When I was twelve I joined my mother on a take your daughter to work day. I was really excited to see where she worked what she did all day, who she talked to. And when I walked into the sparkling lobby with the glimmering marble and shiny elevator doors, I think I was hooked. Next to my drab building where I spent my days in school, this was a beautiful place, full of people that looked like they were important somehow and they all rushed around as if there was somewhere that really needed them to arrive. I wanted to be that important to something. As a 12 year old the feeling that someone is waiting desperately for your arrival and thoughts, it was, for me an amazing selling point on the business world.
So off I went first to an undergraduate degree in Economics, where I learned that everything was perfectly predictable if only the world was predictable. However, in a world that is not predictable, we can still draw graphs without being tied to scales on the axis and make overarching statements, that the more something is demanded, the higher the price will rise, unless that high demand is met with more supply in which case the price will stay the same, or alternatively the high demand will cause supplier to overcompensate driving down prices temporarily, until a time that they are unsustainable, driving competitors out of the market and increasing prices again, unless of course the government won't allow it and then they will stay low ad infinitum. So in a nutshell that was my undergraduate degree. I was hoping that would be enough that people would find me important and I would rush around and they would start asking and respecting my opinion. However, with a B average in Economics and 4,500 classmates I was virtually unemployable as anything more then a part-time burger flipper or Olive Garden waitress. (image placeholder)
With the details of my dreams of greatness slowly coagulating into a solid but malleable mass, I was asked to join a group of test gerbils, to try out the new Master of Accounting program. In return for my participation I would receive 90% of my tuition and the opportunity to increase my value from that of part-time burger flipper - living in my parent's basement between the Barbie Dream house and 12 gnarled boxes of Christmas lights - Olive Garden waitress to CPA – real honest to goodness letters after my name. If that didn't make me important, I don't know what would.
Nearly 2 years after graduating with my undergraduate degree, I started working as a tax accountant at one of the largest public accounting firms in the world. My first tax return ended with my supervisor pretty much redoing all of my work while I was relegated to be staffed on the left over returns or work for people that no one else with any power would. It was a depressing scene in that first year. I had been allocated to the one kind of tax I wasn't interested in … individuals. I was assigned based on - wait for it - the B in my last name. It was the first in my class and the Individual group was the first on the list of departments, so off I went. Soon it was all I could do to get myself unchained from my department without pissing anyone off – but the only manager who was patient enough to deal with my distinct inability to really focus on details was himself a manager in the international individuals department. Finally, in this department I was worthy of rushing, I eventually accumulated some staff to help me and I was close to meeting my goal of importance. But I was worried I couldn't be important enough? (image placeholder) I mean how many famous international assignment services tax managers are running a Fortune 500 company?
In order to reach my goal I would have to breakoff schedule and make a quick pitstop at Servicetown, USA. It's a popular place to stop these days on your way to any high profile graduate program. However, this destination is growing so popular that sometimes you need to work pretty hard to get in, especially if you are hoping to get paid while you are there. My destination was the TFA neighborhood of Servicetown. I had signed up, interviewed, speeched, and dazzled my way into Greenville High School, much to my mother’s horror. I raised the average age in Servicetown by a couple of years, and was happy to share the wealth of life experiences gained from my 4 years partying legally in bars instead of frat parties. It was a two year stint, and it was mighty hard work, but at the end of it, I had what all but the most dedicated find at the end of their trip to Servicetown, a letter of acceptance. In my case it was off to Business School back in Philadelphia.
My MBA built on my knowledge of charts and graphs and broad generalizations. I redefined myself by the rules of this new game, where leadership came in four flavors, everyone lived in boxes and were desperate to get out, and team members should feel free to critique you at any point in order to foster your personal and professional growth. I came out of two years with some Cs Ps and a new appreciation for Excel shortcut keys. I could voice an opinion strongly and without any real foundation, and best of all ... all those charts and graphs I had learned about during my Economics degree I could now translate into 40 colors and make into an animated three-dimensional chart that talked(image placeholder).
