Surviving the Workday

One of the most important things in terms of being spiritual throughout your life and during your workday is to remember to treat everyone with respect. Unfortunately, some management folks at Radio Shack forgot that when they sent an email to 400 people:

The work force reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated.

Spokewoman Kay Jackson said email notification was quicker and allowed more privacy. Aw, how considerate.

Radioshack fires 400 people by email

Thanks to GhostGirl for the heads up

This doesn’t seem particularly religiously justified:

Religious leaders in Saudi Arabia want to impose restrictions on women praying in the Grand Mosque in Makka, one of the few places where male and female worshippers intermingle….

At present, women can pray in the immediate vicinity of the Kaaba, a cube-shaped structure inside the mosque, believed to have been built by Ibrahim (Abraham) - seen by Muslims as a prophet - and his son.

Muslims walk around this seven times according to rites first established by Ibrahim and re-established by Prophet Muhammad.

Plans by the all-male committee overseeing the holy sites would place women in a distant section of the mosque while men would still be able to pray in the key space…

Hatoun al-Fassi, a historian, said the move to restrict women’s prayer in the mosque would be a first in Islamic history.

“Perhaps they want women to disappear from any public prayer area and when it comes to the holy mosques that’s their ultimate aim,” she said.

From Aljazeera.Net.

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.

From John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

In three easy steps!

1. Call him at work on his birthday.

2. Tell him a long and involved story about how goofy your parents are. This story requires that he laugh uproariously at the end. But, of course, he won’t, because he’s at work. Act all hurt that he didn’t laugh at your lame story.

3. Mention how much you liked the photos on his website of his new baby and cats in the same poses. Then realize that he didn’t actually know that these photos were of the cats in the same poses as the baby. He’s not much of a deconstructionist. He knows this.

Feel extremely awkward. Apologize. Hang up. Go back to work.

Want to choose non-Catholic godparents for your Catholic child?

Wish your boss a blessed Rosh Hashanah?

Giving gifts to Jehovah’s witnesses?

Religion Etiquette (or how not to put your foot in your mouth) has you covered. And, Oh My God, Religious Coworkers are addressed too!

Today’s Daily Om is about finding your life’s work, always an interest of mine:

You’ll know you have discovered your life’s work when you wake eager to face
each day and you feel good about not only what you do but also who you are.

So perhaps waking up and considering building a fortress out of pillows and refusing to leave the bed doesn’t mean you’ve found your life’s work? I wonder.

I think for many of us finding our life’s work isn’t a matter of “finding” or “not having found” (a false dichotomy!) but of a journey with good days and not so good days.

For more of Blessed with a Purpose, click here.

I guess I wasn’t the only one irritated by the reverence paid to Katie Holmes and her bump.

I don’t look to Glamour Magazine for words of wisdom, but I just read a very thoughtful article, Infertile in a Baby-Crazed World, about women, infertility, celebrity babies, and misplaced true callings:

As painful as the fuss over babies and pregnancy may be for infertile women, some experts believe it’s not good for any woman, infertile or not. For one, breathless profiles of movie-star mothers and their new tots overshadow the fact that these women have other accomplishments—you know, like Oscars and $50 million opening weekends at the movies. The message: Having a successful career is nice and all, but don’t forget your true calling…Mom!

Baby obsession isn’t healthy for mothers, either. “The ways we romanticize pregnancy only increase the postpartum hangover that is a normal but challenging part of motherhood,” says Amy Tiemann, Ph.D., a cultural critic and author of Mojo Mom: Nurturing Your Self While Raising a Family. “Caught up in the frenzy, women can lose sight of the realities of what it’s like to have an infant. Reading about a Hollywood baby shower won’t prepare you for the sleepless nights and hard, physical work. The maternity marketing industry is a lot like the wedding industry, where people get so wrapped up in wedding plans that they neglect to prepare for the actual marriage.”

For the whole article, click here.

I’m sure most of you have read about the charming article in Forbes about why you should marry someone without a career. I believe it was called something like Don’t Marry a Career Woman and compiled random research together to suggest that if you were a man who married a woman who went to college and earned more than 30K a year, she would earn more than you, cheat on you, and cut your dick off.

And then Forbes realized that perhaps its article was a little wacky, so it pulled it and then placed it in a He Says v. She Says column. It’s a sophisticated format in which the male writer first says, “Women suck and will emasculate all of us. Run and hide!” and the the female writer says, “No, men can be lazy! Run and hide!”

You may enjoy some of the enjoyable posts on the discussion board with titles like Feminism is to Blame with this sort of comment:

When a woman partecipates in something labeled as feminism she thinks she just fights for her constitutional rights. For euality for empowerment…

Those women. Thinking again. Damn them! Damn his typos too!

