Let’s say you were a passenger on U.S. Airways flight 1549 that crash landed in the Hudson. Pretend for a moment. You were probably terrified. You probably thought you were going to die. You ended up in some very cold water after standing on the plane in the most surreal moment of your life.
Now you’ve received $5000 for your lost luggage, which seems generous for luggage (unless of course you had a suitcase full of expensive clothes). You were also refunded the price of your ticket. Now what exactly would it take to get you back on the plane? A year’s worth of upgrades? That’s pretty laughable. Why not splurge for a lifetime of upgrades, U.S. Airways?
God, here’s some evidence that I’m a snob, and will burn in hell. I don’t have perfect grammar, but I was reading Lily Ledbetter’s remarks, feeling quite teary already, thinking how this was such a divine piece of legislation, and then I stumbled on this:
MRS. LEDBETTER: Thank you. And thank you, Mrs. Obama.
I fell in love with those people campaigning with them. I have to tell you that. And that’s not on my prepared speech — (laughter) — but I have to tell you I love she and the President.
Lily, Lily! It’s “I love her.”
I realize my inability to see sweatshops as a good, necessary evil may be left over from college, but sometimes good things happen in college protests:
A major supplier of college apparel has brokered a unique deal, promising to pay more for garments produced by a factory in the Dominican Republic if workers there are paid a living wage. While not publicly announced by the company, the plan proposed by Knights Apparel is already drawing support in higher education. Officials at Duke and Pennsylvania State Universities have confirmed that their bookstores will be buying from the Knights Apparel factory, and a committee at the University of Connecticut is considering participation as well.
For more on what a “verified” living wage means, read No Sweat.
I really don’t believe in astrology. I swear! But having been informed that Mercury is in retrograde, I have to say that explains so much:
Mercury retrograde gives rise to personal misunderstandings; flawed, disrupted, or delayed communications, negotiations and trade; glitches and breakdowns with phones, computers, cars, buses, and trains. And all of these problems usually arise because some crucial piece of information, or component, has gone astray or awry.
Dear God, yes, yes, yes, that pretty much describes my life. I suppose it’s only going to be a few more days of this.
I’ve been finding lately that Fridays make me want to lay down and take a nap, rather than writing. So I’m making an experimental move to Mondays, we’ll see how it goes.
I have these filed under “WTF?”:
*A pet groomer has been charged with “piercing gothic kittens.” Seems she saw nothing wrong with piercing their ears, necks, and tails. Because how is that different from piercing humans? (Ummm, can you say “consent?”)
*Speaking of pets, a real life Ace Ventura is having trouble collecting on a bill. His skills include dog nose calibration and he is even able to track down hedgehogs.
*A “famous” businessman in Tanzania and seven other people have been arrested for allegedly planning to kidnap and kill an albino herdsman for the purpose of witchcraft. Albinos in Africa are killed for use as good luck charms.
*One brand of eggs in Britain carries a warning on the carton: “May contain eggs.” And the back-and-forth between the company and the various experts is seriously weird.
*I actually found these two articles right around the same time, in a weird moment of convergence: The story of a woman whose home was ordered destroyed by the sheriff because it was blocking the road. And a Snopes story about a bridge that collapsed when a moving company tried to drive a house over it. I sense a training opportunity.
Cringe of the Week: A man won $2.9 million in a lawsuit against Home Depot after a pile of 18 DOORS FELL ON TOP OF HIM. But I’m actually enjoying the reader comments.
This is a post I’ve been working on for two weeks, but it’s clearly not going to get any better. And by that I don’t mean I think it’s good.
I was raised in the Unitarian Universalist tradition(s), and also went to divinity school, so I’ll offer some thoughts on lay theological education, if anyone out there is reading. Essentially, the question asked is: how can we bridge the gap between lay experience in congregations and experience in divinity school? In other words, what can we offer people who want “more” (but don’t want to go to seminary or divinity school)? Read the rest of this entry…
Some of these suggestions for indispensability are great. Simple civility. Saying “Good morning” and “thank you” are always appreciated in the workplace (although I’m remembering that GhostGirl hates getting thanked for each email).
And then others of the suggestions… Well, I don’t ever suggest that women make coffee or fetch it for others regularly unless it’s in the job description. Likewise with refilling toner in the printer. I mean, if you want to make coffee and refill toner, that’s great. But becoming an expert means it will be your job from now on. Good if you want it….
