oNCE UPON A TIME about a million years ago, the forest started getting quite dark around noontime. A damp, chill wind went streaking through the firs and spruces although it was a summer day.
“My word,” a woolly rhinoceros said to his wife as he squiggled his three toes in the mud. “They certainly are rushing the season.”
“You can say that again,” said his wife. “My snout is absolutely a-twitch with cold.”
A giant beaver stopped building his mud and tree-trunk dam to murmur, “The union is going to have to do something about this light if it expects me to put in my usual fourteen-hour day.” A great quiver went through his fat, flat tail.
A saber-toothed tiger nestled closer to her cubs. “I wish your father would get back here,” she said. “Something’s up.”
At the sea coast, other creatures were being affected by strange developments. “Ethel,” a Devonian shark said to his girl friend, “did you ever see a tide as low as this? It’s all I can do to keep myself wet.”
“I know,” she replied. “I keep hitting my head on the sand every time I dive.”
The great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather of what later became a porpoise surfaced beside its mother to ask, “Mummy, mummy, where did the sun go?” “Hush,” said its mother, “hush,” although she knew very well something awfully funny was going on.
Just like the innocent creatures confronted with the first harbingers of the Ice Age, many a forlorn little office creature has been heard to ask as recently as yesterday, “Mummy, where did the sun go? Why is it so cold in here?”
Mummy may not have the answer, but I’d be willing to guess that the sun is being blocked, and the chill is being caused, by a virulent case of office politics!
I define office politics—which exist in nearly all offices at least to some degree—as the struggle of people to hang onto their jobs, get better ones, get more power and money and occasionally drive a fellow worker out of his job and out of his mind.
My husband puts its more succinctly. “Office politics,” he says, “is the art of loving a bunch of bastards.”
A smart girl I know says that office politics is simply people being people—afraid, anxious, petty, jealous.
I think our definitions are all true ones, but the last definition is the truest. Any time you have a bunch of bast—I mean people—thrown together in any situation, you’re going to have factions, frictions and squabbles. Kids fight in kindergarten, mothers fight at PTA meetings, girls fight with beaux, landlords fight with tenants; and sometimes they all fight dirty. You have lots of people in offices.
Office politics ranges from the petty stuff—girls being pussycats, girls and boys getting in a bit of apple-polishing, a boss favoring your rival—to major stuff, such as the power play, the proxy fight and the stockholder suit.
Office politics are like white corpuscles. A certain number of “corps” are necessary in the blood to fight disease. A certain amount of politics are necessary to keep the workers in an office from being too torpid, contented and noncompetitive to get anything done. When there are too many white corpuscles, you get leukemia. With too many politics, you get bedlam!
Politics get much more virulent, of course, when a company is in trouble. If the cars aren’t selling or the stores aren’t reordering, management starts looking around for somebody to blame. They even look at each other, and usually they form teams. A board chairman, executive vice-president and sales manager will hold hands for strength while the president, treasurer and export manager decide to go steady—temporarily. You know about politics making strange bedmates and all that.
Although some politics will probably always be necessary, and a company crisis may make politics multiply and divide, I’m convinced that the men and women who go beyond the norm and play them virtually as a way of lif e are sick. Politicians generally choose to play politics instead of being good at their jobs. They’re not to be confused with the gruffs, the grumps and the grouches, of course. While these people are anti-everything you bring up and have fifteen reasons why it won’t work, after they’ve gruffed, grumped and grouched a bit, they usually go along with what has to be done. We’re talking about the real saboteurs. Here are three examples, all true but slightly camouflaged to protect the author.
THE GREAT ORGANIZER: The head of an electronics firm has reorganized the office twice since he took over six months ago and is headed for a third reorganization. One hundred and sixty-eight people have either been shifted, fired or scared hell out of since he arrived. Nobody can find the cafeteria without a road map because it’s been relocated four times, along with every conference room, wall partition and stick of furniture in the place. The Great Organizer has charts to interpret his charts, books of procedure to show girls how to do what they have been doing competently for ten years and graphs to record every curve but the receptionist’s. He doesn’t discuss problems with his staff, he shows slide films. Interoffice memos litter the air like confetti. Sales are way off compared to last year, and his high-powered research team has almost completed its report on why this is good. In other words: Office politician in high gear.
