Your First Job: Ten Critical Things That Nobody Tells You
7. Understand There is a Club
This one is an invaluable lesson. If you are good at your job, your superiors will like you. What comes with that will be invitations to events outside of work. These will come across as optional, but they are not, they are required for advancement. When I was 29 I was a director for a major healthcare organization. I often had to wake up at 4:30am to go play basketball with a bunch of out of shape, older executives that were terrible ball players. Most of them didn’t want to be there either, but they attended every Wednesday morning because our CEO liked to play basketball. I had to be part of that club because my boss was. It was that simple. They even put pressure on my to join their health club which was 45 miles from my home.
Things got better when the CEO started asking me to go surfing in Santa Cruz instead of morning hoops. My point is, you must understand there is probably a club like this at your new job. There may be a Saturday morning hike, a dinner party with a bunch of wine snobs or early morning yoga. Whatever it is, you need to attend more than a couple times. Later in life I tried avoiding the club and it never worked out very well. This was the most annoying thing about the grind for me. I preferred to do my job well, then go home and be with my real friends.
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