Jelena Woehr
Denver
- 105 comments
- 49 likes given
- 72 likes received
Community & communications person for the world's largest publishing platform of its kind. Speaky-person. Politics nerd. Millennial professional.
I missed this somehow (which just goes to show how little this guy matters in the grand scheme of things, a fairly regular reader managed to totally not even see this despite reading that post and enjoying it)... but stay strong! I have noticed that sometimes people honestly don't know the difference between "plagiarism" and "having a similar thought." This goes both ways -- people plagiarize outright without realizing they're doing something different from just having the same opinion as the original author.
I saw it in my CSU classes. People would actually plagiarize discussion board posts! I thought it was just pure "I'm invincible" outright laziness, but I realized some of these people didn't understand that they couldn't just follow the creative process of "decide how I feel, Google to find someone who put my opinion in words already, use their words." It seems unfathomable, right? But it happens!
And on the other side of it, there are people so aggressively protective of their words that they think a vaguely similar thought is necessarily stolen from them, and they simply form a mental block to any suggestion that they're wrong--or that THEY weren't the first to have that idea, either! In their minds, they put the thought so well that anyone else who has it must have read their blog (book/article/site...) and must have stolen from them.
Thank you for writing this! It gave me a good Friday morning chuckle. I've been raving against unpaid internships for quite a while now, because the bottom line is that an internship is either paid and legal, or unpaid and illegal. Nobody, but NOBODY, is actually using unpaid interns as the federal guidelines require, e.g., in a way primarily of benefit to the intern, not to the company. If you aren't allowed to receive direct benefits from the intern's work, why have an intern?
I was just discussing this recently -- the McJobs of the world in food service and retail are often full up with people with decades of work experience who are changing careers and filling a gap after a layoff, while entry level "career jobs" have transformed into unpaid internships. So how exactly ARE young people who don't have access to funding from wealthy parents supposed to both pay their bills and get a foot in the door in their career fields? Most recent grads I know who haven't found career jobs yet would gladly work in their field for $10/hr, sometimes less. Are these companies sure it's REALLY not worth $1600/month to have a full-time intern? In the PR field, that's like... a handful of billable hours for one client. If having an intern isn't worth what you earn from a few hours of work, you don't need an intern. Fetch your own damn coffee.
@stevenmcoyle Me too! Hey, you're ambitious, smart, opinionated, I like your website, and you're adorable, much like Gini. I think you can do it. Claps.
@stevenmcoyle I work for the company in question, and I agree that the original letter was fine -- perhaps it could have been tweaked more, but we can't all be Gini, can we? I wasn't offended -- a little amused, yes, but if we can't laugh at corporate emails conveying what will be for some people bad news, what can we laugh at?
@HeatherTweedy @stevenmcoyle @RebeccaTodd I sympathize with her and I don't want to turn that around and condemn her individually now just to respond to the age conversation, but I was laid off (empathetically, kindly, with a focus on what I'd done for the company) at 21 and still had admin privileges for the company's website for the rest of the organization's relatively short life before it failed entirely. Never touched them. Most of my friends who are twenty-somethings would do exactly what I did: Laugh at the fact that they had forgotten to turn it off, briefly fantasize about revenge, then move on with the job hunt.
OK, I'm gonna say it: I feel bad for her and, although I don't agree with her actions, I think the employer is partly at fault. It does sound like they didn't understand the importance of social media--and the fact that they had one junior employee in charge of it solo proves that. The Marketing Director didn't know how to access the company Twitter account?!
Obviously there are big things wrong with HMV. The company is failing and bankrupt. Watching a company you love and believe in fail is agonizing, especially when the cause is mismanagement so outrageous it's clear even to the most junior staff that the company could have been saved. (I'm extrapolating here and projecting a bit, but there IS that little thing about the Marketing Director not having the Twitter login... if that's exemplary of management at the company, draw your own conclusions.)
Someone like Gini doing a layoff would be able to make clear to even a very upset employee that their work was genuinely valued and that the decision is an absolute last resort. I know, because I was laid off at 21 by someone who has Gini's empathy. And someone so easily disgruntled that even that kind of kind, empathetic, as-fair-as-possible layoff conversation would have driven them to hijack the company Twitter... well, Gini probably wouldn't have hired them in the first place.
It sounds like a large group of employees were let go in an inconsiderate and sudden way that didn't offer any acknowledgement of their individual efforts. They were made to feel like numbers -- or like failed X Factor auditions, according to the rogue tweeter. She was still wrong (mostly because it sabotaged her own future) to go rogue, but I feel really badly for her and her colleagues.
Totally with you on the "scratch my back and I'll pretend I care about scratching yours" thing with LinkedIn, and now apparently G+ (I still can't really get into G+ at all, so I will take your word for it, but it sounds about right.) And I even share the pet peeve about paranormal romance novelists who want "feedback" (read: adulation).
In this spirit of ACTUAL feedback, I am, however, totally skeezed out by all of the social-networks-as-women-as-sexual-objects metaphors in this post, not least because, on both Facebook and Twitter, more than 50% of users are women. And yet, I see so few posts describing Twitter or Facebook as a Calvin Klein model flexing his abs for attention, or even a cute hipster boy loudly mentioning his ska-dubstep fusion band's next show. Maybe because men-as-sexual-objects metaphors are ridiculous and get deleted.
Reminds me of another of Mark Twain's suggestions: "Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be." Substitute the metaphorical depiction of a man as a hapless sexual object every time you're tempted to put in a metaphorical objectified woman waiting eagerly for male attention, you'll notice it looks ridiculous, you'll delete it, and the writing will be just as it should be.
But hey, that's just, like, my opinion, man. Also, I've got the flu and I was cranky and nauseous already, without the idea of LinkedIn sprouting breasts to help it along.
@ginidietrich @burgessct Maybe something told us you were going to make a fun post.
@burgessct If only that were a business model I could apply... I'd totally translate normal, sensical communications into incomprehensible jargon and back for a living.
@ginidietrich I could do this in my sleep. And should be. Because it's now 6:07 in the morning. Is this your fault? Are you contagious with your early rising? WHY AM I UP?
@jasonkonopinski Woo! Now what am I supposed to do for the REST of the day?
Oh, Gini, I'm really thrilled we could connect on this topic. I hope your blog post creates some synergy in the working world around moving in unison to dynamically alter corporate language, so as to create transformational excellence in customer-focused and business-to-business communication. So long as we all keep sharply focused and on the bleeding edge, I think we'll be able to innovate for customers and deliver radically comprehensible communication experiences!
@ginidietrich Maybe douchepontoon.
@ginidietrich Seriously, though. The "companies who think they need a community manager when they actually need marketing/PR/customer service" trend is out of control. "Community manager wanted, should have 3-5 years' experience in email support." THAT IS NOT COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT. "Community manager wanted, should be experienced in corporate communications and outbound PR." ALSO NOT COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT. Rabble. Rabble!
@ginidietrich Damn. Guess I have to write that one?
Can you puh-leeese put something in about how community management is not:
* PR (or a substitute for PR)
* Customer service (or a sugar-free substitute for customer service)
* Marketing (or a way to force marketing messages down your customers' throats after tricking them into joining your "community?")
@ginidietrich @KevinVandever I'm going to hold you to this.
I don't think this was a case of bad intentions or intentional exploitation--never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity--but it's a good reminder that, when in doubt, silence is your best option when managing brand pages during a national/international tragedy. The very most that should be said is "thinking of those grieving today" or something like that -- no elaborate words of comfort, ever. People don't look to their shoes or their cereal for comfort. They look to their friends, family, and community.
@yvettepistorio You know it!