Working Life
You calling me a bitch?
The guidebook for corporate women who are ready to shed the bitch and rocket to lasting success and happiness, too.
I’ve had a successful career in advertising for going on two decades even though the industry is a breeding ground for bitches. Controlling, bossy, ambitious, stop-at-nothing, intolerable bitches. But now I’d had enough and I quit.
“Talk about the kettle calling the pot black,” my friend said, dismissing my bitch excuse for quitting my job at a San Francisco agency.
I gasped and sputtered, “Are you calling me a bitch?”
“We’re both bitches,” she said proudly. “It’s why we’re successful. Remember that line from Madonna—’I'm tough, I’m ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.’”
Yeah, I remember that line and yeah, maybe it had gone to my head. But in my defense, no one until now had ever called me a bitch. What if my friend was right. What if I was the bitch?
I called up Bernadette Boas who’s written the book on bitches—literally. It’s called, Shedding the Corporate Bitch.
Bernadette had rocketed to the top of her organization, “lashing out, venting, condescending people, disrespecting them, and being a bitch to anyone who crossed my path,” as she put it. Then after decades of high performance, she was let go.
Her story was like hearing an echo. Except in Bernadette’s case, she spent years in bitch recovery. When she emerged, she built a process, brand, and enterprise around helping people “shed their bitch to find the rich.” (You can learn more at SheddingTheBitch.com. Order the book here.)
“I was the ‘bitch of bitches’,” said Bernadette. “But I came to see that my bitchiness was a cover-up for my insecurity. I didn’t believe in my own competence, skills, or talents. That’s why I teach that the starting place for shedding the bitch is discovering your skills talents and accomplishment, or your riches.”
Now this emphasis on women taking responsibility for their bitch isn’t to say that Bernadette doesn’t understand the corporate pressures that can cause a smart, competent woman to stop believing in herself and to compensate by trying to ‘man up’ and get into the old boys club. How could she forget what she’d lived for years? Still, she says, we always have a choice. If Virginia Rometty making it as the ninth CEO in IBM’s history and its first female chief exec is any indication, I’d say Bernadette was onto something.
“I’ve been following Rometty closely,” said Bernadette. “From what I can tell, she didn’t get to the top by being a bitch. She’s strong, confident, assertive, dedicated, and dignified. She took risks, trusted in herself, and leveraged all her skills and talents to pursue her dreams and goals not just for herself, but for the greater good.”
Rometty: CEO of IBM. Me: unemployed. There is, as they say, no arguing with success. Which brings me to the obvious. Yup, it’s time to shed the bitch. I got a feeling, no one’s going I don’t to miss her.
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Loading ...How a Job can Cure an Existential Crisis
“Maybe existential malaise comes from lack of obstacles.”
–Spoken by David Mitchell, author of “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet,” in an interview with Terry Gross, host of the NPR show, “Fresh Air.”
Ever get to that point in your life where you’re sure you know what’s going to happen next–the words, “I coulda seen that coming,” ever ready to tumble out of your yawning face?
It’s happened to me a few times and when it does, I respond by shaking things up but good. Sometimes too good. This time, I left everything I knew, including my home, dog and friends, to take an advertising job in San Francisco. It wasn’t easy but enduring boredom infused with sameness and predictability seemed worse at the time.
So now I’m back to doing what I’ve done before–writing copy, thinking about brands, and coming up with strategies and tactics designed to take markets by storm (or at least get some attention). This time though, I’m finding things are different.
Though the job title is the same, the ad business is no longer the free-wheeling, crazy and creative world it used to be. Blame on lawsuits or the lousy economy but clients sure have become a whole lot more cautious and restrictive in what can be said and done to get the brand out there. So much so that I now find, I’m more of a copymover–or as a woman in the editorial department put it, a copypaster. What this means is the account team tells me exactly what the client wants, and I dutifully move the “approved” copy around the page.
Care to see my ad, doctor?
This leads to conversations like this:
“What’s the call to action?” I ask the account manager, Frank, as he briefs the team on a new ad for a pharma client.
“We want the doctors to call the sales reps,” he says.
Now what I want to say at that point is, that’s not going to happen unless the sales rep is giving out free lap dances. But as we just had a workshop on sexual harassment, I keep my mouth tightly zipped and nod seriously as though I’m thinking hard.
“I know, I know,” says Frank suddenly, waving his hands excitedly. “You can use the bullets with the new data from the clinical trial.”
As I am now a devout team player, I nod my head vigorously and dutifully return to my desk for more copy-and-pasting of approved language. Later, I will be asked to add footnotes, disclaimers, caveats, and references so that by the time I get done with the “ad,” it will look like exactly like a page in a medical journal article.
Some call it advertising. I call it torture. At which point I realize I have traded general boredom with the frustration of trying to be “creative” in a tight little box. I also realize Mitchell is right because I’ve been spending all my “reserve” creative energy trying to figure my way out of that box and in the meantime haven’t had a single existential crisis.
And to think, I get paid for this.
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Some big news. I’m starting over.
Just when I thought I’d be winding down my (not so illustrious) career in advertising, I find myself taking a “real job” in my late forties. Hard to believe I was actually crazy enough to imagine middle-age would be a time to be cashing in and kicking back.
Right smack in the middle of my 27th (failed) get-rich quick scheme, life went and surprised us all with things like economic collapses, the ruination of property values, and double digit unemployment rates. All of which led me to wake up in a sweaty panic one memorable morning transfixed by the realization that (a) I was too broke to retire and (b) too old to marry rich.
It was a terrible predicament. I spent the rest of the week rewriting my resume (which I hadn’t looked at in five years) and composing professional-sounding “cover letters” (even though I had no idea what “professional” sounded like anymore).
In what could only be described as a miracle (given the economy, for sure, and my “advanced” age most definitely), I eventually landed a senior position in an ad agency. In San Francisco, arguably among the best cities in the country. They even offered to pay my relocation. It was like falling into a crystal clear oasis after wandering aimlessly through a desert.
Within a month, I went:
- From heat (Arizona summer) to fog (San Francisco summer).
- From wearing as little as possible to wearing “layers” (the key to dressing for San Fran weather, I was told by many).
- From a daily circuit that went pool—bed—fridge, to walking everywhere by foot (since I can’t figure out how the public transport works), knapsack firmly strapped to back just in case I want to do some shopping along the way (since I was warned not to bring my car).
- From always whining about being bored and/or my loss of muscle tone, to talking to any stranger who entered my path, usually starting the conversation with: “Hey there, I’m new here. What’s good to eat around here?”
- From having my own bedroom and private bathroom, to sharing a flat with a twenty-something private school teacher in Victorian mansion having eight rooms, one tiny bathroom, roughly 3,000 antique books, an eccentric collection of Asian antiques, and 400 pair of men’s shoes (smelling of course like men’s feet).
I quickly discovered my coping skills had dulled considerably while wandering in the desert, and regularly found myself on the edge of a teary breakdown. Too much change, even if it was positive, was freaking me out.
Upon admitting my fragile state to others, I heard the following bits of sympathy and support:
“Shut up, you got a job!”
“Stop whining, you’re in San Fran!”
“Get over yourself. It’s a new beginning.”
I’m sure I’ll come round in time.
Once I stop crying.
Boo Hoo.
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