This exchange between the Director of Public Relations of Petland and an animal rights protestor has me wondering when snark became acceptable in public relations (or has it always been?). Is it really acceptable to be rude to people who criticize you? Especially what seems like legitimate criticism (to me)? Can’t you acknowledge a mistake (or a difference of opinion), correct it, and move on?
A related anecdote: In October, I wrote briefly about alleged discrimination in diamond sales involving a major jewelry chain and female sales associates, who were reportedly paid less and promoted less often. Since then, I’ve had comments on the blog just about weekly from the major chain jewelry store (I see their ip addresses) calling me dumb, a poor researcher, and suggesting that I don’t know all the facts. Now I’m sure I don’t know all the facts. I know only what was in the articles here and here and here. But the entire matter has left me wondering about strategy. Is it really in your best interest if you’re accused of discriminating against women to seek out a woman that writes (briefly!) about your company and insult them? Granted, it’s not the same as the Director of Public Relations being snarky, but what’s the strategy here? I’m not going to let the comments post to that piece. Period. And my opinion of the company has certainly not increased.
How would you describe yourself in your current position compared to your last position? “I am less patient and I dress better” was the description given by an university administrator who had formerly been a faculty member. It seems that how you view your current role often depends on your past roles:
A key difference he [the researcher] found in the administrators surveyed was whether they took their first administrative job at a new college or at the institution where they had been working as a professor. The former were more likely to have sought out the position as part of looking for a new challenge or opportunity. The latter were more likely to have been drafted into administration or to be taking on the role out of a desire to serve their institution.
The two groups also face comments about the changes they made when moving to what those whose first job was at their home campus were more likely to call “the dark side.” While people remark about clothing (more formal), personality changes, and lack of time of new administrators, those who didn’t switch campuses feel more commentary and criticism since their former colleagues know that they used to wear jeans all the time. The title of the session — “I Am Less Patient and Dress Better” — is one dean’s summation of his situation.
Well, you gotta love administrators who refer to themselves as working for “the dark side.” In research terms, “role exit theory” is applicable (an hypothesis stating that our attitudes toward our current positions are shaped by the roles that we exited as well as the roles that we current have):
The research focused on applying the “role exit” theory of the sociologist Helen Ebaugh, who argued that many people’s identities are as shaped by the positions they left as by the positions they enter. The “role residual” or “hangover identity” has a major impact, said Jeffrey Breese, a sociologist who is an associate dean at Marymount University in Virginia and who conducted the research through open-ended survey interviews with 62 members of the deans’ association (and judging from nods in the large audience of deans here, a representative sample).
It does seem fairly obvious that our past roles affect our current roles, but who hasn’t seen someone with a hangover identity (the non-alcoholic kind)?
One of the factors that shaped Generation X’s attitudes toward the workplace and work in general was the recession of 1992. Generation Y seemed to luck out—they missed the recession, they had the God-blessed (Al Gore-blessed?) Internet, and the world was theirs. But now the current recession seems to be affecting Generation Y:
The global downturn has been a brutal awakening for the youngest members of the work force — variously dubbed “the Millennials,” “Generation Y” or “the Net Generation” by social researchers. “Net Geners” are, roughly, people born in the 1980s and 1990s.
Those old enough to have passed from school and university into work had got used to a world in which jobs were plentiful and firms fell over one another to recruit them. Now their prospects are grimmer.
According to America’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate among people in their 20s increased significantly in the two most recent recessions in the United States. It is likely to do so again as industries such as finance and technology, which employ lots of young people, axe thousands of jobs.
I’m sorry, Generation Y, that this is happening, but you’ll recover.
Articles in the New York Times (Return to D.I.Y Ethics Erodes Service Businesses) and Los Angeles Times (Gardeners Reap the Pain of Recession) describe the decline of outsourcing of simple services, such as beauty treatments, animal care, and house cleaning.
I don’t actually hire people to do these sorts of things (I did consider hiring gardeners though—we seem to be the only house without them, and I’m afraid it’s quite obvious, and once our dog went to a dog space—she liked it), but many people do, and they are a considerable source of jobs as described in the New York Times:
These small, service-oriented businesses are run in storefronts on urban streets and in suburban strip malls, or sometimes just out of pickup trucks. Responsible for roughly 18 million jobs nationwide, according to 2006 Census Bureau data, these companies have long been seen as engines of America’s economic growth. Yet after years of explosive expansion, many beauty salons, dry cleaners, landscapers, dog walkers, nanny services and restaurants experienced slower sales growth or even decline in the final months of 2008.