THE GREAT BUTTER BALL: The advertising manager of a large company oversees the spending of a five-million-dollar advertising budget. He doesn’t know any more about advertising than a salamander, but instead of ever having bothered to learn, he spends his entire day buttering. He butters his boss for one hour in the morning and another in the afternoon as they drive to and from work together. During prime time, he butters another top executive who’s above him and whom he has managed to interest in his own hobby of deep-sea fishing. This makes the painful discussion of advertising practically unnecessary. The remaining hours of the day are allocated to keeping anybody in the office who knows anything, including what a frightened stoop he is, from spending too much time with his bosses or his client. Office politician in orbit.
THE GREAT ARBITER: The producer of a comedy television show hires eight writers a week. The guy can’t write a line himself and doesn’t even know what’s funny, but the assistant producer takes care of such messy details as putting the show together. The producer is then free to spend his entire week pitting the four comedy-writing teams against each other so that he can step in just before script time and “bring order out of chaos.” Office politician superieur.
“Temporary insanity” may cause politics to run rife in an organization. For example, all hell broke loose in a public utilities company a few years back when the president fell in love with a no-talent actress and started buying TV spectaculars for her to star in. The ratings were nil. Profits fell. The stock dipped. Much whispering developed behind closed doors (closed doors are an absolutely necessary component of office politics), and the board of directors started hanging executives by their heels to see if any love letters fell out of their pockets. Secretaries were fluoroscoped. The chief finally resigned to go into independent television production, where he could lose money (his own) to his heart’s content. Office politician with wings clipped.
All these things affect you when you work whether you’re a principal or a minor player. Ladies can play office politics too, of course, although we usually aren’t awfully good at it. We don’t have the iced viscera necessary. Also, women hardly ever get responsible jobs without having talent and working hard, so there isn’t so much reason for us to play. You more often find girls coping with rather than instigating office politics. Of course a biddy-bookkeeper in charge of all the girls may seem to concentrate her every energy erg spreading fright, fear and anxiety among her flock instead of running the department. She’s an office politician third class.
One of the most tragic outgrowths of office politics is that a very insecure or confused boss will surround himself with idiots while perfectly capable people are either fired or left unused. I know the head of a bottling company who hired an unfrocked Greek priest to replace a perfectly competent sales manager who made him feel uneasy (about his own job). “Think how he’ll be able to commune,” he told his startled salesmen.
One of my copy chiefs had a favorite favorite, an ex-football star who gave some signs of having had his head stepped on. “Pete is a tower of strength,” my boss was fond of saying. What old Pete really was was a tower of blubber; but he was also the biggest yes-man who ever lived.
Sometimes office politics create a situation in which competent people can’t get their jobs done. In the second advertising agency I worked for, we three girl copywriters, considered as good as any in the business, were out of favor and almost totally misused or unused for over a year. The most creative of the three was finally fired outright. She went over to another ad agency, started working on $3,000,000 worth of business and is the darling of the place. The second girl, sick of the frustration, finally took a job in a giant agency in another city where she was made a copy chief herself. As for little me, one of my few assignments was writing a Max Factor column of advice to teen-agers for Seventeen Magazine. After I finished each column, five to seven men would rewrite, and eventually the assignment was taken away from me altogether. Quelle ego blowl Since I had very little else to do, I just sat down and, on company time, wrote a book of advice to girls about make-up, grooming, and a few other little things like sex and so on. The title of the book was Sex and the Single Girl, and it earned over half a million dollars for its author. (I also recently started doing a column on the same subjects for more than a hundred newspapers.) Am I angry about office politics? Don’t be silly!
There are bosses, of course, who know how to get the best out of people and keep office politics to a minimum. Usually these paragons of maturity are found in smaller offices and they succeed by practicing laissez faire with creative people.
Why don’t boards of directors hire only smart, reasonably-at-peace-with-the-world men and women to run companies in the first place? Why do they let in all those nuts?
One very intelligent career girl I know has this answer: “There aren’t enough smart, reasonable, well-adjusted people to go around,” Nona says. “In any company you usually find one or two brilliant men surrounded by twelve or fifteen average-to-outright-criminal types.” (And of course we’re all average or less some of the time!)
Another friend says, “When you discover the inner workings of any company, you just can’t understand how they keep the place open, much less turn out a product and make a profit.”
This bears out what the first girl said. If there were enough fabulous business leaders to go around, boards of directors would hire only that kind (provided the board members weren’t marshy themselves).
