This post was cowritten with Elizabeth McLeod, a millennial and cum laude graduate of Boston University, and daughter of Lisa Earle McLeod.The first alarm bell in this "resignation letter" (which astonishingly goes unremarked upon in the well deserved fisking) is that this child needed her mommy's help to write it. Ok, if you're asserting yourself as an important and competent adult, relying upon your parent to help write it is a terrible way to start.
In this long, tedious letter, this "adult" (again, it bothers me immensely that she wants to be taken seriously, but had to get parental supervision to write it) goes on and on about how the work she's being asked to do is more about the bottom line than changing the world. And she's quitting (again) because she's not finding the fulfillment she wants. The problem, child, is that businesses are in business for business. They are all about the bottom line, because that's what lets them hire vapid little idiots like you (or more precisely, ones who will actually work without feeling "fulfilled") in order to improve that bottom line. Something tells me that they're not going to be suffering from an acute lack of you. You may believe they will, and it's truly adorable that you and your mommy feel qualified to give business advice to your former employer, who, chances are, was turning a profit before you ever showed up. I mean this sincerely when I say that I agree. Your former employer did not deserve you.
…and what I read were a dozen excuses why the twit didn't want to show up to work on time, and ready to actually do the work involved.
ReplyDeleteI have worked in every working environment there is: little company, fast food, fortune 100 company, retail store, lab, office, and home.
The day came when I was working with a white-headed patent attorney, a partner in my firm, who found himself cutting legal-size paper down to A4, to make a filing that day. He said "When I went to law school, I never dreamed I would wind up doing this." When you are the boss, and you have to get something done, and you don't have the right support, you do it yourself. Cutting paper to size is simple: it only takes two strokes. Explaining it would have taken longer than doing it.
Every job I have ever had occasionally involves scut work. People get their first jobs doing scut work to take a load off of somebody who has real skills. Such work is honorable and useful. People who want to get beyond scut work, and who want to get paid better, learn how to do a more-skilled job.
This letter, with its exaggerated sense of personal importance and value, reminds me of an idiot a law firm hired to handle its IP issues. They went cheap, and got someone very young. He would be asked to fix something at a secretarial station. He would fix that, and get all charmed about adding cool features and rearranging things. The secretary would come back with assurances that all was ready, and then attempt to accomplish a task given to her. Shortly thereafter, there would be a scream of pure rage from an otherwise polite, contained lady. The kid had some little bit of training on the latest version of a handful of programs, and lots of enthusiasm, but not one clue about how to add value to the enterprise that had hired him.
My kids and my ex-husband think I am a luddite, because I do not adopt technology unless I can see a demonstrable advantage to doing so. No, I do not push every button on every new device, just to see what it will do. No, I do not want to spend hours playing with the latest thing, or buying some ungodly combination of cheap equipment and vaporware to incorporate into my workday.
My clients are regularly amazed at how fast I am, and how well my work supplies their needs.
/rant
Valerie
When you are the boss, and you have to get something done, and you don't have the right support, you do it yourself.
ReplyDeleteThat's really been the lesson about being the boss for me. What it ultimately means is that everything is on you.
…and what I read were a dozen excuses why the twit didn't want to show up to work on time, and ready to actually do the work involved.
ReplyDeleteI'll not disagree, but figured the fisking had covered that well enough for my taste. But now that you speak directly to it, I am now astonished at the wide variety of arrogance on display. She and her mommy not only know more about how to run their business, nor do they only feel like they're there to "change the world" (and damn that company for not letting her/them), but they also think the work they've been assigned is beneath them somehow (as you point out). Once again, that company did not deserve an employee like her. In fact, there are very few people I would wish her upon.
Hubris, hubris, hubris.She needs to spend some time washing dishes in a restaurant.
ReplyDeleteAfter that little screed she will never work again for any productive enterprise- it is going to be "non -profit quasi government " or nothing. People trying to make a buck are not usually interested in suicide by PC idiots.
ReplyDeletecum laude: what is that--colleges' new participation award?
ReplyDeleteToo precious.
I won't be recommending BU to my grandkids, if this is the level of education they provide.
Eric Hines
Hillsdale is one of the few places that seems to be PC virus free.
ReplyDelete