I’ve totally had my head in the sand about the weather the past few weeks (although I did take the car for a drive with the top down on Tuesday when it hit 11C), but was just watching the news/weather and saw that tomorrow’s sunrise is at 6am, and sunset is 6:45pm. Yep, spring is definitely on the way…
I love tulips this time of year. We’re still ranging between below-freezing temperatures and more moderate days, but I have the most beautiful bouquet of orange and yellow tulips on my table. On Queen West near where I live, there are several little markets that all carry tulips beginning in February and lasting until May or June. The going price seems to be $4 for a bunch of 5 blooms, and if you buy them tightly closed and keep them in a fairly cool room, then they’ll last for days.
I always buy tulips for myself, and I can’t recall anyone ever buying them for me, although I’m sure that that has happened. Men, if they deign to buy flowers, seem to want to make a grander gesture than a $4 clutch of tulips; I suppose that they want it to be remembered. So once a year, on Valentine’s Day, Damir gives me a dozen red roses. Don’t get me wrong, they’re gorgeous, and I love them. But if he took the $100 that he probably spent on the roses, he could buy me $4 tulips every week for half the year, or two bunches per week for the 13 weeks that I most need a taste of spring, from February to April.
There is, however, a satisfaction in buying flowers for myself. I might stroll out to the market, window-shopping along the way; or stop when I am rushing home from a meeting. I let my eyes drift across the array of colours (I only have eyes for tulips), then pluck one or two pleasing bunches from the pack. If the weather is bad, I inevitably remark to the shopkeeper that the flowers make it feel like spring (like they’ve never heard that before). At home, I carefully cut the stems and strip the lower leaves, then place them in a round glass vase (for one bunch) or a pottery water pitcher that I bought in Barbados (for two or more bunches).
As long as I look at the tulips, and not outside at the snow still on the ground, I can pretend that it’s spring.
I’ve been thinking a lot about professional networking lately, mostly due to the issues discussed in my previous post. Today, I had a reminder of ways that I don’t like to network.
I was on my way out of the house headed for a wine tasting, and received a call from someone who used to work for the same software company as me in California a few years back. I worked there for about 18 months, transplanting myself from Toronto to California, and found myself in a political mess of an old boys’ club that was impenetrable to women. So, after being promised a VP position but never seeing it get any closer, and being rebuffed by most of the management (except for the president, who I worked for but seemed to exert little influence over some parts of the company), I quit. Great decision on my part, I ended up moving back to Toronto and am 1000% happier not having to deal with the daily dose of bullshit.
Anyway, a former VP from the company called me today, looking to network and find work for herself. She left there last year, probably also tired of the bullshit, although I don’t really know that because she wouldn’t give me the time of day when I worked there. I tried to network with some of the VPs when I was there, but as a director (the level below VP), I obviously wasn’t worth returning a phone call or dropping by to say hi. Three and a half years after I quit the place, having never said a word to me in the past, she somehow tracks me down and feels that it’s appropriate to call me up and ask me if I know of any opportunities for her. The funny thing is, she didn’t quite realize that I’m in Canada so don’t see a lot of opportunities for washed-up ex-VPs in southern California: even after dialing my 416 area code, I had to remind her that yes, I’m in Toronto, and yes, that’s in the Eastern time zone, and yes, it’s after 6pm and she was inconveniencing me by keeping me from a social event. She talked for 20 minutes anyway. I was polite and we had a chat, and now she’s sent me her resume with very explicit instructions about what she’s looking for, as if I’m her recruiter. Yeah, right.
Coincidentally, I ran into a former customer at the wine tasting tonight. She’s been my customer through four different companies that she worked for, and although it has been lucrative over the years, she has been one of the most disloyal customers that I could imagine dealing with. I like her personally, and have been to her home, but I would not trust her to help me in business any further than I could bench press an elephant. The last company that she worked for helped to bring down one of my previous companies, by committing to paying for a large piece of work, then reneging on the payment after we delivered the work. Since they were large and we were small, it took my company into its final death throes. She didn’t make the decision to not pay us (at least, I don’t think that she did), but she had to know about it, and she never gave me an inkling of warning so that I could have pulled back earlier and possibly saved something. About a year later, after she had been laid off from the same company, she called me up and wanted to network so that she could find work. I talked nice to her, and did nothing except throw her the odd bone that I felt was a dead end. She’s now working in a completely different industry.
I pride myself quite strongly on personal and professional integrity and loyalty. I don’t have a lot of respect for those who don’t, in fact, I can’t imagine treating someone the way that these two people have treated me then be able to ask, without embarrassment, to help them network. I certainly won’t go out of my way to help them in any way; they might think that we’re networking, we’re actually “notworking”.
I’ve been in a frenzy of reconnecting with people, due to two events: first, I changed my corporate domain, and hence my email address, and secondly, a friend introduced me to LinkedIn.