And from the LA Times:
Gardeners, like housekeepers and pool cleaners, are seen as extras when people’s houses go upside down or when they lose their jobs, said John Husing, an economic consultant based in Redlands.
“You can cut your lawn. You can clean your house,” Husing said. “These are those little extra goodies when you are feeling flush. They are also some of the first to go away when you are not.”
Your laugh of the day from David Robinson’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle:
I think I’m addicted to e-mail! Even when I have a big project and a looming deadline, I can’t resist checking every 45 minutes or so. I realize that if I’m at a conference and when I’m traveling, six to eight hours can go by without me checking e-mail and the world keeps turning. How can I give up my obsession?
Every 45 minutes? Why wait? Some of us know the second email arrives. Part of Robinson’s reply is below:
Above all, e-mail is intermittently rewarding. Every once in a while, a message arrives with a big payoff: New business from a client, a compliment from senior management, or just a friendly note from a colleague you haven’t heard from in a while. As any slot machine player knows, it’s the intermittent, unpredictable reward that most controls behavior.
Yes, email is exactly like a slot machine. Seriously. You get rewards, but they are intermittent and unpredictable. If you have trouble with an email addiction, stay out of Vegas.
At the Office, Taking a Break for the Oath of Office tells us what we already suspect: many of us are taking today off:
Ophelia Galindo, an expert in absences and productivity for Buck Consultants in Orange, Calif., predicts that twice as many people will skip work on Tuesday than the average for a day after a holiday.
Ms. Galindo said that many of her clients — some of the nation’s largest retailers and manufacturers, as well as hospitals — had called her to say that they expected a lot of people would be off. But even if everyone shows up, she added, there are questions about how much work will get done, with employees turning to live Internet broadcasts to watch the festivities.
“The dilemma that some employers are facing is, do I block access to certain sites?” Ms. Galindo said. “They might just tolerate the loss of productivity because in the long run, at least, that person came to work.”
Oh, don’t block access to web sites. Silly employers. That will just piss people off. Here’s a better idea:
Tony Dinkins, who owns a small company in Yonkers that does event planning, decided to organize a modest get-together for his workers and their families at the office. Mr. Dinkins, who is black, employs 10 people — “blacks, whites, Eastern Europeans, a real rainbow coalition,” he said — and all of them are supposed to be there on Tuesday, just in case they are needed, he said.
“We’re going to set up some TVs, order some food, put the phones on mute and we’re all going to share in this together,” he said.
Did you take the day off? I didn’t, but I will watch on-line.
There has been an increase in requests for help from parishioners to clergy during this recession. Here are a few suggestions, some of them things that many churches do (e.g., have an emergency fund), but other suggestions that are equally helpful and less widespread (e.g., make a job network and provide help finding appropriate state and federal resources):
“We have an emergency fund at our church to help out members who are in need,” said David Howell, pastor of First Congregational Church of Palo Alto.
“We started a job network,” said Stacy Friedman, rabbi of San Rafael’s Congregation Rodef Sholom, “to connect people in the congregation who have jobs to offer or have job leads [with those seeking work]. We also have emergency resources in terms of funding or meal assistance for congregants who are in a financial crisis.”
Wilfried Glabach, minister of First Congregational Church of San Francisco, said he has been trying to connect church members in need to state and city resources. “People often think they have to go to soup kitchens and wait in a long line,” he said. “But there are other places that provide help and food; the city has a lot of listings and resources available.”
Read more at Faith and Finances in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Last week, a friend came over and was bemoaning her workplace meetings: the meetings ran into three or four hours, no agenda existed, discussions meandered and were frequently completely off-topic, and often too many people were invited. Her complaint sounded startlingly like this scenario:
THE meeting spills over into its second hour. We are discussing an employee productivity initiative. At the moment, our most talkative committee member is describing a similar effort at another company. Her descriptions are peppered with self-consciously clever turns of phrase and images.
Another participant chimes in with the idea that we need some kind of incentive system to reward employees for behaviors we want from them. This is the same solution he offers for every problem, at every meeting.
