Fine, I'll Just Boycott

One of my best friends, introduced me to a fascinating consumer strategy: boycotting. Her family has a long and storied history of boycotting that began the day that her father was denied help by attendants at a Shell gas station. The year was 1948 and her father and his friend were ice fishing on a cold winter day. Her father fell through the ice, but luckily his friend was able to pull him out. They set off on foot for help, and the first place they came to was a Shell gas station. They asked to to use the phone, but the Shell attendant yelled at them to leave. Her father eventually got help, but he never forgot the way that Shell abandoned him in his hour of need. And so he began the Shell Boycott, and he taught his family to boycott with loyalty and honor. On one particularly memorable family outing, he drove right past three Shell gas stations despite the fact that the car was running on fumes. A boycott is a boycott, regardless of convenience. To this day, when the family feels that an injustice has been served, they boycott.

I first heard this boycotting tale during the spring of my first year at business school. I was still recruiting for a summer internship (even as a first year, I was a late bloomer), but I had a couple of promising prospects. One of those was a marketing role with a major fast food company. Because I wasn’t a local candidate, I had several rounds of phone interviews. For the first round, I spoke with a recruiter and for the second round, I interviewed with several marketing managers. During my second set of phone interviews, they put me through the wringer. I wasn’t asked a softball question like what my favorite brand was or asked to provide an example of what I thought was a poorly designed advertising campaign; no, I was calculating breakeven ROI in my head (Excel wouldn’t load quickly enough since I still had Crystal Ball installed on my computer – rookie mistake). I held my own, though, and managed to crank out the numbers. At the end of the interview, I was given a decision timeline.

The requisite two weeks passed, and still I heard nothing. I called the recruiter to touch base and she was very apologetic as she explained that management had been away for Fastfood-a-palooza. Because they had been busy crowd surfing to french fry chants, they hadn’t had a chance to review intern candidates, but she promised that they would make a decision very soon. Another two weeks passed, and still there was nothing but silence on my end. At this point, I realized that a decision had been made and the decision was no. However, I was irate that nobody had even bothered to send me a generic email update. I had spent close to three hours on the phone interviewing with members of their team and countless more hours doing interview prep; the least they could do was acknowledge me with a polite decline.

I was only a first year so I hadn’t yet developed the thick recruiting skin that I have now. My baseline assumption was that companies would treat me as a valuable candidate whether or not they ultimately decided to bring me on board. By the middle of my second year at business school, I adjusted my ideas regarding recruiting, and I began to assume that companies would decline to get back to me if they had decided not to move forward with my candidacy. I found myself pleasantly surprised when I would actually receive the polite refusal email. “How thoughtful,” I would find myself thinking. “It was truly considerate of the recruiter to send me a three sentence email to inform me that they had decided to make an offer to another candidate. Gee, all I did was set up calls with a couple of alums at the company, research the company online, travel cross country to get to company headquarters, and interview all day with members of the team, all on my own dime.”

As an applicant, I generally felt powerless; the companies seemed to hold all the cards. However, I eventually realized that perhaps that wasn’t the case. I relayed the story of my silent rejection to my friend and she listened thoughtfully. Then a wide grin stole across her face as she gleefully announced “BOYCOTT!” and proceeded to explain her family's tradition of boycotting.

Admittedly, the boycott would have a rather limited financial impact as I never really ate much fast food to begin with, but that detail is beside the point. The main goal that a boycott would accomplish is a psychological one. Namely: I am not purchasing your products because I was disinclined to do so in the first place; no, I am rejecting your brand in order to relay the message that your company sucks at life.

Unfortunately, when you are interviewing with as many companies as I am, and summarily boycotting all products made by those that rejected you, you quickly find that shopping becomes a challenge. I can’t buy half of the products in grocery stores, and the deodorant category leaves me in dire straights. I am a stubborn human being, though, so I pressed on and made substitutions as necessarily to support my boycotts.

A severe blow was dealt to my boycotting strategy when I was rejected by one of my favorite retail stores. I began to rationalize that perhaps I could make an exception. Just because they didn’t recognize talent didn’t necessarily mean that I had to cut them out of my life entirely. We could still be friends, right? My enthusiasm for boycotts collapsed completely the day that one of my favorite cosmetic brands refused me. There was NO WAY that I was going without mascara and skin toner.

I hang in head in shame, knowing that I do not have the boycotting fortitude of my friend's family. At least my teeth will be minty fresh, my skin glowing, and my hair shiny. Disgrace looks good on me.