So a young woman (Diana Mekota) who recently graduated from college and was looking to move back to the Cleveland area reached out to another woman (Kelly Blazek) seeking assistance with a career in the Cleveland area. Blazek works as a marketer in the media industry in the area and voluntarily started a job bank for marketing professionals in the Cleveland area. In 2013 she won an award as the “Communicator of the Year” from a local business group.
Mekota reached out to Blazek via LinkedIn, seeking to subscribe to her job group: http://imgur.com/bBonE3M
Mekota responded to her in a very polite and courteous manner: My response - Imgur
However there was no reply again from Blazek, so Mekota posted the string of communications to friends via email and then on reddit and imgur. It eventually found it’s way back to Blazek who has now issued an apology in the Cleveland paper.
Actions by people taken when they don’t think anyone else will see, are more representative of one’s character than actions taken when they expect everyone to see.
I did too, until I read that she sent similarly snide and bitchy replies to several other job-seekers before this incident — so it wasn’t just her having a bad day, but was clearly something she enjoyed doing. Nearly as much as I’m enjoying watching her reputation self-destruct. Oh, the Schadenfreude.
Yep, between private nastiness and a public apology, I know which I’d take as the better gauge of her nature. The apology strikes me as an attempt at damage control by someone who knows the right words and is willing to parrot them.
Yawn…an unpleasant person reveals to a wider audience that she is, indeed, unpleasant. A cursory examination of local arrest reports will demonstrate that a host of other people do exactly the same thing (or worse) DAILY.
Since Cleveland isn’t the go to “job destination” for the US and since the majority of people online will eventually find work without either referencing or even discussing this petty woman and her anger issues, this is just another tempest in a teapot that the media can use to show that they are “hip” to that whole “Internet thing.”
I especially like how Blazek stomps all over a “young jobseeker” and accuses her generation of being “entitled” when she herself holds the key to many valuable professional connections. Classic Catch-22 - you can’t get a top tier job, or even on the corporate ladder, unless you have the right connections but without the right connections you aren’t allowed to join the connections-club. It’s not “entitled” to have ambition.
With young people (and older folks as well) being told to bypass automatic gatekeeping and reach out to actual human beings in order to get a foot in the door why are people like Blazek so shocked when people actually try to do that? How dare they! But how else do you get a job these days?
The apology written by Blazek is meaningless. Ethics isn’t about what you do when you’re being watched, it’s about what you do when you think no one is looking. Blazek is clearly an entitled jerk who wants to exclude people from her private club rather than promoting people of merit. She’ll get her comeuppance.
Oh, and the “you have nothing to offer me” crack? Seriously, this twit doesn’t understand the benefit to nurturing talent? It’s inconceivable to her that at some point in the future she won’t want the services or need the help of someone younger than herself? What an idiot.
Quite the power tripper, isn’t she? It’s a hammer she gets smug enjoyment from hitting people with who ask for her help. Kind of sick. “I hold the only keys to the kingdom and you are not worthy to see it!”
ETA: That was a reference to that sorority sow from a while ago who bitched out all her sorority sisters for being too slutty (or not being slutty enough, I forget).
