Another update from the Jungle….
Patsy was named for Patsy Cline and she has a pretty good singing voice. So she moved to Nashville with visions of international fame dancing through the lyrics in her head. She took the first job she could find while she pounded the pavement seeking a record contract.
She never landed a record contract and her last three employment gigs were as abbreviated as her open mic gigs. But her luck is about to change. She just got a job with a regional company that is distantly connected to the music business. Sure it involves doing boring stuff that she did at several of her previous jobs but she enters the new employer’s offices with a smile on her face and a spring in her step.
After a day with HR, filling out paperwork and learning about all the things that can get her fired, Patsy’s enthusiasm wavers. But she arrives early the next day determined to do well. The HR rep shows her where the bathroom is located and guides to her a rabbit-hutch sized cubicle. Then the HR rep abandons her to go deal with an HR crisis.
Patsy leans around the cubicle corner to ask Doris for a little assistance. Doris is on the phone. Rebecca, on 
her other side, clues Patsy in to a few basic procedures, such as which database takes which customer information. Patsy realizes from prior experiences that she’s just gone through “orientation” and she sets to work.
In the first week, almost all her work is rejected for a variety of reasons. Patsy tries to explain to co-workers that in her last job they did it this way. Her supervisor says in front of co-workers that she doesn’t care how the company’s main competitor does business.
Before her first paycheck, Patsy’s demoralized. As her probationary period ends, the HR rep tells Patsy that she’s being dropped because she “just doesn’t get it” and her co-workers think she’s whiny.
What should Patsy do next?
- She can reach across the desk and slap the HR rep for not ensuring she received proper training.
- She can leave quietly and bad-mouth the company on her Facebook page.
- She can find a friend like Merle Haggard’s “Leonard” to help her until her singing career takes off.
The above scenario is a composite of many employers who expect to find ideal employees without investing in training. It’s a doomed process similar to seeking your life’s soulmate in a 2nd Avenue bar on Saturday night.
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Corrie is bored with her job. It hasn’t challenged her skills in years or put her in line for a promotion. She’s tried to find other jobs but the truth is that she’s unlikely to get a big enough salary increase to offset the loss of her current benefits package.
To pass the time and alleviate her boredom, she creates imaginary scenarios for her job. When her boss gives her a new assignment, she pretends its part of a great military plan, like Operation Overlord. She imagines herself working in a small office in London, helping plan the D-Day invasion.
When she takes a business trip, she pretends she’s an agent dropped into occupied France to support the French Resistance. As she drives, she thinks of the highway patrol as roving bands of collaborators looking for Resistance workers they can arrest and interrogate. When she checks in to a hotel, she scouts the lobby for exits in case she needs to beat a quick retreat from a Gestapo raid.
But Corrie stopped caring after the management team downsized the workforce. She’s survived several staff reductions since the first big cull of the herd by keeping her head down and her opinions to herself. She no longer volunteers for special projects but her past volunteerism means her boss considers her a “team player” and Corrie thinks that’s helped her keep her job.
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