Explode, continued further….

Here’s the third installment of the comedy thriller I’m working on entitled “Explode,” about a woman who explodes at work while drinking her morning coffee. Is it spontaneous human combustion, or murder?

Andrea tried not to be overwhelmed by the feeling of desolation that swelled in her chest, threatening to send her silently crouching in a corner like a small child. Julia had been her family, and now she was alone. Not that she didn’t have other friends, but Julia had been the center.

Andrea’s genetic family consisted of a cousin and a sullen fourteen-year-old niece in Fort Lauderdale with whom she exchanged holiday cards every year. Her father had flown the coop when she was eleven, for a twenty-six-year-old stripper whom he’d met at the dry cleaner’s (she was having her leather thong laundered). When Andrea was twenty-four, her embittered mother, who had taken to wearing industrial underwear and pleather shoes, was fatally bonked on the head in a parking lot by a tree, which was felled by an SUV when its owner forgot to pull the parking brake.

Andrea’s ex-boyfriend, to whom she now referred as Toxic Tony, had always been jealous and critical of Julia. But then Tony had been jealous and critical of everyone, since he seemed to be suffering from Terminal Asshole Syndrome.

Not that Toxic Tony suffered himself. He just spewed his negativity and paranoia onto everyone else around him, like a foul-smelling noxious gas. Andrea had her insecurities (along with a bit of hostility towards strippers), but before she met Tony, she had always had enough self-respect to avoid men who treated her like a telemarketer calling at dinnertime. Somehow, Tony had lured her into the world of his skewed perceptions, and Julia had been the only one who had been able to help her extricate herself. Now she felt like she could just drift away up into the clouds, like the balloons that seemed to follow Julia everywhere like colorful ghosts. She knew that, from this point on, she would always be depressed by the smell of rubber.  

Tags: comedy, family, funny, humor, mystery, relationships, thriller

Verizon – Winner of the Clusterf*ck of the Year Award

or,

How Many Verizon Employees Does it Take to Connect
a Wire?

Congratulations, Verizon. I know you’re honored to receive this award. In case you don’t know how you happened to be chosen, allow me to tell you my story.

I finally made it into the millennium and got a smartphone, which is infinitely smarter than your customer service people seem to be. I cancelled my landline service, with corresponding re-routing of the internet service on my laptop to “dry loop” (does that mean the wires on a phone connected to the internet are “wet loop?” Sounds kinda risky to me). This re-routing process, as the customer service rep who took the information (and at least five subsequent tech support reps) informed me, is supposed to happen automatically with no interruption in internet service. Which it did, if “no interruption” can be defined as “bit the dust for eight days with thirteen (literally; I counted) hour-long phone calls to Verizon in vain attempts to fix the problem, with the complete impossibility of speaking with the same person twice.”

Every day on the phone (often after more than twenty minutes to even find my account in the system), it was like the calls before never happened, and I had to start from scratch every time, like in “Groundhog Day.” “Put on your booties, ‘cuz it’s cold outside – it’s Verizon Clusterf*ck Day!”

The highlight was the day when, after ten calls and twenty minutes of waiting for the twit on the other end of the phone to find me in the system, he finally came back on the line and said, “So what’s the problem again?”

“Okay,” I said. “I think I need to hang up now, because I’m going to lose it.” I put the phone down and hollered into the sink.

When I finally spoke with a supervisor who seemed at last to figure out what the problem was (my internet service was apparently still connected with the landline phone number that no longer existed, and a missing wire also seemed to be involved), he promised that my service would be back up the next day. It wasn’t. Since he actually told me his last name and location, I tried to contact him to see what happened, figuring I might have better luck with someone who at least seemed to have decent critical thinking skills and already knew my situation.

Alas, my efforts to locate this person were in vain. The office he was in, in Andover, Massachusetts, I naively thought would be easy enough to find via Google or Smartpages. But as I soon discovered, Verizon, any actual offices of yours seem to be in an alternate dimension on the time-space continuum, like the island on “Lost.” I know it must be there, but I can’t ever get to it. Perhaps it’s stuck in 1974, before the internet existed.

