High School - College Job

I think I've mentioned here that I have a Facebook page (just look for Stephen Albert in Scranton), and yesterday I added a friend that I had worked for...I believe she was my manager...during a job I had in High School and College. It was great to add Kathy (the new Facebook friend), as I have seen her once or twice over the years, and just as was the case "back in the day", she's still a terrific person and I am thrilled that she is doing well.

Having Kathy on Facebook reminded me of what it was like doing the kind of work I did back then. While most of my peers had jobs washing dishes (I actually did that too for many weekends while in high school), the job I had during summers was working at a private facility for the mentally retarded. I know, "awwwwwwwwwwwww". It was an unlikely job for me, as in hindsight I have no interest in that kind of Human Services work. I got the job mainly because my mother was a night-shift supervisor at this place. But so I digress. Anyway, it was an "interesting" experience, to say the least. Some of the things that happened to me include:

• I lost 3 or 4 watches that were flushed down toilets by the clients (I would take them off to help with showers/baths, and for some reason flushing my watch was considered to be a sport of sorts)
• While working at the summer camp of this place, I had a door slammed in my face by an angry young man; this caused a cut on my nose. Sounds bad? Hahhhhh...it got worse. There must have been something on the door because I ended up getting some bizarre fungal infection on my face that took weeks to clear off. It looked for a time like my face was being consumed by some alien infection. No wonder I didn't get many dates.
• I got chicken pox at age 18 or 19. I was never so sick in all my life. In addition to the fever that spiked at 104 degrees, I had the sores everywhere...including the soles of my feet.

And those were just the top three....there are other stories, but I think you get the drift.

It was, shall we say, quite an experience.

It's Friday....

...and I am going to Connecticut today; in fact I'll be leaving in about an hour or so. I have two classes to teach and then I'll be heading back for a much needed weekend. The weather looks good...for late February...so I don't have any real travel worries.

Well yesterday was the review day, and by and large all went as expected. I took a very big hit in the compensation department, but hearing that from someone who works in the financial services business is like hearing that there will be a Tuesday next week. How big of a hit? Well let's just say that if you look at my bonus last year compared to this year, it's a drop of close to 50%. This is in spite of a very good review. Regardless, I'll say here what I said to my Director:

If this truly is a shared sacrifice among all of us, then I'm fine with the outcome. Sure I'm not "happy" with the numbers, but I've not heard of anyone who is & in the final analysis I have a great job with what I think is a great future.

In life you really do choose your attitude. I can choose to be bitter, angry and suspicious that this is all a scheme to screw me out of money, or I can choose to accept it for what it is and make the very best of it. I've learned this lesson the hard way over the years in dealing with my share of personal and professional issues. All the crying, all the fist pounding, all the bitterness in the world never built a single bridge, solved a single problem or made anyone happy.

Now what to do? Well this gives me an opportunity to look more closely at expenses, so that's a definite course of action. There won't be any vacation or trips this year, but I'll still invest in car maintenance (one of the cars needs from struts, for example) and I'm still going to get my flats screen office TV (although it will probably only have a 720p resolution). It will all work out.

Onward, to Connecticut.

Review Day

"To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing and be nothing"

- Elbert Hubbard


For the record I don't know who Elbert Hubbard is, and I'm neither motivated or interested enough to find out, but I like the quote never the less.

Anyway, today I participate in that once in a year ritual known as the "Annual Performance Appraisal". I'm not sure what's worse, giving these things or getting these things. I've given all the reviews I need to already, with the last being finished on Tuesday (although I do have some follow-up I'm working on).

Why is it so bad?

Well first, it's really not that bad. Honestly, the discussions tend to be very cordial and it's always been my opinion as a manager that there should never be any surprises at review time. If there are, that means that the manager didn't do a good enough job throughout the year to talk to the employee about his/her performance. It's like most things in life: if you put bad things off until the end, it's usually more difficult. Regardless, I don't anticipate much in the "bad things" department. In fact, I expect a fairly cordial discussion.

What I don't like about these kinds of things is the very notion of having to talk about myself. I'm simply not comfortable with that sort of thing. Mind you I am a very introspective kind of person, but that introspection is just that: on the inside. The act of having to verbalize this kind of thing is is annoying at best, frightening at worst. I simply don't want to sound like a dork, and of all the things that involve awareness in the this world, I'm often most confused about the "outside looking in" deal. I know how I see me, but I have a far tougher time understanding how others see me, and reconciling the difference between the two has always been a difficult process for me, if for no other reason than consistency: I'm fairly consistent with my own view of self, but the outside view tends to vary widely.