The first is a bigger boon that you might realize, in spite of the work involved. I needed a bit of a corporate rebranding, even though I am just a one-person consultancy, so renamed the company, grabbed the associated domain name, and finally mounted a real corporate website. I host the website and email on Yahoo!, which I love because they have the world’s best webmail and the web hosting is really easy to use for beginners (I recommended it to Damir and didn’t have to help him, much) but still allows for ftp and other more sophisticated things if I ever get around to implementing some of them. I even host my business blog on there under a subdomain, generated by Blogger. With the name change, email change and new website, I now had an excuse to email everyone in my address book with the updates, which is what passes for networking for me. You see, I’m a bit introverted (although some will disagree, especially after I’ve had a few drinks) and, being female, don’t really do the old-boy, hand-shaking, back-slapping type of networking. I whipped out my free version of Group Mail, which I use for mailings to the membership of my wine-tasting club, and set it up so that I could send individual emails to everyone rather than the usual everyone-on-the-To:-line nonsense that most people do. I did that last night (Friday, yes, I have no life because Damir is at his own place with a head cold, and I was recovering from a slight overindulgence on St. Paddy’s Day), and the replies started to trickle in. More came in today, and I’m expecting a deluge on Monday and Tuesday. You see, a simple change of email address is all the prompting that’s required for most people to send you a “how the hell are you” message back, and just like that, you’re reconnected. Some of them even visited the new corporate site, read the blog and commented favourably on it, which is pretty amazing because there is only one entry in it.
The second networking event was LinkedIn, which is a very cool professional networking site. I was invited to it by a personal friend (who I also worked with in the past), and since then I have found several people that I know already signed up for the site, and have invited them to join my network. Because I can see my connection’s connections, I saw a friend’s lawyer listed on her connections list, and have made a connection with him so that I have someone to review contracts for me. On another friend’s connections list I found a VP at a company at which Damir is interested in working, so I made that connection. On a whim, I looked up an ex-boyfriend and found that I was connected to him by four degrees of separation through three different people on my connections list, and none of these people know each other! When I imported a bunch of my address book contacts, it told me which ones were already signed up (by matching their email addresses). The more that I look at it, the cooler it gets. It’s just in beta now, and has some weird freezing behaviour sometimes; also, who knows what will happen when it goes to full commercial production: if they start charging for it, I suspect that most people will drop off.
I also was introduced (by one of the people who I reconnected with) to re:invention, a blog purportedly for women entrepreneurs, but probably of use to many entrepreneurs and small business owners. There was an especially good post today, Tips for 10 Million Women by Elisa Camahort of Worker Bees, which points out that technology-based networking is especially good for women — something that I think I just figured out on my own!
I’m a terrible housekeeper. Maybe it’s because I was the youngest of four with a stay-at-home mom so never had to clean much except for my own room. Maybe I missed that day in home economics class. Maybe I got lazy by being married to a complete anal retentive who literally vacuumed around houseguests. Whatever the reasons, I don’t like to clean house, and I don’t do it as often as I should.
I should have a cleaner come in every week or two and clean my place. I used to, then the last time that I moved, my cleaner was too tightly associated with my crotchety old landlord and I thought a change was due. Then my metrosexual male friend teased me about having a cleaner even though I worked only part of the time, and mostly worked from home, as if this somehow meant that I should be using my free time to do something that I hate. Ever since then — two years ago now — some weird Protestant work ethic has been at work in my subconscious, based on that comment from my friend, and I still don’t have a cleaner. When I was away in October, a friend stayed at my apartment, and she had a cleaner come in the day before she left. Was this a hint? Do I care?
A funny thing happens every week now, however. Damir ususally stays over the weekend, then we’re both busy during the week so we don’t see each other again until Friday or Saturday. Mondays, after he leaves, I find myself cleaning the place. Not a thorough cleaning, but laundering bedding, towels and any clothes that he left behind; cleaning the bathrooms; making a swipe at the kitchen; and straightening the living room and the inevitable debris on the coffee table left over from a lazy Sunday of reading and watching TV. It’s not like I’m trying to eradicate traces of him, there’s still lots of that around; it’s more a matter of setting things back to my “single” state such that whatever I touch is the way that I left it.
I love being with him, but I also love my time alone. As long as I don’t spend too much of that time cleaning.
The day after my last posting, and after several more emails to other Bell departments, I awoke, looked outside and saw a Bell Sympatico truck. Instant paranoia swept me: were they going to punish me by cutting off my internet access? I laughed it off, until two days later when Damir’s Sympatico access died… 
After a week and a half, it’s interesting to look back on what’s occurred in the Bell Sympatico rant story. I managed to inspire 5 friends (that I know of) to write to Bell in complaint about the ad, but as far as I know, we all received the standard form letter that stated “Our advertisement was a tongue-in-cheek attempt…” and worked hard to justify why they needed to degrade women in order to sell parental controls. I received a slightly more personlized letter when I wrote to BCE investor relations, since I am also a shareholder, but in spite of their promises to forward the issue to management, I have heard nothing in response.
A great summary of what went on in the press and other areas is here, including how an MPP has petitioned the Ontario Legislature to carry this issue forward to the Attorney General for review and possible legal action. For once, I would welcome lawyers.
It appears that Bell is really missing the point, however: that people were really, truly offended, and that they ought to issue some sort of public apology. I also like the suggestions that they should launch some sort of woman-friendly campaign, but I’m not holding my breath.
