Since we’re in the office for most of our waking hours, it’s inevitable that eating will be taking place there.  Here are some tips to eat and co-exist peacefully with your other colleagues:

1. Do not burn your popcorn — Even popcorn that isn’t burnt will leave a lingering smell around the microwave and wherever you eat it.  If you HAVE to have popcorn, don’t let it burn. Please?
2. Steer clear of smelly foods - Your food might taste delicious to you, but take a moment to consider those around you.  They might be struggling to breathe through their mouth so that they don’t have to inhale the grossness that is your lunch.
3. Don’t eat anything too heavy - If you know you have a really important meeting right after lunch, don’t have a really heavy lunch.  Something light, low in carbs and high in vitamins will help prevent you from getting drowsy after lunch.  If you’re worried that you’ll be hungry again later, have a light snack ready.  Heavy lunches will make your afternoon crash even more severe and it might turn into something caffeine can’t fix.
4. Check your teeth right after lunch - I realize that not everyone has time to brush & floss after lunch, but the very least you can do is pop in a mint and stop by the restroom to make sure you don’t have food stuck in weird parts of your teeth.  One of the worst feelings in the world is when you go into the restroom after that big presentation and you see a big spinach leaf stuck near your ‘canine’ tooth.  No bueno!
5. Step away from your desk - I know, I know.. you’re so busy and you don’t have time to eat in the cafeteria.  I’d argue that you do have time.  Stepping out of your desk area accomplishes so many things:
   1. It gives you time to rest your eyes – Humans weren’t made with eyes that were meant to stare at computers for hours on end.  It’s a great idea to give them a break from the bright screen… even if it is only 15 minutes.
   2. Networking – Great leaders don’t get to where they are by eating alone everyday.  Lunch is a great opportunity to meet and/or get to know others in your company.
   3. It gives your brain a break – Have you ever have a problem that you can’t solve no matter how hard you are trying? Then you step away for a few minutes and when you return the solution just comes to you? Sometimes you just need a fresh look at it.

At my Former Company, the rules for getting to the office in the morning were pretty laid back.  If you made it to work before 9:45, you were OK.  I never made a huge effort to get there before 9.  Here at Present Company, it’s a little bit different.  They are more structured.  There aren’t any time cards or anything, but if you get there by 8:30, you’re set.

Lately, I’ve been waking up early despite my crazy sleep patterns and I typically get there at about 8 am.  I’ve found that there are some definite upsides to getting to work early:

1. Badass parking – There is nothing better than having a short walk to the Princess Mobile after a long day of work.  It’s handy when it’s blazing hot, when it’s raining, and when it gets freezing cold, I’m sure I’ll like it too.  I think the next best thing to a badass parking spot is a nice glass of wine when I get home.
2. Distraction-free working – When you’re one of only a few people in the office, you can be sure you will be distraction-free for at least the first half hour.  That half-hour is soooooooo productive because you aren’t getting 500 phone calls or emails to interrupt your train of thought.
3. Fresh coffee – I’m not even a coffee drinker, but I know that the folks that are there early really appreciate the fact that they get first dibs on that magical elixir.
4. Early exits - I am 100% guilt-free when I need to leave a bit early.  You should always talk to your manager before you start setting your own schedule though.  While more and more companies are doing “flex-days” you shouldn’t assume you can leave early just because you got there early.  Leaving early can help you miss the stress of rush hour traffic.
5. Relaxation - I don’t know about you all, but when I don’t get to work early I am sooooooo stressed.  OHMIGAWD. WILL THIS LIGHT EVER TURN GREEN? HURRY UP AND GO.  NICE SIGNAL THERE, PAL. I NEED TO FINISH THAT REPORT BEFORE THE MEETING. I CAN’T BE AT THAT MEETING LATE, IT’S MY MEETING! When I get there early, I’m in a weird state of calm.  I know I’ll have plenty of time to take care of the little things and even crazy big things that might pop up before that meeting.  Hell.  I might even have time to organize my Outlook inbox while I’m at it.

Get to work early next week and give it a whirl!