So what do I do to prepare for this monumental event?

Well I've had my review to look at since Tuesday. Note that I haven't actually looked at it yet. Why? Well I've been very busy, and plus I don't necessarily want to obsess over it for days before hand. So I'll look it over this morning. I've also researched things like past compensation decisions & ratings, so I'll have that handy for reference. I don't plan on actually using that kind of things during the discussion, but rather it simply helps me put into context what I hear. In point of fact the whole money thing isn't an enormous issue to me, as I've always had the philosophy that if I feel I'm being treated fairly then I'm okay...if I'm not, then it's war. Oh, and I feel that I've been treated fairly by and large for most of my career with my current employer. Truth be told, I'm not sure what my annual salary is anyway, so obviously I'm not in the business of counting that sort of thing down to the penny.

Lastly, as someone who also gives annual performance appraisals and who strives to live by the "treat others as you would like to be treated" motto, I do try and make this as painless of a process as possible for my boss. No sense causing him any grief, as I think he genuinely tries to do the right thing. In this day and age that's a good thing.

So there you have it, today is review day. The actual big event is this afternoon, I think at 3pm via video conference.

Road Apples, #17

Back on the Chain Gang - I'm back in the (Scranton) office today, after having been out on business & time off (yesterday) since last Tuesday. I'm betting on 54 new emails since Thursday afternoon. Joy.

On the Road Again - I'm in Hartford on Friday to teach two classes. I've set it up so that I can take the girls to school first, so as long as I get on the road by 8am I'll get to Connecticut with time to spare. The class is one that I do a lot, so no real preparation is required on my part. It's not a bad way to end the week.

In the Bad News Department - We apparently had five people laid off last week, one of whom I worked closely with a few years ago. I also worked fairly recently with one of the others. My heart goes out to them & I hope that they can find something better. These are tough times, and I'm afraid that things are going to get worse before they get better.

Things To Do - I have a whole host of small things I need to do, none of which I've made any progress on of late. I'm talking about things like checking my auto policy for glass coverage, scheduling an eye doctor appointment, etc.

Getting Ready for HD - I don't spend a awful lot of money on myself, which given the fact that I have three kids is understandable. I am, however, going to treat myself of a new flat screen LCD TV. Given everything that I went through last year at work, it's the least I can do. Anyway, I'm looking at buying a moderate sized full HD (1080) screen. To go along with it, I just got myself a new DVD player that up-converts standard definition DVDs to full 1080 HD. I needed a new player anyway, as I had to donate my old one to the TV room, as our old DVD player (which we've had for a long time) started to skip. By the way, the first movie I'll watch in HD? Independence Day.

PT Cruis(ing) Again

Back on the road after some minor repairs. It seems that the oil sending unit on the car decided to leak, resulting in my oil running low and the warning light coming on. Immediately after seeing that I took it to the garage where I get my work done...the verdict was the above referenced part. Unfortunately they were not able to make the repair on Saturday when I brought it over, so that had to wait until this morning.

The story does have a happy ending...after a new part and the addition of a tire rotation, I'm now fully back on the road, all be it $80 lighter.

James Gandolfini On SNL

If you are a fan of "The Sopranos" then you will love this...

"Useless, Useless"

...the title above is what Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth muttered to himself, near death, while looking at his hands. I always wondered just what he was thinking about at that moment, and will I, near death, be thinking something similar?

In point of fact, I think we all feel "useless" from time to time. I know I do.

There is a terrific but not so well known song written by David Gates titled "Been Too Long On The Road" that has as it's first lines:

Always look so good on the outside
when you get to believin' it's true
Then you know that you're on your way

Heady stuff coming from a guy who once wrote a song with the opening line "If a picture paints a thousand words, then why can't I paint you?" ("If"). Anyway, so just what is the connection between John Wilkes Booth and a song by Bread? Well for starters, both seems to be different angles on one of the biggest challenges I've faced and face in my life, mainly that of people in my family who suffer from chronic mental illness.

I know, I know, unlike AIDS or Cancer, "mental" illness is not a trendy diseases that you can rally around and get Regis to support. There's no telethon for Mental Illness and in fact you're not supposed to even talk about it. But in the immortal words of many-a 70's comic, "Funk That".

