Why Facebook is "Like" Junior High

So Mark Zuckerberg plans to take Facebook public and reap billions. Nice chunk of change for a guy who has made a killing off the social media craze.

Yet I contend that he has made his fortune not on the social media phenomenon, computer technology, coding ability or his sheer entrepreneurship.

No, he’s made his money off of social insecurity. You know, the kind that plagued you back in junior high school, when all you cared about was how many friends you had and whether they “liked” you or not.

Think about it: How many times have you gone on Facebook and wondered why so-and-so has so many friends, like in the hundreds, and you barely crack 50? Why don’t more people comment on your posts? Or at least like them?

Frankly, I think it’s silly for adults to think like junior high school kids, but sometimes it’s hard not to. I think a person should have as many friends on Facebook as they are comfortable with. (Although I do think those who have friends in the thousands are venturing into crazy land. Seriously, do you want to be a cult?) It’s really not that difficult to get a lot of friends on Facebook if all you want is a long friend list.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was not popular in my school days. Well, that doesn’t quite do it justice: I was a bottom feeder, a total nonentity to my classmates. I was shy and sickly and was dealing with a very bad home life. So it’s no surprise that I was unpopular and I can’t blame my classmates for not recognizing the stress I was under. They were young and had their own problems to deal with, like who was going to take them to the prom.

Fortunately, my social skills have improved a lot since then and I’ve learned to become a better friend. Yet I am still insecure in social situations and don’t make friends easily. The root, I believe, is that I automatically think someone won’t like me and reject me outright, instead of believing they would want to be my friend. Being unpopular in junior and senior high can have lifelong consequences.

Which makes me wonder why a handful of friends from my school days want to now friend me on Facebook. I honestly believe these people could not pick me out of a crowd if you put a gun to their heads and paid them a $1 million. They either mocked me or totally ignored me in junior and senior high. So why be my friend on Facebook now? More likely they were trolling FB for people from our hometown and happened upon my name in an attempt to plump up their friend list. As Teresa from the Real Housewives of New Jersey would say, Go Scratch.

So what has me ranting about Facebook at this moment?

Yep, you guessed it. I was un-friended recently. Nothing catapults you back to that seventh-grade lunchroom than having someone anonymously dump you on FB.

I have no idea why this person did the deed. But isn’t that point? To un-friend me without me knowing about it or why and making me feel like crap? You know, like kids used to do in junior high.

Perhaps she decided to pare down her friend list and decided that I was not worthy of any more communication with her. That I can understand. She doesn’t have to be my friend anymore if she chooses not to. I’d just like to know why. Don’t I deserve that much common courtesy?

Did something I posted on Facebook offend her? That’s doubtful. I don’t post that much and what I do post mostly has to do with funny things, my lame attempts at humor and dogs.

An aside here: If you are going to post political comments on Facebook, fine. But just be warned that you will get pushback from those who may disagree with you. I don’t post political comments myself but others are welcome to do so.

Since going on Facebook, I’ve chosen whom to friend carefully. A lingering hangover from my junior high days, I prefer not to court rejection by asking people I doubt would respond positively to my friend request.

Yet I don’t confirm every friend request I get, just as some people (one guy, really) I have requested to be friends with have ignored my request.

I’d rather do it that way instead of friending someone and then later un-friending him or her. I don’t want to hurt their feelings, even when I’m forced to read numerous posts on their children’s pooping habits.

I actually thought about asking the person who un-friended me why she did so, and even thought about sending another friend request to her. But I decided to respect her wishes.

Too bad she didn’t have the same respect for my feelings.

But that's the beauty of Facebook. It allows some people to be as nasty as they were back in junior high.

You Know You’re Going to Get Laid Off When…

Despite some cheery reports in the media about a recovering job market, I’m not buying it. Blame it on my brutally laid-off-after-16-years-with-the-same company cynicism, but I don’t think this economy is recovering. Not by a long shot.

With that in mind, I still think its imperative for fellow workers (or future 99’ers) to be aware of the signs that changes are a-comin’ in your workplace and those shifts just might put you on the jobless rolls.

