Girl Talk Thursday . . . Job Venting

“Let’s all end the call with a positive close . . .”

Those few words ended up becoming the bane of my existence at a previous job.

I held what was supposed to be a part-time, telecommuting position as an account executive for a very small PR firm.  When I first began, the partners of the firm had one weekly conference call with all the team members.

I was a bit thrown after my first one when I discovered they liked for everyone on the call to say something positive, be it work-related or personal, at the end of it . . . hence, the “positive close.”

Hmmmmm.

It all seemed a little forced and a bit too “cum-bay-ah” for my tastes, but when it came to my turn, I gave it a whirl nonetheless and managed to come up with some positive spin about me being excited about the opportunity to work for such a great company.

I know . . .  blah-dee-bloody-blah, right?!

In hindsight, that makes me want to hurl, but still I was naive and trusting and happy to give my 100% to what I thought were great people.

Funnily enough, neither of the owners of the firm were particularly positive in their natural, day-to-day personalities . . . they both kind of bitched to me about everything, so I think they most likely ended the conference call this way because it was something they had been advised to do . . . . or read in a book . . . or took from a class they attended called Team Building 101.  Just sayin’.

Over time, as more clients were added to the roster so too were the weekly conference calls . . .  and, yes . . . the positive closes.

Three to be exact.

Three out of five working days . . . spent listening to everyone’s mind-numbing and moreover time-consuming positive closes.

Now, I’m a pretty positive person, but in my humble opinion, I thought this was taking it to the extreme . . . especially when some people’s positive closes could take almost five minutes or more.  By this time, I was working upwards of forty hours  a week trying to stay on top of a detail-oriented workload that needed to be completed in a timely, informative and creative fashion.  And, quite frankly, I did not need to hear that somebody was getting a new dog or that they were excited to be going shopping for a new dress or that they farted and it didn’t smell nor did I need to share my own mundane snippets of life such as that my littlest one had finally gone poop on the potty — oh yeah, I dared to go there!

Once or twice I thought about just passing when it came to my turn, but alas I never did!  I’m just too polite for that kind of behaviour.

It did end up becoming all a bit torturous and I would end up cringing at the end of every conference call.  Yes, my skin would literally be crawling when those words were spoken . . . “let’s end with a positive close.”

I never confirmed it, but I think others may have felt the same way too as on more than one occasion a sarcastic comment or two was made to me.  So much for the moral boosting exercise!  All I can say is thank goodness for the conference calls and that nobody could see my body language or the rapid eye-rolling.

When I gently suggested to the owners that maybe we cut the positive closes back to once a week so as not interfere with the clients’ demands, it was met with hostility and I was told that the work needed to get done . . . regardless.

In the end, this turned out not to be the company for me . . . the job I ended up doing in the end was simply not the same one I had been hired for.  Too many changes, too many bosses and too many bloody positive closes.

And, on that note . . . my positive close is . . . . . . ha!  As if I’d go there!

If you’d like to join on this week’s topic over at Girl Talk Thursday, feel free to link up and vent all you like about your job.