Nutella: Aftermath of a Fandom Fail

Earlier this week an unexpected blog post was penned by American photographer Sara Rosso, explaining why her website, a collection of recipes, stories, and resources about the celebration of ‘World Nutella Day‘, would shortly be shuttering.  The culprit:  a cease and desist order from Ferrero SpA, the owner of Europe’s favorite breakfast junk food, Nutella.

Now, fans are used to these official-looking documents. They’re sent to music aficionados who remix their favorites, to the writers of fan fiction containing proprietary characters, and sometimes just to people selling hats.  I received one myself back in the late 90′s, and the scary letterhead – and expense implied therein – was enough to make me shutter my very first startup faster than you can say “copyright infringement“. (Hopbooks, you’ll be missed).

But this cease and desist order was different.  For one thing, International Nutella Day was just so darn silly, and so obviously did more to help than hurt  the Nutella brand.  Now, it’s true that this excuse is  trotted out by brand violators to defend a suspiciously long list of crimes, from file-sharing and console-modding to downright design theft. And it’s also true that, at least in the US, companies are required to pursue every instance of infringement on pain of trademark erosion.  But in this situation it really is difficult to imagine what damage might have been done. Full attribution was given, no properties were stolen. It was the most vanilla of crimes, right up there with “assault and makeover” or “breaking and donating“.

But the other reason this cease and desist differs is because Rosso is a superfan.  Superfans are the true believers in a fan object, the multipliers, the ambassadors, the evangelists, the advocates, the brand leaders, the “insert business 2.0 term” of commerce.  They may be drawn in for any number of reasons (the joys of community membership,  a love of fannish activities, or just the status that comes with knowing a lot about something.)  But no matter the reason for their their romance, all superfans should be treated like cherished, beautiful, delicate elfin princesses…who also might rip your arms off and eat your brains at any moment .

By the time a Superfan has attain such exalted status they’ve already found followers who care about their opinion.  They’ve found an existing platform on which to express it, and they have a deep-seated motivation to keep their fan object true to the ideals they’ve already internalized. And when the leadership at the top of any cultural hierarchy is attacked, the sugary chocolate goop hits the fan. Primal instincts, developed long ago on the savannah for tribal defense, swoop into action:  a pack will always rush to the rescue of their alphas. Barely had Russo blogged her note of resignation before a large portion  of the breakfast-eating web rushed to tweet their betrayal and outrage. Nutella’s Facebook page overflowed with comments like “Sorry to hear that you value your attorneys so much more than your customers. This is what happens when you take us all for granted, I guess. Would you prefer a worldwide boycott of Nutella until you give your customers what they want?” and also the more direct “Your spread is tasty, but your lawyers are idiots.”

It’s been noted that all fans make a conscious choice to ignore one fact: that their item of worship is a commodity created for moneymaking purposes. But just because they ignore it doesn’t mean they’re not aware of it. Somewhere, deep inside, every fan acknowledges the make-belive aspect of their love: they feel very strongly, but they could also chose not to. Very few Team Edward fans would truly turn down a date with Jacob if the opportunity presented itself, very few Apple owners truly wish to lay down their life and liberty for a war against Microsoft HQ (although you never know).  To upset this delicate balance – to forcibly remind a fangroup of the corporate entity behind the curtain – is part of the map that should be crossed off with a huge skull and crossbones and ‘here be dragons‘.

Nutella has quickly backpedelled with a Facebook post of full of thankfulness to their fans and an intention to to drop legal charges, but they may have yet to see the big picture.  For one, according to Nutella, the fault lies with a routine lawyer task. Had it been brought to their attention, they say, it would certainly not have happened.  This has prompted many fans to question Nutella’s entire fan philosophy – as one fan put it, “Gratitude, but no apology?”  For this to be treated as PR mistake instead of as a policy mistake is remarkably tone-deaf; many companies might have reacted by requesting the fan enter into a formal agreement, or have the fan place a disclaimer on their site, or in extreme cases, immediately hiring the perpetrator at a huge salary to head their PR team.

Compare this with Beam Inc’s reaction over fan outcry over their plan to reduce the alcohol content in Makers Mark. I haven’t seen that level of groveling since the last time my puppy got too excited on the carpet.

