I’m not going to lie, it’s a little weird. It’s weird driving the same roads, parking in the same parking lot, walking into the same building, opening the same doors, and sitting at the same type of desk, albeit one a floor above my old position. During my first week, I felt almost detached as I walked down the same halls, saw the same offices, and even smelled the same smells that I was acquainted with for the last few years. They were all the same, yet I was different.

I know not working made me appreciate “being me” more. It made me have a stronger sense of self outside of the workplace. When I tell people I used to work in the building, many have asked what I have been up to. I’ve told them that I took a year off to pursue my interests. Although that’s not 100% true, I like the way it sounds.

What I did not anticipate upon my return was that getting laid off would make me appreciate the work environment more. I don’t think I will be so quick to complain about the lack of parking or the traffic on the way to work. I don’t think I’ll even bicker about the time I have to be at work. I think before I was so accustomed to the environment I almost considered being in the workplace a right, and not a privilege.  I know now that the powers that be made my workplace what it was and what it continues to be and there is no way I can change that. That’s the corporate culture of that environment and corporate cultures don’t usually change from the bottom up.

Another thing I have appreciated more in the few days I have been back working in the same building is the outpouring of support from former work acquaintances. So many familiar faces have smiled when they saw me and said things such as “great to see you” and “welcome back”. Those comments definitely made me feel good and appreciated. Although I stayed in touch with a handful of ex-work acquaintances, many of the people I’ve run into while walking the hall in the last week are people I haven’t seen in nearly a year. So to know that they not only remember me, but are honestly glad I have returned is heartwarming.

That said, I am in no way going to march through the building announcing my return. That would be foolish and arrogant. And besides, there may be people who were happy to see me go. Because I was laid off, there were decisions made by people in power who decided that I wasn’t of maximum value at the time of my dismissal, that keeping me around in my former position was not cost-effective for the organization. These people might think I am not cost-effective in my current position either. So with that in mind, I think it is best to stay out of the line of fine and keep my head down. And if I do run into anyone who is critical of my return, I should stay humble, acknowledge any lessons learned or second chances, and move on quickly.

Fortunately for those situations, I won’t have to avoid any negative encounters for too long as I am headed overseas for business for a year in late January or early February. Although it might mean not seeing all my friendly former work acquaintances or being able to say hello to everyone I would want to say hello to, hopefully my short time in my old building will be to my advantage. Hopefully I won’t have time to take anything for granted or get in my own way. Maybe I’ll even be able to accept the corporate climate and culture for what they are and keep my opinions to myself. Maybe I’ll stay humble and show people that I have learned quite a bit since I was last in the building of my new and old job.

One month isn’t too much to ask for. But in this case, in a familiar place with familiar complaints, temptations, and adversaries, staying positive and looking at employment only for its bright sides – the friends, the new challenges, and the income – is a large step for me.

About this time last year, however, a former co-worker recommended the book “The Gamesman” to me. He described it as the best organizational business book he had ever read, although he claimed to have read it over 25 years ago. As we were working in a resources and requirements division, the book seemed like a solid recommendation and something I figured I would enjoy.

Written in the early 1970s by business anthropologist Michael Maccoby, “The Gamesman” explores several different personalities found in the 1970s corporate business environment. Maccoby builds on other personality studies such as “The Organization Man” and Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” and attempts to categorize workers based on their drive, corporate roles, and lives outside of the workplace.

First a disclaimer: being that this book was written in the 70s, it is very much a product of its time. There is very little talk of women and minorities and only Mexico is given an acknowledgement in the discussion of international cultures. When discussing the work place, women get the most coverage of the aforementioned groups and even then they are marginalized as secretaries and other administrative positions. They are seen as objects for powerful men to oogle or flirt with and their admiration is counted as points for a distinctive corporate personality. That aside, as a white man who has worked in predominantly white male dominant industries, I could identify with a book about the corporate personalities of other white men.

(Also, I am not sure if the person who recommended the book to me realized how The Gamesman was incredibly sexist and culturally single scope, since he too was a white male in the same white male dominant work environment. And the fact that the military and many defense contractors are so white male driven does say a lot about their business culture. This is not good or for bad, just reality.)

Through his research, interviews, and investigations, Maccoby comes up with four distinct corporate personalities:

The Craftsman

The Craftsman is the type of person who takes pride in his craft. They are subject matter experts on one thing, often spending their entire lives working one issue or field. They are career plumbers, career writers, career engineers, or any other field where one can dedicate their lives. They care little of promotion or interaction, only that they get emotional satisfaction from being good at their niche.