The 12th call finally yielded an allegedly scheduled visit from tech support the next day, in one of those 4-hour blocks (this is done so that the tech people can catch up on daytime TV in between appointments, without having to stick to an actual schedule). Yes, I said “allegedly scheduled visit.” This is because they didn’t show up. And when I called around 11:15 (call number 13), I found out that, after the 45-minute call the night before, the person I talked to figured out that something needed to be connected in the office (a few brain circuits, perhaps?), so they didn’t need to come out. Of course, no one called to tell me that.

Finally, the supervisor I talked with checked into the Grand Clusterf*ck and, miracle of miracles, got my service back on (thank you, Karen – you were a beacon of light in the depths of the abyss).

Thank you, Verizon, for giving me a few more gray hairs in my eyebrows to pluck. Keep up the good work – if you play your cards right, you’ll torture enough customers to put the company out of business. One can only hope….

Tags: anxiety, bad customer service, comedy, funny, humor, stress, Verizon, workplace behavior

Top 10 Reasons to Continue Your Job Search During the Holidays

This is actually re-posted from last year, with additions (I thought of 5 more reasons).

 1.   Employers ARE hiring, despite the common misconception that everyone’s in Bermuda.

2.   There’s less competition, since a lot of job seekers think everyone’s in Bermuda.

3.   It’ll keep your momentum going, and make it less likely you’ll hop into a bathtub full of water and plug in your electric toothbrush.

4.   All those holiday parties are great opportunities to network. And scarf down free food.

5.   You’ll soon get sick of staring at the TV and watching Jimmy Stewart have a meltdown.

6.   A lot of companies start their fiscal year in January,  so they want to get the newbies in there as soon as all the holiday crap is over.

7.   There’s always the chance a manager could be inspired to hire you while snockered on spiked eggnog.

8.   How many times can you listen to songs about homicidal reindeer?

9.   The hiring manager is more likely to bring you on-board out of holiday spirit despite the embezzlement charges.

10.   Job search can generally be more fun during the holidays, since a lot of people are jollier than usual. Not me, but a lot of people.

Tags: careers, comedy, employment, funny, holidays, humor, interviews during the holidays, job search, networking

Multiple Branding Disorder

Seems like all we hear these days is branding this, branding that. We must brand ourselves, professionally speaking, if we want to be taken seriously. If you’re looking for a job, that goes double for you.

But what happens when we have more than one interest that we’re trying to pursue; different images – sometimes conflicting – that we want to project and promote? Are we splitting ourselves in two? And if so, which self will win??

Yes folks, I myself am suffering from Multiple Branding Disorder. I currently have 3 online selves, sort of: one as Employment Counselor, one as MarCom Writer, and my third alter-ego, Comedy Writer. Since I have a lot of years of experience as a career counselor, I’ve mostly branded myself blogwise as the Employment Counselor/Comedy Writer Combo Pack, with an occasional MarCom Writer snippet thrown in.

But now I’m focusing on a comedy thriller I’m working on (“Explode”), and want to brand myself as both my Comedy Writer self and my MarCom Writer self, since that’s my day- job- career path. I have to re-brand myself and hang out with my comedy-and-mystery-writer Twitter-peeps, rather than my job counselor ones. Plus, some of my comedy stuff is edgier than some job hunters looking for job search advice might think of as, uh, appropriate.  Which means I’ll likely lose the folks that are mostly interested in job search advice, and don’t give a crap about the comedy. But that’s the way the branding iron sizzles.

Nevertheless, here comes some branding advice for job seekers:

• The self you most want to focus on at this point is how you should brand yourself.
• If you have more than one self you want to project, it’s okay if there’s some overlap, unless you’re simultaneously trying to brand yourself as conservative religious Republican and porn star. In which case, good luck to you.
• If some would-be employers are less than enthusiastic about the you that you’re projecting, then guess what? Those aren’t the right employers for you at this point in your life, anyway.
• Here’s my shameless self-plug: though I’ll mostly be concentrating on my novel, this blog has a plethora of posts already on various job search topics, so feel free to peruse.

Tags: branding, comedy, funny, humor, job search, marketing

Explode, continued

More Explode….

CHAPTER 2

Julia’s former co-workers, clad in bleak colors, wandered around the funeral home, still looking shellshocked.  A long line of mourners, amid a cacophony of sniffles, waited to have their turn at a tiny coffin that was slightly larger than a ring box, perched on a plush-seated chair.

