With marriage and motherhood, 25 years passed before I returned to corporate America. Since my son had moved to California to pursue his dreams and my daughter was working full time, I decided to reenter the business world and chose a small construction company where I would be the only woman in charge of 20 men. I like men. I have always liked working with men. They make the day go by quickly and, usually, painlessly.
Progress is not always a benefit in business, especially if you are the act first/think second type of personality. The interoffice memo has been replaced by the forever come back to haunt you e-mail. When carbon paper was still leaving smudges on your fingers, it was easy to retrieve a letter or memorandum that was, perhaps, written in haste. Should the offending correspondence already have been picked up by the mail room clerk (gone like the dodo bird), a secretary… sorry, administrative assistant, would chase him down and remove the manila bound missive from his cart. If the envelope had already been delivered, the admin support network would get it back before it was opened and read.
With e-mails, there are no reprieves. Once you push the Send button, the die is cast. Even if you were able to sneak into the addressee’s office and delete the letter before he/she saw it, some computer genius would find a way to resurrect it and send the author to their grave. Email correspondence is never completely gone or forgotten. I believe some politicians have recently learned the horrifying fact that you can deny what you have said but not what you have written.
For word processing, the computer is far superior to a typewriter, easily beating the renowned IBM Selectric. When the IBM Communicating Mag Card typewriter was introduced in 1971, corporations took their first step into the future as we know it now. This invention allowed similar typewriters separated by thousands of miles to send information to each other over voice-grade telephone lines. However, no matter how great the Selectric was then, it was no better than a chisel and stone compared with today’s personal computers.
PCs speed our way through setup, spell checking, filing and printing, saving countless hours and eliminating the added cost of whiteout supplies and correction tape. During down times, the computer also serves as a means of entertainment. No more hanging around the water cooler; now everyone is glued to the internet. I became addicted to Addiction Solitaire. Try playing that on a typewriter!
The internet is a tremendous boon to business. Research no longer entails hours in legal and business libraries. A few words typed into a search engine, and you are traveling the information highway like an Indy 500 driver. The amount of data available on any and every subject is overwhelming. Whether your need is a recent Supreme Court decision or the location of the best Mexican restaurant in town, the world wide web can get the information for you in a jiff.
The one thing that has not changed is gossip. I switched management jobs more than a few times in my career, but at every new company, it seemed the person I was replacing was the same one I replaced before. For the first few days, the outgoing GM remained on site to teach me all I needed to know to perform my job efficiently. He/she took the time to show me all the little extras, such as where supplies were kept, which bathroom was most convenient and which pot was always filled with fresh coffee. He/she also went out of their way to tell me who was having an affair with whom, which manager was disliked by what employees and who was not to be trusted. Instead of being disturbed by the lack of professionalism, I found it strangely comforting.
Whether 25 years or 25 minutes had passed, it made no difference. In the corporate world, time stands still.
Now that I run my own business… a business of one… I cannot fathom how I survived all those years. Waking up each morning knowing that the success or failure of my company rests solely on my shoulders is daunting… and invigorating. Far too often in corporate America, the person getting the credit for a job well done is not the person who actually did the job. I have had to learn that I cannot control everything, but being me, I am certainly going to give it the old college try. I have learned to celebrate even the smallest of blessings because they often grow into the greatest gifts of all.
Donna Carbone is the Executive Director/Playwright in Residence at the Palm Beach Institute for the Entertainment Arts, where education through entertainment is the mission statement.
Please visit: pbinstituteforentertainmentarts.com