[See my June 28 blog entry on my concerns about confidentiality. “Confidentiality criteria” (abbreviated “CC #__) referred to below are numbered per the criteria listed in that June 28 entry. Also, this entry may seem stylized and dense, probably because it is naturally elegiac about what seems a different age; future entries on the company at hand, if/when they become available, will be less dense and more “journalistic.”]
The first work I did within the CommonHealth conglomerate included several accounts in different divisions. My first stint of all, on May 14, 2001, through the placement agency Horizon Graphics, was at Noesis [CC #1]. This workday I barely remember, but my records show I worked on material for the product Elidel, a medication for eczema. I seem to recall—and my records confirm—that I had not enough work to keep me busy the entire time I was in the office. I was there over seven hours but had only enough real work to claim two and a quarter hours on my timesheet; but I’m not sure if I was paid for most of the time I was there.
(If I claimed on my Horizon Graphics timesheet about two and a quarter hours, or not much more than that, this generally would have followed the hours-reporting principles I would use—becoming increasingly regular with this—in virtually all my medical-media gigs in 2001-10, which I can further describe as to methods and reasons in another blog entry. For this day in May 2001, since I was new to this industry, and since Horizon may have guided me on what to do with hours for this day, I may have claimed all time I was at the Noesis office except for lunch, not just time worked plus a portion of my idle time.)
Later in 2001 I worked for a division called The Xchange Group, in Parsippany [CC #1]. There is not much to say about the brands I worked on there; I do recall that—to my surprise—the proofreading work was fairly easy and light (compared to many of the high-volume places I’d worked at in the past). I was especially struck by there being there a definite lack of ugly office politics or bitterness as you could so often see in low-paying, more traditional forms of publishing-related firms. I was rather amazed I’d “ascended” to such a species of (or environment for) media work, after a decade in, generally speaking, the tougher region of publishing I’d been in 1990-2000. (Of course, some firms in that period were distinctly nicer than others.)
In 2001, company optimism and serene sense of mission
There was also, among permanent staffers at large at Xchange, a general attitude of healthy optimism (not flaky optimism that was built on denial or obliviousness) that was tied to a sense of being “on the deck of the ship of good-faith American media-driven consciousness.” This was such as one might see among those working in top-level media firms in Manhattan, if the following isn’t a slippery caricature: it was one where a worker was privileged to gather information, and disseminate some version of it, that showed how you could (in good conscience) hail fine seas for all ahead, while enjoying an occasional droll minor-interest news story. This exaggerates the high-minded aspect a bit, but I am trying to describe a self-confidence tied to an attitude regarding not-quite-self-important, but important-and-competently-approached work that is not merely saying the opposite of where we often seem to be today (across white-collar America more broadly), post 9/11, post–financial crisis, swamped by scandals and paralysis, etc.
What I am sure of is this mood at CommonHealth changed, as a general tendency, over the subsequent years—definitely by 2007 [CC #3], though, pretty much, in mild stages. I defer comment here on what I witnessed in 2010 [CC #3, 4], while it is safe to say that changes in corporate mood and culture following the fall 2008 financial crisis would be, across numerous industries, to be expected and not all blameworthy.
One thing I remember about the 2001 phase is observing how, in the first few weeks post-9/11, people at the Xchange office, who had been so sanely, unruffledly self-confident up through about later August 2001, subtly but significantly registered what change of mood seemed to come over people in the wake of 9/11. This is very generally describing what it would take a novelist, and one dedicated to subtle details and a longish period of time, to do justice to. Interestingly, any broad change at CommonHealth, such as toward the more paranoid, bitter, snarky, or the like, very definitely did not happen through later summer 2003 [CC #3].