Detective John Silver  stood in a corner attempting to look unobtrusive while snapping surreptitious photos. He was a boyishly virile man of 40, with nearly-black cropped hair and sharply intelligent gray eyes with a glint of irony. A voluptuously attractive dark-haired woman in her 30s gingerly stepped up to the little coffin. Her black-and-gray dress was low-cut enough to show a hint of cleavage – sexy but not slutty. Weeping, she reached in and kissed something inside, out of Silver’s view, and turned away.  Stepping away from the coffin, her eyes locked on his for a moment. Lowering her head, she turned and walked away.

Silver sidled up to the box and peered inside. Nestled within black velvet was a big toe, slightly charred, adorned with pink polish. Silver stared at the toe, snapped a quick photo, then turned away and looked over at the woman. She was leaning against Jim, the athletic man from Julia’s office, and sniffling loudly against his shoulder. He was patting her back somewhat awkwardly.

Silver strolled over to them. He flashed his badge. The woman looked at it, then up into his face. Silver cleared his throat rather noisily. ”I’m John Silver, homicide. Are you Andrea?”

”Yes, I am. It’s good to meet you, Detective.” She reached to shake his hand. Their eyes met again. Damn, she was attractive.

”I’m very sorry about your friend,” Silver ventured.

“Thank you.” Her lip trembled. Silver hoped she wouldn’t burst into tears again. He was mush around attractive sobbing women. He turned to the athletic man, who reached to shake Silver’s hand a bit too vigorously.

”Jim. I’m, I was, Julia’s boss.”

”Do you have any leads on her death, Detective Silver?” Andrea inquired.

Silver swiveled back in her direction. ”Not yet, I’m afraid. All we know right now is that your roommate blew up at work while drinking her morning coffee. Since none of her coworkers exploded, we have to assume it wasn’t the coffee.”

”Let me know if I can be of any help,” Andrea said. She grew misty-eyed again. ”We were best friends, you know. Like sisters. Neither of us has – had – much family.”

”I’m very sorry,” Silver said gently. He touched her arm. She looked up at him, and her eyes pierced his. Oh God. He cleared his throat loudly. ”I’ll need to talk with you, after I question Julia’s co-workers.” He glanced over at Jim.

”Of course,” Jim said, somewhat gruffly. Silver peered at him sharply. He appeared to be trying to hold back man-tears. Silver made a mental note to probe into just how close he was to Julia.

Andrea rummaged through her purse and pulled out a pen and paper. Several balloons and a condom fell out onto the rug. She stooped to pick them up, grabbing the condom and stuffing it hastily back into her purse. Silver bent down to help her. He handed her the balloon, withdrawing his hand reluctantly.

”Free samples,” Andrea offered.

Not sure whether she was referring to the balloons or the condom, Silver offered a weak, ”Ah,” in response.

They both stood. Andrea scribbled on the pad and handed it to him. ”Here’s my cell. Call any time.”

A small, balding ferret-like fortyish man approached Andrea and took her hand. ”Ms. Davis. I’m so sorry about your friend. I gave her a root canal just last Thursday. What a waste.”

Andrea stared at him. ”I mean,” he stammered, ”because she was such a nice person.”

”Yes, she was. It’s good of you to come, Dr. Fine.” Andrea turned to Silver. ”Detective Silver, this is Julia’s dentist – mine too, actually.”

Silver shook his hand, which was somewhat moist. Silver wiped his hand on the chair in front of him with what he hoped was an appropriate degree of subtlety. ”Detective Silver, good to meet you. I’m investigating Julia’s death.”

”Good, I hope you find out what happened. Such a shame.”

Silver turned to face Andrea. ”I’ll be in touch.” Andrea watched him as he walked quickly away and was soon swallowed up by the crowd.

Tags: co-workers, comedy, funny, humor, mystery, novel, thriller

Explode

I’ll be taking a job-search advice break for now, to continue work on a comedy thriller I started a couple of years ago, entitled “Explode.” Here’s the tagline:

Julia suddenly explodes in the office while drinking her morning coffee, her big toe landing on a co-worker’s desk. Spontaneous human combustion, or murder?

