Sunday January 17, 2010
GOLDEN GLOBES: Heavy on the dark and sober themes. 3F
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‘Constructive revenge’ a better route BY MILDRED L. CULP WORKWISE FEATURES
Many workplace experiences sour. In more than four decades of practice, psychiatrist Victor Cruz of the Cruz Clinic in the Detroit suburb of Livonia, Mich., has seen his share of patients who considered revenge. He says that such thoughts are human: “You feel hurt and want to inflict pain. Everyone thinks about doing it.” The cost, he says, is that “revenge harms you, creating destructive feelings and demoralization.” Two people in very different work situations have disappointment in common. Read about revenge that was and revenge that wasn’t.
NOT MAD, JUST EVEN Cruz explains that covert revenge is secretive, occurring frequently in the workplace through technology or gossip. Parmelee Eastman of the proprietary market research firm EastSight Consulting in Wellesley, Mass., provides an example of covert revenge. She was laid off with a group of people, a large number over age 40, from Digital Equipment Corp., where she’d worked more than 16 years. “Digital had been family-oriented,” she recalls. “The president was adamant against layoffs. People in manufacturing had no work but he wouldn’t lay them off. When financial problems started, I’d do what I could to help. The new president
SPECIAL | WORKWISE FEATURES
Victor Cruz brings uncommon perspective on revenge in the workplace. He practices at the Cruz Clinic in Livonia, Mich. Here he’s shown in Tampa vacationing over the December holidays. immediately instituted massive layoffs.” She had one week to get out and eventually received severance. The company that had her loyalty had evaporated. Eastman met with an attorney, who advised her that the likelihood of gaining much from pursuing the company’s firing of too many older workers was nil. She decided to shift to a smaller company. Her door was open to revenge, but “I didn’t want to spend my energy entwined in a bad situation,” she reports. “I think it was a healthy way to get
closure from a company where I thought I’d spend my life.” Then, out of nowhere, an opportunity arose. Eastman had a chance to apply her personal philosophy, “Don’t get mad; get even.” A client at her new company wanted competitive intelligence on Digital, to which the client had lost business. Eastman had worked in that very part of Digital but had to assess whether practices had changed there. They hadn’t. She documented her findings and turned them over to her client.
‘LOOKING FORWARD’ Dee Jones, owner of Power of Women Magazine and Radio Show in Hot Springs, Ark., used what Cruz calls “constructive revenge,” which allowed her to feel the pain and work through it. She fell prey to a subcontractor, also a woman, of her startup medical staffing business with 130 subcontractors. That woman stole her clients and, by reporting to the Department of Labor that Jones was treating subcontractors like employees, assured an investigation into
the business. Jones faced a potential $73,000 fine. Jones completely lost her “fight,” and the women who’d worked with her firm, both single mothers and mothers with low income, kept asking her for help. She concedes that she was “panicked: I didn’t know what to say. “My 16 year-old son said, ‘Mom, this is obviously not what you were supposed to do,’ ” she remarks. “ ‘There’s something better ahead.’ ” Her husband suggested that, should their house be at risk as their main asset, they could get divorced and take her off title. She kept wracking her brain. What could she do? She decided to close her business and started a new, very different one. “You have to keep looking forward,” she says. Cruz describes her attitude as “healthy – beginning by feeling the pain and doing something constructive. She was ... coping with the pain. Her urge to create pain became weaker and weaker.” Eastman believes that “getting even is sweet but it isn’t worth risking a new job.” Cruz disagrees, saying “harming a competitor or former employer never pays. That’s revenge that will haunt you. You always get it back, sooner or later, in some way.” DR. MILDRED L. CULP, Workwise Features, is an award-winning journalist. E-mail questions or comments to culp@ workwise.net.
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