Are You a ‘Savior’?

This is the second in a series of posts on jobs you should probably avoid. Having labored

through hundreds of job interviews, I aim to impart my knowledge to fellow job seekers in the hopes they don’t fall into these traps.

Last week, I discussed how to spot a jerk in a job interview. This week it’s the “savior” job interview.

The subject line of the email stated “job interview/confidential.” The word confidential was my first clue something was a bit off with this job interview, and I had a feeling what it might be.

Nevertheless, I replied and set up a time for the interview, which was to be held in the restaurant of a hotel in a quiet, old-money part of Manhattan. After I confirmed the day and time, I was told not to tell anyone about the interview. Like, whom would I tell?

On the day of the appointment, I walked past weathered brownstones that have seen better days but still house only the very, very rich and made my way to the hotel. There, I spoke to two nice gentlemen about the job, my background, etc. The interview went well, or so I thought. Then came the kicker: “Thank you for coming,” said one of men. “We’re exploring our options.”

Peeved, I left and thought to myself, “Hey, buddy, I just wasted three hours! I have to dry clean these clothes!”

Yep, I feel for it once again, the “savior” job interview. These guys wanted to make personnel changes and were looking for ready candidates to fill the jobs of employees they most likely wanted to dump. Not bad in theory, but horrible for those employees and their oblivious replacements, AKA, saviors.

So what is a “savior” job interview? It’s when a company or manager has a “difficult” employee they want to replace but doesn’t have the cojones to outright fire. Or, they don’t want to fire them until they have a replacement lined up. Makes sense, right?

But it’s more than that. Since I’ve been on several of these savior job interviews (which I’ll recount presently), I’ve come to recognize there is another dynamic lurking beneath the surface: The workplace is dysfunctional and the manager, unable or unwilling to deal with the situation, hopes to hire someone new who will somehow pacify the rancorous office environment and make everything wonderful. A savior, get it?

My first experience with this savior job interview came during my first unfortunate stint of long-term unemployment back in 2010. I was summoned, again, to a diner. (That is always your first clue something is amiss. Why not hold the interview in the actual office of the hiring company?)

The interviewer then proceeded to tell me, rather obliquely, but clear enough so I understood, that the person currently in the job wasn’t working out. While it’s difficult to gain insight into the mind of a complete stranger, from what I discerned the employee in question was rather passive-aggressively needling his boss to fire him. I actually checked out this guy’s LinkedIn profile. He had authored books, so my hunch is that he believed the job was beneath his talents, which it might have been.

He wanted out, but wanted to be fired (in the hopes of getting unemployment and severance?) instead of being more assertive and proactive and quitting a job he obviously hated. Obviously, a dysfunctional relationship between manager and employee. I can’t be sure, since I never met the guy in person, but that was my take.

Then, as a waitress who wanted us gone from the table so she could get a better tip was rushing us, I was forced to take an editing test. In a noisy diner. While the guy stared at me. Not an ideal setting for a test.

Eventually, I received an email informing me I was not chosen for the job. No surprise. But with nothing to lose, I asked the interviewer why I was rejected. He said there was someone within the company who better fit the profile of what he was looking for in the job. Fair enough. Oh, and I didn’t do very well on the test. Ya think! Sheesh. I resisted the temptation to remind him I had to take the damn test in a noisy Manhattan diner and let it go.

More recently, I went on yet another savior job interview, one of the oddest job interviews I have ever endured. For an hour — an hour! — I sat dumbfounded as an arrogant, condescending bully of a boss (throughout the interview he repeatedly and rather threateningly struck his shoe with a steel letter opener) regaled me with the intimate details of an employee’s home life that he believed was impacting his work performance. Why was I being told this? What impact did it have on the job I was being interviewed for?

Oh, but he didn’t want to fire the guy, he insisted. That would be too hard. He wanted to bring in another staff member to help him.

So, I politely asked, what were the duties of the job? His answer (this is a direct quote): “To make my life easier.” Ah, a savior.