Don’t the creeps, the stoops, the virulent politicians, the weaklings and no-talents ever get fired? Certainly they do. Those who live by the sword, etc., etc. Consummate politicians usually have a lot of staying power, however. What else do they do all day but plot how to survive while the workers work? The politicians eventually do get bounced, of course. In twenty-one years of working I’ve never seen a real no-goodnik hang on forever. And once they’re fired and you meet them on the street, you wonder how anybody ever took them so seriously! That’s then! Unfortunately, before they are finally carried out, a great many nice men and women have usually been bludgeoned, fired and carried out (in emotional tatters) themselves.
How come I want you to work when work is like that? Darling, life is like that! There are some perfectly dreadful people in one’s own country, one’s own community, one’s own church and sometimes in one’s own family. Would you resign from the thrills of life to save yourself from the chills and spills? Some people even think office politics are sexy because of the intrigue and danger inherent—like sitting ringside at a particular gory fight. (I think these people ought to read a little in the Kama Sutra every night to dope out some new thrills.) At any rate, office politics don’t begin to dim the other joys of working. Besides, you’re all in the mess together! In a family squabble or doomed love affair you may suffer quite alone. During a siege of office politics, a thrilling spirit of camaraderie develops like that which Londoners knew during the Blitz.
Why can’t you, by being a dear, sweet, good little girl and wearing dirt-repellent miracle fabrics, just lie down and let office politics wash over you?
It’s almost impossible! Though you should be safe as a secretary, for instance, your boss may be on the ten-most-unwanted list. If you’re having an affair with a man who’s headed for the firing squad, I suggest you stop whatever you’re doing right now, get a big white hanky, cut two holes for eyes, tie it around your head and go to the mirror. You’ll want to know how you’re going to look as you both go down together.
If you’re virtually your own boss in a company, you’re too far up the ladder to stay neutral. When an involved executive friend drops by your office or opens up the whole mucky political subject at lunch, are you going to say, “Oh, dear! Oh, gracious! Oh, please, Mr. Gripsholm . . . you mustn’t tell me these terrible things. Couldn’t we talk about ice hockey?”
You’re in an office. To remain utterly aloof, even if you could, would get you so hated by both sides that you’d finally have to leave the company out of sheer loneliness (and sooner than the people who took sides). To abstain from voting is like not backing a U.S. presidential candidate because neither candidate is perfect. Anyway, abstinence won’t save your job.
Personal enemies are another facet of office politics. Going around in a potato sack and trying not to cause another living soul any trouble will still get you hated by somebody. You may remind someone of how far he could have got if he’d played it steam engine as you have. A little turnip who spends most of her time backcombing her hair will feel outraged because you have the job she feels she deserved. And if your position calls for making decisions, the decisions are going to rub somebody the wrong way. And then there are the plain old everyday haters, for whom hostility is as necessary as food. You can’t escape.
Though lying low doesn’t allow you to dodge office politics and avoid making enemies, “playing” politics isn’t the answer either! A friend recounts her experiences trying to play.
“There I was,” she said, “finally past the secretarial barrier with a job in public relations. This particular office was a hotbed of political intrigue, and I determined to play the game. I immediately made friends with my boss’s secretary. She would give me the scoop on the guy. As my friend, she would also put my calls through when others waited. My memos would be placed on top. She would tell him what a charmer I was and tip me off about pitfalls to avoid while others fell on their faces.
“All my plotting would have worked but for one thing. Mr. Tully was straight out of Tobacco Road. He was a vital-parts scratching, nice-girl-deprecating slob. He not only wanted the Kleenex brought to him—he wanted it held for him. And all the time he was busy holding Kleenex for his boss—an oily and insecure nothing. On the one hand, I was willing to do almost anything to make good and not be returned to the secretarial pool. On the other hand, I’d walk into his office and be told, ‘Okay, baby, let’s strip to the waist and get to work ‘(He didn’t mean it about stripping to the waist. He just wanted to put me on the defensive, which he did.)
“I tried hard to play the game—whole-heartedly at first, then half-heartedly, then quarter-heartedly, then no-heartedly. As the man liked me less and less, my work got worse and worse. I simply couldn’t do anything right. I finally left before he fired me.”
I think the point of this is that with a nice guy you don’t need to play politics. You can just be yourself. With a creep, it’s almost impossible to play and win.
All right then, what do you do . . . just stand there and wait to get your head handed to you?
It is my sincere hope that Vance Packard or Spyros Skouras or somebody will write a book someday and tell us exactly how to outlive our enemies at work and, furthermore, how to get them to stand still while the honey is drizzled over them and we get out the ants.