While it’s not actually job-search related, Julia does, in fact, meet her untimely and bizarre demise at work. Okay, maybe that’s stretching it….

Here’s the first chapter:

Explode
by
Laurie Holman

CHAPTER 1

The day Julia blew to smithereens started out pretty much like any other day.

It was 8:30 a.m. Julia’s little red Honda crawled down the busy street lined with industrial buildings.  A small, perky redhead in her early 30s (but not so perky as to invite disdain), she was  stylishly dressed in a narrow gray skirt and belted deep blue sweater. She took a dainty bite from her lowfat blueberry muffin. A lone balloon drifted in front of the windshield,  tapped on the glass and popped.

The light turned red. Julia pulled up next to sporty red Porsche. She glanced over. A blonde twenty-something woman chattered on a phone while applying lipgloss. The car behind her slid into her bumper, and the tube of gloss went up her right nostril. She sneezed. Julia looked over at the car on her other side. An elderly woman who appeared to be texting drifted perilously close to the car in front of her. In the car behind her, a distinguished-looking man who looked to be seventy or so played Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” on a saxophone.

The light blinked green, and Julia peeled out.

Arriving in the parking lot of a building painted in crayon colors, Julia emerged from the car and hurried up to the door, which read ”Dolly Balloon Company.” She pulled janitor-sized set of keys from her purse, swung the door open and stepped inside.

Julia strode rapidly past a huge warehouse-type space with a rainbow of colors zooming down a multitude of conveyor belts. She passed a cluster of cubicles.

”Hey Stevie. Having a good morning?” she tossed over her shoulder at a slick, too-perfect-looking type in his twenties. He looked up from his desk with bleary eyes. ”Bite me,” he responded amiably.

”You wish,” Julia said as she breezed past him.

She passed an athletically-built man in his forties standing outside an office door looking down at some papers. He glanced up, and their eyes met.

”Morning, Jim.”

”Hi, Julia.” His eyes followed her briefly as she continued down the hall. She entered her office, decorated with the same colorful balloon motif as the rest of the building, tossed her purse into a drawer, and hurried back down the hall. Entering the kitchen, she poured herself a cup of steaming coffee, greeting several fellow thirty-somethings milling around the machine. Paula, a slim, stylishly-dressed woman in her fifties walked in briskly.

”Hi there. What’s up?” she said to Julia as she filled her mug with “Menopause is  Adolescence With a Smaller Bladder” written across it.

”Hiya. Is it hot in here?” Julia pulled a paper towel off the rack and fanned herself vigorously.

”Not really. Hot flash?”

”God, no. I’m not ready for that yet.”

”We never are, honey, believe me.”

They all walked out into the main office. As they passed Steve’s desk, Julia took a sip of her coffee. Suddenly, BAM – she exploded into pieces. A smoldering toe landed with a clatter on Steve’s desk. He stared at it, dumbfounded, then leaned over as if in a trance and gently blew on the toe, extinguishing the flames.

Julia’s co-workers all stood motionless, in shock. Slowly, they all looked into their coffee cups, and tossed them over their shoulders onto the lime-green carpet.

Tags: balloons, comedy, explode, funny, humor, mystery, spontaneous human combustion, thriller, work

Keep it to Yourself – Info Not to Share in a Job Interview

While lying on a job interview is a bad idea, that doesn’t mean the Job Interview Police will come after you with handcuffs and an electric prod if you don’t reveal every little snippet of info related to your work history. Contrary to popular belief, a job interview is not an interrogation. It’s more like a first date. If you were on a first date, you wouldn’t chatter about the time you spent in the psych hospital because of your breakdown after your stalker ex-boyfriend came after you with a serving fork, would you? Hope not.

