The Not Really New Kid on the Block
I worked for company X for 13 years and during the span of time that I worked there, I turned 30, moved to another state got engaged and didn’t get married, got engaged again, did get married and then got divorced. I watched people come, go and return to Company X while I stayed and did pretty much the same thing, year after year, for several years longer than what I probably should have. The degree to which I was or was not effective in that job is a matter of some debate and with some of my closest friends still working for company X they likely aren’t the most unbiased souces of my professional assessment. Toward the end, I’m astute enough to say that I had “jumped the shark” (funny story about that expression in a bit). And then last year- I left, taking a leap of faith and my questionable judgement to a new company.
This week I’m in Chicago staying at the James Hotel http://www.lhw.com/property.aspx?propertyid=890&Ext=Gjmschi&gclid=CL6-u-ylpJACFQINPAodf2yu7Q attending a training with about 40 other people from my company. I find that I have little in common with them and that while waiting to be seated at the restaurant tonight http://www.nacional27.net/ I was, as I have been, very much alone. My friends from company X wouldn’t recognize me now (and not just because I’ve nearly doubled my weight in the last two years). I was struggling to make conversation. Eventually, things loosened up (thank you, Captain Morgan) but when everyone headed to the hotel bar afterward, I had a flash of sitting at a different hotel bar, surrounded by colleagues and friends from company X where I knew everyone and for better or worse, they knew me. Would I go back to work for company X again? No. But if I could take everyone of them with me to my new company…
The company where I’ve now worked for the last year, has given me an amazing job. The people are wonderful but I can’t seem to get past the fortress of “what office are you from, what accounts to you manage, blah, blah, blah.” There is an age delta here and I’m long- in- the -tooth compared to the Millennials I’m surrounded by. One of the presenters today from a consulting firm referenced the Happy Days/ Fonzie episode where Fonzie is on water skis and jumps a shark while on his skis. It was officially the end of Happy Days and so birthed the expression “jumping the shark” which has been the impetus for many business books and Internet reference (search on-line for the expression if you’re thoroughly confused). So when the presenter made the reference this afternoon, there were only 2 other people who ”got” the joke. And as I looked around the banquet room, I realized that the majority of the people in training had never seen an episode of Happy Days.
At company X, we had a shared sense of humor and the same pivot table of experiences and history. And I miss that.
On a bright note, there was a part of the presentation that is encouraged blogs as a business development skill and the guy I was seated with has one; we exchanged urls and then he referred me to a friend of his who does a lot of blogging and enviously has several thousand readers each month. I can’t even imagine. At this point, I figure there are 5 people who’ve read what I’ve posted so far. I know it’s only been a couple of days since I’ve been doing this and also that much of what I’ve written isn’t very good, or very funny and I keep finding typos. It’s a start though, right?
Check out the Chicago links; I can’t say enough great things about The James or Nationale 27.
…and there’s a Starbucks across the street!
Jen — you never cease to amaze me with your wit and ability to laugh at life. Keep it up, kiddo!
I love reading this and you always make me smile with your words of prose and literary abilities. I only wish I had the ability to write instead of calculate.
You bring up an interesting point, that at Company X we all had a set of common history and so many of us started at roughly the same time that we aged contemporaneously as a group and thus I didn’t notice us getting older. It was only after I too left Company X and went on to another workplace that I really realized I was older than many of the people there. And at first I was like “How did that happen?”
I love this blog – keep writing. This is great stuff.
…and I completely identify with the age gap even though we are not THAT old. We are just not the youngest end of the workforce spectrum