He did tell me of one incident where he had to step in and take over this employee’s duties while he was on a faraway business trip and he become ill because of it. On this point, I agree with him. If this employee didn’t do his job, he had every right to be angry. But I’d also like to know why: Was the employee sick? Was there a family emergency? Did he deliberately shirk his responsibilities? I’d like to know the why before I simply fired the guy or hired another person to be the “savior.”

When I spoke to another employee at this company, he said quite sternly, possibly as a warning, that the boss had a bad temper. This job came with more red flags than an Indy car pileup.

From my reading, all these episodes have several factors in common: a dysfunctional workplace; an underperforming employee; a manager too timid to deal with the situation; and the vain hope a newcomer can make everybody sing Kumbaya. Not gonna happen.

What should happen, in my humble opinion, is the manager and employee first attempt to repair their broken relationship, if possible, with an honest dialogue. HR can be called in to mediate, but in my experience most HR people avoid interfering with bad manager/employee pairings and simply tell the two to work it out on their own. Good luck with that.

Now, let me say here, I don’t put all the blame on the manager. While I believe it’s a manager’s job is to provide fair and specific guidance to employees, it’s up to the employee to be conscientious and capable enough to carry out his or her duties.

If the employee still underperforms, well, then he or she must be fired, and the next in line promoted to replace that person. Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it?

Except…most managers prefer to do nothing and let the situation fester. Or, they figure they can bring on a new person to be the savior. Stupid management 101.

Is that fair to the new person who is hired as this savior? How are they supposed to learn the job (especially one with unspecified duties), get along with their new co-workers, and correct the dysfunctional morass permeating the office? That would be difficult for any one person to do.

Even boards of major corporations a fall into the savior trap. A company is floundering so they bring in a new highly trumpeted CEO. Months pass, and the company is still sinking. Not even the new CEO could save the ship.

These situations burn me for another reason. Managers will hand-wring for weeks and months over whether to fire an obviously underachieving slacker. Or, they will put the employee under a “performance improvement plan” or PIP, so the employee can either shape up or be shipped out. Either way, the employee is given a chance to save their job or make a conscious decision to leave.

No such luck when it comes to laid-off employees. We are given no such opportunity to save our employment, or even given any insight into why we were selected for the trash heap. That always seems unfair to me.

Perhaps managers hem and haw over firings because it's a tacit admission they hired the wrong person or aren't very good managers. The fault falls on their weaselly shoulders. With a layoff, they can blame the economy and poor revenues.

So, back to the savior job interview. Should you take the interview now that you know the warning signs? Yes, for no other reason than for practice.

Should you take the job? Well, that’s up to you, of course. But I would want to know the exact duties of the job (other than “to make my life easier”) before I agreed to work for that company. Otherwise, you are being set up to fail. Most employment experts agree with me on that point.

You are there to do a job, hopefully one that aids in the profitability of the company. You are not, and will never be, the company’s or a manager's savior.

Next week, I’ll discuss the “unicorn” job ad.

Why I Won’t Work for Jerks Anymore

I had an interesting conversation this week with a prospective employer. Though I avoid writing about individual encounters in this blog — too tedious and boring for me to recount

and for you to read — this one stood out for its sheer audacity.

Let’s backtrack a bit. I applied to ad on CraigsList (yeah, I know, my first clue this was going to be a bad trip) for a part-time copy editor. The ad stated — in bold capital letters — the unnamed company would only accept applicants from Manhattan, the five boroughs and three towns in New Jersey. I’ve seen this ad before, but this time, one of the acceptable towns — lo and behold — happens to be where I live. So I applied. Why not? I have copyediting experience. A part-time job combined with freelance work could net me a livable income.

Soon after, I received an email asking for my hourly salary requirements. Now, here, I admit, is where I screwed up a bit. The ad stated the starting hourly salary was set at between $13-$15 per hour. Not terrible, but typically lower than my base ($20) and what other part-time editing jobs offer. So I replied, $20 per hour.

Bad move on my part, apparently. How dare I try to negotiate my salary? How dare I want a livable wage commensurate with my experience and the rest of the market? No dice, said the HR person, I hadn’t read the ad.

So, I replied that I had read the ad, that $15 was acceptable to me, and could I speak to someone about the position. The HR person said okay, and I sent along my number, thinking that would be the end of it.