The Jungle Fighter

Jungle fighters are people who scratch, claw, and play political games in an attempt to get to the top of a corporation. They play people against each other, manipulate their co-workers, and use those below them for their own personal gain. They are largely political creatures who ass-kiss when needed and throw people under the bus when needed.

The Company Man

The Company Man is the type of person who throws themselves at the will of the company because they fear the repercussions of the company. He will do any job, take any position for the betterment of the company, and side with the company on all decisions. They are submissive and do whatever it takes to not get fired.

The Gamesman

The Gamesman is the newest type of corporate personality and was created by Maccoby. Gamesman feel the corporate environment is game they have to “win”. Money isn’t the end result unless it is part of a goal. Gamesmen want to achieve, compete, and pit themselves against their environment. They are very success-driven, often as Maccoby discovers, at the risk of alienating or losing their emotional attachments.

After writing brief chapters on the craftman, jungle fighter, and company man, Maccoby focuses more than half the book on The Gamesman. He explores the personalities of several successful managers at defense companies and other high-tech industries. What he finds is surprising and somewhat shocking. Gamesmen rely on competition. It drives them and keeps them on their toes. They have an unending drive to be the top of whatever field they decide to be in.

Unfortunately, Maccoby writes that the drive that propels many gamesmen to the top of their fields often stands in the way of their emotional well-being. Their lives revolve around work and they often lead unfulfilling family lives, sacrificing the warm embrace of home and hearth for the cold calculations of the business world.

Maccoby discusses the conflict these individuals have in depth in a chapter called “The Head and the Heart”. He proposes the idea that the corporate culture that promotes corporate “winning” and being “better” than others sadly kills the idea of true cooperation and compassion. Although Gamesmen aren’t inherently cold people, their actions and need to feel victorious sometimes make others feel degraded, especially those who don’t share their competitive will.

I don’t think it was the intent of my former co-worker to show me that I was too driven by work. I think he told me to buy The Gamesman because it would help me identify what I was up against in the conservative military defense contracting work environment we were in. But when reading The Gamesman, I found myself associating with The Gamesman personality much more than any other corporate type. And I found myself looking inside myself to see if I was as ultimately empty as the people Maccoby interviewed.

One of the people Maccoby profiled fit me almost to a tee. He was a successful worker who racked up the accolades at work, but couldn’t seem to find happiness. Although he was married, he couldn’t stay calm after work. He kept thinking his life would be better if he sought out other challenges, such as law school, medical school, or trying to find another job. He felt frustrated in his job because they wouldn’t let him “win” any more.

Overall, The Gamesman scared me more than any book I have ever read. Since I have been out of work, I’ve realized how important it is to be alive outside of the workplace. All the work and accomplishments I did at my job went right out the window the second I was laid off. They went on my resume, but they didn’t define “me”. I thought I was “winning” in the career “game”, but in reality, professional and educational accolades didn’t mean anything to me as a person. And now, as I try to figure out where my career path is going, I know money alone doesn’t equal true happiness. Money is necessary to pay the rent and I should still save for a time when I am too old to work, but money and accomplishments shouldn’t be the end-all-be-all of life. I should enjoy my work path as much as possible.

I might not know what I want to do, but I know I want to try to undo 16 years of competitive nature and act more from my heart for the first time ever. I don’t want to be a Gamesman anymore.

I think this is a great idea and I hope they have been successful in their first year and a half. Especially with today’s financial lunacy, having someone to help people with their financial decisions is a genius idea. Too many people I know are sending money down the toilet with the hopes that they will get some sort of decent return.

Yet of course, the rich are getting richer.

Needless to say, I have a lot of problems with the financial industry.

1) It’s very elitist.

Seriously, one of the reasons I have no interest in joining the financial sector, even though I love money, is that I often hear about people working 60-90 hours a week. That’s more than 10 hours a day.

How about they train more people to work in the field, and then work forty hours a week and have other people work the difference. Pay two people 100K instead of one 200K. Sure, companies have to pay less in benefits and health care, but with higher employment, they might not have to pay as much in social benefits, like unemployment and social security.

There is no way I would like to work 80 hours a week. I’d like to eventually have a family, home, white picket fence, minivan, and all the other trimmings of suburbia. And I would like to enjoy them. I can’t do that if I was working 85 hours a week.

Meanwhile, unemployment is still over 9% nationwide. We pay CEOs and their ilk millions in salaries, bonuses, golden parachutes, and other lucrative advances. There is no way sharing the knowledge in these fields – education through employment – is not cheaper than letting the financial upper class have a monopoly on money moves and management.

