When the Unemployed Get Some Power ... Watch Out!

When you're unemployed, your ego and self-esteem goes on a bit of a roller-coaster ride. For example, each time I meet someone who *is* employed, and seems to not be doing his/her job particularly well, I find myself wondering to myself, "Yeah...and *I'm* unemployed."

(For example - just today - I was food shopping. One grocery store had an advertised sale on lobster tails (extremely cheap). When I asked for them, the sales associate told me they had none, because, "his manager had ordered very light for the weekend..." Really? On a holiday weekend, with an item that rarely goes on sale and is advertised with a GREAT price on the front page of the flyer, a manager thought it was a 'smart' decision to order light? (Assuming, of course, that they really didn't want to run out of supply...))

A few weeks ago, however, my self-esteem took a boost as I engaged in a small battle with another unemployed job-seeker (and realized, almost certainly, that I will NOT be the last unemployed person in the world, as I now know one other person who should still be there).

As readers of this blog know, I'm a huge fan of efficiency and technology. I'm a champion of using RSS feeds to read more, quicker. Unfortunately, not all websites offer RSS feeds. YahooGroups, in particular, don't make RSS feeds readily available (which is truly damning, since there are an awful lot of YahooGroups).

Since you can only get the messages via email (or, by reading on the web), I had to do some ingenious tricks to secure an RSS feed (and, you can read about that as the #4 option on the blog post listed above).

I saw on one of the groups I belong to, that one of the members was looking to speak with me -- I responded to the poster, and waited to see what he wanted. He responded, saying that he had received concern from other members that their posts were being publicly posted, and that the practice should stop (as though I had maliciously set out to do this...)

I replied back, that this wasn't necessarily accurate -- that the blog these posts were appearing on were not being publicly posted. The blog was not promoted or marketed as a public blog. The only way someone could find these posts was to be searching for them. Nevertheless, I took privacy seriously, so I presented to him (the group administrator) what I was trying to do, and asked him what advice he might have (because, in addition to being the admin, he was also a computer professional).

Here's where the train goes off the rails. By his own admission (later), rather than reading my response (or, even WAITING for a response), he kicked me out of the group as soon as he sent his initial message and banned me from the group. This is akin to a police officer shouting, "Stop, or I'll shoot!" and then blasting away immediately after.

A day later, he deemed me worthy of replying to, and he said, since I had agreed to stop publishing them (not that I'd had any vested interest *in* publishing them, initially), he would reinstate me. I was still miffed, but I accepted it. However, I wasn't actually reinstated. I had no access to the group or messages.

I continued to email him to find out what to do (and told him, this could have all been avoided had he actually read my email before impetuously banning me from the group, for what was not anything intentional or malicious), but he also came up with a dead-end as to why I didn't have access. Finally, he must have realized that I had not been "reinstated"; I needed to reapply for membership, so his last email to me said, "You need to reapply. Jeez, just do that already and stop whining."

This was an impressive string of communication failures. Starting with his initial email (where he'd already assumed I was doing something malicious), to his ignoring of any return email, to his hasty, ill-advised banning, to his final insult because it took him longer to realize what had gone wrong. In my career, I've not really seen anyone so "natural" at committing error after error (without actually trying).

More damning was the fact that this group bears the name of a career counselor/Department of Labor consultant (so, although he doesn't run the group, he's obviously associated with it) - his "weigh-in" on the issue was simply that he supported any protection of privacy. I responded, and explained that I never suggested privacy should be compromised, but that a modicum of decency should always be adhered to -- and I got no response.

As I said, this apparently worked out, although, at the expense of my blood pressure. Still, looking at the group admin's LinkedIn profile, I saw he has not worked, full-time or permanently, since 2007. I'd suggest a combination of his lack of understanding of technology (which, as an IT professional, is basically laughable) and his incredibly poor inter-personal communication skills are almost certainly two reasons contributing to this string of luck.

But, I only do this stuff for a living ... what do I know?