The Career Clinic Blog

This is a tale of two keynotes.

The first was given by Jack Swanson at the New Media Seminar in New York City this spring, sponsored by Talkers magazine. Jack's in charge of operations at two of the top-ranked radio stations in San Francisco. He thinks radio’s naysayers are full of it, and he backed up that opinion with research.

He informed, he entertained, he inspired. He had a point.

The second was given by someone else at a different venue in a faraway city, several months later. This man wore shorts and sneakers--and a shirt he didn't tuck in--and stood in front of a couple of gag slides while admitting he hadn’t done much to prepare.

He reminded me how much I enjoyed listening to Jack Swanson.

Now granted, I haven't been asked to do a lot of keynotes. None, actually. I'm the person schlepping my books--and my suggestions for finding work you love--to breakout sessions. So you can take the following observation with a ton of salt. But I was embarrassed for the second speaker. He reminded me of women who used to wear curlers to the grocery store, back when anyone wore curlers, and made the rest of us wonder what they were saving themselves for. If giving a keynote isn't worth a little prep time, a little time to spiff up, what is?

Maybe he's had such an illustrious career it doesn't matter how he appears to people who don't know his history. All some of us had was his present, how he practically bragged about not having a point.

He didn't act as if it mattered, as if we mattered. Jack did.

Guess which one I'm going to emulate?

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One of the bartenders in the restaurant where I worked as a cocktail waitress was amused by my inability to talk for the sake of talking. He thought it was the most important thing we did. I agreed, but it was a struggle. There's nothing I love more than sparkling conversation, few things I find more annoying than the same exchange repeated over and over.

The first few hundred times I heard servers wonder if it would get busy that night, I was okay. I'd wonder right along with them, toss off some remark about the weather or homecoming or whatever might have an impact on the evening's business. After a while, though, I ran out of responses.

It took a while to lose patience with the same old, but eventually I did. “This table didn't tip me. I wonder if I'll get cut. I thought it would be busier tonight.” Shut up already! One afternoon a server stood at the bar, wondering if we needed "better table tents in here"--like that would help business. I just looked at him. Then I walked away. Which the bartender thought was hilarious, because of course he'd set him up.

I used to know a man who worked really long hours, and I wondered how he got anything accomplished--given how patient he was with anyone and everyone who wanted to gab. Maybe that’s why he worked such long hours! He'd engage people who stretched one or two bits of gossip into hours, literally hours, of, "Well, I suppose I should get going..." He’d smile at them and not once betray the twitchiness I felt when I was with him, how eager I was to jump in with, "Yes! Let's all get going and get on with our lives!"

But seriously. How do nice people get any work done?

When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead is Jerry Weintraub's memoir. The man who's worked with Elvis and Sinatra, who's headed a movie studio, who's been the go-to guy for getting more done in this world than you might believe, amused me very much when he told a newspaper reporter something he learned from his father: "When you walk in to work, in the office, just say 'Good morning' and go to work. Whatever you do, don't say, 'How are you?' Because people will tell you--and there goes half your day."

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Does your work history look more like the route a school bus takes than an expressway to anywhere? Mine does.

Babysitter. Beverage girl. Grocery bagger. Bakery gal. Draftsman (I was going to say draftsperson but it sounded like something you’d put in front of a door to keep the cold air out). Construction worker. Railroad design engineer in training. Manufacturing plant manager in training. Telephone technician manager. Marketing manager. Communications account representative. Telephone operator. Tax research salesperson. Natural gas salesperson. Freelance writer. Cocktail waitress. Radio advertising salesperson. Radio news reporter in training. Classified ads representative. Radio news reporter. Mom. Freelance journalist. Book author. Motivational speaker. Talk show host. Blogger.

Career consultant Anne Headley got me to thinking about all the different jobs I’ve had, in a comment she made here. I used to kind of wilt when I pondered the meandering I’ve done, wondering if it would add up to anything. Now that I have the privilege of hosting The Career Clinic and blogging, it makes sense. So does my preoccupation with saving stories.