CommonHealth in its relaxed “golden period”: affinities and trust
One of the things I would say characterized my “golden period” at CommonHealth, which was from May 2001 through late summer 2003, is that the company was still a sort of confederation of formerly separate little companies spread out among multiple locations—Wayne Township (in Passaic County) and Parsippany and Morristown (in Morris County). Thus, when you were called in as a freelance editor, even if through a placement firm, and a given division liked you and had you back, one of the operating principles seemed to be that you and CommonHealth staffers “bonded” with each other based on trust and respect for your work, in an equitable division-by-division manner (actually, by May 2002 [CC #1], I worked at several divisions at different times—at least, Noesis, Xchange, and MBS/Vox).
It was as if affinities and local-group loyalties were what kept groups of coworkers bonded together. To me this was the best of what I saw at CommonHealth in 2001-03, and it represents, in my experience, the high-water mark of what company culture there could be fomented by its spread-out, locality-based “confederation” nature.
When CommonHealth started to locate all its divisions in one place, a big office building in Parsippany, in 2007 [CC #3], it was inevitable that a more unitary corporate nature started to supervene over all the originally disparate parts, and certainly for those corporate departments like Human Resources, top administration, and the like whose work aimed more toward a corporate-wide purview than to the prerogatives of local groups and craft-level work. For the central-office types, the possibilities of handling company business in a more standard big-corporate way were probably tempting and perhaps in some ways liberating (making their work easier). But in the process, I think, you could lose what creativity and good-faith relations would develop when loyalties developed in a more locality-based way; and here I defer comment on how negatively the more corporate qualities could become there [CC #3; 4 not quite yet].
My concentration at one division coincided with a family crisis
The first big account I worked on for MBS/Vox, which would be the one division of CommonHealth in which I did the most work overall (2001-03 and 2006), was for Listerine PocketPaks [CC #1]. The work done by me and a few other temps/freelancer editors (all there through a placement agency) was technical and editing-related—it was called quality-controlling, or “QCing”; it involved precision, wit, diligence through sometimes tedious work, and reference to your experience as an editor and writer (at least for me).
At the time in my personal life, I was dealing with the latter phase of my mother’s treatment for cancer; she had been diagnosed in September 2001, and amid a very demanding fall and early winter, I was heavily involved in transporting her many times to the hospital treating her, UMDNJ, an academic hospital that a doctor had made clear was best suited to her unusual tumor, a large soft-tissue sarcoma on her shoulder. There were two periods of chemotherapy treatments—in October 2001 and later in about February 2002; there were weeks of radiation treatment, mainly in November 2001; and her actual surgery, initial recovery, and transport to and inpatient treatment in a Kessler rehabilitation facility went on from mid-January into February.
This was a first-of-its-kind experience for me, heavily demanding (and coming amid wider post-9/11 business that was ongoing in New York City , about an hour away—even my being in Newark
My immediate contact there was Jen C., a sort of admin who designated what specific work we editors did, handled timesheets, told us our schedule for a given week or so, etc. She seemed as ready a person to bond with me, professionally, in such a situation as anyone I’ve dealt with in the past 10+ years. And for several years after that, when I sporadically crossed her path when I was at CommonHealth, she maintained a sort of sense of loyalty—extending mainly to Hellos in halls. This went on to as late as spring 2010 or so, and then appeared solidly to change [CC #3, not quite 4].