By the same token, don’t talk about the stuff the employer doesn’t need (or necessarily want) to hear in an interview, either. Here are a few tidbits to keep to yourself:

• Your termination from your last job as the result of your calling your boss a moron on your Facebook page. Yes, people still actually do that. Don’t be one of them. And if you were terminated for something stupid you did, or something stupid they did, your prospective employer doesn’t need to hear the details. Be as brief and positive as you can in your explanation as to why you left the job (not a good idea to say you were “fired,”  “terminated,” or “tossed out on my ass”), and don’t talk against your former employer, even if he was an evil toad who forced you out because your lunch was smelly.
• Your plans to get pregnant. If you start a new job and actually get pregnant, you probably want to share that bit of news with your employer at some point before your water breaks all over her Manolos during a sales presentation. But you are not legally or morally obligated to share your personal goals with an employer you don’t even work for yet.
• Your plans to take a 2-week trip to Alaska next month to try to catch a glimpse of Sarah Palin skinning a moose. The knowledge that you might have to take 2 weeks off right after starting a job might sit sour in the interviewer’s mouth, and you don’t want that to influence their decision whether or not to hire you. Besides, you don’t know what their timeline may turn out to be. When you have an offer and are discussing a start date is the time to bring that up.
• Your recent divorce and subsequent career epiphany. The career epiphany part is fine, if it’s relevant to why you’re applying for that particular job, or how you’ve arrived at this point in your career. But leave the personal stuff for your shrink.
• Your difficulty getting out of bed in the morning.  Not all of us are morning people, and some workplaces are more flexible than others about work hours, but you don’t want to share your tardiness issues on a job interview. ‘Nuff said.
• How you became born-again last week. How nice for you, but the whole God thing – not an appropriate topic for an interview, unless you’re applying for a job in a monastery.
• Your salary in your last job. Yes, the interviewer may ask, but you don’t have to give out that information, even though you think you gotta answer ‘cuz they asked. Don’t forget the “it’s not an interrogation” thing. And by the way, your previous employer isn’t supposed to share that info either. You can answer the question by saying that your desired salary range is blah blah blah, based on your level of experience and the position. Your desired salary range is what’s relevant – not what you made before. After all, you may have been absurdly underpaid, or you might be more interested in a lower-paying position at this point in your career for various reasons. So there.
  

Tags: careers, comedy, employer, employment, funny, humor, interviewing, job interview, job search

Brand Yourself – Marketing Your Talents in Your Job Search

I’m re-posting a piece I did awhile back on branding/marketing yourself in your job search. If you’ve already read it, just pretend you’re an Oceanic Flight 815 survivor experiencing a time flash….

In your job search quest, you’ve probably seen the word “branding” floating around in the job-o-sphere (here’s a personal branding blog with a lot of helpful tips) and heard your job search strategy compared to a marketing campaign, with you as the product.

While “self-branding” can sound vaguely scary (especially if you’ve ever worked on a horse farm), it’s not as masochistic as it sounds. Marketing yourself is, in fact, an effective way to conduct your job search, and branding is an essential component of that.

Here are some strategies to help you in your job search self-branding efforts:

• Come up with what you want to be known for – your professional identity (known in marketingspeak as “positioning”). What are your unique talents that make you different from Joe Schmeckel Jobseeker? Are you TechGirl? GrammarGuy? Do you know where all the commas go before they die? Of course, branding yourself as GrammarGuy probably won’t help you much if you’re a forklift driver. It has to be relevant to the field you’re interested in.
• Figure out what specific benefits your skills/experience can bring to an employer (otherwise known as your “value proposition.”) Fill in the blank: “When my co-workers (or future co-workers) need help with _____________, they come to me.” Hopefully you’ll be able to come up with something other than, “finishing all the leftovers from Adam’s birthday party,” or “remembering the name of Mr. Spock’s mother.”
• Emphasize your talents on your resume and in your cover letters. Employers, like men in a relationship, hate having to try to read your mind. And when it comes to an employer, since there’s nothing in it for them, they probably won’t bother. If you want them to focus on particular skills that will benefit them, make it obvious which skills those are.
• Focus your LinkedIn profile and Twitter tagline (excuse the alliteration) on those talents, in much the same way as you focus your resume on them. And don’t tell me you don’t have LinkedIn and Twitter accounts. You’re job-hunting. It’s 2011. Shame on you.
• Build a positive online rep. relevant to the type of job you’re interested in. Start a blog in your area of expertise, or at least comment on other people’s blogs, showing your knowledge and offering helpful info. Join LinkedIn groups relevant to your talents, and get involved in the discussions. But I wouldn’t get involved in anything too potentially controversial when you’re job-hunting. That’s just me.
• Establish your style. Yes, if your style is Lindsey-Lohan-meets-Charlie-Sheen, you probably need to rein it in a bit. And resumes and cover letters need to be more on the formal side in terms of tone. But you do want your online persona to pretty much reflect who you are and how you want to be perceived at work. After all, you’re unique. You want to be noticed (for the right reasons). Besides, if your persona is too scattered in different directions, a prospective employer might think you have multiple personality disorder.
• Figure out what your target market is, and go for it. Who are the employers you want to work for, who are likely to need and value your talents? If you want to use your aerial basket-weaving skills in a free-flowing environment, don’t be looking at companies that specialize in a 3-piece suit dress code and actuarial statistical analysis.