Also, How to Capture and Contain Your Very Own Wife is pretty funny and so is the commentary in Salon.

Yesterday, Jim and I went to a class on art and architecture in Florence during the Renaissance. It was a lecture and slide presentation all day with people who love Italy, especially Florence.

Most heartening was to think of the great works of art that were created because of the system of patronage, especially by the Medicis. Artists were really free to work. Their meals were paid for. Their rent was taken care of. Their children were provided for. And they were left to do what they did best–create.

This isn’t to say that the system of patronage didn’t create problems. But it also provided money for artists, something there is precious little of right now.

The instructor left us with the sense that there are many Leonardo da Vincis, many Michelangelos, many Brunelleschis in our midst, but that because of the practical concerns of life and the neglect of the arts, we will not have many masterpieces like those created in the Renaissance.

Of course, yes, you rise early, you do your art, you go to work, you take care of your family. Yes, some people do seem to be able to do it all. But the Renaissance was simply different.

Just in case you thought that spirituality and the workplace issues were limited to this continent, it turns out that they are not by a long shot

Deepshikha Methta writes in The Hindu, the online edition of India’s national newspaper:

What it would be like if one could find the work that evokes a feeling of belongingness, which typically doesn’t induce antagonistic feelings for the large amount of time spent, for the unpleasant interactions that one may have to go through while dealing with people of temperaments that are different from ours. What are the possibilities of developing a deeper connection with our workplace?

These questions sound very familiar. You can read more here.

A Presbyterian minister in Northern California, who asked not to be identified because she did not want her congregation to know she was looking for a new post, said she received 65 rejections when applying for a job in the mid-1990’s. Over the last two years, as she has sought to move to a larger church, she said she has been passed over by 15 churches, even though her own church is thriving and she teaches preaching at a prestigious seminary.

“When a senior pastor is consulted about whom he would like to succeed him, there aren’t any women on those lists,” the minister said. “The good-old-boy network starts there.”

For the rest of the article, click here. And to my young non-feminist friends, I honestly wish you the best and hope this is never anything that you have to become aware of.

Recently, I’ve had some motivational difficulties due to a confluence of work assignments. This has led to a prolonged plan to build a fort in bed each morning out of pillows and then refuse to leave it. But that’s so John-Yoko

The Daily Om has some encouraging words:

Upon waking, many people consider the coming day with trepidation. Because of the natural human tendency to focus on what we fear or dislike, it is easy to unwittingly send a message of unease into the future that negatively impacts the quality of your day. However, while our lives are busy and frequently replete with challenges, they are also rich with joy and experiences worth savoring. We can attract this natural bliss into our lives by starting each day with a message of love. When you send love ahead to your day, that love will manifest itself in your interpersonal interactions, your professional endeavors, and your domestic duties. Tasks and circumstances once made trying by your own anxiety are transformed by your love, and you will find yourself approaching life’s subtle nuances with great affection.

Read the rest here.

Salutation to the Dawn

Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth;
The glory of action;
The splendor of achievement;
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision;
But today, well lived, makes every yesterday
a dream of happiness,
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

- Attributed to Kalidasa

From Beliefnet

Ok Go–Here It Goes Again

These guys of Ok Go are so mesmerizing. Totally worth the three minutes of time. And an apt metaphor for the workday.

One of the primary ways to win an argument in graduate school is to throw out the phrase “false dichotomy.” Because, of course, the world is more than black or white, good or bad, vanilla or chocolate. However, one of the ways to get a nonfiction book published seems to be to simplify the world into black and white. In other words, to create a false dichotomy.

I’m fascinated by Caitlin Flanagan, because really I’d like nothing more than to write, stay at home, and make my man happy. And that’s what she calls us all to do. And when you have kids, a nanny is especially helpful. And a housekeeper. Perhaps a cook. And don’t forget about the gardener. Let me quote from her, “When a women works, something is lost.” Yes, something might be lost. Boredom and debt, for example.
Caitlin Flanagan is actually an example of the challenge of the second wave of feminism (and let’s be clear, she’s not a feminist, but an anti-feminist) in which we assume that everyone lives in the first world, is white, straight, and has the same choices. So, good women stay home and service their man (Did anyone see the Colbert report? She sort of promised to make him a happy man. She also seemed like her meds were off a bit). And bad women work. It’s that simple!

And, yes, here’s my subject: that’s a false dichotomy. But a v. popular one! It’s everywhere.

