to gain a steady client on a yearly contract. But along with it came many challenges.

Frick was a eunuch. He was scared to death of making decisions that might offend anyone, anyplace, at any time. So he constantly played it safe. Any idea I might bring to the table was immediately shot down because it might somehow offend someone someplace.

Frack was an appendage. He thought he had all the answers but wasn’t smart enough to know any of the questions. He told me how to do my job at every opportunity he could. I had seen his work. He had nothing to talk about.

Lessons Learned: The eunuch should have grown the courage to do his job instead of relying on others to tell him how to do it. The appendage is still an anal retentive sad sack whose grasp of the world evolves around many visits to the mirror to assure himself that he was a winner. Only losers do that.

My good fortune was to get so fed up with the antics of those two bobble-heads that I quit working for them. Another turning point in my life.

A day after “What now?”  I began my new career as a writer.