Another dinner with Kathleen

I mentioned in this post a month ago that Kathleen and I had agreed to have coffee or something. Well, even though she now lives a lot closer to me than she did before, she's still not exactly local. But this week I'm attending a professional conference in another city, and that put me close enough to her to provide an opportunity. So we decided to have dinner tonight.

(As an aside, it's a little funny that I'm going to a professional conference when I'm unemployed and possibly retired. But so I am, because of ... well, reasons. It gets complicated fast, and none of them is very interesting.)

You may remember that I introduced Kathleen to this blog in this post, a little more than a year and a half ago. So far as I know she was never aware of any of the subtext that I read into the dinner in that post, and you will recall that even at the time I didn't believe in it either. It was a purely intellectual construct, just for the hell of it. Anyway, in case there was any doubt whatever on this point, she invited her husband to come along. The two of them sat on one side of the good-sized table, and I sat on the other. No possible subtext. And that's absolutely fine with me ... I feel like I'm getting a little old to want to have to worry about the risk of flirting with anyone any more. Nice to know it's a non-issue.

And dinner was fun. We talked about the company where she and I both used to work, and how they are making this and that bad decision in the business unit where we were. I learned what her husband does for a living, and told them some of my stories from earlier employers when they were relevant. We drank beer and ate barbecue and generally enjoyed the time. Because they live a few hours away from where I live, it won't be a regular thing; it might not repeat at all, for all I know. But it was a nice way to spend the evening.

         

The stench of failure

I've noticed something since being out of work. As the office was shutting down and I was on my way out, a lot of people said they were sorry to see me go. "Make sure you keep in touch!" I collected email addresses from lots of them. So from time to time I've sent email to one or another -- most especially after I started a professional blog under my own name. "See this silly blog I started? What fun, eh?" And reliably, what I hear back are ...

Nothing.

Crickets.

And still nothing.

Who all have I contacted in this way? Let's see. There's been ...

• the guy I described here as "my only real friend from work" (but I don't think I ever gave him a name for this blog)
• Hil
• Elly
• Bill
• Frank 
• and I count at least five others, none of whom I've bothered to mention here.

From Bill and Frank and one of the other guys, I got a brief one-line reply. Also from my friend at the top of the list. When I asked my former manager if I could use him as a reference, he replied right away "Yes, of course." But when I followed up by thanking him and sending some general conversation, ... nothing. I've gotten a couple of short notes from a former employee, mostly when I am congratulating her on some accomplishment I've recently heard about. 

You know who I have heard back from? People who no longer work there. 

• There's one guy who lives in the same town I do. We worked together quite a bit, and when I was first looking for a new job I saw one that might have worked for me but was a better fit for him: I told him about it, and he got it. We've exchanged a few emails, and we've gotten together for dinner twice. 
• There's another guy who was never really friends with me, though we got along just fine. But he contacted me a month ago because he realized in his new position that the company needs someone who does exactly what I do. So ... am I available? (I've told him sure, let's talk.)
• And a couple months ago I saw some news in LinkedIn about the former Regional President in my area, so I sent a note to Kathleen to ask for more details. At that point she was one of the very few people I used to know that I had not yet contacted. I got a long reply, which told me that (among other things) she was leaving the company and moving across the country to a place maybe two or three hours' drive from where I live right now. We've sent some more emails back and forth, and I think we are going to have coffee some time next month.

Why the discrepancy? What am I seeing?

At some level it's just that "work-friends" aren't real friends. You get along together because you have a common task and you basically like each other, but there's no real engagement with each other at a personal level. But I think there's a little more to it than that. If I were to have estimated how close I was to the "real friend from work" above, or to Hil or Elly, or to my former employee, I would have thought that I was closer to any of them than to, say, Kathleen. But she wrote back and they didn't. It's possible that I was simply wrong in what I thought about our respective friendships. But I think there's another factor too.

I think one factor is precisely that I'm unemployed.

And I think my very unemployment frightens people. How does it look to them? I send a chatty email, light-hearted and not very informative, maybe telling them about my blog. And then what? Isn't it possible that they are just a little bit afraid to answer? If I say something to Hosea, if I encourage the conversation, he's probably going to hit me up for job advice; or he'll try to use me as part of a networking chain. That's what all the job-hunting counselors out there tell you to do. Or maybe he'll start sobbing on my shoulder about all the bad luck he has had in interviews. And look how long it's been already. [I had been unemployed already for six months when I contacted some of these people, and nearly a year when I contacted others.] Why isn't he working yet? Is there something wrong with him? Is it ... contagious, somehow? Will his clammy desperation rub off on me if we get too close? And really, we weren't actually all that close anyway ... were we? I don't have to reply, ... do I? Of course Hosea's a nice guy and all, but how much do we really have to talk about? Of course I really should answer. I don't know. Maybe I will. Anyway, I'm busy right now. I'll think about it tomorrow.

Maybe I'm wrong. But I think there's something about the unemployed that is just a little bit scary to the still-employed. That's why I could connect with the guy in the same town, because he was laid off before I was. The fellow who wants to hire me was laid off on the same day I was. And Kathleen is quitting of her own volition, because she wanted to move to be close to her family and they wouldn't let her work remotely. So she's no longer invested in it.

I think that when people see an email from me show up in their Inboxes, they smell just a whiff of the stench of failure. And they'd rather not have to deal with it.

Kind of like in this wonderful cartoon that I posted -- gosh, it looks like ten years ago.

         

"Optimistic but challenging start"

Someone at work just screwed up something we thought we had fixed. Now we have to figure out how they were able to do it, how our fix went wrong, and where to start over.

