Career advice, quoted — some of 2019’s best
Asking someone to tell you about their job can go one of two ways: They give you the quick answer, usually something of the “it’s a job” variety, or they go all in, sharing every piece of minute detail about who they work with, the perils of their commute and the latest conflict they had with the boss. For us, the latter option is always preferred.
Here’s a look at some of the more interesting quotes we collected in 2019:
“I do volunteer work for my church. I do volunteer work for the Lord. My job is not part of my volunteer work. My job is not part of my charity. … And getting paid later — don’t get me wrong, it’s helpful and it’s the right thing to do — but getting paid later puts me in a bad spot. For every $100 I get late, I’m $110 in debt.”
— Laura (last name withheld), a Transportation Security Administration employee at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport on being contractually obligated to work without pay during last January’s budgetary shutdown
“Unless you’re in upper management, you’re going to either make lateral moves with the hope of getting a promotion or you’ll get a job that’s one level up from where your current job, and I’ve found that a job that’s one level up from where you are is basically the same job. … You’re competing for promotions with people who’ve been there for years. It’s like running a race. If you start two miles behind someone in a marathon and you’re both good runners, it’s going to be tough to catch up.”
— Jane McCarthy, looking back at what she called her “standstill” career upon her 2019 retirement
“I’ve interviewed people who are literally looking over my shoulder, out the door. Whenever I saw that, my feeling was ‘fine, keep looking, ‘cause that’s where you’re headed.”
— Joan Hickman, a career coach in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on the importance of properly concluding a job interview
“I get so much done between 8 and 10 in the morning that I can pretty much coast for the rest of the day. I’m not saying that to come across as lazy or unmotivated, I’m just saying that if you took the average employee and condensed everything they do in the day, I’m guessing that it would come down to two or three hours. People waste a lot of time, myself included. I mean, there are days when I start looking up stuff on Google or I get angry about that something that’s happening politically and my day is shot. That’s why I stay off of all social media networks until noon so I can do as much as possible before I get sucked into the world of Donald Trump and Kylie Jenner.”
— Stephanie Washington, Indianapolis, on how she stays focused at work
“I felt bad for his wife and kids because he was spending all this time on the phone with me. I finally told him to not worry about us and to go spend time with his family. Probably overstepped my zone a bit but we were friends, so I thought it was just a casual comment. He didn’t. He snapped. ‘My family doesn’t need me! You need me!’ Who says things like that? The guy left for a new job a few years ago so I have no idea if he ever got over himself.”
— Jean S., an administrative assistant for a large creative firm in Chicago, on her former manager’s habit of micromanaging while on vacation
“I really felt a kinship with my co-workers at my last job that I didn’t feel with my own family if I’m being honest. … We’d been through so much together that I couldn’t imagine being competitive with people I really cared for. But then a friend — OK, thought she was a friend — on my team used a couple of difficult projects to make me look incompetent. Not cool. I thought there was still something to be said about teamwork, that not everything had to be cutthroat, but I was wrong. She used me as a scapegoat to get a promotion.”
— Sandra Elm, a graphic designer in Boise, Idaho, on the reality of potentially being betrayed by friends at work
“Women head into jobs today with their eyes wide open. If they feel any hint of sexual harassment, they will call it out, at least that’s the hope. I know we’re not there yet but it’s coming. Soon, they’ll not only call harassment out but they’ll call it out at the top of their voice. They’ll call it out in very public ways and perhaps most importantly, they’ll call it out by name.”
— Jamie Dokovna, an attorney with Becker & Poliakoff in Miami, on the legacy of the #MeToo movement in the workplace
“It’s like the ‘SpongeBob’ cartoons when SpongeBob and Patrick are working on something and things are just flying above their heads in constant motion. I’d grab a pile, ask for a quick yes or no and then throw it into the recycling bin.”
— Gerald Kaplan, an organization expert in Toronto, on his “no-pause” approach to helping employees eliminate clutter \— Marco Buscaglia, Careers