First and foremost and the most obvious are changes in upper management. Both times when my former company undertook massive layoffs it was preceded by a change in ownership. (For that matter, my current company is looking for a new CEO. Yikes!)

Whenever a new CEO comes in they want to put their mark on the company and that usually means shaking things up and “restructuring” (read: reductions in products, services and people). Think of it this way: When you buy a new house, even if the house is structurally sound you’d want to make changes, like painting the rooms and upgrading a bathroom. So it is with corporations. Forget about innovation or finding new sources of revenues, cost cutting is the new mantra for CEOs. (Not that they say that outright. It’s usually phrased as “We looking for business efficiencies.” Efficiency, my potential unemployed butt. They’re looking at layoffs.)

Now, how that affects you and your division is hard to say. It can happen suddenly or play out over time. You have no way of knowing since those discussions are held in board rooms (or in my case, at some bar during happy hour), far from your lowly little cubicle.

So what can you do? Of course, you can search for another job, but again I’m not sure that will reap immediate results even in our supposedly recovering employment market.

You can also keep you ears open for any gossip, but that’s assuming someone knows what it is being discussed, what’s going to happen, or if they will divulge such information. Office gossip can be notoriously unreliable…until that is, it turns out to be true. But you won’t know that until the day they actually tell you to pack up your desk and leave the premises.

What other signs are there? Here are some I personally encountered:

Your boss is either nasty to you or stops talking to you completely. Yep, after 16 years, my one boss started treating me like a piece of dirt, nitpicking and criticizing everything I said and did. The head of the division, who had hired me 16 years earlier, stopped talking to me altogether. Was my work any different? Nah.

So why did they do it? You’d think the mere fact of putting someone’s livelihood in jeopardy would be enough. No, they have to heap on gratuitous cruelty.

First, both were trying to justify my termination. You know, put the blame on me rather the company’s poor revenues and the bad business decisions made by them. That way, they didn’t have to feel bad about the scummy thing they were doing to me or other layoffs. I know my work was no different than before; in fact, it was better and I was doing more tasks than ever before. As tough and painful as this situation is, you just have to suck it up like I did and remember it has nothing to do with you as a person or an employee. Try to maintain your dignity and work ethic. It may not save your job, but it will preserve your self-respect at the very least.

Second, and this is a fairly common practice, bosses think if they treat a potential layoff badly enough, that person will leave the job, thus sparring them paying the unemployment benefits and severance package. Obvious, cowardly and pathetic, really.

That only works if the person can find another job quickly, which is difficult even in a good job market. I remember one time a colleague of mine was getting flack from the head of the division. It was obvious the woman (a real bitch) was trying to push my co-worker out the door. I was looking for a job at the same time, so I passed along a job lead to her, which she was hired for. She was able to get out of a bad work situation and avoid a painful termination.

Alas, that’s not always the case. Most of the time, people cannot find another position quick enough and the most viable alternative is simply to wait for the ax to fall, go on unemployment, and then look for another job.

Your boss gives the “no one has job security speech.” Yeah, no kidding, right? When that phrase is uttered, you might as well start packing up your desk. But did you ever notice how the boss who gives that speech miraculously escapes the chopping block and is the one who decides who no longer has job security…or a job?

So, what can we do as workers do when all or some of those situations present themselves? Wait, worry and take home that coffee cup you brought to the office.

Lessons Learned

It’s been two years and a month since I was laid off, and the memory still stings and haunts me.

Why was I laid off while others with less time in the company and at higher salaries were kept on? Why did my former co-workers throw me under the bus to save another colleague? Was my work poor? (If so, why wasn’t I let go earlier?)

Stupidly, I even tried to talk my way out of getting laid off (like that ever works). I often wonder if I should have tried to save my job when I knew I was about to get dismissed. But would that have meant another co-worker got the boot instead? I don't think I could have lived with that (although others didn't mind saving their jobs while I got laid off). And would it have saved my job? That's doubtful.

What was the real reason behind my dismissal? I wish I knew, but considering the personalities (backstabbers, douchebags, liars and drunks) involved, getting a truthful answer is near impossible. I will never know the real reason behind my layoff, and that tortures me.