In any case, thus ends a week in which at least some of Nutella’s fanbase realized that sugar mixed with palm oil isn’t the best way to start the day after all (I kid. Nutella tastes lovely, especially on… everything).  But lest we grow too smug in our condemnation, to paraphrase the author Neil Gaiman, “May all your moral decisions be so easy”.  There are times, true times, real times, when the business imperatives of an institution really do outright clash with fan demands, and no satisfaction can be brokered even by participants of goodwill. When that day comes, God help you – there will be no solution except to put on a brave face and hope your company will outlast the outrage.  Fandom is a small tempest in a teacup, but it’s a tea cup that can easily spill over and swamp the whole breakfast table.

The Sad World of Context-less Fan Objects

Downton Abbey fandom is knee-deep in Season 3.  My goodness me, every magazine and blog has turned into a smorgasbord of content both official and fan-generated, not to mention the gorgeous influx of new fan text (and more importantly, fellow fans to experience it with).

Is it possible we have that unusual specimen, the perfect fan object? Whatever the reason for an individual’s fandom, this show can provide: for class-conscious identity builders we’ve got a enjoyably upper-class Anglophilia. For those seeking to up their cultural capitol there’s quote-happy text galore, and who-did-what-to-whom trivia to memorize.  And for the merely lonely we’ve got hoards of fellow admirers to idolize, mimic, and impress.

Not so a fan of Regency House Party, a little known 2004 historical recreation reality series.  A few articles, interviews, and fan activity may have trickled out briefly around it’s release, but these days even the most assiduous researcher will find neither a grain of news, nor a fellow fan with whom to commiserate about it.  A couple of the participants have Facebook pages, carefully locked, and one has a twitter account where he talks about advertising. The message boards have long gone dead and the bloggers have moved on.

Both these fan texts have the same titillating veneer of English drama and romance.  The difference? Without a robust fan context the Regency House Party fan finds themselves gasping like a fish in a dry stream bed.

It’s surely the goal of all fan objects to produce such a robust context that it becomes self-fueling long after the text is complete (think Star wars, Jane Austen, or Rosie the Riveter posters).  But at the same time, proclaiming the value of an under-appreciated fan text is one of the purest marks of fan status, or for that matter, regular old boring status too. This illustrates an interesting paradox potential fans might find themselves asking:  how obscure is too obscure?

Depending on an individual’s motivations the answer might be:  never!  This is a familiar cry for many an indie music fan (“I’m a fan of bands so new they don’t even exist yet!”).  But that’s only true when there’s a possibility of spreading the love, engaging in a group, having your personal taste mean something to those about whose opinion you care.

There’s a status to being known as that lady who likes that group that’s still unknown, or better yet, that group who is too innovative to be famous.  Whereas there’s no satisfaction whatsoever to being known as that guy who keeps going on about that random soft drink they only sell in one store in Ireland, a breed of dog that went extinct in the 1100′s, or that board game they don’t make any more and there are no copies but you would have loved it.

The answer is probably a Bell curve – up to a certain level of obscurity, devotion to a fan object allows a user to really pinpont that self-definition.  The more obscure the higher the possibilities (“I’m not just a wine lady, I’m the type of lady who prefers a 1994 vintage of Vino Davvero Oscuro from Luogo Lontano over the 1995, but only if I have enough time to let it breath…”).

After that point it gets more complicated.  How satisfying can it really be to be the last and only fan of Regency House Party?  The answer is probably not very – the possibilities for fan-like activities are simply so limited.  You might watch the show over and over, and perhaps do a little evangelizing to your friends.  You might even go as far as to take a pilgrimage to England to trespass on the Chateau used as its set, but without any fellow fans to report back to, it’s rather unlikely.

Fandom just can’t thrive in a vacuum – at its heart fandom is a performative ritual, and it fast uses up the surrounding oxygen without someone to perform for.  But never fear, oh devotees of Regency House Party, I hear that Downton Abbey has just been signed on for a 2014 season.

Digital Fandom and Economics: The Summer Drinking Game!

So here we are knee-deep in summer, and I bet you’re thinking to yourself, “Hey, there’s just too much relaxation going on right now.  I’m feeling too darn happy with the world.  I need some pretentious reading to sandpaper my nerves so I have something to bitch about.”

Well TOO BAD, cause one look at this summer reading list and you’ll notice that none of us have anything to complain about at all.  This summer’s topic is the economic impacts of fandom in a digital age, and baby is it a delicious one.

Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age, Clay Shirky – Obviously every list with any kind of buzzword has to start with Clay Shirky’s tasty musings about all that’s good about heavy connectivity. You’ll want to spend most of your time on the chapter dealing with fan motivations.  Start off your drinking game by taking a shot every time you slap your head and say , “Huh, teenage girls make sense for the first time ever.”  It’s summer, so the shot should be something with watermelon.

Fan Cultures, Matthew Hills – Ever wonder what academics do when few people care about their subject?  They write for each other! Painstakingly plotted out,  most of this is a refutation of the heretical theories espoused by the dozen or so other fan theorists active in the world.  But look a little closer and you’ll see some interesting points about gender and decision-making in pre-digital  fandom. Take a shot of something with iced tea in it every time he claims that someone’s theory didn’t take the X-Files into account

Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are, Rob Walker – How does what we buy reflect our social affiliations and sense of identity?  Rob wants to tell you! He makes a great case that our commercial motivations are thoroughly tied to the image we build up of ourselves. Take a summery shot of something with cucumber in it every time he uses a euphemism that isn’t quite “fan group” but really means “fan group”.  Don’t worry Rob, we know what you’re talking about.

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Don Tapscott , Anthony D. Williams- At two years old this is kind of ancient for a  tome about digital whatsis.  But be not deterred!  This is the classic ‘Origin of Species for crowdsourcing’ – not first and certainly not completely right, but it’s held up remarkably well for a book that relied on examples that, in hindsight weren’t actually the next big thing.  Take a shot of something minty every time you feel a smug sense of superiority.

Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, Jonathan Gray (Editor), Cornel Sandvoss (Editor), C. Lee Harrington – More academia!  This collection of nifty essays spans everything from early proto-music fandom to Korean pop-stars.  Ignore all that and highlight every third word in the introduction where the different stages of fan theorization are spelled out.  Take a shot of something with ginger every time you have a mood swing between “Oh-my-god-I’m-dying-from-bordom” and “oh-my-god-this-just-changed-my-life”

Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business, Eric Qualman – Any book that adds the phrase “-nomics” to the end of  their title is good by me: freakinomics, wikinomics, MICRO wikinomics…there’s nothing ‘nomics can’t do.  A lot of this book has been said before, but the conversational tone is helpful for beginners and the examples give a great insiders view. Take a shot of something with lemon every time you suspect there’s something intrinsically, horrifically terrifying about all forms of marketing.

Fans Bloggers Gamers, Henry Jenkins – By the dude who wrote the much-touted Convergence Culture, you can believe this is a serious page turner. I’m totally not being sarcastic.  Compared to most other books from this time period, these essays are less dated, and more , what’s the word, AWESOME than its contemporaries.  Spend most of your time in the early chapters about fan fiction and gender.  You’ll never look at man-on-man stories written by middle-aged straight women the same again. Take a shot of Champagne every time you feel the urge to google “Kirk/Spock”.

Now go drink some water.  What were you thinking reading all those at once.

You Hurt the Ones You Love: A Facebook Rant

You always hurt the ones you love. Now, I love Facebook, and I’d like to think that Facebook loves me. Not “me” me – I’m a few years to old to think of FB as a way of life, but about half a million fans on FB do love my little company and interacting with them is the sweetest part of my day. When we ask ourselves why do we  work, very few people have a fanatical community who wants to explain it to them.

So with all this Facebook love to go around, it’s no wonder that I keep on getting hurt. Behold the ugly side of Facebook’s motto “Move fast and break stuff”.  A motto like that is like having ‘Heartbreaker’ tattooed on your butt: it sounds excitingly subversive, until you remember that having a broken heart is really really horrible. And hearts are technically free, whereas every time Facebook decides to play fast and easy with its features I lose a chunk of cash. And that hurts.

Every few months I end up with a mental list, the relationship equivalent of “Facebook, we should probably talk about how you acted at the party the other night.” It’s not a breakup talk, just a friendly reminder that you’ve been an insensitive jerk and I expect some serous flowers to make up for it. But unlike my long-suffering guy at home, I can’t force Facebook to pretend to listen to me. I can technically list my gripes as bugs, but I’ve seen so many long-running FB bug threads closed with no resolution that it seems silly. Which leaves me ranting to my social media manager, or, more often, muttering to myself in the shower.