I’ve heard that a psychologist in Beverly Hills has come up with a plan for office in-fighting which he calls “stalking.” You lay a trap for your enemy and wait for him to fall in. I’m dying to hear more about it. Every time I’ve ever laid a trap for my enemy, the wrong “enemy” wound up with the trap door clanking shut behind her. I can still hear the clank.
I know during troubled times you’re supposed to play it smart, be seen only with the “in” people, avoid the untouchables and all that. It’s all such a lot of bother though—snubbing your best friend in the hall, especially if he or she is your roommate.
I remember when Buddy Adler, the handsome boss of Twentieth Century-Fox Studios, died. The new studio head had not yet been selected. In fact, it was the morning of the funeral. My husband gave me a blow by blow on the phone. There was the maddest scramble to get into the “right cars” to go to Forest Lawn, but nobody was absolutely certain which the right cars were. God forbid you should be caught riding out with anybody who’d been important in the Adler regime. Heaven bless if you got into a Chrysler 300 with the leaders of the new. But who were they? Now, three years later, nearly everybody in that funeral cortege is out of the company. Shows you how much good handpicking the right chums can do.
It would be cowardly, however, not to suggest some course of action when office politics are rampant, so here are some little exercises. The first are mental. You are to memorize the following five “Don’t Worry If’s” and four “Don’t Be Surprised’s.”
1. Don’t worry if your boss shows rank favoritism for somebody in the organization who is a cluck. It’s probably chemistry. A cluck’s H2S04 may titillate him wildly while your CaC03 leaves him cold. It may be just the other way around with the next boss. Play the waiting game.
2. Don’t worry if you were the fair-haired darling for five years and now find yourself on the s—list. Your successor won’t be the young elegante forever, either.
3. Don’t worry if management went to the ends of the earth to get you into the shop and is now treating you like slightly moldy bread. Poor insecure management is probably figuring it this way: If she works for us, how could she be any good? (They may have something there!) Other managements are waiting to be dazzled. One may be eyeing you wistfully right now.
4. Don’t worry if a genuine phony male or female is impressing the hell out of everybody temporarily and you seem to be the only clear thinker in the place. The flashy phony will fizzle eventually; if not, there is always a market for clear thinkers elsewhere.
5. Don’t worry if nobody has gotten around to telling you you’re doing well for six or eight months. In a New York cosmetics house famous for high salaries and terrible morale, a management member says, “Hell, why would you need to pass around compliments? If you’re still here, you know you’re good.”
Now for the “Don’t Be Surprised’s.”
1. Don’t he surprised if, when things are at their absolute nadir, a dear “friend” cheers you up by saying he’s heard you’re going to be sacked. For some reason he thinks he’s helping, but of course this is the kind of blabbermouthing nobody needs.
2. Don’t be surprised if, after there’s no question in anybody’s mind you’re leaving, they don’t get around to telling you. “Phasing Out” is more popular—make the person so miserable he leaves without severance pay.
3. Don’t be surprised if you are quietly separated from the people you have to work with to get the job done. One publicity girl I know was supposed to publicize a television show but was told she was never to attend it. She had to sneak in and skulk behind cameras and props.
4. Don’t be surprised if, while all this is going on, you feel suicidal and as though you’ll never be any good again. You need a benevolent atmosphere in which things are possible to do your best. A veteran insurance saleswoman told me that, after racking up the biggest sales in her department for seven years, politics set in and she was unable to make the simplest exploratory phone call without getting the shakes! A new job or change of office current will have you ticking like a clock again.
Now for a few action possibilities:
1. Redouble your efforts to do a good job during an office political siege. As little as you feel like it, slaving shows you are not going to be easy to unload. Khrushchev was quoted during the Cuban crisis, “Let your bayonet thrust. If it strikes fat, destroy. If it strikes steel, withdraw.” Well, when their bayonet thrusts, it should strike steel.
2. Do extra-curricular work for charities and professional clubs. This will help convince you you’re still good—and it might even convince them if you get enough publicity.
3. Try not to sulk or be a sorehead. Don’t go into seclusion. Try to keep your lines of communication open to the enemy.
4. Continue to charm. Though a certain executive can’t stand you, this is no reason for you not to continue to be cheerful and adorable. Palm the real you off on your analyst.
5. Don’t gratuitously discuss your trying situation with associates. One or two confidantes will know how bad things are for you, but keep the number small.
6. Wear your most beautiful clothes. Get your hair done often. Smell glorious.
7. Don’t get off the payroll! Leave at your convenience if you leave. Exiting to prove how smart you are only proves how smart they were to get you to do it.