Now at the risk of sounding defensive, while I've had my share of mental health challenges in life...I think we all have...and God know's I'm not model for anything (well maybe for Portly-Sized Boxers)...my own mental health has actually been okay. That's the blessing part of this rant. While a few members of my family have struggled (and do struggle) tremendously with depression and other related problems, by and large my experiences with them them haven't made me less mentally healthy...in fact, I think they've done the opposite. The more I've needed to deal with family members who have trouble dealing with the realities of living, the better I've been able to deal with them myself. In fact, I can look back 20 & 30 years ago and see for myself just how much I've grown as a person.

Anyway, one of the problems in dealing with people close to you who suffer from mental illness is the feeling of "useless". No matter how much you try, no matter what you see as being the "obvious" solution, no matter how you try and express yourself, the fact remains that you are more or less powerless. It's no different than any other illness: I can't, by extension, offer up my immune system to help a young child fighting cancer, no matter how much sympathy I feel. Sure, you can try and be supportive, but in my experience this is one illness where that may make you feel worse after the effort. That's just a minor cruelty in a sea of them when it comes to this sort of thing.

Now from the outside, you may look at someone like me and think "okay, he's a bit pudgy, but he seems reasonably successful and appears to have his act together" and I couldn't argue with you. I'm working on the pudgy part by the way. Like most things from the outside though, the view is ever so skewed. Like the song goes though, I can't myself believe that it's true, because if I did, I'd surely be on my way. No, the view from the inside is one of always trying to balance my own sense of self and my own mental health so that I'm overwhelmed by the waves of illness that seem to crash on me all too frequently. It's not easy, but no one ever said that life was.

Finally, I suppose someone could read this and think "Well boo freak'n hoo Steve! Stop your complaining and self-loathing", and that's their prerogative. They would be wrong though. Far from self-loathing, I'm actually okay within my own skin, thank you very much. I have found though that writing about how I feel, even about painful subjects like this, is probably one of the best ways to prevent myself from "believin' it's true". I've not done a lot of writing about these kinds of things here, but over the years I've actually done a lot of it via other venues. I write about this because it helps me understand these things better; the fact that this is a public venue is all the better: public venues make you all the more careful and thoughtful about what you say; they maybe also send a signal that it's okay to talk about something as shunned as Mental Illness. As for complaining, I'm not better or worse off than anyone else, and in fact I think that the things I may struggle with in fact pale in comparison to those of others. That doesn't mean that I don't feel what I feel though.

In the end, what matters is that you be able to look at yourself in the mirror...pudginess aside...and be reasonably comfortable with that you see. That's the gift I think I have that some close to me seem to lack. For that I will always be grateful.

The Case FOR Howard Stern

I admit it: I am a Howard Stern fan. Well I admit it here; there are some instances where I don't, such as around my mother (and if pressed by the VP in charge of my division at work). But anyway, I do freely confess that I am a fan.

I first heard Howard Stern back in the mid-late 80's, when he had a show out of Washington DC which I was able to pick up from my lowly post-graduation-first-job apartment in York, PA. It was a Sunday I believe, and the station was replaying his show (or segments from his show), and I was immediately interested. His guest on the show was "The Fabulous Thunderbirds", and they did a raunchy version of "Tough Enuff" in the studio. I was immediately struck how by how different the show was in comparison to the "Wacky Zoo" format stuff that was normally played on the radio. Now I didn't regularly listen to the show back then, but it was my first experience.

My experience with Howard slowly grew from there; while living in NJ (1989) I would listen to him while commuting to work and then once I moved back to Pennsylvania (1990) I'd again listen when I had business in NJ. It's then that I got hooked. Even though I couldn't listen all the time, I took every opportunity to tune him in when I could. He was even briefly on the radio in Scranton, but alas, Scranton and Howard Stern go together like Sauerkraut and Chocolate Pie.

Fast forward to now, and with the advent of satellite radio, I was finally able to fully feed my Howard Stern jones on a regular basis, and I've been listening more or less daily now for over two years.

So the question is this: Why Howard Stern? Here's my list:

1. Honesty - Howard Stern is the most honest guy in the media today, bar none. In an age where everything is pre-packaged and focus-grouped, Howard is a guy that always shoots from the hip without a filter. That isn't always pleasant to listen to, but you have to appreciate the fact that the man is honest with (and very mush respects) his audience.
   