Well no more! Why rant alone in my shower when we can keep score of FB’s biggest offenses together! Here are the two that currently have me venting my spleen at the shampoo bottle.

1) Facebook Fanpage Hidden Posts. Every successful Facebook fan community is going to attract spammers, trolls, and folks who want to enlarge your anatomy. Let me illustrate two different scenarios for dealing with it. In the first, FB culls posts that have subject matter unrelated to the page topic, or suspicious links, or repetitive content (like a chain letter or ad). The offending posts are hidden from the public, but not the page admin who can deal with them at their leisure.

In the second scenario, FB culls posts that come from high-volume posters, thereby penalizing the most important fans for being ‘too engaged’. The offending posts are hidden from the page admin, but NOT the public who are still free to read and reply away. So you probably won’t know that there’s a screaming flame war going on in your page until you happen to check your spam filter days later.

I’m sorry to say FB Fanpages use the latter scenario, and the only workaround is to think of your ‘Hidden Posts’ area as a second Wall that needs to be curated in paralel. It makes it so much more difficult to catch spammers than it would if this feature used a proper algorithm, or actually “hid” its hidden posts, or, say, didn’t exist.

2) Facebook Comment Box. The most amazing idea ever; the ability to embed Facebook commenting threads into any html page. I can only assume that whoever thought it up was immediatly given a raise and a pony. It has every little thing a coder could ask for to host long, multi-threaded conversations with easy admining and crowd control. It even looks pretty.

So what’s the one thing, the only possible thing that could make this amazing feature completely useless? How about an inability to have comments default to chronological order? Yes, you heard right, this tool, created to follow developing conversations, has an arbitrary default order based on the commenter’s ‘social clout’ (an internally calculated number only FB understands). A crazy out-of-date comment can take priority over something said 5 minutes ago. Questions and responses no longer come before, or even near each other. The laws of causality have been suspended!

What does it mean? Well, at best, someone viewing the page will see really dated comments and assume the topic is old and busted. They’ll leave and tell all their friends that your page is lame. At worst, because, let’s face it,you probably have the highest social clout of all your commenter, your posts will float to the top and it’ll look like you’re the only one commenting. On your own posts. So lame.

You think I’m kidding, but right now the  only visible comments on one of my threads are: Me:It’s Yellow, to match!(4 days ago) Me: Aren’t bunnies great? I think this one should be pink(5 minutes ago) Me:I totally agree, but you should have seen it before(1 day ago) Me:Go Axolotl!(2 days ago) Me: I’m really sorry to hear it, could you send us a picture(5 days ago). Facebook has tried to offer some kind of solution by offering reverse chronological order as one of the hidden options available, but as of right now I have yet to see even one user try it. How is it possible to somehow overlook the”Thread” part of having a”Commenting Thread“?

Anyway, Facebook, I’m not dumping you, but you really can’t keep breaking this fragile heart of mine.  I’m expecting some serious flowers, buster.

The Case for Agile Journalism.

Journalism outsider is a lonely role.  It’s a little like being a Janitor, a hired hand who tackles the unsavory duties avoided by the more  fastidious and mainstream staff.  You can find them doing web updates, or mobile app development, or “dealing with all that social media stuff”, or maybe, in more forward-thinking organizations,  the R&D, but one thing they’ll rarely be found doing is much journalism.  News with a capitol ‘N’ promotes from within, and the number of its High Priests who started as anything other than a writer is still pretty low.

As a Journalism outsider myself (using the traditional definition, my bona fides extend to only two semesters as Comics Editor at the Johns Hopkins weekly back in ’99) it’s interesting to observe that writing is still sometimes considered the basic journalism accomplishment. It would be like declaring that the default unit of Marine Biology is ‘naming fish’.  I mean, it’s certainly a foundation skill for every marine biologist, and, depending on the job track, they might even end up doing some seriously classy fish naming, but it’s hardly the exhaustive definition of the career.

But as the search continues for a new skillset fit for a post-writing industry,  seriously, how tempting is it to say:  ‘But of course!  We need more of those janitorial skills we’ve overlooked for so long!’  It’s a great ‘gotcha’ solution, isn’t it?  Everyone loves to hear about a young savant coder who overcomes the cynical traditionalists and saves the day.  Teach the Journalist of tomorrow how to livestream and podcast!  There shalt be coding in 5 languages so they can make all kinds of news games and mobile aps and social media channels and data visualizations!  It’s as though sprinkling technology over the field like pixidust can make the underlying bulk fly.