As promised 2 weeks ago – a handy dandy guide to a company culture that doesn’t suck:

1. Don’t hire @ssholes – If you’ve messed up and hired one (or two, or a couple hundred) don’t encourage their jerk behavior.  You know who I’m talking about – the people who are caught up in job titles… the ones that will do just about anything to get ahead.  Make sure they are treating others with respect before you do anything crazy like promote them.  Even if you speak out against mean behavior like that, all of that will fall on deaf ears if they see those people succeeding in the company.  They will believe that in order to succeed, you have to be a jerk, and that won’t help your company culture at all…
2. Think outside the “Mission Statement” – Let’s be real here – Just about all company mission statements are the same … maybe just worded differently.  You can harp on the wonderful and profound mission statement all you want, but don’t think having a nicely sounding mission statement automatically equals a wonderful culture that makes your employees enjoy being there.
3. Take Action – If you take the time & expense to do an employee survey, do something with the responses besides looking at them.  Do more than give flex days or letting the employees wear jeans on days other than Fridays – I speak from experience when I say those two things alone will not change your employee’s minds about wanting to get the hell out of your company.  It’s nice, but it doesn’t quite do anything to fix the problems that your people in the trenches deal with on a daily basis.  Listen to what your employees have to say and actively do something about it – there is nothing more frustrating that inaction.
4. Cultivate Your Talent – You spent so much time and effort recruiting them, and then a bunch of money to train them… why not make sure they want to stick around? Give them a clear career path and don’t limit that to your own functional area.  If they show interest in another functional area, put them in situations to learn more about it.
5. Be Open to New Ideas – Some older companies are hiring us crazy Millennial kids not because they want to, but out of necessity because their older Baby Boomer crowd is retiring.  Gen Y has a bad rep for being “know it alls” which I think is an unfair stereotype, but I do think we have a lot of great ideas because we see the whole world in a way that has never been seen before. Case in point: When I got my promotion at Former Company, I was the youngest person who ever had that job.  My peers were Gen X’ers (mostly on the older side of that generation!).  At that time, our boss’s boss was talking about problems our group was facing and instead of listening to some new ideas, they just kept doing it the same way.  Over. And over. And over again. Somehow, I guess they were expecting different results by doing the same thing?  I’m not even sure… but when I left, they still had the same, unresolved issues.  Nerds.

Life has been pretty nutty, but I was determined to get in a Friday Five this week!

This isn’t an all-inclusive list, but I’d say they are definitely the highlights –

• Company Culture – I don’t think I could possibly describe the differences in a couple of sentences.  I think it deserves it’s own post.  Stay tuned…. it will very likely be posted this weekend
• Cafeteria food – I’ve mentioned before that the café downstairs of my old office building was not great.  The sandwiches were crappy, bland, and cost almost $7.  I guess it’s because I’m working in a snazzy HQ building now that the food is really good.  The cafeteria has 5 or 6 different sections with different types of food and all of them are magically delicious.  On top of that, the cost is very reasonable (around $4-$5 per entree).  I don’t eat there everyday, but it makes those days that I forget my lunch all more bearable.  Better food & better prices? Yes, please!
• Stress level - In my old job, my stress level was always through the roof.  Every time I got that MS Outlook notification, my heart started pounding.  “Great… what now?!” was all I could think — especially when I saw those emails came from specific people.  The overall environment was a lot stressful too.  Everywhere you turned, people were walking a thousand miles per minute, and had this crazy cartoon look in their eyes.  I know right now I’m not too stressed out w/ the new job, but I know it will increase as I get more into it (which is why I gave it around 30%).  The stress the people in my group have isn’t anywhere near what the stress levels were at my old company… and it’s a much faster-paced environment.
• Challenge level - My old job was not that challenging -at all-.  I used to joke that I could probably teach a monkey how to do my job.  It was a little bit at first, but after the first 3 or so months, I could pretty much do it in my sleep.  My new job, is a teensy bit similar to my old one, but there are so many more layers to it and I’m in a whole different part of my field.  Additionally, there are so many more intricate processes that have to be executed across several dozen sites which makes it more complicated than what I was doing before.  I’m really excited.  My new boss promised to keep me challenged whereas I had to beg my old boss for more challenges.  Maybe that’s why I got canned?  I made it look too easy!
• Work life balance – My old job was pretty cozy.  The work-life balance was easy to acheieve, but then again, I didn’t work at the HQ level at my Former Company.  I have several friends at that HQ who said things aren’t as fun as they were out in the field.  My new company goes the extra mile in making sure their employees are taken care of.  They want to make sure everyone still has time to spend with their families, and they encourage their employees to step away from the desk during lunch.  It’s been a pretty amazing experience so far because I definitely did not expect that at the HQ level.

