About Me

A Short Story

If I may, I’d like to share a bit about me – where I come from and how I got “here”. I thought I’d do that by talking a bit about my 35+ years of experience working in the corporate world. I spent nearly 20 of those 35+ years working in HR, specifically recruiting. My entreé to the world of work goes back to high school. Instead of after-school sports or band, I worked part time. Aside from a break for graduate school and a layoff during the ‘08 financial crisis, I’ve worked ever since.

Born in New York City, I grew up in a part of that state where having a car was mandatory. Being in a family of very modest means meant I’d be the one saving for the car, paying for the car, registering the car, insuring the car, etc., and paying for any college I decided to attend. So work it was throughout high school. I still managed to make into the National Honor Society.

Going away for college was out. Just too expensive. I lived at home, going to the local community college. I kept working, paying for and earning an Associate Degree. I decided after that to go back to work due to uncertainty about what to pursue for my bachelor degree. I went to work in New York City for nearly six years. I returned to college at age 26 within months of my mother’s very untimely death. I finished my degree in 1987, working my way through undergrad by bartending.

Deciding on an M.B.A. as my next academic endeavor, I earned that in Boston in 1992. At a time when nobody was hiring, I managed to get hired before graduating into a general manager position at what was then The Bank of Boston. I reported directly to the Division Executive, essentially the CEO, of a commercial lending division within the Bank’s Corporate Finance Department. I had administrative, financial, and day-to-day operational responsibility for this $25 million business, which included managing a team that at one point numbered ten people. My departure after six years is a story unto itself. Perhaps another time.

New Year’s Day Brunch January 1, 2020 - View from Top of the Hub Restaurant, Boston, MA (John Hancock Glass Tower)

After leaving The Bank of Boston and making an attempt to pursue another field entirely, I changed my mind and decided to go back to work in the corporate world. This time I chose – purposely – recruiting. As a manager at The Bank of Boston, I’d hired, managed, interviewed, written job descriptions, conducted performance reviews, partnered with Human Resources, etc., so this choice made sense.

I got hired by one of the world’s largest staffing companies with headquarters in The Netherlands. I learned a ton about recruiting and account management, recruiting talent for companies in Boston’s suburbs. In 2006, I switched from the staffing side to the corporate side (in-house recruiting). I took a contract recruiting role for one of Boston’s best known digital ad agencies, and as “they” say, the rest is history. I stayed on the corporate side of recruiting for the rest of my career.

Fast forward…In December 2020, I left a position after 10.5 years with a subsidiary of the world’s best-known educational brand. Except for the months beginning in March 2020, those were the best years in all of my recruiting and professional experience. Despite being the outlier in terms of my political views, I had great colleagues whom I respected and with whom I worked well. As a recruiting professional, I developed the most while working there.

Starting with this company as a contract recruiter in Jul 2010, I progressed to the level of Associate Director, leading all of domestic and international recruiting for the organization. I managed a team of four and was a member of the senior HR team reporting directly to the SVP of HR who reported directly to the CEO.

I would send you to my LinkedIn profile except LinkedIn banned me permanently last December (2021). I had an international network of millions and dozens and dozens of recommendations. All gone. I broke LinkedIn’s professional “whatevers” as I call them one too many times. The final straw came when I posted an article with an imbedded video featuring Stefan Oelrich, the VP of Bayer Europe. Mr. Oelrich told us that these “mRNA ‘vaccines’” are good examples for (his word) “cell and gene therapy”. That post didn’t make it 24 hours before LinkedIn took it down and suspended my account, ultimately banning me permanently. I was an inaugural year member of LinkedIn and one of the earliest and longest-standing paying members, as well. Poof.

I knew out of the gate that this “COV!D” hysteria had a sinister motive. By March, I was calling it an “operation”. I told that to the senior recruiter on my team, adding that a crime was in progress…I had been watching the repo market through the last part of 2019, and I thought that the crime was coming to us from the financial system. It was ready to collapse…So, it had to be shut down, I thought. Please read this excellent comment by reader “Allen” over at Celia Farber’s Substack: 

Covid Is Not An Epidemiological Story; Covid Is A Crime Story

“Allen” tells this side of the crime far better than I.