But the biggest learning I took away from business school is the importance of having friends. However, you should no longer have only "popular" friends; you should have friends evenly distributed across all the strata of social acceptance levels from homeless man to presidents alike. During your MBA you find out the more connections you make the better. However, if you are the type of person to really develop deep friendships with a few key people, you may find yourself in trouble. As your social connections may have many, detrimental, "redundant links" and there is nothing more worrisome then the dreaded redundant link ... if I know 1 person who knows all the same people as another well then why the HELL would I spend any of my time (and time is money) talking to person number 2 since he/she is no more valuable then person 1 in my social network. Rationalize your social networks, RATIONALIZE! It's all about efficiencies across all aspects of your life, if you are not efficient then you are destined again to never be important and never be truly respected within the corporate world.
The most depressing learning of my advanced degree was that even in a top rated school there simply weren't enough good jobs to go around and you were forced to battle it out like a scene out of Mad Max, or like in Waterworld when people wanted freshwater and they couldn't drink out of the ocean, yeah, like that almost, except without the water so much, or the post-apocalyptic outfits, because well mostly people just shopped at Banana Republic. But I fear I'm getting away from my story, of how I was struggling my way up the corporate ladder towards a job with real meaning and responsibility. A way to shape the corporate world as I knew it. (image placeholder)
In May of my second year I received confirmation that I had climbed one more step in a long ladder to corporate greatness, or the ultimate destruction of my very soul (depending on who it was that you are talking to). Where had I landed and who had I stabbed in the back to get there? Well, I managed to find a small place in a little strategy consulting firm (read: you have a question? we'll make up an answer) and was absolutely thrilled that my long term plan of 2 years consulting followed by a move into the corporate world, quickly followed by world domination. As for those I'd stabbed in the back, well rest assured they were a fully redundant connection and of absolutely no value to my future.
It was a great start; it seems that in order to really be effective at telling someone else the answer you need to develop your own code language to make sure your client never knows that you are just discussing your dinner plans. The tags and ghosts, and standards ... I never knew I had any bandwidth, only time ... and write down what a random person thought in quotes and suddenly it became "color". Manhattan, wasn't just a place, it was a chart that no one could explain, Harvey's balls were all over the place, and if your bars weren't stacked you weren't trying hard enough to pack as much into a single loop as possible. When the haze of random words, that were used in place of very common, easily understood words, finally began to clear and I found myself looking for Bandwidth to accommodate a weekend shopping trip I thought ... this is a little strange, but I feel like I'm getting somewhere. Certainly everyone important must speak a language no one else understands.
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When I began I slept easily knowing full well, that when they had hired me they had not just hired a former CPA/teacher/endless student they had hired a person looking for success. Unfortunately, they had also hired someone who was very much used to having a life of their own as well ... hmmm. Depending on your perspective work life here was definitely in balance as long as your life was your work, then you were 100% in line 100% of the time, and I worked with many who were thrilled about it. They could talk about their ability to bring their work home, and call forwarding, as well as the power of the internet to allow them to have a life at work and to work continuously at home. In my master plan, it was never written that world domination would be quite so much work.
The lowest point occurred at the saddest part of the day ... dawn. While in many cultures dawn is equated to rejuvenation, and a re-awakening of the world. Dawn in the business world merely means that you have lost any chance to spend more then a few minutes in bed before returning to work, with even less brainpower. So my personal lowest point occurred just as I was realizing I had hit the 100 hour mark ... there were no taxis to be found at this hour and all I wanted was to be home in bed. About a block up I spotted a blond woman, about 26, getting into a cab, the cab pulled away and I turned around again, hoping to spot another from a new corner. And just as I thought the cab was about to take off it pulled over and the girl climbed back out ... the cabbie inside yells - you go to Lynn Street? I was thankful that a co-worker had called me a cab and got inside. When I noted my thanks, the cabbie stopped me and said, "no, no" I drove you last night - I drive you home again. It seemed my bright pink jacket and a propensity to tip my drivers well, had earned me a reputation with the few drives that were stuck with the night shift work. What do you do when the night shift cabbies know you?
What do you do when you are so sleep deprived that no alarm clock in the world can rouse you to meet a 6am flight? When you are expected to check documents for errors at the point that exhaustion has your eyes slamming shut involuntarily? When you leave work and sleep for 23 hours? When you cry at work more than once a week? How does world domination look when you are just aren't "owning" your position? When you are being told that you just aren't good enough? When person after person says it again and again? World domination starts to look pretty grim. World domination starts to look like a pretty lame plan. Screw world domination. I quit. I'm going home and taking an f-ing nap.