Let’s look at Elizabeth Dole briefly. We’re talking about someone with 20 aides who travels extensively and then tells women to stay home with their families (though frankly if one’s husband had been a Viagra spokeperson telling the world about his penis and its activities and lack thereof, one might have the right, nay, the entitlement to go a bit batty). Good women stay home. Bad women work. Except for the women who work at telling women to stay home. Those women are also good.

Honestly, did anyone group up beyond kindgarten when we learned there were all sorts of colors, not just black and white?

The Daily OM today is on creating a ceremony of welcome, which seems like a wonderful idea to welcome a new being (a baby, an older child, grandma, dogs, cats) into your life. Sometimes we tend to think that rituals are extras rather than necessities.

We don’t do enough with welcoming in the workplace. I can remember my first day at Houghton Mifflin. I was given a cube, a computer, and an assignment that took about six minutes to finish. When I went to look for my boss (or anyone!) I couldn’t find any help or any way to get more work. Finally, I tried to surf the Internet in some way that could be construed as educational.

It wasn’t much of a welcome, but when a company hires so many people (and lays off equal numbers) I think they must have become soured on the process. Or exhausted by it. A couple weeks later, the new hires went out to lunch with our boss, but it seemed too late. Patterns of behavior had been established and the chilly atmosphere didn’t seem to warm up.

Any good stories of creating a welcoming ceremony?

I gave into the guilty pleasure of AC a month ago. And now I can’t go outside ever again. That hot air is scary stuff.

In any case, knowing that I’m already damned to hell, where it will be hot all the time, I’ve located some tips for efficient use of AC for my time in the earthly realm:

Ideal Byte’s Tips for AC Use

Compare two American Apparel advertisements supposedly selling the same product, one for women, another for men.

Meet Melissa.

Meet Memo.

What kind of image are we shown of men and women at work? The same? Different?

From Clamor Magazine article, Who’s Your Daddy regarding American Apparel:

“The company possesses a downtown textile factory straight out of the ’40s, a sexploitation ad campaign from the ’70s, and a marketing strategy so sophisticated it almost seems to come from the future. Old-world manufacturing paternalism meets sexy transnational marketing: has American Apparel vertically integrated different eras of capitalism?”

All ideas and information from Feministing.com, which does a thorough job of breaking it down.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean–
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
‘who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down–
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass,
how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed,
how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

–Mary Oliver

From All Spirit

Photo Copyright 1993 to 2006 University of Missouri. Published by MU Extension, University of Missouri-Columbia, all rights reserved .

I’ve been entertaining myself with some of the Breadloaf blogging in between memorizing weird things in Italian.

It looks like lots of people are blogging from Breadloaf.

Check out Mary Akers, Cliff Garstang, Kat Denza, and Laila Lalami. It sounds marvelous. It also sounds exhausting. Marvelously exhausting? Exhaustingly marvelous?

I worked for a narcissist. It was honestly living hell. It was impossible to have any sort of a life. We had meetings that went on for days without bathroom breaks. We were expected to work nights and weekends. We had to show up at inconvenient events, including Passover, Easter, Christmas, to make our boss looked good. It was clearly the worst job of my life.

At some point, I started researching narcissism and self-preservation and found that if you tolerate narcissism, it may be because you learned to tolerate it and have someone in the family. Let’s not go too deeply into that in a public forum. Needless to say, we all operate within patterns in our lives, often without too much deviation.

In any event, one of the best hints for managing a narcissist is this: R U N.

Seriously.

But in the event that this is not possible for you in the workplace, I’ve found some hints on managing a narcissistic boss from Narcissism in the Workplace:

Never disagree with the narcissist or contradict him;

Never offer him any intimacy;

Look awed by whatever attribute matters to him (for instance: by his professional achievements or by his good looks, or by his success with women and so on);

Never remind him of life out there and if you do, connect it somehow to his sense of grandiosity (”These are the BEST art materials ANY workplace is going to have”, “We get them EXCLUSIVELY”, etc.).

Do not make any comment, which might directly or indirectly impinge on his self-image, omnipotence, judgement, omniscience, skills, capabilities, professional record, or even omnipresence. Bad sentences start with: “I think you overlooked … made a mistake here … you don’t know … do you know … you were not here yesterday so … you cannot … you should … (perceived as rude imposition, narcissists react very badly to restrictions placed on their freedom) … I (never mention the fact that you are a separate, independent entity, narcissists regard others as extensions of their selves, their internalisation processes were derailed and they did not differentiate properly)…” You get the gist of it.

These are great hints. Is this manipulative? Yes. Is this in the interest of self-preservation? Absolutely. Should you look for a new job? Yes, because you can’t succeed in that kind of environment.

Frequently Asked Questions about Narcissists