Surely on the changing menu of journalism, arguing if steak should replace chicken seems rather pedantic, no?   We’re debating the merits of one limited skillset over another, an exercise which rather misses the point.  Why are we still deciding between chicken or steak?  Why are we arguing about the best dishes to put on the menu?  Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to just  teach tomorrows journalist how to cook?

Myself I come down on the side of methodology. The world has plenty of delightful news writers trying to find their relevency, but it’s just as easy to imagine the world full of of delightful news technologists trying to find their relevency. What does the world have very few of?  Folks with the background training to orchestrate either group.

Skills are for interns. Everyone should know what the skills are and how they work, but if the Head of Digital is still spending his days thinking about HTML bugs then you’ve got a problem.   The power in any field lies in the planning, not the implementing.  It’s  in the ability to see the bigger picture and plot a course through it, and to relay that vision to those who were hired for their limited skillset (who, increasingly, aren’t employees at all but rather someone’s college  friend who’s between jobs, or  a dude bidding on projects from Poland.)

Yes, anyone arriving at a journalism school should be expected to know a basic level of  technology just as their counterparts of yesteryear were expected to know how to read.  Perhaps there could still be remedial tutorials for those getting up to speed. But for the core experience?  Perhaps it’s time to really take a page from software development.  Instead of co-opting its low level skills, co opt its high-level ones!  The Agile design cycle.   Iterative Project development.  Pitching.  Usability testing.  Gamification. Entrepreneurship.    You know, the tech skills that actually matter.

Otherwise we risk turning Journalism school into a certification degree like Nursing or Air Conditioning Repair – full of important protocol but with a focus on skillset, not strategy. Taking a step back and thinking a little bigger would go a long way to making sure that students don’t end up as outsiders in their own field. Journalists are too valuable to waste as highly-paid Janitors for hire.

Your Clients are Smarter Than You

Before client meetings, an early design guru of mine always insisted our team stand in the hallway and chant the phrase “All designers are arrogant bastards” until he felt we were in the proper frame of mind for the upcoming stand-off. From the vantage point of a decade I’d love to ask him about this little ritual; the project was a website redesign for the space industry, not the most cut-throat of opponents to begin with. There’s only so much satisfaction to be gained from dominating a bunch of kindly old astronomers. But for whatever reason, we never failed to ram our design suggestions through.

That website is still in use today, and it gives me the deepest pangs of shame to browse over its now-venerable pixels.  Not ’cause the design is so  ancient – for all I know its longevity could be a sign of really timeless thinking and not, as is more probable, budget cuts.  The shame comes from this:  My goodness were we a fantastic design team.  But what were we absolutely lousy at?  Astronomy.

It takes a lot of cash to hire a consultant who’s sure enough of herself to be a bully, and there’s a temptation to believe that throwing your weight around is part of the floor show.  This is the same line of thought that leads to rude service in a fancy restaurant: only a restaurant completely confident in its food could afford to be so disdainful of a customer. But does anyone actually enjoy eating at those restaurants?  No! Oh neophyte consultant, of course you know more than your client, but only, and this is important, only in one very small, specific area. What does your client know more about than you do?  Everything else.

A dude was recently ranting to me about a troublesome coding team.  The whole project idea, so terrible!  I’d offered them SO many better alternatives! And they wanted it in purple!  Agh!  Well dude of mine, let me take this opportunity to apologize for the angry lecture I gave you (not for the angry part, but I really shouldn’t have cursed so much.)

It can be tough to explain why it’s so important to never say no to a client.   I myself have asked prospective employees “So give me an example of how you handled a difficult client” and chortled at their tales of supremacy.  But why do we offer alternatives and trade offs, and when all else fails, beg and plead, but never ever ever ever outright say no?  It’s not, as the poor beleaguered dude guessed, that we need the money, although there are worse incentives for diplomacy.  It’s because more often than we’re comfortable admitting, the client is completely right.  After all, they do know a hell of a lot more than we do.

Imagine if any of the big innovators had let themselves be intimidated by their design team: Alright, let me get this straight – you want a big screen with extremely limited functionality, but you’re going to charge three times the amount of a fully functional computer. But having no content won’t matter because you expect thousands of programmers to teach themselves one of the more sophisticated coding languages  in order to create entirely new custom apps for it. And you’re going to make it white and rectangular, and name it the “ipad”, a combination sure to make schoolchildren everywhere snicker.  Mmmhmmm.