2) They should have to do pro-bono work.

Lawyers have to a percentage of pro-bono work in their careers.  The fact that there are already too many lawyers means this pro bono work is just making work for more lawyers. We need professions that really make a difference to do pro-bono work.

Namely fitness trainers and financial advisers. I’ll talk about why and how fitness professionals should do work for free sometime later, but although there are some startup companies that offer low cost advising, financial advisers should absolutely do a certain percentage of their work for free. Especially if their clients make under a certain amount.

We need to get the people who know how to make money together with those who don’t have money. Financial advisers need to be as accessible as priests. People need to know they can approach them at any time with any confession and that they will offer wisdom and advice.

I doubt this will happen, but it’s easy to imagine if you try.

While circumstances closed my mother’s store, another threat is killing other used book stores around the country: online sales and downloadable books.

My father recently forwarded me a link to an article that discussed the closing of another Melbourne, Florida used bookstore. This bookstore, On The Shelf Books, had been in business for over 30 years, only to close their doors because they couldn’t keep up with rising rent and other overhead costs.

Of course, the article then discussed the overall plight of used bookstores and their battle for survival. One of the local bookstore owners the author quotes is Elva Rella, owner of Patrick Paperbacks in Satellite Beach, Florida. I’ve never been to Patrick Paperback, so I can’t honestly rebuke her claims, but her quotes confused me.

According to the article, Rella’s store is seeing increased business and she is scheduling local events to draw in buyers, such as scheduling autograph sessions by local authors. That’s great. However, Rella says,

“We do all we can to bring the customers in”.

Then, however, in the same article she bemoans the growing influence of the Internet on book buyers.

“If you’re reading the New York Times Book Review (online), embedded in there is a little link that takes you to amazon.com,” Rella said.

“It makes it so easy. People’s lives are very busy, so coming into a store like ours becomes an investment in time.”

These quotes, when taken together, lead me to think Rella is not doing all she can. She is not trying to be a local alternative to the New York Times or Amazon. I am of the belief that people want to support local businesses, they just want those businesses to be as convenient as corporate stores.

It might take more work, but the Internet should be the friend of small bookstores. Instead of watching customers flock to other alternatives, local bookstores need to try to intercept those readers who are reading national reviews and buying the book on Amazon.

First of all, the Patrick Paperbacks website is amazingly primitive to the point of being ineffective. The “About Us” page is ok, but that’s it. Patrick Paperbacks could improve their website to include items of interest such as Q&As with local authors, announcements, and their own book reviews. Maybe Rella could start a blog with volunteer reviews by local patrons. Three to five reviews a week should work. I’m sure Patrick Paperbacks has loyal customers who wouldn’t mind writing reviews of their favorite books. Perhaps Rella could even do a review a week for the Florida Today. (Maybe the Florida Today could cycle through all local bookstores and post reviews from one of them a week/day/etc.)

Bookstores need to feed their customers their opinion online, rather than have them go the New York Times. Small bookstore owners need to sway and influence local customers online as they would while those customers would be in the store.

Those reviews could also have some way to buy the book from Patrick Paperbacks, be it a direct link to an Ebay or Amazon or other third-party merchandise account or even an email address to email Rella to request the book. Once that request is received, no matter what avenue, Rella can take the book the shelf and send it to the buyer. Make it easy to buy no matter where the customer is.

Second, Patrick Paperbacks needs a Facebook presence (Rella herself has one). So far, all I could find is a location page for the store. While that tells me where they are, it tells me nothing of why I should go there. Rella should post links to the aforementioned book reviews on the stores’ Facebook page as well as promote conversation on books, incoming inventory, authors, sales, and upcoming happening at the store. A Twitter page could also do some of the same. With so many people on Facebook, it’s inconceivable that a small business in a struggling industry wouldn’t at least try the social media option.

Like I said, I have a soft spot for local bookstores, both because of my mom’s store and the fact that local book stores have a charm that you can’t find in Barnes and Noble, in what’s left of Borders, or on your internet browser surfing Amazon. I want to be influenced to go to a local bookstore, like I would be lured to seeing a band live instead of downloading a song and listening to them in my living room.

Don’t fight the internet. Use blogs, Facebook, and other online tools to create a 24-hour community and conversation about your store. This way, if I am part of that community, when I am away from my computer I’ll want to stop by and talk, listen, and most importantly, buy.

Originally valued at over 50 million dollars, Mawhinney has used every avenue to part ways with his collection and keep it in the hands of a fellow music lover. He even posted it on eBay, where he almost had a sale, until the buyer was found to be a fraud.