I know some people will say, “Get over it. You have a job now.” That I'm being negative. Well, I have a right to my feelings, and I think I'm justified in being hurt by their actions. Perhaps I was unjustly jettisoned in favor of lesser people whose only saving grace is that they were the favored puppets of upper management.

Being laid off is a stark reminder that some things are beyond our control, that our fates are in the hands of others who only know us as a line item on a spread sheet.

Bitterness aside, being told to pack up your desk and leave as if you are a criminal is a traumatic experience. What about the stress of being jobless for 16 months? How dare anyone say I shouldn't be hurt by my layoff.

There are times when I think I am almost over it, but then I remember that day I was told to pack up my desk and leave and the bitterness and hurt wash over me again as if it were yesterday.

And the people who say to get over it are usually those who have never been laid off or are safe because the drunken morons that run my former workplace protect them. Lucky them. I’ll say it again, nobody thinks getting laid off is big deal until it happens to him or her. Those same people who tell me to get over it would be the biggest whiners if they were to get laid off.

Alas, the company has survived since I and others were laid off, so I guess they did save the company while we took one for the team. My bad in thinking I was a valuable employee. Never will I make that mistake again.

The effects still linger. After a layoff, I no longer have a sense of job security. That is something that will stay with me for a long, long time. How can I be sure my new company won’t lay me off? How can I think of moving to a new apartment or buying a new car when my position is tenuous? I’m even hesitant to buy a smart phone.

Then there is the economic impact of being jobless for 16 months. Not only didn’t I make any contributions to a 401(k), but also I had to take a job that pays me much less than I was making at my previous job.

Still, I would be foolish not to look back and think of mistakes I made, mistakes that may have made it easier for my former bosses to kick me to the curb. This is my chance to be a better worker and colleague and I want to learn from blunders.

Was I let go because my poor tech skills? Maybe. At my new job, I have taken great pains to learn new systems. It’s not easy, but I’ve made progress on some programs; others, well, will take more time and training. I hope my new bosses will give me the time. (Of course, being out of the workforce for 16 months didn’t help improve my tech skills. I’m playing catch up now.)

I’ve (pretty much) stayed away from office gossip, mostly because I don’t know the people in my new office very well.

I’ve also stayed away from sending ill-advised emails. (The reply all function is not your friend.) I’ve only questioned one work edict, but I did so respectfully.

All in all, I’ve tried to do a good job and made every effort to do my duties to the best of my ability.

But is that enough? I did a good job, or thought I did, at my previous workplace and I was still dismissed. Employers want employees to be hardworking and loyal, but what are they giving us in return? Crappy health plans, puny raises (if any) and no job security.

It’s hard to give a job your all when you know that it will never be enough to save your job if budgets must be cut and your bosses don’t have your back.

You can work hard and still get screwed.

So Long, Jose

Oh, well…as predicted, Jose Reyes has signed with the Miami Marlins.

As a Mets fan, I’m sorry to see him go, but I can’t really blame him. The team’s financial woes would have made it difficult for them to re-sign him and getting into a bidding war was out of the question. This was his one chance for a big free agent score, and he would be foolish not to take it. No way was he going to give the Mets a home team discount.

Just one word of warning to Fish Fans: At least one time during the season, Jose will romp around second base, grab his hamstring and be out of the lineup for a month.

Of course, the Miami Marlins courted him like the prettiest girl at the prom. The team’s owner even went to a hotel suite where Jose was staying after midnight wearing a jersey with Reyes’s name on the back, which in the post-Sandusky-era is kind of creepy. Did he think he was recruiting for Penn State?

Now, Jose gets to wear those icky Miami Vice-era uniforms and we Met fans are left with a team that will finish last in 2012.

And workers throughout the country are left to wonder why we can’t be free agents.

New Job, Same as the Old Job

Six months into my new job and I have to say…not much has changed.

That fact was drilled home to me the other day when I was heading for home on a Friday afternoon after a tough week. It was the same week we switched over to a new system (with little to no instruction) and we were all frazzled, to say the least.

So, I decided to say goodbye to a co-worker and wish her a good weekend. However, as I approached her office, and without a word coming out of my mouth, she threw her arms in the air and snapped, “I can’t talk now. I’m busy!”

