Ghosted From Jobs

Ghosting. It’s a new social phenomenon whereby one partner in a relationship severs all contact with the other person with no explanation. No phone call, no text, and of course,

never any face-to-face meeting. The person figuratively becomes a ghost, a plume of white dust never to be seen or heard from again.

Though this rather distributing trend occurs more in romantic or personal relationships, ghosting happens just as much in professional circles. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been “ghosted” from freelance jobs with no explanation (unless you consider the rather vague “didn’t click” BS I was given by a douchey client). Another time, I was told I had a steady freelance gig. But after I accepted, I never heard from the company again. So what gives?

Just this past week, a client of the editorial consultant I’ve been working with told him the company was going in a different direction. This swift turnabout came mere weeks after they assured him the company liked our work and would continue on another three-month contract.

Sometimes, personal relationship die out simply because you’ve moved on. You took a new job and don’t have daily contact with former co-workers. You move to another city, and have fewer opportunities to get together. That’s understandable.

Other “ghosting” incidents are less easy to comprehend. As a strikingly unpopular person since junior high school, I’ve become accustomed to people insulting and mocking me to my face, and cutting any and all contact with me in a rude, mean-girl manner with no reason given for their nasty behavior. But, hey, at least they did it to my face. And after some soul-searching, I realized my sometimes clingy behavior and “foot-in-mouth” disease might have caused the rift. Was I deserving of their abrupt expulsion? No, I don’t think my treatment of them ever rose to that level. I never insulted or was mean to them. My guess is they simply wanted someone to kick around so they could feel superior, and I was an easy target. They made it abundantly clear I wasn’t worthy of their time or friendship anymore. Once it become obvious they wanted no part of me, I respected their wishes and kept away.

Yet, those horrible, soul-crushing incidents (of which I count only three) made me a better person, a better friend and co-worker. I tried not to make the same mistakes, and for the most part I’ve been successful. I also know I would never treat somebody the same way those mean girls treated me. I treat people with respect, even when my courtesy is not returned.

What makes ghosting so much easier today is our digitally connected world. Why tell someone to their face why you’re dismissing them from your life when you can simply send a text, or better yet, say nothing at all. Poof! You’re gone.

How ironic at a time when we are more connected than ever that we’ve become less sensitive to other’s feelings. Aided by social media, we’ve become a callous, narcissistic society with no compassion or empathy. We’ve become more distant from one another, not closer.

We send nasty texts and make cruel Facebook and Twitter posts about people. Yet we seem to believe because those vile comments are made in cyberspace — not to the person’s face — they are somehow not hurtful.

So, why was I ghosted from those freelance jobs? Were the people in charge too busy to send me an email response? Can’t pay freelancers anymore? Was my work subpar? (Let me point out here that I’m always willing to edit my work to fit their specifications, and have done so when requested.)

All any of us who’ve been “ghosted” want is a simple, reasonable, respectful explanation of why we’re being kicked to the curb. Give us a reason. It may have something to do with our work or behavior. If that is the case, we can make changes to better ourselves. If it has nothing to do with us or our work — the website can’t pay freelancers anymore, the company is going in a different direction, the person you thought was a friend is a backstabbing mean girl — we should know that, too, so we’re not punishing ourselves for something beyond our control.

Without an explanation, we “ghosted” parties are left to ruminate as to what could have been our failure. As someone who has been laid off twice since 2009, I fall easily into the “I suck” mode anytime I’m ghosted or rejected for a job.

What really sucks is ghosting. Let’s stop it. Be brave and tell people why you’re doing them wrong — to their face. Or at least a frickin’ email.

Go Back to the One Who Dumped You?

Sometimes things happen in the world that astound me. Endless wars, terrorist beheadings,

illness, hysteria over illness, political sniping that accomplishes nothing. And all we seem to care about is the ample, well-oiled rump of a dumb-cluck reality star. Has the entire universe gone bug-eyed crazy?

Things happen closer to home and my reality that make me shake my head in sheer bafflement as well. Like just yesterday I learned through the wonder that is social media (hey, it’s good for some things) that a woman I worked with at my former former company, who’d been laid off nine months before I was, has been hired again…by my former former company, the same one that — let me repeat — laid her off in 2009!

What the what? At times like these I hear the exasperated, plaintive whine of Tim McCarver: “What is going on here?” Has the entire world gone to Hades in a hand basket?

Since I’ve lost all contact with anyone who works at my former former company, I have no way of knowing what machinations went into this bewildering decision. Did she approach her former bosses, or did they approach her? Is my former former company, which has recently been sold, in solid enough financial shape to hire more staff? 

I do know that the laid-off/hired-again woman had fallen on hard times since her termination nearly five years ago. Was she that desperate for a job that she went back to the one who dumped her?

I truly wish her well, and hope my former former bosses treat her properly. She has a heart of gold. Now, I could say some rather unflattering things about her, but…

Oh, what the heck? No names here, right? It’s my blog and I’ll dish if I want to.

My overall impression of her, and I apologize in advance for my sexism here, is that she is, well, a bit of a ditz. She seemed more interested in coming into work and talking with her friends on the phone than in doing her job. She’s a party girl who has yet to realize that her particular party ended in 1983.

