Egalitarianism #3 - Jan. 11, 2012

It's been one week and one day since I lost my job and I've had a lot of time to think about it. It's probably human nature to wonder what I did wrong, or if I did anything that earned me future eligibility for unemployment? I'm certainly not perfect, but I made my deadlines, haven't had a sick day in several years, often don't use up my vacation, work around the clock, take complaints from people when it's not my job (and actually try to help them), and generally, came to work every day excited about my assignments. I certainly was not one of those people who burst out the back door to the parking lot each day at 5:30 on the dot!

Interestingly, there is one thing that probably did not help my cause, and that one thing is something that is essential for all people who go into newspaper reporting. It's a sense of egalitarianism. That's a big word, but the dictionary defines it as "a belief in human equality, especially with respect to social, political and economic affairs." In other words, a big part of my professional training, starting as a "Teen Page Correspondent" at the Winston-Salem Journal/Sentinel (N.C.) around age 16, was the required sense of treating all people equally and not getting star-struck. I can remember my old editor telling me that I had to be objective and impartial if I wanted to "make it in this business."

People in the news industry are around movers and shakers all the time, so you have to program your brain early to see sports figures, entertainment figures, political figures and the Donald Trumps of the world with equanimity. So what if they are the greatest basketball player, actor, world leader or richest man in Manhattan? At the end of the day, why should that make him or her different than the UPS guy or the cat sitter or the person who dumps your trash cans each day at the office? And truthfully, do you have the most contact with the sports hero and bazillionaire or with the UPS guy and cleaning crew?

I've done a pretty good job with that throughout my career and honestly, I think the only person who caused me to get a tiny bit rattled was tennis legend Billie Jean King. Maybe that's because I had a poster of her up in my room as a kid beside Swedish tennis legend Bjorn Borg and Australian tennis great Evonne Goolagong, and in my mind as a kid, it was almost as if Billie Jean invented women's sports. After all, she started Women's Sports magazine and was a founding influence in the Women's Sports Foundation. She helped put women on the map in sports and insisted to newspaper editors around the world that women athletes were relevant.

But what does all that have to do with why I lost my job? Maybe nothing, but also, maybe a lot. Everybody knows how office politics works. The "squeaky wheel gets the grease," right? So if you just hunker down in your office and work and don't "play the game," maybe you are regarded differently. Maybe you are perceived as not being fun or even respectful. You're not awed by much. You're not genuflecting or kowtowing. And if you treat others equally, which, ideally, should be an admirable trait, could that potentially come back and bite you if you don't stroke egos?

Maybe it's a case of genuine misunderstanding. I behave professionally as I have been trained. Perhaps others want or need another kind of person as a colleague or staff member -- one that does not have an egalitarian view of the world. If that's the case, then showing me the door was the only option because it's seemingly not in my DNA to alter my approach to people. Sure, it's fun and interesting to see what "stars" are like and to engage with them in conversation, but for me, unless it's Jesus Christ, Gandhi or Buddha, I'm probably not going to get too rattled in my interpersonal dealings. People are people. I believe that and respect them all on the same level. If that's a bad thing, then let me open my own door.