Well if that were you, wouldn’t you feel silly now (not to mention totally poor).  Every once in a while, the client isn’t being stupid or stubborn or disdainful or dense, they’re being gosh darn brilliant and you’d better listen up.  And the kicker is, you’ll never know which one it is until afterwords.

So, dude of mine, just for a moment,what about entertaining the possibility of a completely purple website?  Who knows what fantastic new ‘all-purple’ trend your clients may actually be onto?  Being an arrogant bastard is a great way to bulldoze over a couple of sweet old astronomers, but a really crappy way to build a website about astronomy.  It’s an awesome way to get things done your way, and a terrible way to innovate.  When it comes to assuming idiocy over invention, consider giving your client the benefit of the doubt. After all, they were smart enough to hire you, eh?

A Lady’s Guide to Lying

In the summer of 2004 I was poor. I was fresh back from playing the wandering European for a year and I was cashless, homeless, jobless, and had spent too long living on what I’m proud to call “Zoe’s stolen spaghetti stew” (secret ingredient: stealth).

The first temp company had no design jobs, but on the way out the receptionist asked me if I knew anyone who could use Visio. Why yes, I said, I’m a Visio expert, did I forget to put that on my resume? She called my interviewer back, who said  in that case the job started tomorrow.

I left the building, went the the nearby Barnes and Nobles and looked up what the hell this Visio thing was. Then I called the guy on whose whose couch I was crashing and had him pirate me a copy. I spent the night working through the help files, and started my new job designing userflows for SAP the next morning. It lead to what’s been a rather nifty career in interaction design.

I am proud to say I have never been hired for a job I didn’t have to lie to get. Not about my achievements, those are stupid to lie about and anyway they’re easy to check on. But when it comes to skills, to take a job you’re absolutely sure you can already do seems silly. Taking career risks is the only way to make sure of having one, and I’d sure as hell prefer to try and fail than demur until some imaginary time when I’m 100% sure I’ll be perfect.

This is the time of year when students start coming to me for career advice. The dudes in general either have something or don’t. But for some of the ladies its not so clean-cut. Yesterday, for the third time this year I heard a variation on this theme: girl has a job, usually an internship. Girl is offered a promotion to full time. Girl is nervous she’s not ready yet and decides to turn it down. Or this variation: girl is offered dream full-time job. Girl is also offered dream freelance job on the side. Girl decides to take full-time job, but turn down freelance one because she wants her performance in the full time job to be perfect. Neither of these scenarios have happy endings, at best her career stalls from lack of trying new things, and at worst at some point she’ll be replaced by someone with a bit more guts.

From where came this bizarre female aversion to self promotion? This insistence on perfection to the point where, like OCD, it handicaps the victim and ruins their  prospects? Why is taking a risk so impossible to contemplate for some otherwise brilliant ladies ?

Lets run through these scenarios again. Girl gets offered promotion. Girl takes promotion. Girl fails. The boss is disappointed. Or this one: girl takes both jobs. Girl does marginally less well at both. Girl will be forced to quit one of them. One of the bosses will be disappointed. Bottom line: disappointed bosses. Is that truly the worst possible thing that could happen? Without resorting to the highly improbable, the answer is yes, yes it really is. But hamstringing a career from  fear of letting down an authority figure is something even the most  desperate of daddy issues should balk at.

Well ladies, being successful takes guts, and having guts means taking the type of risks that sometimes result in looking stupid and disappointing people. That assurance, that strike of lightning that says “Why yes, I just realized I am the best possible person in the world for this particular job” may by long coming.  As Nietzche points out, “claiming to be good only because you have no claws” isn’t actually being good at all, and cowardice masquerading as politeness does no one any favors, least of all your boss.  Speaking as one now myself, I’d surely rather have my employees ambitious than submissive.  It makes them more fun to be around, for one.

So go after that job ladies, even though you don’t have a clue if you can handle it or not. Grit your teeth and tell that lie about your confidence that, for you all you know, might just be the truth. And maybe you’ll fail. Maybe you’ll be fired. Maybe you’ll have to cut back your hours. Maybe your boss will yell at you in front of everyone and they’ll all point and laugh while you cry. But maybe, just maybe, you will be amazing at it.