After taking infinite precautions against COVID-19, Marie came to visit me around New Year's. The precautions and the visit deserve a post of their own. The visit was great. But her return trip was straight out of "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles."

And then of course there's all the craziness a couple days ago at the Capitol building, because where would we be without a crowd seizing the halls of Congress, looting documents, and planting IED's?

I wished Kathleen at work a Happy New Year, and she said she thought 2021 was off to an "optimistic but challenging start." We'll see.   

Closing up shop, part 4

When I sent out email to colleagues and friends and family telling them all that I had accepted the job in Sticksville, the replies were mostly pretty positive. Some were perfunctory congratulations; one or two gave me earnest advice about preparing for the weather. Then there was this from Hil:

I am glad to hear that we as [Company] will not lose you!!! ... I hope to get the chance next year to see you again – I am missing my friend Hosea!

And this from Kathleen:

: ) : ) : )   I am so glad to hear this.

It's always nice to hear.

But I noticed something interesting. We were originally told that 27 positions were being relocated from Beautiful City to Sticksville. But to my knowledge I am only the fourth one of us to accept an offer to move. And since the announcement was back in August, I assume I am probably the last. Of course it is easy to guess why a person wouldn't want to leave here to go there, but still ... 4 out of 27? That's not a lot.

Also in a recent announcement about how the business as a whole is doing, our regional president mentioned that (as a cost-cutting measure) 25 positions had been eliminated from the books. I wonder if 23 of those were the remaining spots that were originally designated to move from here? In other words, I wonder if the ship has now sailed, or if it's still possible for anyone else to change their mind? I'll never know, of course.

  

Dinner with Kathleen

I had dinner a couple nights ago with a colleague from an office in Faraway City. I’ll call her Kathleen. She’s a Product Manager with a focus on the products we design in my home office. (I suppose I should say “the products we used to design there,” since we are being shut down.) A while ago – honestly, I don’t remember when or how – I apparently helped her find some data she needed for something. And ever since, she has been telling me, “The next time you’re in town, I owe you a coffee.” Well I was in town last week, as part of the Grand Tour I’m taking of our offices. And about the only time I had free during the whole visit was dinner one night. So we met for dinner. 

She wasn’t really buying my dinner, of course. I’m traveling for work, so I’m going to expense the meal. In fact, if we’d gone somewhere slightly cheaper I probably could have bought her dinner and passed it off as me being very hungry. The point was the meal itself. That we got to spend time away from the office just talking. 

In substance it was all unexceptionable. We were both animated in chatting, we told stories about who we are and where we’ve come from, ... in general the volume of words to food was pretty high. But there was nothing that I would overtly identify as flirting. No soft compliments sotto voce, no delicate pauses, no staring meaningfully into each other’s eyes. She mentioned her husband (once, when she talked about living “in my husband’s house but not with my parents”). I mentioned Wife (once, when she was essential for a story). So we each made a pro forma gesture in the direction of romantic unavailability, and to look at a transcript of the evening you would never find anything romantic in it. There wasn't anything. Open and shut.

Only ... as Plato and Aristotle could easily remind you, the world is composed of form as well as substance. And I couldn't help but notice tiny details of form -- tiny details, nothing more, but still:

• Since Kathleen didn't have the opportunity to buy me coffee, she bought be a bag of gourmet desserts that I could carry home with me. She made a point to add, "I hope no-one in your family is allergic to anything in these" ... and that surely distracted attention from the pink bag she handed them over in.
• After dinner was over, we spent the longest time standing in the cold wind in the parking lot before getting into our respective cars to drive away. I don't remember what we were discussing, and I'm sure that a transcript would have been very banal. Still. Standing in the cold wind in the parking lot instead of just saying "Good bye."
  
• She wore a thin, short skirt. It was dark so I might not even have noticed it except that we spent so long standing in the cold wind in the parking lot ... and the wind kept trying to lift her skirt so that she had to keep holding it down. The interplay between the wind and her hand caught my attention, so that I was able to see how light and thin the fabric was, and also how short the skirt was cut. Admittedly Kathleen isn't as tall as I am. But still, it was pretty short.
• She wore high heels -- delicate, pointy high heels, where the heel itself seemed no more than a needle. It was a bit of a hindrance when she had to cross the street between the restaurant and the parking lot. And she blamed the high heels on the COVID-19 pandemic, claiming to have been housebound for so many months that she was desperate for any excuse to wear "grown-up clothes." Still, I can't help thinking that for some dinner guests, "grown-up clothes" would have included shoes that were a bit more sensible than those ones.

 Does any of this mean anything? Not by itself, no. Wearing high heels does not ipso facto mean you are trying to flirt with anyone. And how often will I even see Kathleen in the future? She works in Faraway City. I work on the other side of the continent.

Oh ... wait ... I won't work there much longer, will I? We are closing that office. I am being given a chance to move to Sticksville, which isn't Faraway City -- but it is only one time zone away, and not three. So it's closer, for whatever that is worth.

On the subject of whether I should take up the offer to move, Kathleen said she would 100% understand and agree with my decision if I said No, because Sticksville is nowhere near as nice a place to live as Beautiful City (my home). Having said that, she went on to say that the transition the company will have to make (absorbing all the work we used to do) will be way more painful if I don't accept the offer. She explained this with reference to all the history that I carry in my head, all the questions I can answer ... that kind of thing. Nothing, not even her tone of voice, suggested that she meant any kind of personal reference at all. As I say, there was really nothing like that going on. But I did notice that she used the word painful instead of clumsy, cumbersome, awkward, or difficult. I don't really think that choice of words meant anything, but this whole post is an exercise in teasing out possible meanings that I don't really believe ... just because they are possible, and I've been wrong before. Maybe we'll see.