Ever had to deal with the drudgery of calling a company's customer service department for assistance? Yep, we've all been there. Just this morning, I received a message from Discover -- at work, no less -- saying they were calling in reference to a "request" I'd recently made. ' A victim of identity theft several times over the last few years, I immediately assumed someone had tried to open an account under my name. Then I remembered I was protected under a credit monitoring service through my wife's employer -- plus, they hadn't notified me of any suspicious activity. I called the number and was told that, in order for them to track down the file in question, I would either have to provide a reference number (which wasn't given to me) or my full social security number. The latter was, of course, out of the question, so I opted to do one thing at that point: Call again later in the day and hope the person who attended me then was more com...

While some of us may aspire to rise the ranks of our current companies and become VPs or CEOs, others may be thinking about starting our own businesses. What would you say is your top career goal? It's okay not to have an answer to that question at the moment, as many of us are still on a seemingly neverending quest to determine what our true calling is. I know mine is writing, which is precisely why I hope to write a book someday. In the meantime, I aim to continue enhancing and pumping more and more content into this blog while securing writing positions of increasing complexity in my copywriting/editing career (i.e., my day job). And the truth of the matter is that not everyone seeks to be a manager, or is even cut out for it. Some people would rather remain in production-driven roles, where they're truly at their best, than transition into a more strategy-oriented position. And while some people would love to have subordinates, others loathe the thought of people repo...