I also know that she slept with the sleazy drunk who oversaw the sales department at my former former company as well as another salesman, both married with young children. I know she clashed with the head of the company, a despicable, drunken bully — as most of us did at one time or another while under his nasty siege. She was none too happy the day she was laid off. I was there and overheard her wail to her former lover over her termination. He acted like she wasn’t there. He ignored her. Now, she wants to go back to that place? To work for that same guy? She deserves better than that.

Again, I like this lady. She was always nice to me and I to her. Her personal choices, however misguided, are just that — her personal choices. This is not to judge (too much), but to make an observation.

It also makes me wonder how well she will do in her “new” job, which is essentially the same as the “old” job she had before her layoff. The industry, the players, the entire landscape have shifted immensely in five years. Can she still do the job? A job she wasn’t all that great at five years prior? Has the employment market tightened so much that there wasn’t another, more qualified person to do that job?

I must point here that it's not unheard of that a company rehires a laid-off employee on a freelance or contract basis. Both my former former company and former company did just that. The company lessens the heavy burden (please note touch of sarcasm here) of having to pay that employee a full-time salary plus benefits, while at the same time retaining that person's knowledge and skills. It's pretty diabolical when you think about it.

Heck, even my former former workplace offered me a freelance assignment after my layoff. However, I think it was a one-time peace offering after I reported plagiarism by one of the esteemed (low paid ) editors they kept on staff over me. I also couldn't take it because I was just about to start the job at my former company. Which makes me think: Is this a full-time or contract position this lady is now taking? Of all the former staff members my former former company drop-kicked off a high ledge, they take back her? I can think of at lease half a dozen former co-workers (not including me) more deserving of a second chance than that airhead.

Then the more I thought about this situation, the more it makes perfect sense. It speaks to how personal and professional rejection warps our psyches and leads us into disastrous, incomprehensible decisions.

How many times after a lover has dumped us or a company has terminated us have we thought of only getting that person back, of getting our old job back. We’ve been tossed asunder, unmoored from the life we thought we had, our self-esteem ripped to shards of broken glass, never to be pieced together again. That is until we get that person/job back. “Oh, he/she will come back to me. He/she will realize what a mistake they made.”

Except…they don’t. And it’s good they don’t. That’s because our self-worth is not, or should never be, dependent on another person or a job. That person may leave you. Your company may dismiss you. What then? Does that mean you are a bad person? A bad worker?

Yet we scamper frantically after those shattered pieces of our self-esteem, collecting our sense of self, hoping to put them in our pocket, and with a tap, think, "Ah, it's all better now." Rather we should stand in place and watch those shiny bits undulate away with the capricious breeze. We cannot change what has happened. That part of our life is over. Better to move on and build anew.

Admittedly, I struggle with this on a daily basis. After too numerous-to-count personal and professional rejections, I sometimes feel I have no self-confidence left, that everything I do is horrible, I have no talent, everyone is better than me, that I’m ugly…okay, let’s stop there. Rejection can crush a soul.

Yet I instinctively know that pleading “take me back, please!” smacks of desperation that only reinforces the cruel narcissism of the person/company that dumped me. Getting that lover/job back will not heal the pain or make me whole again. That can only come from me. (On the other hand, believing no one could never not love us or that every piece of work we produce is perfect is another form of narcissism.)

Nevertheless, I can certainly understand why my former co-worker went back to the company that spurned her. She was sinking and grasped at the first rescue rope tossed into the water before her. Will it make her whole again? Will she get back to the life she once had, or hoped to have? I don’t know. She thinks she’s entering familiar territory but is she? So much has changed in five years…The business has changed and so has she.

Since I know the players in this rather bizarre re-coupling, I can make a few assumptions about why my former former bosses hired her back as well. It’s not because she was a great salesperson, although I can say with assurance she will not be sleeping (regularly) anymore with her former boss. She has moved to another state to take the job. The position is commission based, so I doubt they are paying her much in the way of a base salary. Always a concern for those cheap bastards.

No, I think they wanted someone they could control, somebody who wouldn’t question or challenge their ginned-up authority, somebody they could use as an easy whipping post. A happy-hour gal they could have drinks with and mistreat with nary a worry about her fighting back. Sounds too cruel to be true? You don’t know those men like I do. Never would those black hearts do anyone a kindness if it didn't benefit them first. At the very least, they are taking advantage of her desperation for a job. And can she ever be sure they won't terminate her job again?

Will this on/off-now-on-again business (personal?) relationship work? For her sake, and only for her sake, I hope it does. Unfortunately, a cursory reading of any pop psychology book on relationships affirms that on again/off-again pairings eventually fail. Oh, sure, the couple gets back together. But after the initial happiness, relief and stupendous makeup sex fades, the couple realizes the reasons for their breakup are still very much duking it out in the messy, overlapping he/she terrain of relationships, waiting to explode again at any minute, like a grenade whose pin has yet to be pulled.  

So if I had to venture a guess, I’m thinking this re-pairing will crater in about six months, after my former former bosses realize this woman cannot reach the impossible revenue goals they set for her. She couldn’t before, so why now? She, meanwhile, will realize she can’t handle the pressure (she couldn’t before), and acting the (aging) good-time girl is no guarantee of job security with those clowns. It wasn't before.

Soon the relationship will dissolve into a bitter game of blame, contempt and abuse. This will not end well.

As for me, I’d never go back to the one who dumped me. Never.