Girl on the Brink: Surviving Desperate Times with Desperate Measures

ANN’S NOTE: Ann lands a national TV interview on FOX Business Happy Hour, Friday, Sept. 4, between 5:20 and 5:30 PM EST.

Miss it? Catch her on Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 7 at 10:45 AM EST on the Louisiana Radio Network (WRKF), an NPR affiliate.

Read the press release that got her the gigs.

Jobs end abruptly, as do relationships.

One minute your cardkey works, and you slip into the oblivion of office milieu. The next minute, you’re waved into an empty office, and two upper management types (the firer and the witness) lay you off.

Management’s aim is to get you out of the office as fast as possible, just like the guy who f–cks you one night and then shuts you out the next.

Both situations arise from poor communication. Built on expectations born by the courtship of relationships and jobs, communication drives us together as much as it drives us apart.

Like a job interview, a first date might involve the question: “When was the last time a guy swept you off your feet?”

When a guy asks me that I might remain radio silent and think, my last serious relationship. My ex boyfriend, a millionaire, was quite generous. He bought me round-trip airline tickets and a high-fashion black bikini for my birthday.

He hunted me down at a hotel to send me flowers, met me at Penn Station with a bouquet of roses, and, among other things costing thousands more, offered to buy me an $800 coat, which I turned down because I’d only known him for a couple of weeks.

And that’s the key—redeeming your words with action.

If a guy sugars your mind with words of taking you, say, shopping or on an exotic trip but doesn’t deliver, chances are he never will, and the relationship ends. It’s not about the money, although that’s the first thought that often leaps into a guy’s mind.

You think back: Did he mean all those things he said to you, or did he use words to keep you under the covers?

In the workforce, some of my job descriptions and bosses filled me with promises that were never fulfilled.

My last job promised that I’d “work closely” with my boss on strategy to revive the organization’s marketing efforts.

Instead, my boss arranged lunches with marketing directors from other organizations and never invited me. She hired consultants to analyze unprofitable departments and never clued me in until later on.

When I raised that the job description set me up for failure and needed to be rewritten, she waited nearly a year before revising it with business speak. Less than three months later, I got laid-off.

My life experiences have taught me that living up to a promise is one of life’s highest moral achievements. I promise.