Check out the video. My comments will be proceeding.

The Archive from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.

No offense, but I don’t feel sorry for the guy. Sure, his collection was expensive and he wants to see a return on his investment. But he is sitting on thousands, if not millions of songs that are not digitalized yet.

Why not?

It is because they won’t “sound right” after they digitally compressed? Is it because he is scared no one will want them? Are they that bad?

If he digitalized the collection, he could sell it over and over to people curious about his music, not just the fact that he has some antique media in a warehouse. Those records contain insight to bands, trends, and people that we might never know about or be able to hear because Mawhinney is waiting for the right buyer.

Recently Mawhinney has opened his doors for interested buyers of individual products, but of course there is a catch. Buyers must purchase at least $5,000 dollars with of media after putting down a $500 guarantee that they will show up.

I wonder how much it would cost to digitalize the entire collection and leave Mawhinney with the physical records. If his passion is about the music and not what it is recorded on, then he should accept some plan that gets the music to the ears of the most people. If he is an elitist, as many of the comments here suggest, then he may be far too concerned with the dying medium of vinyl to part ways with the sounds that are contained within.

Personally, I have no idea how to operate a record player, but that shouldn’t prevent me from hearing the music in his collection. I’m sure he has some blues albums that would knock my socks off.

Although Underdog was a smash hit in the 1960s and early 1970s and Biggers published his novel “The Man Inside” in 1968, from the late 1970s to the 1990s Biggers was a man forgotten. He did freelance work, penned several novels that drew little publishing interest, and lived on inheritance.

Then in the 2000s, a live action movie was made from the Underdog cartoon and “The Man Inside” was adapted to screenplay. When asked to sum up the sudden re-awakening in his work, Biggers said this great quote:

“You’ve got to believe that if you work hard and have hope, people will eventually love your stuff.”

Wow.

I’ve been blogging for only four years and I’ve been doing stand-up comedy for barely six months. I am still a rookie in either game. Getting concerned about page views and other wild metrics is a fool’s folly. My goal should be to write and create, whether here, on other sites, or on stage at a stand-up venue.

If I do that long enough, maybe, just maybe someone will like me. They’ll really, really like me.

• According to Dallas Maverick owner and media maven Mark Cuban, TV will not be replaced by the Internet anytime soon because peoples’ media habits change as they get more engaged in life. As they get older and more stressed by the everyday rigmarole, they want to be less engaged, not more. Unfortunately for me, I have the media habits of a 20-something with the lifestyle of a 30-something, hence I stay up until 2AM every morning.
• National Geographic explains the phenomenon of the chupacabra. It is not a mythical monster as portrayed in local legend or low-budget cinema, it is only a coyote with a bad case of mange.
• Here is an article on a 6’9 female pro wrestler named Isis the Amazon. I have seen her in person around Tampa. She is a legit giant. The question remains however, how successful will she be in entertainment?
• Here is a very cool Wu-Tang Clan shirt. I normally don’t like the _____&_____&_____-themed shirts, but for Wu it fits.
• If you have ever been curious how much it costs to employ Boba Fett to capture someone who dumped a cargo-load of spice in the presence of an Imperial Star Destoyer, here is your answer.
• Also on the Star Wars tip, here are some awesome travel agency posters for places in the Star Wars galaxy. Depending on popular consensus, the person who designed them may sell them. (Christmas hint, yo!)
• Here is one of the 5 million articles on LeBron James and his new commercial. I care less and less about LeBron everyday, but the reason I like this post is because of this quote from the book “Only the Paranoid Survive“:

Your career is literally your business. You own it as a sole proprietor. You have one employee: yourself. You are in competition with millions of similar businesses: millions of other employees all over the world. You need to accept ownership of your career, your skills and the timing of your moves. It is your responsibility to protect this personal business of yours from harm and to position it to benefit from the changes in the environment. Nobody else can do that for you.

• Finally, because it’s Halloween weekend, here is a link to more pictures like the one on the right from National Geographic of costumes from the early 20th Century.

In order to make money on this cultural shift, I discussed investing in various producers of bicycles, scooters, sneakers, and motorcycles.  I explored the idea of putting money in a few of the biggest names in the industry and ended the post with these words of advice:

In conclusion, my recommendation is buy Dorel and Nike and drop a few dimes on Patriot. Might as well take a chance.

When that article was written in June of 2008, Nike stock was $68.37. Last week, Nike soared to a new all-time high and closed at $81.89. A week later, and as of the most recent market closing, Nike stock is still high, although it has since lost 23 cents.