Then, our self-appointed parliamentarian interjects a long story about a previous institutional effort — to make the point that our team is not the proper entity to recommend the kinds of changes we are proposing.
I, meanwhile, contribute nothing useful.
Yes, workplaces are all different, but when it comes to meetings, they can be quite similar. Often meetings run long, often people think agendas don’t matter, and sometimes no one wants to stop before they hit the three hour mark.
Meetings Are A Matter of Precious Time gives three rules that many of us should remember:
1. Whoever calls a meeting should be explicit about its objectives. This means specifying tangible goals and assigning responsibility for creating, summarizing and reporting on them. Ask yourself this question: Specifically, what do we want accomplished when we walk out of the room?
2. Everyone should think carefully about the opportunity costs of a meeting: How many participants are really needed? (Almost all business teams and committees are too big.) How long should the meeting last? Set a definite ending time. Anyone who doubts that the meeting is necessary, or thinks it’s too long, should speak up.
3. After productive or unproductive meetings, assign credit or blame to the person in charge. Then, if people have track records of leading ineffective meetings, don’t let them lead future sessions. When their expertise is essential, make them subordinate to an effective meeting leader.
I sit here at my computer, in hat and scarf and several layers of clothing, and have come to one conclusion: I’m not wearing nearly enough socks.
Before my fingers turn completely blue and frostbitten, I will attempt to post some of my favorite articles from this week. Enjoy reading them as you wait for my memorial service to start.
You’ve come a long way baby: It’s sometimes hard to believe just how blatant racism and sexism can be, and then you read this Disney rejection letter from 1938. My favorite part is that it’s signed by a woman. “Women do not do any of the creative work.” With a picture of a witch at the bottom. It’s like they’re not even trying to be subliminal.
So what you really mean is: On the surface, this articleabout how to say things diplomatically might seem fairly innocuous, until you think about what their suggested phrases are really saying. The fine folks at fark.com expose the truth:
“Let’s wait on this until we have more information.”
Translation: None of you know what the fuck you’re talking about, so let’s wait until someone with a brain chimes in.
Fast Food Nation: Two articles caught my eye this week. An “offbeat” couple got married at Taco Bell and some kids found a condom at Chuck E Cheese. (Cause and Effect?)
This is Good News for Some: Peru’s top court has ruled that you can’t fire someone for being drunk on the job. Meanwhile, in Australia, a crossing guard was fired for smoking. But hey, that’s nothing, this teacher in Britain was fired for wearing tennis shoes. And for a local firing, here’s a waiter working just a few miles away from me who got fired because he played a tape of Arabic chants at a Jewish wedding. Hey, man, he was just trying to disrespect them privately.
Okay, my toes need to be thawed so I’m signing off. I think I need to find my cat.
Stay warm! (Except for all you Californians, you suck…)
One of my New Year’s resolutions was to be a bit more deliberate in thinking about theology in the workplace (and this blog as a form of lay ministry) without lapsing into theology proper, which is often completely incomprehensible to most of us. There’s a discussion in the UU blogosphere about how to develop curriculum for lay people in theology. I have some emerging thoughts on that, but more immediately, I’ve found that I can adapt some of the theological questions here for the workplace. (Of course, I’m not so sure these are solely theological questions. They’re certainly moral, spiritual, and religious as well.)
What is the purpose of work in my life?
Where is God (the holy, a divine presence) at work?
How can I reconcile my own suffering at work (and the suffering of others) with the necessity of work?
Why do hurtful things happen to me at work?
How can I best deal with troublesome people at work?
What do I owe my coworkers? What do they owe me?
How can I find joy at work?
Why do I make mistakes and screw up at work? And how can I best succeed?
Anything you’d like to add that you think about? Or modify? Or subtract? Sometimes I think the larger question that keeps arising is, “How can I be moral in a workplace that seems amoral?”
Oh, I am all over this article: Preoccupations - A Sisterhood of Workplace Infighting.
If I could summarize my workplace experience glibly, I’ve had far more positive and lasting relationships with men than with women in the workplace. And, I fear, it’s at least partially, if not entirely, my own damn fault. Something about how women are socialized (or, gulp, how women are) seems to make some really good at being frenemies:
But while women have come a long way in removing workplace barriers, one of the last remaining obstacles is how they treat one another. Instead of helping to build one another’s careers, they sometimes derail them — for example, by limiting access to important meetings and committees; withholding information, assignments and promotions; or blocking the way to mentors and higher-ups.