This week I filed for unemployment.  I have to say, when I was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed business student, applying for unemployment was pretty far up there on my list of Things I Didn’t Think I’d Ever Do In My Lifetime.

Since I crossed that off my list, I figured I might as well cross some more off!

• Filing for Unemployment
• Telling off my former boss in the nicest of voices
  
• Eat spinach and LIKE it
• Bungee Jumping
• Traveling out of the country

A couple of weeks ago, I made a pizza with chicken & spinach.  It was pretty yummy.  I might even post the recipe later.

I’m thinking I will probably try bungee jumping before sky diving.  I have a fear of heights, so I’m taking baby steps.

Technically, I’ve already traveled outside the U.S., but it was only Mexico in Baja Califonia… and it was for work, so I’m going to say that didn’t count.  I’m secretly hoping my older sister and her boyfriend get engaged soon so they can have an awesome wedding on some exotic beach…. though I’m hoping that beach is not Hawaii b/c Hawaii one-way is about an 8-hr flight and there is a tooooon of water to be flying over to get there. Eeeeeep! I have an issue with long flights and flying over water.

What is on your list of Things You Don’t Think You’d Ever Do?  Have you done some of them?

I’ve been really bad at updating this lately, which really doesn’t make sense because it’s not like I’m working or anything I have, however, been having oodles of fun and almost 2 months in, I’ve come up with the 5 Upsides to Unemployment:

1. Everyday is like Saturday! - While your working brethren are dreading Monday and helplessly wishing for the weekend, you’re cool as a cucumber and are able to do pretty much whatever you want.  Want to take Fido to the dog park? Done! Want to go to the driving range? Done! There are no alarm clocks necessary either, so you are able to catch up on all that sleep you missed out on while you were working.
2. No lines at the stores! – I seriously detest grocery shopping.  I won’t do it typically unless I ABSOLUTELY need to.  I’m not sure what it is that turned me off to grocery shopping, the lines, the herds of people, empty shelves on the weekends…. blah! But if you’re free to shop in the middle of the week, you typically don’t have those problems!  Even in the malls, these issues are just about eliminated.
3. Time to do all the stuff you were too tired to do while you were working! - I don’t know about ya’ll, but my job was mentally, and maybe even emotionally exhausting, so at the end of the day, I didn’t really feel like doing all the stuff I probably should have.  Being unemployed has afforded me the opportunity to get all that stuff done! My apartment is less cluttered, and I’ve even managed to make my bedroom look like it came straight from the pages of a Macys catalog.
4. Saving Money! – I’m typically very good with saving money.  I already have a “Christmas account” that I use to put money away throughout the year for Christmas presents and travel, I have money auto-transferred every 2 weeks to my emergency savings account, and I don’t typically buy ridiculous stuff that I don’t need.  One thing I didn’t really realize when I was employed was how much money I spent on lunch everyday!  I had great intentions to take lunch to work, but that never really panned out and I probably spent on average $9 every day to buy lunch at our fantastic (read: that was a sarcastic adjective) Café downstairs.  That’s $45 a week, and $180 a month – which doesn’t count any fast food I might have eaten for breakfast or dinner either.  That’s a ton of money to save!  I also reevaluate purchases that aren’t really necessary at places like Target.
5. Getting healthier! – Every year, losing weight and/or getting in shape has been on my resolution list, but that almost never comes to fruition.  Since I have all this free time, I’ve been focusing on eating better which means less fast food (it saves money!), healthier meals, and Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred. I also take Coco on looooooooooong walks just about every day.  When I was working, I always had that “I don’t have time” excuse, or the “I’m too tired!” excuse.  I can’t say I have any excuses now… except maybe just laziness, which I admit happens every once in awhile

I’ve been ignoring my Friday Five lately… I think my FF has been on strike since I lost my job.  It’s back today, though, and it’s back with a vengeance!