Kinda rude, don’t you think? I wasn’t looking for a long conversation. I had my coat on and it was obvious I was leaving for the day. So why the rather nasty reaction? Why not say something like, “Hey, can’t talk now. Have a good weekend. See ya Monday.” You know, a polite response.

I know it wasn’t my fault. Usually, I say something stupid and get reamed out for it. But in this instance, I hadn’t said a word. I understand she was stressed, but why take it out on me at that particular moment? She is not the only one who is over-worked and stressed out on the job. But most of us manage to be respectful of others even when we are under pressure.

I did not respond in kind, nor have I mentioned the incident to anyone in the office. I'll forgive and forget and chalk it up to her having a bad day.

Except...this is the second time this particular person has snapped at me when I was only wishing her a good day. OK, she’s high strung. But now I wonder if she isn’t bat-shit crazy. Best to keep my distance from her.

I know I said I would stay away from office friendships, but since when is basic courtesy a bad thing? Won’t make that mistake again.

The whole instance made me a bit sad. This is pretty much how I was treated at my former place of employment. Yes, there were times when I snapped under pressure, but I always apologized for it later. And if I didn’t there was always somebody else who called me out on my bad behavior and I did my rightful mea culpa. More times than not, I was the victim of somebody else’s rudeness than the perpetrator.

There are other aspects of this new job that make me realize the workplace is generally hostile to low-level employees. The higher-ups get to sit in their Ivory Towers and make decisions without consulting the people who are actually going to carry out those new projects. When those new projects are launched, we are given bare-boned instructions, so when something goes wrong we get blamed. Hey, why weren’t we given more time and instruction so that mistakes won’t be made? Alas, bosses have the upper hand in this employment market and we have little say. Our job is to simply take whatever is thrown at us and not complain.

Let me ask you: When was the last time you felt confident enough to stand up for yourself in the workplace? I’m even afraid to ask questions about technical things, lest I be viewed as an easily replaced dinosaur.

It’s futile to argue anyway. It’s budget season now, so surely meetings are taking place about our futures without us knowing anything about it or getting a chance to defend ourselves.

I understand that certain matters (layoffs, the sale of divisions, etc.) require confidentiality. But there is something fundamentally disturbing about other people discussing our professional futures without any input from us—the people most impacted by those decisions.

So, this is what I worked so hard for? To get back to a workplace as rude and disdainful as my former office?

Ghosts of Working Men Past

Recently, I read an interesting article about how jobs are becoming obsolete. The author argues that with technology, productivity is up so we don’t need the kind of jobs we needed back in the heyday of the Industrial Revolution.

While I agree that some jobs (like bank tellers) are becoming passé, I cannot believe that technology has become so proficient that we will not require people to perform some jobs in the future. Health care, for one, requires a human touch, unless you want your colonoscopy done by RoboPlungr.

The author does acknowledge that is not good news for the millions looking for employment. I certainly believe many unemployed people read this article and thought, “FML!” The author talks about lost jobs as if actual human beings did not perform those tasks. Like those people were ghosts.

With fewer jobs, our society requires a new way to exchange goods and services, the author contends. People produce a service somebody else or a company wants. They then exchange that product or service for something they need. So, in other words, in this Utopian society, I can exchange a chocolate cake for a Chevy? Not so sure about that. (Too be fair, the author, Douglas Rushkoff, doesn’t predict what this new jobless society will ultimately look like.)

What I am sure about is that our job-based economy has been altered, probably forever, as the result of decades of changes in how we work, aided, of course, by technology. It’s also the result of the weakening of unions and the disappearance of manufacturing jobs. At least with manufacturing, someone without an education could get a job, retire with a pension and stand firmly in the middle class. Now, only those rich to begin with can advance.

This country’s economy has historically thrived when we built things. Now, we build nothing; hence, we don’t export anything. Our economy is based on consumerism and the goods and services consumers require (that is, when they have the money to buy). Yet it seems like we are servicing only a small, upper stratum of society that afford those goods and services.

