[DOF] Entertainment: Listen & Learn (My Interview with Cindy - Part One)

In support to UN's upcoming "turn-over", I had the privilege of doing an interview with our now Founder, Ms. Cindy.

So won't you all eaves-drop on our conversation, come listen and learn.

LB: When did you join UN? Did you start as a Trainee or what rank were you?
C:   I joined UN when we first opened back in 2014.  I remember before joining, I had actually left Habbo the following year but one day I had received a random facebook message from Scottyy?! asking if I was interested in joining Habbo and helping him develop an Agency where promotions and pay were based on hard work and not favouritism.  Scott and I met back in 2013 at a different Agency and just like many others, it was based on friendship groups and favouritism.  I was actually "fired" from that Agency for talking back and being "disrespectful" due to the fact that I did not agree with their biased ways.  Due to my past experience and effort dedicated to my former Agency, Scott offered me an OOA position starting at 800k to help him grow and establish United Nations.  I joined at 800k, but Scott didn't really take "no" as an answer.

LB:  What was it like when you first became Owner, and then eventually Main Owner?
C:    To be honest, the truth is when I first joined UN as an OOA, I had a very difficult time adapting with the Foundation team. I was never really close with any other OOA/Owners and me being the only OC OOA I was often bullied, looked down upon and even excluded from many group discussions and OOA agreements. I came online to mainly socialise and update boards so the progress from 800,000 RP to 1,400,000 was a long journey. At first I never planned on becoming an Owner, I wanted to stay as an OOA for as long as possible so I would literally collect 1 arrow every 14 days to prevent my account from getting deactivated. I remember getting scolded and lectured almost everyday from a lot of the Owners and even Scotty himself. I was either being told I was being too lenient towards members when enforcing rules, and rather than deducting /punishing members straight away, I often spent a lot of my time explaining to members where they went wrong so they wouldn't repeat the same offence twice in the near future. It took me roughly about 6 Months from OOA to Ownership and within that time frame I learn't a lot and used that time to better myself and improve on my leadership skills and qualities. Even though many still looked down upon me and doubted that I would ever be reach Ownership, I still remained civilised and positive. I wasn't in such a big rush to reach Ownership, especially when I was mainly focused on managing my first special unit which was the Department of Events. As time went on a lot of the current OOA's left our community so out of the 8 original OOA members, only two remained and stayed. The other OOA and I became very close friends in time and eventually our friendship bloomed, we both opened two of the very first special units to ever exist within our community which lasted for a while. When I first reached Ownership in 2014, I was the very first female to work my way up to Ownership without purchasing rank points or leave. UN had a lot of active members during the EU/NA timezone so it required me to stay up very late and at this point my sleeping schedule was backwards. It was often difficult and I used to have a lot of breakdowns and often felt overwhelmed and sometimes I even wanted to give up. We only had about 4 active Owners including Scott himself, I struggled because not only did people not take me seriously due to my gender but it was difficult working in a community where we had a female as an Owner and within the agency community back from 2011 - 2015 it was very rare to see a female in such a high position, females were looked down and many even said "UN would never last" for having a Female Owner. Many doubted our community and many doubted me. Many of the successful Agencies were well known active during the EU timezones, and us having an Australian Founder, we had a of hate. So when I did finally reach Owner, my friendship grew a lot stronger with Scott himself and we went from two acquaintances who could not stand each other to two very close, trusted coworkers. I had promised myself that I would not give up on our community, no matter what was thrown at us and I would try to stand up for myself and show other Agencies and people that it is possible for a female to manage and run an Agency. I still received alot of negative comments and sarcasm working with other males and trying to be civilised was very difficult. I had to bite my tongue often for the sake of UN and when Scott decided to promote me out of all of our current Owners, it felt good. Not only did I believe in myself, but I knew Scott also believed in me. Out of all of the Owners I was Scott's least favourite Owner for a fact and we never saw eye to eye, so I felt the envy from other Owners who always thought they would be selected or assumed Scott would promote them to Main Owner due to how close they were personally. I was very proud of myself because I was able to now enforce a lot of positive changes within our community, not only within lower ranks but I was also able to create and make more change within the Foundation team, our source of communication, rules to prevent arrow hunting or unfair promotions, create and develop more special units to benefit our community and help make UN grow to what it is today. When I first became Main Owner, one of my first projects was creating the reward rooms hallway to help members be able to go into certain rooms without needing to go through each and every room, and enforcing the 15 minute rule to prevent arrow hunting for all timezones.

LB:  Was there ever a time you wanted to quit, and why?
C:    Of course. Many many many times, I have honestly lost count with the amount of times I've broken down, cried, or wanted to quit. Being Main Owner is not easy, I think my biggest reason is just feeling so unappreciated and unacknowledged for the amount of work I put into our community. UN is a very active community and it takes a lot of work, it requires a team to keep functioning and when people don't put in the effort of their role or choose to not care, it can get very overwhelming when by the end of the day "if" something is not done or completed on time. It's my responsibility to fix it, it's my responsibility to pick up all of the work that is not completed and make sure it's completed for the sake of our community. I created a lot of roles and positions to give members the opportunity to help out and be involved in our community but when someone doesn't fill that role, it does put on extra weight on the team."With great power, comes great responsibilities". There is constantly always something that needs to be done or something that needs to be updated, if it isn't on Habbo, it's on our website, or within a certain group chat. The pile of workload keeps being added and unless we complete it in a certain amount of time, it will keep adding to the pile. Not only does it involve so much time but you have to choose to want to be a part of the team and choose to put UN as a priority sometimes just to get things done, it can very stressful, and overwhelming especially when you have a busy work or school schedule, and we also have to make time for a social life and personal priorities and life commitments. So it does involve a lot of organisation skills and actually finding the motivation. When you invest so much time and effort towards a community, you will have emotional breakdowns and sometimes to do whats best for the community, you're often looked at as the "bad guy" and receive a lot of negative and mean comments. I've had my fair share of bullying, harassment and threats within my time as Main Owner, many people do not like me or share the same view as me especially when I am not agreeing with them or allowing them to do something which will only personally benefit themselves and not for our community. It hurts when people say things like "Cindy is very biased and unfair." or "Cindy is like the Main devil within Habbo" due to personal conflict, but I try to not let it get to me and just ignore them.

LB:  Your thoughts when you first found out Scotty was retiring?  What went thru your head?
C:   I was honestly sad and somewhat afraid. Afraid of failure, afraid of not being able to be 'The Founder". I was very nervous on how many would react, would people stay in UN if I was Founder or would they leave. But that was just my anxiety speaking, a lot was going through my head but I wasn't really surprised Scott was retiring due to the fact that I was aware he was very busy with his goals and ambitions, life commitments and I'm very happy and glad that he's achieved great things in his life. Unfortunately he will be retiring now as he can not focus or put Habbo as a priority anymore.

LB:  Did you have any apprehensions in accepting the role as the new Founder?
C:   Yes. A billion things was fluttering in my head and a lot of "what ifs" and "buts". But sometimes you have to just suck it up and take one for the team. It was either me accept the role and do the best I can as Founder or let UN run on with a Founder who will never be online.

Due to thread length limitations, the remainder of our conversation can be read on the next post: [DOF] Entertainment:  Listen & Learn (My Interview with Cindy - Part Two).