2. Interviews - Howard Stern is one the best interviewers in the media today, and probably one of the best of all times. You have to hear him interview someone like Paul McCartney (where he gets Macca to talk more about how he really feels about Yoko Ono that you've ever heard before). For whatever reason, guests seem to be more honest with Howard than they are with anyone else. Why? I suspect it's for the reason I noted above: Howard is honest with them (and his audience).
3. Format - Howard Stern practically invented the talk radio format. Before you had Limbaugh, Hannity, or even Don Imus doing radio shows that consisted of almost entirely just conversation, you had Howard Stern doing it. Howard's show really consists of him (and his cohorts) talking to their audience for a few hours each morning. Note the words "talking to"...as opposed to "talking at" or "lecturing to"...as you get the distinct impression that Howard has the utmost respect for his audience.
   
4. Humor - I don't find everything on the Howard Stern how funny (for example, I don't like "fart" humor & I could care less about spanking porn stars), but what I do find funny is often times utterly hilarious. For me, the "golden age" of the how was back in the early 90's, when the show had Jackie Martling and Billy West on...some of the hold David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani bits still make me bust a gut laughing.

As I noted above, I don't find the show as funny now as I did years ago. In fact, I think the show took a bit of a turn south when Jackie Martling left years ago and in all honesty, I kind of liked Howard better when he was more of a normal married guy (as opposed to now when he's more of a super-rich dude married to a super-model) with a radio show. But even with what I think are flaws, the core of the show is still great.

Notes From The Road...Thursday Evening

For the record, I did write yesterday evening, but for some reason the post seemed to disappear. Le sigh. Oh well, it was far from an Peabody Award winning piece anyway.

Yesterday was pretty tiring, but it was also pretty productive. The details are either lost to me or I'm too tired to recall, so who cares?

Today wasn't as manic as yesterday, but I did get some sense of accomplishment. I finished doing staff annual reviews, which was the reason I am out here in the first place. Those discussions went well, which says more about the extremely high calibre of people I work with than any talent I may have.

As for this moment, I'm sitting in a Best Western Inn near the Quad-Cities airport in Illinois. Not a bad place...it's not Marriott, but the bed looks comfortable, I can get an Internet connection, and it's close the airport. Life is truly good.

Here's to tailwinds, exit row seating and going home.

Notes From The Road...Tuesday

Well it's been a long day.

Up at 3:45am this morning, out the door by 4:45am.

At the airport by 5:00am.

Boarded my first flight and was able to get an exit row seat...SCORE! Room to spare, and all I had to do swear that I could lift a 35lb CRJ aircraft door. The space allowed me to do 90% of my checking account reconciliation. Score again. Left the gate a half hour late, but arrived in Detroit on time...you gotta love the power of fudging flight times.

Had about 40 minutes between flights, so I got a Sarah Lee blueberry muffin at an airport shop. Disgusting, but eaten anyway...I was hungry.

Boarded my second flight at about 9am. No exit row seating available this time...in fact, I'm seated next to a gentleman who about the same size as me. Not pretty stuff. I swear that my knee caps were going to wear off from being pressed into the seat in front of me. Flight arrives on time. Damn was I sore.

Got my rental car...lucky me, it's a 2009 Chevy Aveo. Quite possibly the cheapest car in production today. You'd have to go back to the Yugo (the cutting edge of early 80's Serbo-Croatian transportation technology) to find something cheaper. I think the doors are made of drywall. Anyway, I proceed to drive to Dubuque. Once I get on I80 (which I'm on for about five minutes) I call into our team's bi-weekly conference call. I can hear about 60% of what is said due to a combination of the road noise and poor voice pick up in Scranton. Oh well...I was glad I was able to at least get onto the call.

Arrived in Dubuque after driving for about an hour or so. Park at the hotel and walk across the street to the office. A slew of meetings begin, although I did time out to have some Mexican for lunch.

At about 5:30pm I get too tired to function, and after solving some print server problems, I decide to declare victory and end the day in the office.

Walk back to the hotel and check into room 420.

Dinner consisted of a steak sandwich at the lounge (the hotel restaurant wasn't open) and a piece of marginally okay coconut cream pie.

Head back to the room to unpack, iron a shirt and fight with the ThinkPad over it's desire NOT to connect to any wireless networks. I win...and I get connected.