Every day on my way to work I pass by abandoned and graffiti-smudged factories standing side by side with luxury apartment and condo buildings, some of which were built using the existing structure of an old manufacturing plant. It’s a poignant commentary on how our society has devolved from an industrialized economy to one that revolves around a monied class that desires the design elements—hardwood floors, brick walls, high ceilings and windows—in those once-thriving factories. They are the only ones who can afford them. Sometimes, I can almost see the ghosts of lunch-pail-toting working men emerge from those empty factories, clad in their stiff-cotton work pants and open-necked shirts with rolled ups sleeves.

I’m not romanticizing a past that looks better in hindsight than it was in reality. Perhaps it wasn’t a sustainable economic model and was destroyed by the same people working within it. It’s just sad that way of life is gone forever.

Now, we’ve shifted to an economy based on financial services, a rollercoaster ride of an industry. It’s no coincidence that our economy began to have more mood swings than a menopausal woman off her hormone meds when Wall Street took over.

What needs to happen, and this will take decades to evolve, is new training for new technologies that, hopefully, put people back to work. But it will take a long time for our educational system to catch up and devise the training necessary for those jobs, whatever those may be.

In the meantime, it’s inevitable that our social safety net will need to expand. More and expanded jobless benefits, training funds for the long-term unemployed and increased Social Security and Medicare money in the future to financially support all those 50-somethings tossed out of work with a mortgage to pay, kids in college and zero retirement funds.

Yet the rich and the money-hoarding corporations don’t want to pay any more taxes to support those programs. Well, we all might have to. What we need are not tax cuts or increases, but tax fairness. Let’s start by getting rid of some stupid tax loopholes, like the ones for corporate jets.

How those taxes will be assessed is another matter. Do we increase taxes on income or on assets (which don’t count as income)? That’s for the politicians to decide. With the lobbyists big business and the wealthy can afford, it’s hard to believe taxes will be distributed fairly.

Which brings me to the protests on Wall Street. I’m of two minds on this. I think it’s great people are finally speaking out against corporate greed and the growing gap between rich and poor in this country. Our poverty rate is increasing at the same time Wall Street corporations are raking in record profits.

But most of the protestors seem to be young people looking for their “Vietnam” moment. I wonder, too, if they are mostly spoiled rich kids who can’t find a job after party-filled and parent-funded college years and are now upset because, as one Facebook friend said, daddy cut them off. If they were offered a six-figure job on Wall Street most would jump at the chance and switch sides so they can live in a downtown loft, far from the people who have been truly hurt the most by corporate greed: the millions of laid-off workers who have no voice and don’t have the time to protest because they are too busy trying to find work, pointlessly attending job fairs, and attempting to make ends meet.

What exactly are they protesting anyway? That Wall Streets make too much money (it always has) and has yet to do anything with that money, like create jobs that would help the middle class? Are they protesting economic inequality? Is this class warfare? A way for the left to counterbalance the Tea Party Movement on the right? Do they want a redistribution of wealth? Good luck with that. And from what I’ve seen, most of the protestors are, dare I say it, white. Where’s the diversity?

And where is the real anger? To these protestors, it’s a party, a way to show their social networking prowess. A more apt representation of middle class ire was the protests in Wisconsin when the governor tried to cut union benefits. And where did that get them?

Yet I think one of the reasons there has been relatively little anger about Wall Street greed is that there is a social safety in place that has helped the jobless through long stretches of unemployment. However, if that safety net is cut, and it surely will be, there will more anger. It’s unhealthy for a civic society to have a small, rich ruling class and a large, economically deprived underclass. At some point, those forces will clash and it may not be pretty or as relatively peaceful as the protests now on Wall Street.

Yet, count me cynical, but I don’t see much changing. Wall Street is probably laughing at the protestors, all but putting a sign out that says: “We don’t give a s**t.”

People who have jobs don’t care about the jobless and the politicians sure don’t. We’re seen as losers who are a drag on resources.

To Wall Street fat cats, the protestors are nothing more than an inconvenience on their way to their corner offices, A commentator I once heard said it perfectly: Wall Street’s job is to make money for investors, not job creation. President Obama has a hard sell on his jobs bill. With politicians of both parties beholden to Wall Street cash, it’s doubtful true financial reform will happen.

