By Joyce Lain Kennedy
Dear Joyce: I am a master mechanic for a car dealer (dealer A) but lately don't get enough hours to pay my bills. Another dealer (dealer B) is anxious to interview me. I hesitate for one reason -- honesty. A friend bought a car a few years ago from dealer B, whose sales manager encouraged him to drive the car home that very morning. That afternoon the sales manager called to tell my friend that he had forgotten to add in a $500 cost and my friend had to pay that amount to keep the car. My friend broke the speed limit getting that car back to dealer.
If they treat customers in a dishonest way, why should I expect better as an employee? My wife says to stop worrying and take the new job if they'll guarantee me a certain number of hours per week. Your advice? -- T.L.
Take the interview. It never hurts to listen. Then go with your instincts. As career coach Richard Koonce says, ``Job seekers frequently practice a kind of selective denial when it comes to interviewing. They may overlook patently obvious clues about a dysfunctional organization.''
Koonce, author of ``Career Power! 12 Winning Habits to Get you from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be,'' says he himself once fell victim to a rotten job he left after 18 months where the boss micromanaged him to the point of telling him how many inches from the wall he could have his desk.
Koonce later realized he had missed the warning signs of a control-freak boss in the interview, because the position seemed ideal and he was desperate to change jobs.
Sheila Nielsen, an Illinois career counselor to attorneys, agrees. Writing in the Illinois Legal Times, she says it's scary to be out of work but worse to have a job that ruins your self-esteem or burns you out:
``You return to the job market worse for wear and will often have more trouble interviewing than before,'' warns Nielsen. One of Nielsen's clients, a young law graduate from a school not considered elite in Chicago, couldn't find work for months. Panicking, the student finally took a job with a single practitioner whose specialty was not interesting to the law grad.
Her boss, rarely in the office, turned over files of complex litigation that the new grad couldn't handle. She quit within a month. The experience shot holes in her self-esteem and she didn't find a job she liked for a full year.
You mentioned a possible ethics gap. I'm not certain how you can find out for sure if your prospective new employer operates with a different standard of ethics than yours but you should ask around. Ask also if dealer B has been plagued with turnover? Is the reason workplace ethics, the boss, the nature of the work, the work environment, an undercapitalized company with too few resources, or the pay? These are a few of the comfort-zone factors to weigh before making a poor choice because you fear joblessness.
A sign of the a-job-is-not-forever-times adds another factor in weighing employment acceptance: skills. How many new skills will you bag or perfect on the job? Try to find jobs with companies using the latest equipment to help you remain marketable. An outdated technology environment can damage your skills base.
Business columnist Jim Gallagher of the St. Louis Post Dispatch asks in good humor: ``When is it time to restructure yourself and downsize out?'' Now may be the hour, but in your rush to get enough work to put food on the table, try to make a work connection you can live with in good cheer.
In a more serious vein, counselor Anna Navarro of Work Transitions in St. Louis says a job is the wrong job when it conflicts with your own morals. ``No job is worth your soul.''