The next day, I received a call from a gentleman who only gave his first name. Throughout this process neither the HR person or this guy revealed their full name or the name of the company. Another bad sign.

He then proceeded to rant on me. I was asking for too much money! I hadn’t the read the ad! How tough it was for him to train people only to have them leave for a higher paying job! (Duh!) The atmosphere at his “agency” routinely featured yelling and screaming!

Bingo! Now I understood. This guy was a jerk. A cheap jerk. The worst kind.

And why would he tell a prospective employee his workplace is a screeching hellhole? If someone offered him a new job at the twice the pay, wouldn't he jump at the chance?

People weren’t leaving this job because of the low pay. They left because they could no longer endure a WWF-like office environment. They left because they felt they were being mistreated and harassed — all for pay barely above minimum wage and no benefits. They left because he is a jerk.

Back in the dark days of the Great Recession of 2008-10, employers routinely oppressed workers without any fear of retribution or a mass exodus. There were no jobs, no one was hiring, so where could they go?

Today, the job market isn’t as tight. It’s not great, but workers have a bit more wiggle room now to find another job for higher pay or more pleasant working conditions. Workers are less willing to work for jerks.

What this jerk failed to understand is that workers have free will. We can, if we so choose, take another job for a better salary. If we feel we are being abused, we can decide, “fuck this shit,” and leave.

I actually had the gumption to say to him that if people were leaving it wasn’t solely because of the salary. I added that salary is something that can be negotiated between employer and employer. He agreed, but I don’t think he got my true point. This jerk is obviously stuck in a time warp where bosses have all the power and workers have none. It’s not that way anymore. The power balance has shifted. Not a lot, but enough so that workers are no longer jailed in their cubicles.

He pompously said he might consider me for the job. How big of him! To consider me for a job I have every qualification for. I don’t think I will ever get this job. It’s not a place where I want to work anyway. I spent 16 years abused by a nasty, raging alcoholic and I have no desire to return to that type of an office environment. Ever.

Honestly, I don’t expect to be treated with kid gloves at work. If I screw up, I believe my boss has every right to reprimand me. Outside of those incidences (which I keep at minimum), if I treat my colleagues with courtesy and respect, I expect the same treatment in return.

Of course, it’s his prerogative to hire whomever he chooses and ill treat them if that is how he wants to relate to his underlings. He can pay them whatever he chooses, too. Companies further have the right to fire and layoff workers whenever they deem necessary, no warning or questions asked. As someone who has been laid off twice since late 2009, I think I have a pretty good idea who wields the hammer and who is the nail. I get it. I GET IT!

Yet it is also the worker’s prerogative to choose a more tranquil workplace for a higher salary if such an opportunity arises. It’s not a one-sided equation. Incomprehensibly, managers persist in the belief that workers owe unyielding loyalty to a company while the company owes them no such loyalty in return.

This clueless jerk whined that too many of his hires left for better pay. Yes, that is a risk any company assumes when hiring a new employee. That's why HR departments are so meticulous when assessing candidates. (Don't I know it!) Sometimes, a company and the new hire simply don't mesh. But the new employee also takes a risk — the risk he or she will be fired after a probationary period or laid off when revenues sink. Both employee and employer take a tremendous leap of faith on the first day of employment.

Workers chose to work for a company, stay at a company, or leave a company for many reasons, salary being an important but far from the only factor. How well they are treated by management, the overall stress level within the organization (are they being asked to do too much with little support?), and the actual work duties all contribute to whether a worker remains or bolts.

A worker may leave for better pay. But they could leave because their spouse relocates for a job. Or they want a better work/life balance (whatever that means). Perhaps they want to take their career in an entirely different direction. Guess what Mr. Boss Man? They have every right to do that.

I think this jerk misses the real issue here. It’s not the money, though he could pay them more. The real reason people are leaving is because he has obviously fostered a hostile work environment. He’s putting the blame on the wrong person — the worker who is leaving — rather than himself and his boorish behavior.

Until this jerk understands that, he will continue to watch people walk out the door.