Tags: branding, careers, comedy, employment, funny, humor, job search, marketing yourself

On the Job – No Blubbering Allowed

Okay, we are all human and have emotions. Well, most of us, anyway. But that doesn’t mean we should just emote all over the place when we’re at work. It’s distracting, uncomfortable and can undermine your professional mojo – especially, dare I say it, if you’re a woman. That glass ceiling is slippery when wet (from tears, of course. What did you think I meant??).

So here are a few workplace drama don’ts:

• Try to avoid crying at work. Yes, it happens. I’ve had a couple of  sobbing sessions in the ladies’ room in my past work life myself. But unless you come to work and discover one of your favorite co-workers is dead, it’s generally considered unprofessional to bawl in the office. If you feel yourself losing it, excuse yourself as quickly as possible and go cry in private. Or you can try clearing your throat, which I’ve heard stems the flow (haven’t yet tried that one).
• Don’t blow up. I’m not talking about spontaneous human combustion. Not that I would advise catching on fire at work, either. Or anywhere else, for that matter. But I digress…. Yelling or throwing a chair at your colleague’s head is not okay. I grew up with a time bomb, otherwise known as my sister, that went off at unexpected moments. It was quite unnerving and stressful, and you don’t want to be the trigger for your co-workers’ traumatic childhood memories.
• Rein in the crazy. Being a bit eccentric or odd can make a workplace more interesting, up to a point. However, you don’t want to be known as the office wacko. If your workplace is casual and welcomes creativity, wearing a Three Stooges tie is probably okay. Wearing it around your waist instead of pants is not.
• Don’t overdo the touchy-feely. Some offices are more okay than others about expressing affection to co-workers, but the whole sexual harassment thing warrants some caution. Even if you don’t think a hug will be misinterpreted, your co-worker might still prefer you keep your distance. Especially if you have tuna-breath.
• Keep your passionate political and religious opinions to yourself. Don’t share your agitation at work that your hero, George Bush, couldn’t serve a third term, or that God spoke to you when you got up to pee at 2 a.m. and told you to stock up on freeze-dried beef patties to prepare for the apocalypse.

Tags: careers, comedy, emotions at work, employment, funny, glass ceiling, humor, work, workplace behavior

How to Keep Your Job – Dunder Mifflin Don’ts

In case you have no idea what the hell Dunder-Mifflin is, it’s the fictional paper company in which an array of bizarre and often socially obtuse characters spend their workday in the sitcom “The Office.”

“The Office” characters frequently demonstrate behavior that, while funny on a sitcom, in real life would likely get you booted out the door so fast you’d be sitting out in the parking lot with your coffee mug in your lap and a dumb look on your face before you had time to say, “Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.”

Here are some big fat don’ts if you want to keep your job in the real world:

• Tell a racist joke while attempting a Chris Rock impersonation.
• Volunteer the info that you’ve been trading sexual favors for a discount on office supplies.
• Kiss a gay co-worker on the mouth in front of the entire staff to demonstrate your lack of homophobia.
• Have sex in the stockroom with a co-worker during office hours.
• Tell your employee she gives you a boner.
• Fake thousands of dollars of website sales.
• Pelt a client’s office building with eggs because they didn’t buy your products.
• Toss messages from your boss in the trash without reading them.
• Share an employee’s confidential info with everyone else in the office.
• Perform a fake suicide to elicit your employees’ sympathy.

Tags: comedy, employer, employment, funny, humor, The Office, work, workplace behavior