8. Do keep a plan in mind about what you will do if you get bounced.
9. No matter how shaky your own situation, see people who are looking for jobs. You should do this throughout your office life anyway. It’s one of the ways you pay back the people who were kind to you.
10. I know most people will disagree with me about this one, but here goes. If you do leave with pretty sound knowledge about what’s wrong with the company and who’s running it, write a personal and confidential letter to the president. Keep it unemotional and back up your statements with as much proof as possible. (We don’t want you tied up in a sticky old libel suit.) You’ll feel better getting it off your chest, and maybe you can save the company after you’ve left.
Suppose it’s all to no avail and you’re axed!
Getting fired is pretty awful! I remember it well . . . walking through the office with the typewriters all clickety-clacking as usual, everybody still folksy and friendly because they haven’t heard yet . . . and the sick, thuddy feeling of being a failure. The worst thing is looking about at all the people who are left and realizing these cats are still wanted, beloved, while you alone have been singled out for Siberia.
Just remember that nobody is fireproof; and the bigger you are, the more combustible you become. There’s also almost no exception to the rule that people who are fired from good jobs go on to bigger and better jobs. Broadcasting companies, department stores, automobile factories and pharmaceutical houses are always being run gorgeously by somebody’s old castoffs. As for littie you, whatever got you into the place you got fired from won’t desert you in your need to shinny up another tree.
That’s enough brave and philosophical talk. Let’s answer a few immediate questions.
Q. Should I try to get them to change their mind and un-fire me?
A. No! It can be done occasionally, but then it’s rather like gluing a severed arm back onto the body. Plump for more severance pay if you like or a longer period on salary to get relocated, but don’t beg them to take you back.
Q. What can I do to get even with the bastards?
A. Get another job and have a brilliant success. There is no other way. Greek retribution will take care of your enemies, and they’ll do themselves in without any help from you.
Q. If they offer me the choice of severance pay or staying on until I get another job, which is better?
A. It’s usually better to stay put until you get another job. You can t be sure you’ll have one in a tiny time. Remember Rule 7—always stay on a payroll if you can.
Q. Do I frankly tell people I was fired?
A. You do not frankly tell people anything of the kind! Though your tendency is to announce your injury like a wounded child (“Hey look, fellas, I bashed my finger in and have six stitches!”), this is not smart. The minute you tell a handsome stranger at a cocktail party you were canned, a veiled, hooded look comes into his eyes. Somebody out there doesn’t want you. He isn’t sure he does either. Be honest with close friends but evade or lie a little publicly. Nobody knows for sure what happened to you.
Q. How soon do I apply for unemployment insurance?
A. Run, do not walk, to the unemployment office the day after you’re severed. You may need to force yourself—stand in line with those indigents? Listen, Cary Grant has stood in line with them and so has Fred Astaire. You have a right to unemployment benefits—you probably contributed to them, one way or another. Start looking for work, however, without delay.
Q. What about people who want to celebrate your departure with a bash or two?
A. Watch it! When twenty-five people were fired in one swoop from Foote, Cone & Belding, the first ad agency I worked for, there was such a round of galas you’d have thought an automotive tycoon’s daughter was getting married. We simply couldn’t do enough for the dear departing. There were breakfast do’s and luncheon do’s and sticking-pins-in-efligy do’s and I don’t know what all. The one man who refused to have anything to do with us mourners was the first one to get another job. There could have been a connection. Let friends see you off in style, but don’t let them lionize you as a loser.
Unless you’re a top executive (in which case you have to pretend you aren’t really looking for a job and nobody could have you without putting up a stiff fight), you have to make a job of getting a job. And you do let people know you’re eager.
First thing you do is make a snappy one-page résumé. There are many forms it can take, but the one outlined here is pretty good.
| (Name) | Ann Tompkins | Single | |
| (Address) | 382 Thrush Street | Age 33 | |
| Chicago, Illinois | |||
| (Phone) | DEarborn 4-7327 | ||
| (Last Job First) EXPERIENCE |
|||
| 1962-63 | FIRM NAME, Address (Job description. Make it sound good. Enhance and embroider. “Ran errands” becomes “production assistant,” etc.) |
||
| 1960-62 | FIRM NAME, Address (Job description) |
||
| 1952-1959 | FIRM NAME, Address (Job description) |
||
| EXTRA-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES | |||
| Business organizations you belong to, what you do in them, awards won, philanthropic work, extensive travel—any “plus” that might impress a new employer |
|||
| EDUCATION | |||
| 1948-1952 | College, Degree | ||
| 1944-1948 | High School (If you didn’t go to college, list night school courses and any current studies) |
||
| SKILLS (if you’re a secretary) | |||
| Typing: 65wpm | HOBBIES (if you’re a semi-executive) | ||
| Shorthand: 120 wpm | Skiing Sailing Costume Designing |
||
Now get a large supply of 8 x 10 or 5 x 7 black and white glossy pictures (of you, silly!). Caption each with your name, address and phone number. A photo and résumé go immediately to everyone you know who could be helpful. Leave a set at employment agencies. If you live in a big city, don’t register at more than four. You’ll run yourself ragged.