2002 work’s ending shows agendas
When the winter 2002 work suddenly ended for me (before February was over), I got an e-mail from Helene, my contact at Horizon Graphics, the placement agency handling several of us freelance editors, and she said [CC #3]:
“Sorry I didn’t send you a message yesterday. I did talk to [X manager, not Jen C.]. She said that you were very conscientious and thorough and she would definitely like to have you back as a temporary worker; however, the MBS/Vox team did not think that any of the Horizon temps were exactly right for a permanent spot. She said that the next project might be coming up in about three weeks, but she did not have any definite dates. I am not sure what this will mean in terms of you doing more work there. I know that they want to evaluate some more people who might be interested in permanent employment with them, but, at the moment, I have no new candidates to offer them. If the work comes in and there are no appropriate new applicants for them to try out, I am assuming that they will want to use temps who have already worked for them and who understand the job. …”
This forthcoming set of comments is very interesting, for several reasons:
(1) The way Horizon used us editors, in ostensibly temporary work but with an eye to being judged for permanent positions, is a fairly typical placement-agency method, and an ambiguous one (and not always meshing with my aims—I generally tend not to expect or want this at any temp gig I’ve had). As I’ve said elsewhere (in my June 19 blog entry, “In editing, what is a freelancer?...”), as I’ve seen numerous times, this combined-agenda move can be handled sincerely on your behalf or not quite so. And as a more positive thing, if in employing you this way a company is checking you out to see if you fit them, you can certainly (and secretly) do the same with them. I can later explain how, at times, it seemed that Horizon used temps in this framework of a “try-out”—meaning, in particular, how Horizon could benefit from a temp’s being hired away from it by a client corporation as a permanent employee.
(2) The way CommonHealth looked at proficiency on a craft level versus how an editor fit into their company desires and culture is a very important theme that I can revisit with later anecdotes, which would say a lot more about the positives and negatives of this company [CC #3, 4].
(3) A situation in summer 2003, when a group of us temporary editors were back at MBS/Vox, and we were there for about eight months (with one or more of us starting slightly later than the others), illustrates quite a lot how an agency like Horizon related to CommonHealth—in this case, with the result that CommonHealth cut all ties with Horizon by September 2003. It is quite a story [CC #3, probably 4].
In February 2002, I probably wasn’t hoping for full-time work yet—for one thing, my mother was not out of the woods in terms of rehab and other requirements like returns for follow-up scans to see if she had a recurrence of cancer—the rehab alone would go into the spring or early summer, requiring my driving her at first, and later her driving herself when she was able. Periodic follow-up scans would go on for years, quarterly first, then every four months, etc. From winter 2002 on, I was always the one who drove her to UMDNJ, more than an hour from home one way. So obviously freelance work—with the possibility of flexible scheduling—was all I could do, and would appreciate, at the time.
But my response to Helene was frank, in a February 20 e-mail:
“My initial response is, yes, I would work again there, but it is subject to ongoing things at this end (schedule, certain priorities). I will give more info on this soon [probably related to my mother]. As far as permanent work, I started reaching the firm conclusion I wouldn’t want to work there permanently[,] in about my last week there. However, it seemed they weren’t clear on certain things they wanted from us in the work—all us temps had to make up some of our own rules, in effect. …” [CC #1, 3, possibly 4]
My tie to CommonHealth was rebuilt in late 2002 through much of 2003
As it turned out, I was not called back to MBS/Vox for many months. I got work through Horizon at other locations, not only within CommonHealth but with other medical-media agencies. Sqodox (a pseudonym), a fellow temporary editor with whom I would later routinely trade e-mails about various things (work-related and not) for years, was called back there (via Horizon) in the middle of 2002 sometime, and spent only a short time there; I wasn’t called back (via Horizon) until November 2002.
And then, though my time was renewed in stages like two months or a few weeks at a time, I spent about eight months there, the longest single stint I would ever have at a CommonHealth division. In fact, Sqodox and I were there basically contemporaneously the entire eight months; a fellow temp editor named Zdovox (a pseudonym) arrived shortly after we did, but we ended up as a de facto team steadily employed there as editors for several months through July 2003. (My time at MBS/Vox then, which wasn’t constant, was interspersed with brief time at other CommonHealth divisions, such as Xchange and Quantum. Xchange, generally speaking, produced promotional items related to direct-mail efforts and the like, while Quantum handled consumer advertising. [CC #3])
You could say this was the high point
But the way the “tenures” for myself, Sqodox, and Zdovox ended all at once in July 2003, and why, is very illustrative of the dimmer side [CC #3; at some point, 4] of my overall story, and this story has to wait (it has to do with point 3 of the Horizon-related considerations above).
