updates: the musician with a day job, the required email greetings, and more

[ResidentialBusiness]

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

Here are three updates from past letter-writers.

1. How do I manage a “regular” job with a parallel career as a musician?

I asked about career advice for musicians a long time ago, and I’ve waited a long time to have an update I felt like sending. Unfortunately, the last few years have just been really, really bad. Things started to go sideways not long after I wrote to you. The program I was in was a really bad fit for me, and I ended up dropping out long before the end of it. There were other bad things too – I won’t go into it all because it would be pretty identifiable.

One major theme of the past year has been weird and stressful health problems. Your post on PMDD was very timely – it appeared right around the time I was realizing that my particular premenstrual hell was perhaps not, in fact, normal. I got medicated for that earlier this year, which helped a lot. I also discovered recently that I have CRAZY ADHD, WHO KNEW, and started taking meds for that too – and the difference is like night and day! I am having a lot of feelings about the whole situation. I am overjoyed to finally have something that works for my brain, but also incredibly sad and angry that it took so long to figure this out.

So many people left very kind and helpful suggestions on the original post (thank you all so much!) and I went back to read the comments many times. A lot of people suggested some sort of corporate job, and that’s what I’ve ended up doing. After dropping out of school I took a break for a few weeks, then freelanced and job hunted, and back in March I fell into a temporary position in a corporate mailroom. I’ve been there for 8 months now, and so far so good I guess? It is a very boring, low stress job. I do a lot of data entry and scanning and sorting and making UPS labels and I listen to a lot of podcasts. My coworkers are all very kind, and my bosses seem to like me, and we take turns bringing in snacks every week, which has turned out to be more important than I thought it would be. I am very underpaid but asked for a raise a month back when my contract came up for renewal (thanks Alison for the wording suggestions!), and am being persistent in following up :) In the long term, I don’t know that this job or type of job will be the best fit – this is my first corporate job, and it turns out that I’m not so good at situations where I have to sit still for long periods of time (but at least I understand why!!!!). But for the moment, it’s ok. I’m treading water, trying to sock away some money, sorting out the medication situation and finding a new equilibrium, doing music things on the weekends, and generally setting myself up for my next move, whatever that is.

Anyhow, if you have any musician friends, please check in on them and maybe give them a hug. The post-pandemic arts situation just really sucks – so many people I know (myself and my ex-partner included) are moving on to other things, because life is just too damn expensive now and we are all broke, exhausted, burnt out, and struggling with various illnesses. I’m feeling more positive about my personal life than I have in a long time (it’s amazing what some consistent income will do for you!) but I’ve never felt more discouraged about the future of the music industry (or, perhaps more accurately, the future of not-independently-wealthy musicians in the music industry…). The economic shifts of the last few years are rapidly choking off the last revenue streams available to the average musician, and it’s honestly really depressing.

Thank you so much, Alison, for all the work you put into this site – it is such a great resource. And thanks to all the commenters – I love this warm, kind hearted, and supportive little pocket of the internet :)

2. My boss said it’s unprofessional not to start an email with a greeting (#2 at the link)

After my boss emailed me about how I started that single email, I ensured all my emails had a “proper” greeting, even in longer email chains (there may have been a little malicious compliance involved).

However, it was the beginning of the end. I started getting negative feedback from my boss on other minor things and then mixed messages, like “You’re asking too many questions; you should know your job by now” and then “I’m not sure why you don’t just ask me that question.”

I could see the writing on the wall and started looking for another job. I was eventually put on a PIP, told to write the PIP and come up with goals for my success, which she then approved. (Is it just me, or was that really weird, too?) Despite succeeding in all my goals, I was fired without cause at the end of it, with a small severance. I don’t know why I even bothered.

All of this happened within six months of an excellent performance review in which I was told I was meeting or exceeding expectations, accompanied by a decent raise.

They advertised for my position at a lower salary and title, traveled to my city to hire someone, didn’t, and then transferred all my duties to others.

I was lucky enough to find another job quickly, and while it has its own characters and challenges like every job, at least I haven’t been blindsided. It was truly a bizarre experience, and I still wonder what it is that I did to make her opinion of me change so quickly.

3. Coworker was a jerk after I gave her (solicited) feedback (#3 at the link)

I decided in the end to suck it and see. (Note from Alison: this appears to be a Britishism.) I carefully shared my experience with my new work buddy (a much more experienced contractor) and she revealed she’d had the same meeting – and that the woman who’d been rude to me had also been equally rude to her. We discussed speaking to her manager, but the woman in question was about to host a team meeting that very day and we decided to see how that went first.

Well, it was awkward as hell, basically. It turns out this woman is just outright obnoxious to everyone, about everything, and nobody says anything!

So, being British, I went with the tried and trusted technique of aggressive politeness. Every time she was rude to me over the next few months, I responded with smiling, robust politeness in the face of her coldness and abruptness. Taking this approach with rude people tends to highlight the rudeness, making them feel awkward and inviting comparison from others.

Over the six months or so that I was there, her peers must have spoken to her: she slowly became less rude. By the time I left she was extremely nice to me, and even fairly nice to others.

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