Four interviews a day are enough, too. It takes time to travel through a city and executives do take two-hour lunches. When you’ve been on an interview that interests you, follow it up with a thank-you note the same day. Don’t bother with jobs that didn’t appeal. As for the interview itself, try these:
1. Study the company where you’re going to apply—products, clients, stock-market position, advertising campaign, history and anything that’s been written about them.
2. Wear whatever is clean, reasonably businesslike (you can dress sexily when you get the job) and makes you look pretty. Hats seem to say you’re taking the whole thing too big these days, but you be the judge. Beautiful hair . . . definitely.
3. Come on strong charm-wise. A picture of the dreariest-looking wife and kiddies ever photographed gets a warm, ‘Your family? You must be very proud of them,” from you. Glow a littie. Bring up anything happy you’ve ever heard about the firm.
4. Do you flirt? Only by hanging on every word the gendeman (or lady) utters and not interrupting. As a matter of fact, this is flirting if it’s a man; it’s just being attentive if it’s a woman. Let them do most of the talking. Your resume will have said almost everything necessary concerning your career, so you don’t need to blabber away about that. Most interviewers love to grow expansive about their companies. Encourage them.
5. This is another place not to be too frank about having been fired. You can say you wanted to make a change because the job had a ceiling on it, or they were cutting back and wanted you to stay in a lesser capacity, or whatever makes sense. You can say you wanted to change fields if it fits in with this interview.
6. If a man seems to be sizing you up as a woman, but lovely! A married man usually likes attractive, approving females around him whom he may or may not think of as sex objects. (You’ll never get me to say this is wrong!) He may not be planning to bag you for his collection but only trying to ascertain your basic attitude toward men. One Little Miss Priss who thinks hemlock is preferable to sin, even when it isn’t her sin, can spoil a man’s pleasure in his work. An attractive girl textile executive says, “I’d rather have a man making a good healthy pass at me any time than have him cutting my work to ribbons. One is flattering. The other is venal.”
7. Make them commit themselves first about money. When they say, “What salary would you expect?” you say, “I’d rather you tell me approximately what you had in mind” The reason to hedge is that if you say right out how much you expect, the figure may be lower than what they secretly were willing to pay. If the figure is higher than you hoped, weren’t you smart to make them speak up? If their salary turns out to be too low, you can always say that wouldn’t be enough.
As to what to settle for, grab the job if you want it badly and can manage to live on the pay. There’s usually a going rate for any job category, and you can’t do that much better elsewhere. If the company needs you as much as you need them, hold out for the highest salary you can without losing the job. If they need you more than you need them, oh joy! You can grab for everything the situation will allow.
There’s one catch to demanding and getting an outrageous salary! If it’s completely out of line with what other people are getting for doing about the same work, you haven’t heard the last of it! Every time the company has to cut expenses, you’re the one they’ll draw a bead on. If the amount is major, executives who know your salary may resent you from your first hour because your paycheck is too close to their own. Even if nobody’s hostile, management asks itself regularly, is she worth it? Was she really such a bargain? (Remember that companies tend to undervalue what they own.) I wouldn’t for a moment tell you not to gouge when you’re in a good gouging situation. It’s too often the other way around. Just don’t expect people not to be trying to reverse your money coup.
One final word about job-hunting. While you’re in limbo, you will be very sensitive about how your friends act. Perfectly understandable. There’s no doubt your being jobless embarrasses some of them. (They’re embarrassed?) These spooks you have to forgive. For the most part, however, I don’t think pals actively avoid you as much as they just don’t think about you—one way or the other—all day, even though you think they do. One buck-up lunch and a call when they hear of something may be about all you can expect. (Didn’t you play it the same way when you were an “in?”) Job-hunting is a lonely, do-it-yourself proposition. You just have to chug chug through it like the little train going up the mountain. I’m sure you’ll arrive at your destination soon. Now let’s all go on to a happy place called Lunchland.