And if you are a woman and happen to have a female co-worker who is a bully, watch out. A recent study by the Workplace Bullying Institute examining office behaviors — like verbal abuse, job sabotage, misuse of authority and destroying of relationships — found that female bullies aim at other women more than 70 percent of the time. Bullies who are men, by contrast, tend to be equal-opportunity tormentors when it comes to the gender of their target.
Women aren’t necessarily unkind to your face, of course. Hence “frenemy” rather than “enemy”.
I first noticed the infighting with adult women when I attended Smith. Never in my life had I seen women attempt to control one another, judge one another so harshly for wearing the wrong clothes or saying the wrong thing (or being from the “wrong type” of people). It astounded me that in a place so supposedly feminist that there was this degree of negativity toward one another. And it seemed almost impossible to not participate in one way or another. Unfortunately, this sort of environment isn’t unique. Women do this sort of sabotaging to one another all the time, especially in the workplace.
The article proposes a number of hypotheses for this sort of behavior (i.e. the scarcity of few places at the top, the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps because I did” approach), but I tell you after Smith, and several just-about-all-female workplaces,…
this cheese stands alone.
In order to keep lay-offs at bay, companies often turn to cost cutting measures, including turning the thermostat down, adjusting shipping costs, monitoring your use of office supplies, including Post-Its, and even eliminating holidays. None of those is a particularly terrible idea (except perhaps for strict monitoring of Post-It use), however, on a small-scale, these changes may not reduce costs significantly to weather a recession.
Here’s a very related question about cost cutting:
Question: What costs can I cut to stay in business?
Answer: Business owners who try to stay profitable by reducing minimal expenses for the short term are rarely successful. “Turning up the thermostat or shipping by freight rather than overnight will not offset a recession,” said Bill Bartmann, chief executive of BillionaireU .com.
Other companies in your industry are suffering the same loss of revenue and increase in operating expenses that you’re probably experiencing. All you need to stay viable is to gain an edge: “You don’t have to outrun the economy, you just have to outrun your competition,” Bartmann said.
Rather than cutting small costs, think about increasing your prices. If your business has been profitable until recently, increasing your prices in proportion to increased expenses should allow you to continue to produce a profit.
Another idea is to attract new customers who are changing their purchasing habits because of the economic downturn. “Don’t cut your marketing budget, but focus it in areas where your message will find desired new customers,” Bartmann said.
So other than increasing prices and finding new sources of customers, how else can companies manage in a recession?
They spread the pain with salary reductions across the board (and elimination of holidays). Yes, you may manage to cut costs, and it definitely may help you weather the recession, but you may also end up with potentially (very) disgruntled employees. On ther other hand, some companies have already laid-off so many employees that they cannot reduce the workforce further
And, because this is one of the most googled topics on the blog, what’s the average pay raise going to be like in 2009? Less than 3%, which is lower than previous predictions.
What builds morale in the workplace? Treating people as if they are adults. Treating people as if they are fully functional, capable human beings. In short, treating them with respect.
Here’s a Q & A that addresses this very point, Respect is Key to Boosting Morale:
Question: How do I keep morale up at my company when everyone’s worried we’re going under?
Answer: The key is treating your employees and partners with respect, said Douglas Duncan, chief executive of Your HR Solutions, a human resources consulting firm in Maplewood, N.J.
“Don’t insult people by pretending things are OK when they may not be, and don’t ignore them by keeping silent and hoping it all goes away,” Duncan said. “If there are problems, include your employees as part of the solutions.”
Set goals based on the new economic reality and share them with your staff. Talk to your employees every day, even if it’s just to say hello and thank them for working hard. “Recognition from leaders will make all the difference in your company morale,” Duncan said.
I swear that some of these “budget” articles exist solely for me to make fun of them: Spaghetti Meal with a Twist and on the Cheap.
The “cheap” part is that it cost $35 to make. How is it possible to make spaghetti cost $35? You’ll have to read it to find out. It’s three courses, and from ingredients that I’m guessing many of us don’t have on hand (e.g., chevre and blood oranges). And, of course, there is no spaghetti in the spaghetti meal, just rigatoni. But, honestly, given the state of the economy, you’d think something more practical could be featured. You’d really think so.
The best thing about the article is that I got to use scare quotes several times as did the subtitle featuring a “shoestring” budget.