Having a bad day? Hate your job? Your boss sucks?
This story might cheer you up . . . because as bad as you have it, at least your job isn’t the one “Billy the Kid” had to do for almost a year.
I met Billy The Kid in Atlanta this week. His nametag said William, but he introduced himself as Billy, and in my mind he immediately became Billy the Kid, because he's from Texas.
After Day One, Billy was one of the drinkers in the bar, and I asked him what he did before he came to his current job.
Turns out Billy worked for the Red Cross . . . but in a very unusual role. He was on the ground in Iraq, near Tikrit, Saddam’s home town.
Billy’s job? He was responsible for delivering bad news from home to soldiers. So if a soldier’s parent died, Billy had to go tell him. If something happened to their spouse, or their kids, Billy had to pay them a visit.
“I was like the Grim Reaper,” he told me. “People would see me coming and tell me to get the hell away from them.”
That may be the worst communications job I’ve ever heard of, and I’ve heard of a lot of bad ones. Telling soldiers—who are miserable enough already—that they now have to deal with a personal tragedy could suck the soul right out of you.
The worst kind of news Billy had to deliver—even worse than the deaths—was when he had to tell a soldier who had been in Iraq for more than a year without a break that his wife was pregnant with somebody else’s child.
“I had to do that quite a bit,” he said.
If there is a worse job out there, I’d like to hear about it.
Comments (3)
Yikes! That's about as much of a polar opposite of what we do in employee communications as I can imagine.
Greg
Posted by Greg Marsh | March 28, 2007 7:23 PM
Posted on March 28, 2007 19:23
Being a lesbian towel girl at a gay bathhouse.
How did the Red Cross get blessed with the task of telling soldiers bad news?
Red Cross: We want to help with the war effort.
General Killsalot: Let's see. Vast medical resources - check, Disaster recovery expertise - check. Ahhh here we go. We need someone to tell the soldiers all the woe they are missing back home. We hope it will make Iraq seem like Disneyland.
Red Cross: What about someone who tells them good news from home?
General Killsalot: No, no, no. We have people trained to distribute good news. We only need to outsource bad news.
Red Cross: OK, but...
General Killsalot: I'm sorry I have to get readyy for my next meeting, with the paper mache body armor salesman. I'm told paper mache is up to ten times lighter than kevlar, our boys will appreciate that in the heat.
Posted by Rob Patey | March 29, 2007 1:40 PM
Posted on March 29, 2007 13:40
Ha ha . . . nicely done, Rob. You know, Billy the Kid had the background on why the Red Cross got this job . . . but I forgot what it is. It was interesting, though. And completely screwed up.
Something to do with having to outsource this kind of news, because if we left it to the military to do it, it would never happen.
The General Killsalots of the world, when faced with the decision to tell Bobby O'Malley in C. Company that his wife is pregnant with another man's baby---and then have to deal with O'Malley whining about having to have a furlough so he can go home---would immediately put the correspondence in the circular file and be done with it.
Steve C.
Posted by Steve C. | March 30, 2007 11:44 AM
Posted on March 30, 2007 11:44