Why is it that most of my favorite work memories have to do with things going, or about to go, very wrong? Take, “Telephone technician manager.” I type that job title, and suddenly I’m fresh out of college again, in charge of a dozen or so telephone company technicians. I use the words “in charge” loosely, though not as loosely as my direct reports did. It took them, every last seasoned (read: jaded) one of them, several months to warm up to me. The in-between was, shall we say, hell.

I can still remember the first catastrophe we had in telephone companyland. I can still see the technician who barked at me as I reached for--what?--a box with some wires in it. “Don’t you touch that thing!” he screamed. “You don’t know nothin'!”

That’s good advice, I’ve since decided, for new hires supposedly in charge of people who know what they’re doing. Keep your distance until you’re one of them. People who know what they’re doing, that is.

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Once upon a time a dog ran away from a family with lots of little kids. Probably in search of some peace and quiet, thank you very much, but who knows. The children were very sad. They taped a bunch of signs to the front of their house in the suburbs. The signs said, "Have you seen this dog?" Every one featured a picture of the missing pooch, painstakingly drawn with crayons, each more stick-figurish and kidlike than the last.

Nope. Haven't seen that dog.

I found it surprising, as a city gal, what made the news on a small-town radio station. Missing pets, for example. One day we got a call from someone who had a dog but wished she didn't. "I want to place it in a Catholic home," she said. And I just wanted to say, "But it's a dog."

I kept my mouth shut, though. Sometimes that’s your job.

Good thing. What do I know about the animal kingdom? I'm allergic to most of it. Eckhart Tolle was the first person to make me wonder what I'm missing when he said, "I have lived with several Zen masters--all of them cats."

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I used to host a talk show on a cable-access station, and the manager of a local department store let me borrow outfits to wear on television. One of the gals who worked for him was nice, but she never smiled at me. I saw her two or three times a week, and I started wondering what the deal was. Did she hate her job? Or did she just not like some of her customers? Maybe she didn't like me. Maybe she thought my show was lame.

It wasn't that I needed her approval. But not getting that…registered.

Then one day I saw her smile at someone. She flashed a mouthful of teeth so crooked it was disorienting, because everything else about her appearance was flawless. It reminded me how little we know about each other’s stories. I vowed to be gentler, from that point forward, when sizing anyone up--myself included.

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Congratulations! You got a job interview. Now what? My sources suggest you be ready for this opening: "Tell me a little bit about yourself."

Be ready. And be concise. The interviewer wants to know if you're qualified for the work, sure, but that person is undoubtedly also wondering what you'd be like to have around--so don't start with where you went to kindergarten and have the employer nodding off before you get to the pertinent work experience. Offer up two or three things that are interesting, that are useful, that demonstrate how qualified you are. The goal is to tell people enough to pique their interest, not so much they wonder if they’d be able to shut you up during coffee.

Isn't that a great suggestion not just for work, but for life? That's what I love most about passing along career advice. It's a springboard for talking about how to live.

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Once upon a time I decided to get down to my driver's license weight. It was easier than I thought it would be. I just kept track of every calorie the way I keep track of my workouts. Once I was honest about what I took in, momentum took over...and I shot past my goal--by eighteen pounds! I weigh less now than I did in high school.

It made me wonder what else I could pull off, healthwise. On a whim I gave up alcohol, which was easy. Never liked the taste, never liked how it made me feel, never miss what I hardly ever had to begin with. Meat was a different story. It took a few tries to say goodbye to that, and I'll probably always remember my last few bites of a filet… especially the instant headache that inspired me to give it up in the first place. But it's been a year--today!--and I haven't missed that either.

A funny thing happened on the way to letting go of foods that made me feel bad: I ran out of them. I don't eat junk anymore--Dove dark chocolate is not junk, you can look it up--and I’ve never felt better in my life. I need less sleep, my cholesterol is 146, even my teeth are healthier. I eat all day long and don't gain weight. It's a little boring, but so was the unending battle I used to have about how much healthy food earned me the right to a donut or a cookie.

Is there something you want off your to-do list? Don’t let anyone tell you it can’t be done.

Happy New Year!

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