I have worked for my current employer for, at the time of this blog, 28 years and 6 months. Depending on your age, that’s either a trip to the corner store… or… an archaeological dig.

To further humiliate myself, when I started, we relied on fax machines for communication. Transferring engineering files to our factory in Taiwan was a multi-day quest conducted over a dial-up modem. Intra-office email had just begun to creep into daily activities and only the largest corporations had a website. It was not uncommon to visit a known and established business only to be greeted by a crude graphic with a notice of “Under Construction.”

Shopping online was not a thing.

Sharing photos of food, also not a thing.

If you wanted – nay needed – a job, you either grabbed the classifieds or you knew somebody. From there you had at the ready, a functional resume, 12-point, Times New Roman. If you were fancy, you added a cover letter, submitted often by fax, sometimes a drive by or even the occasional delivery via postal carrier.

Then you’d wait.

And wait.

And wait.

A person would call to schedule an interview.  You were given a time and place, and you showed up in your Sunday best to be grilled, and then perspire profusely like a well marbled ribeye over an open flame.

Last year my employer decided to retire. He has been slowly shifting the company operations, reducing our hours (and pay) and reminding us regularly that we should be looking for alternate employment.

I’m not.  I may later.  I may retire. I remain steadfast in indecision.

I am aware that the world has changed.  Everything now zooms through email in insta-time.

Me, with my finger on the corpse, decided to hop on over to LinkedIn to get the 411 on the jive turkey. Admittedly, since I don’t think I’d logged in since its initial launch, it did take like four password resets, security questions I no longer know the answers to, finding all the street signs and a small sacrifice.

The page loaded and I discovered my default settings must have been switched from American English to Alien Invader. I closed my browser. Ate the cookies, took out the cache and tried again.

I see letters from the alphabet of my native tongue. There are names of people I know with banners to “connect.”  The newsfeed is box after box of… Loud.

I had to take off my readers so it didn’t hurt my ears.

Every single post read like a Jean M. Auel novel.

It was like Facebook, but in business attire.

It was like a transcription of a 30 minute Youtube video, in full alt text.

It was like reading the assembly manual of a Whirlpool Imperial Mark XII.

Every post was packed with so many words yet somehow managed to say nothing.

I opened one of the boxes and really read, I don’t mean skimming for enough words to parse the meaning. I had to stop   and   read   each   and   every   word.

“Optimizing Mechanical Fastener Delivery Systems in Dynamic Office Environments!”

700 words, two-minute read, to discover Kevin from Accounting reloaded his stapler?

But it got me thinking, what if I join them… recalibrate my professional value proposition through the strategic optimization of core competencies, administrative process alignment, and operational workflow efficiencies?

Regional Director of Dog

Successfully navigated rehabilitation following bilateral orthopedic restructuring of the femoral heads for a 12-year-old canine.

Responsible for coordinating a complex, multi-layered pharmacological regimen • Independently implementing a multimodal physical therapy program based on written DVM protocols.

Additional responsibilities: • Mobility Assistance • Longitudinal Progress Assessment • Environmental Adaptation • Nutritional Coordination • Morale Optimization • Biological Waste Disposal

Key skills: • Rehabilitation • Project Management • Protocol Implementation • Pharmaceutical Coordination • Adaptive Problem-Solving • Stakeholder Support

12 months post-operative, patient demonstrates optimal functional recovery with proficiency in Cross-Functional Obstacle Navigation • Strategic Summit Acquisition

Compensation should be commensurate with demonstrated ability to use unnecessarily large words while speaking with unwavering confidence.

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