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A few years ago, I went on a sales call that I should have walked out on. Here’s the scene:
I’m sitting in the reception area of a company’s office, located in a suburban Chicago office park. The contact I’m meeting, a director-level head of marketing, is running ten minutes late.
Ten minutes becomes twenty. Twenty becomes thirty.
The woman at the front desk assures me that his meeting is running long but should be over soon.
That’s not why I should have left. I mean I drove all the way to the ‘burbs (gross), the time was a sunk cost.
👉It was the yelling.
There aren’t many times I can look at my career and honestly say “it felt like something out of a movie.” (It feels like lame social media hyperbole even typing this.)
But the neighboring conference room, with its doors visible to me from the lobby, had a steady increase of raised voices, shouting, and as I learned later, tears.
I asked the receptionist, “should I…come back some other time?”
“No, it really should just be a few more minutes.” She seemed completely unconcerned.
At the time, her nonchalant attitude made me think maybe this isn’t that bad. Maybe I’m imagining it? (Spoiler: nope.) But it was a (false) positive confirmation that I wanted. That the trip wasn’t a waste of time. (Spoiler: it was.)
The shouting stopped. The meeting ended. An angry man (who I later learned was the founder and CEO) stormed off. A few people left the room. And that’s where I swear I saw tears. My alarms start going off again.
But then the marketing director came to greet me. To my surprise, he and his colleague seemed pretty upbeat. Personable. Relaxed.
Maybe I really did imagine the entire thing? How could they be this chill? Maybe it was just a bad day. An outlier.
I learned about their hiring needs. Did my pitch. Agreed to terms. Went back to the office and we started a search.
A week later, our first candidate went onsite for an interview.
And they overheard The Exact. Same. Thing.
Turns out, people weren’t ‘upbeat’ because it wasn’t as bad as I thought—they were just used to it. It was a daily occurrence.
They put on a happy face when talking to outsiders. But they were miserable inside.
(This place's Glassdoor score was in the 2s. I’m surprised it’s that high.)
Which brings me to the moral of the story: the job market has shifted over the last couple of years, and we’re not on the moonshot path to Office Dork™️ Utopia that we thought we were on, right after the pandemic.
Even so, there are some things that should always be non-negotiable:
Not working with jerks. Being treated with respect. Fair compensation. Coworkers who carry their own weight. Bosses who understand unique life situations and emergencies. And a general understanding that output is what matters.
All the things that were clearly missing in the company I described above.
If you do want to learn how Hirewell can help build your team (and you’re not the awful company from my story 😂), reach out to me here.
Full episode of The 10 Minute Talent Rant: 'Work Is Called Work for a Reason.' here.
You can follow me on LinkedIn here and Twitter here. Join the discussion on this LinkedIn post (or give it a 👍) here.
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