In April 2020, I posted to LinkedIn John Iaonnides’s piece essentially telling everyone – paraphrasing in layman’s terms – to calm the hell down. We know who’s at risk. Lets take care of them, but everybody else? Someone in Germany saw the post. She went through her connections to get to one of my colleagues in the U.K. She had some very nasty things to say about me, including the “fact” that I was a disgrace to the University and should be fired because “people are dying”.

My U.K. colleague went to his U.S. boss (a person I’d recruited for his position). He got a hold of me to give me the heads up that this was already on its way to our CEO. He forwarded me the email chain with this woman’s rant. (She worked at one of my company’s sales prospects.) Sure enough, my boss hears about it from our CEO, which meant me getting called for a virtual meeting with her. While I’m entitled to post to LinkedIn (within professional guidelines) whatever I want, I must let people know that my comments and posts do not represent the company or the University. OK…So, I changed my profile “blurb” to:  “This is my personal profile. All opinions expressed are mine. And have been mine. Always. Because I have my own mind.” I was “safe”. For a while.

But the writing was on the wall. If people were this crazed?? Then that loser in the corner office on Beacon Hill in Boston, Charlie “Parker” Baker, issued his mask “mandate”. (“Brandon” called Governor Charlie Baker “Charlie Parker” once, so now that’s what I call Baker — among other things.) I thought to myself that if people tolerate this blatantly unlawful and useless crap — on top of the destruction of the lives of so many — then next thing will be a mandatory needle. (I’ve never worn a mask; never will.)

When talk started over the summer of 2020 about returning to the office, our CEO gave a presentation on how our building would operate with the new “safety” standards. Via photos of the lobby (arrows and stanchions), the mask not at your desk, but walking around, the floor arrows directing everyone in a counterclockwise-only direction, I knew my days were numbered. I’m not wearing a mask, not waiting outside in line six feet apart to be called in one by one, not walking only counterclockwise. Yeah, no.

The final, “OK, I have to quit” decision came as a result of the elevators. The three elevators would be limited to two people only. Those two people would have to stand on the elevator floor’s newly painted-on white shoes. One pair faced the front corner by the panel and the other faced the diagonal corner.

As I continued to listen to my CEO and look at the white shoes, I kept tilting my head, thinking, “This can’t be. Is my CEO actually telling me that I have to stand on white shoes and face the corner with my back to whomever to get to my desk??” (It should be noted that our building was within the City of Boston, so these “protocols” came from the geniuses working for the City.) Leaving the presentation running, I got up from my at-home desk and shouted for my husband. “Honey? Honey, I’ll have to quit.” When I told him why, he said, “Oh, yeah. You can’t do that.” Yeah, because I won’t do that.

I figured I’d wait until leadership confirmed our return-to-the-office date to give my notice. Leaving my job, colleagues, (They left me…), income, career, health insurance – all of it with nothing in the offing. I did not care. I simply refused to cooperate and lend respect to this degradation – all based on absurdities in support of a global crime. Sorry. No can do. As it was, I felt as though I’d already cooperated too much.

Ironically, shortly after the CEO’s presentation, the company announced an early retirement offer. I just qualified, and while it was not full retirement for me based on my tenure, it was a means for me to leave and give the organization more than enough time to find my replacement. I negotiated with my SVP to continue to work from home until my last day, December 31, 2020.

So here we are. My husband and I ended up leaving the northeast where both of us were born and raised for Florida. Very different life here. Still unemployed, but we’re getting by – and we have never once worn a “snot pouch” – and we never will. While I have a ton of experience I could leverage on my own, I cannot work for most companies in the U.S. I cannot and will not work for any company that requires a medical intervention for all of its employees. I cannot and will not tell candidates that a medical intervention is a condition of employment. Besides, the whole recruiting world relies on LinkedIn, so who would hire a recruiter whose profile is gone, whose connections are gone, whose experience has been wiped, who essentially never existed?

Despite my losses, they’re nothing compared to what so many in this country and around the world have suffered. The businesses built with blood and sweat — some going back generations — gone, the lives lost to despair, the years taken from the young, the traumas imposed on the young and the poor, the deaths and injuries from a forced medical intervention, and on and on. I’m lucky compared to uncountable billions around the world.

So, that’s my story. Writing the next chapter right now. It’s a little fuzzy, but at least I’m here to write it.

My thanks to Unsplash & Digital Content Writers India for the use of this beautiful image