(How ironic, as it was Michael Jordan’s number 23 that made Nike into the powerhouse it is today.)

Anyway, had you listened to me back in the day and put your dollars in foot power, you would have made over $13 a share in Nike stock alone.

And that’s not to mention Dorel is also up $2 since 2008.

Sometimes I amaze myself. Other times I am just lucky.

(Maybe here is where I should mention that Nike stock went up mostly because they secured an exclusive licensing deal with the NFL.)

How I get those tunes however, has gone through a small transformation in the past few years. Admittedly, I was really late in getting on the music download bandwagon. While friends of mine were using Napster way back when it first started, I finally downloaded my first album two years ago. Although I’ve download dozens of albums in the last few years, most of what I download is re-mixes, mix tapes, and free giveaways. I’m still a fan of going to the music store and buying CDs, getting the entire album, checking out the album art, and reading the liner notes. I’m old school like that and I can’t see regularly getting music any other way.

Although I am also a fan of supporting local businesses, my music buying habits have never effectively “gone local”. Even though the closest independent music store to my apartment, Vinyl Fever Tampa, was ranked 18th on Rolling Stone’s top 25 record stores in the country, I don’t have the incentive to make them my only music destination.

Maybe my music tastes aren’t unique enough. Vinyl Fever carries a lot of vinyl (of course) and hard to find stuff. My music tastes tend to fall outside of mainstream, but not quite independent. Take a band like Clutch, for example. They are one of my favorite hard rock bands of all-time. They have a few songs on the radio, usually one per CD, but have never had what anyone would call a mainstream hit. Although they have been around for over 15 years, you can’t find them at Best Buy and you may find one release if that at a mall music store.

When I looked for Clutch’s latest, I bought the only copy Vinyl Fever had. Maybe other rock fans had been scooping them up, but I doubt it.

Maybe I am being too specific, but I could also not find a few old school rap CDs I’ve been looking for, groups such as the Gravediggaz and Aesop Rock. I know I shouldn’t expect them to have everything, but I can’t figure out if going there will help me find what I am looking for.

Of course, I know I can order CDs through the store. I have done that on occasion. My problem with doing that is once again there is no incentive. I can order music through my local FYE or other mall music shop. There is no 10% discount or anything for ordering through Vinyl Fever.

That brings me to another point: cost. For the CDs I do find, and I do find things on occasion, Vinyl Fever is no cheaper than any other store. As a matter of fact, their usual $12-16 per CD was severely undercut by a sale at one of the local mall stores that marked every CD  down to $9.99.

$9.99 for a Miles Davis, a Sly and the Family Stone, a Ghostface Killah, and a Black Label Society? I can’t turn that down.

If they are going to price their stuff the same or higher than the bigger vendors, it might help if Vinyl Fever Tampa had buyer reward cards. Perhaps if they created a community amongst their clientele and maybe gave one used CD free for every 10 new CD purchases. That would keep me coming back.

Finally, I also have a small complaint with their customer service. Normally, they are average to above average. However, there was an incident lately that really rubbed me the wrong way. A few weeks ago, I went there on a Sunday.  Unfortunately, I was there five minutes before their opening time of noon. Noon passed and the store was still not open. 12:05 someone finally wandered out from the back and opened the door.

That’s it.

It would be have nice if the person acknowledged my presence, especially considering he was late opening the store. He could have said hi, maybe asked if I had been waiting long, and maybe even apologized for my wait. If he was really customer friendly, he could have offered 10% off one of my CD purchases.

That would have cost Vinyl Fever $1.60, but would have won them my loyalty.

As it is, I have no overwhelming reason to shop at my local record store.

(Apparently, a commenter on the Rolling Stone site doesn’t think too highly of them as well. I wish they had listed which Tampa-based record stores they thought were better.)

But then I saw that Playboy may be going private. Either that or they might be bought out by Penthouse. Yet the savior of Playboy may be the legendary Hugh Hefner. Check this report out:

I like to think Playboy is of a higher standard than Penthouse, but honestly, maybe they are not. Maybe the pictures in their magazines are classier, and maybe the road to Playboy fame is more likely to go through Hooters than the local strip club, but both deal in adult entertainment. Unless Playboy can strike a deal with the Hard Rock Cafe people or a similar brand, I’m afraid they will have to sell low.

I did find it humorous that the Penthouse people were kind enough in their offer to include a consideration that would all Hef to stay in the Playboy Mansion. As for his girls, however, if they need a place, I just happen to have a spare bedroom.