Walking Dogs and Talking Economic Recovery

I saw Nancy the other day. She’s the nice lady who lives down the street in the corner

house. We used to take the same bus into the city.

She was walking Elvis, a particularly hellacious little Maltese who barks incessantly at the sight of me. “Guess what?” she told me. “I got laid off in November.”

As I recall, she worked in the insurance industry, but I don’t know for which company. For now, she’s collecting unemployment and babysitting to pocket some extra cash. Nobody, she said, can live on unemployment alone. How true.

Sometimes when I jog I run into (not literally) Jeanine as she walks, Rocky, an adorable and much calmer little dachshund. His stumpy legs shiver in the cold. Yet he’s friendlier and lets me pet him.

Her company just hired another worker for her department. She says she knows I’m going to get a job soon. From her lips to God’s ears…

What to make of these divergent scenarios? One lady worked for a company that downsized her job; another for a company in expansion mode.

Which is true? Which is the false mirage?

As I scan the news sites daily, I come across so many contradictory articles, statistics, and opinions about the job market. Which to believe?

Here are some of the clashing tidbits I’ve found regarding our rather bipolar economy. (Snarky comments in italics are mine.)

The unemployment rate is at 5.5%. That means full employment. Hooray! Well, not if you are Nancy or I.

Big companies like IBM and Target are cutting jobs in massive numbers. Or maybe not. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Tell that to the poor chumps who actually are laid off.

The unemployment rate is so low because many long-time unemployed have given up looking for a job and are no longer counted in the labor rolls. I’m a long-time unemployed worker. Therefore, I do not exist.

Despite the low unemployment rate, wages have not risen. But they might soon. Raise? What’s a raise?

The economy added nearly 300,000 jobs last month. Where? 

These statistics and ponderous yet detached musings on those numbers only impart a 27,000-foot-high airplane view of the job market, where you only spy the outlines of land and sea, the crevices of valleys tumbling down from the high mountains, or the lights of the street lamps and maybe the roofs of houses.

You never hear about what goes on inside those homes: The father telling his family he got laid off from his job and can no longer pay for the eldest son’s college tuition. The single mother crying at the table because her job was terminated and she doesn’t know how she will pay the rent or feed her baby. The older, single female worker laid off twice in four years struggles to find a job in the face of age discrimination, trying to pay bills with low-paying freelance jobs.

When the Great Recession of 2009-10 roared and thousands were unemployed, newspapers wrote those stories. Not anymore. Hey, the unemployment rate is 5.5%! Nothing more to see here. Move along.

The Democrats crow that their policies have saved the economy. Have they? Or is it just a natural economy cycle taking place?

The Republicans, looking for a wedge issue, bemoan the gnawing income inequality gap. This makes me laugh, bitterly. Funny they don’t mention how their slavish devotion to Corporate American has directly led to that very same income imbalance and wage stagnation. What did they think would happen when government removes the necessary regulatory reigns from corporations? Of course, corporations immediately hack away jobs in the thousands to pile up profits. Give raises to the workers? But that might cut into our executive bonuses! Perish the thought and hand me the keys to my Mercedes.

Let me be clear, this is not a political blog. But I do detect a sickening excess of political spin when it comes to the economy and job numbers — by both sides. It’s either partisan self-congratulation or brazen manipulation for each party’s purpose, which, at the core, is only about winning elections and staying in power. Neither party exhibits any real understanding or compassion for the citizens of this country, the people they are supposed to represent. I’m sick of the whole damn lot of them.

How about helping the long-term unemployed by reinstating extended unemployment benefits? Or providing funds to the jobless so they can learn new skills and return to the workforce? How about going after companies that blatantly discriminate against older job seekers?

How about nudging companies to lift wages so families can enjoy at a minimum a comfortable, middle class lifestyle? When people have more money, they tend to spend more on goods and services. That could help the economy rise, right?

Nah, nothing will be done. The unemployment rate is 5.5%, so who cares anymore about those long-term unemployed losers? Let them shrivel up their savings and become homeless.

Yes, I do admit the economy has improved. But better than it was is still not great. Competition for jobs is fierce, and employers are very, very picky.

Just ask Nancy and I.