No Black Cats Need Apply
Wherein Our
Heroine Mulls Over Strange Behavior.
Once upon a time, I was an actor.
Actors are really strange people - they shudder at the name Macbeth spoken
inside a theatre, they have some strange ideas about whistling, and they never,
ever wish each other "good luck" for fear of causing the reverse. All of these
behaviors stemmed from some real historical causes, but probably continued to
exist to provide an illusion of control. This is very important in an actor's
out-of-control life, where a stranger with a job title of "critic" can get you
fired.
When I stopped acting
and started in business, job inquiries were still done via U.S. Mail. This
spawned a whole host of superstitious, obsessive behavior - making sure the
paper's watermark faced the right way, a good strong signature in blue or black
ink, perfect 2/3 folds in the cover letter and resume, lining up the stamp
perfectly on the envelope - all in the service of making sure the documents got
to the recipient in pristine form. We were told that these documents
represented who we were - if we valued them, then the recipient would be more
likely to value them. Then you would arrive for the interview and find that
someone had used your representative document as a coffee coaster, but the
illusion of control was too valuable to give up, and we continued to print
copies of the letter until we could come up with a signature that was closer to
John Hancock than Charles
Manson.
Now we fling the
resume as an attachment onto an e-mail and hope for the best. I have arrived at
various offices to find my 2-page resume somehow spans onto three pages due to
the recipient's printer settings, or the margins are hopelessly tweaked and the
document looks like it was formatted by an insane troll. People are more casual
these days about appearances and more concerned with content, but it leaves
those of us with control issues without some perfectly good superstitious
illusions to play with.
But
being out of control of a situation long enough will make you invent
superstitious behavior. Lacking stamps and watermarks, I have found myself
making empty promises such as, "If I get this e-mail out by 7:30 AM, they will
realize what a hard worker I am and how much of a self-starter I am!" Nonsense.
They probably don't even notice what time you send the e-mail, even if they do
happen to read it.
So, I vow
to be more constructive and less superstitious. Pardon me while I go cross my
fingers, knock on wood and rub my Buddha...
Posted: Monday - March 22, 2004 at 07:46 AM
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