It’s been a pretty busy week and I thought I’d share with you what I like to do before any interview:

1. Make sure you have a power suit. One that makes you look and feel like you could rule the free world when you have it on.  It doesn’t even have to be new – it can be a suit you’re already loving.  If you want to spice it up, buy a new blouse (or shirt/tie for the men) to wear underneath to go along with the season.  Make sure it’s hemmed properly because you don’t want to walk in there looking like you were 6 again and playing dress up in your mom’s clothes.  Super over-sized coats and pants are not good.  If you opt for a skirt suit, make sure the length is professional.  Unless you are going for a pharmaceutical rep job, there is no reason for looking like a hooker in a job interview. (Sorry to all the pharmaceutical reps out there… that’s just the trend I’ve noticed )
2. Remember that when you FEEL good, you look good. Do the small things that make you feel good. Pluck your eyebrows, paint your fingernails, or get a facial.
3. Be prepared. Show up to the interview armed with copies of your resume, reference sheets with your reference contacts, and a list of questions you want to ask.  Hiring managers are busy busy people and while they should come prepared to the interview w/ your resume in hand, sometimes they forget.
4. Have answers ready for those lame questions they might throw your way. Rehearse the answers in your head while you’re in the car, in the shower, whenever you have a free minute.  You don’t need a 20-minute monologue – just a quick 60-second answer.  It’s best to prepare for these types of questions in case you get them because having an answer already in your head will help eliminate your “umm” “uhhh” likes” and other filler words that people use when they are trying to get some time to think of their words.
5. Have fun. Not many managers want to hire stuffy jerks.  Even all of the education and experience in the world won’t help make your case if you’re a meanyhead.  There’s a fine balance here – you don’t want to come off as the class clown, because most managers won’t hire that type either.  Be professional, but show a little personality.  There is nothing worse in the world than being stuck in a room for an entire hour with someone with the personality of a piece of cardboard.

If you read yesterday’s brief blog, you know that I got laid off.  It didn’t come as a complete shocker.  We’ve known for a few months now that there would be major layoffs, and somewhere deep down I knew that if my team was cut, if it wasn’t my manager it would be me.

In another post, I mentioned how disenchanted I had become over the last couple of years and I thought that if I survived the bloodbath that was last week, I probaby wouldn’t stay much longer.

Overall though, I’m fine.  A few people have told me that it “would hit me” and I’d freak out, but to be honest, it was a huge relief.  And here’s why:

1. I won’t miss my boss. I’ve been in the working world for the last decade, so I’ve had a few bosses in my life and I have to say, my most recent boss is by far the most incompetent.  It’s not like I dislike him because he’s a jerk, or a prick, he is just so grossly incompetent and he doesn’t know how to manage people.  I’m so happy that I will never have to report to him ever again for as long as I live.
2. I won’t miss the downstairs café. If you forgot your Lean Cuisine, and didn’t have time to go out for a bite, the only choice for lunch besides 65-cent vending machine pretzels is the downstairs café.  The sandwiches taste as wonderful as cardboard and they’re eff’ing expensive.  Seriously.  You could get a $5 footlong from Subway and that would taste better.
3. I won’t miss our useless metric meetings. We didn’t even measure them in the same way as the customer and therefore, it makes absolutely NO SENSE spend time tracking them that way.  Despite cries from the team and outsiders, Evil Bob absolutely insisted on wasting our time measuring things that don’t even make sense or had any value to the customer.
4. I won’t miss the jerks in the office. It’s true when “they” say ‘a few bad apples ruin the bunch’. Pretending to be nice to these jerks is very taxing on my energy… energy that could have been spent doing other things…  Like measuring metrics that don’t even make sense.
5. I won’t miss the customer. There’s a very real possibility that I’ll cross paths with this customer again, but I am going to be very happy that I’ll get a break from them.  Bless their hearts.

Today was a very stressful day here at the Present Company, and I was amused by how similar everyone in my office thought.  I think it’s one of those things where you just start saying things that you hear others say around you all the time?  Either way, it’s nice to know that not too many people in my office are suicidal, though we do like to cuss out the people who aren’t picking up their phones.

Being a manager is hard- you know what they say, ‘it’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it’!  Today’s little post shares all of the innovative ways to make your team hate your guts.  They are concise & easy to follow!

1. Don’t listen to your team.  What the hell do they know, anyway? If they were so awesome, they’d be the manager!
2. Take forever to respond to your team’s emails.  They’re underlings anyway.  Make ‘em wait.
3. Make it a point to forget all of the people skills you learned in grades K-12.
4. Ask your team members to complete a ridiculous amount of reports that you don’t even look at.  And if they are even 2.3 seconds late in sending them to you, send them a crazy amount of email reminders.
5. Make yourself unapproachable.  This makes you look more important to others.