All this points to the fact we’ve become a nation of hypocrites. We want bountiful social services, but no one wants to pay the taxes that make those programs possible. We want to attack the rich, but we want to be rich like them. And how many times do we hear politicians and others tout their working class roots, yet they are part of the same system that has systematically destroyed the working middle class.

We scream “No blood for oil,” except when that oil fuels our SUVs. We don’t want one political party to control our government, yet we complain when the warring sides—which we put in place—can’t stop fighting each other long enough to get things done.

We say we want to help the working middle class, yet we’ve made them ghosts.

The Fruits of Our Labor

Another Labor Day is upon us and I’m left to ask: Do we really need to celebrate this day? Haven’t the mass layoffs of recent years and a 9.1 percent unemployment rate indicate what little regard corporations have for the average American worker? Instead of honoring workers, businesses want to get rid of us.

Sometimes it seems as if corporations are just one big patronage scheme, with executives only concerned about staying in power, surrounded by their lackeys and cushioned by big bonuses enabled in part by profits boosted by…layoffs. Instead of innovation, companies seem more intent on undertaking an Employee Resettlement Program. They can’t terminate us fast enough to keep their bottom lines flush.

Add to that the fact that no new jobs were created in August and the outlook for American workers is bleak indeed.

I’m no economist but the August job report could be due to a slow summer month. Many people take vacations in August, so no one was around to do any hiring, even if they wanted to. A better picture of the employment condition will emerge in the fall months. Companies start the budget process for the next year in September; if any hirings or firings are going to take place, it will happen later in autumn, probably November or December (the month I was laid off in). We’ll see what happens.

Given this situation, how should workers respond? We can be laid off at any time and through no fault of our own, so just how hard should we toil for any employer?

Of course, doing a crappy job is not advisable; that will surely get any employee fired, in good times or bad. But if working hard and doing a good job is no guarantee of continued employment, well, what can we do?

First, in this economy, be grateful you have a job. Many people would love to be in your shoes, so don’t dismiss it lightly or take it for granted. Any time I hear a person talk about how they only want to work for this type of a company or for some way-over-the -top salary or how they don’t want to work for anyone at all, I think how disdainful and condescending they are to the millions out of work, desperately seeking a job. While no one should take a job they would hate or stay in an abusive work situation, this is not the time to be picky. Perhaps someday when the employment market rebounds, you can find your perfect job. But that is not happening any time soon. Like they say in sports, suck it up.

Does that sound harsh? Yes, but the job market is harsh these days for people looking for work. In an ideal world, we would all get the job we want at a decent salary and more. Unfortunately, as someone who was brutally laid off and spent 16 months looking for a job, I know how unforgiving this employment market can be. So you can either look for work or go broke. The choice is yours. Remember, we are not free agents. (Ok, that was a shameless plug for another post. Forgive me.)

Second, if you have a job, do a good job. If there are days you have to work overtime to get a project done, do it without complaint.

Yet I don’t advise going the extra mile and taking on more projects in a vain attempt to impress your bosses. Trust me, you are not impressing them. They think you are a sap and are only too happy to get extra work out of you for no extra pay.

Take it from me, the mother of all saps. I actually thought that because I worked hard and did a good job for nearly two decades, my company wouldn’t let me go. Well, they did. And I was wrong to think that way, I understand that now. But I guess after so many years with the same company, emotion, not business sense, takes over. I will never make that mistake again.

So start thinking ahead to you next job, what you can learn on your present job that can help you find another position. Even if you have no immediate plans to look for another job (and in this economy, who would?), redo your résumé. It couldn’t hurt. When the ax falls, at least you have a spruced-up résumé to send out.

Network and keep in touch with former business contacts. I got my current job through a former colleague. At the very least, I know I can fall back on freelancing if this job is terminated. You can also look into training for another profession. For those with a riskier nature, you can launch your own business. Hey, you can’t fire yourself.

Remember, ultimately, you are in control of your work life, even though it may not seem that way right now.

But on this Labor Day weekend, I wonder, with corporate profits so high and wages and hirings on the down shaft, who is really reaping the fruits of our labors? Because American workers sure aren’t.