Surviving the Workday

I think it’s always fascinating to find out what people are really up to at work.

In Postman’s Death, A Mystery of Mail Left Behind, we learn of a mail carrier in Brookline, Massachusetts, whose death revealed that he stole circulars and mostly undeliverable mail from people for more than two decades. But I was struck by one thing.

Circulars?

He stole circulars? There may be no greater sign of mental illness than stealing a circular.

Opinions of the mail carrier varied greatly from laudable:

Neighbors said Mr. Gagne was somewhat of an enigma on his street, barely looking people in the eye but seemingly obsessed with getting the mail to them properly and on time, leaving them all the more baffled as to how and why he took the mail.

“When you went away on vacation he would leave photocopied notes in his unusual, hard-to-read scrawl that you should check your mail carefully because there might be a problem,” said Jonathan Sandler, 35, who was walking by Mr. Gagne’s Linden Street apartment with his wife and 20-month-old son. He said Mr. Gagne was the best, most thorough mailman he had ever had. “Al was the mail.”

to downright creepy:

Rebecca Scudiere, 25, a medical student who lives in the street’s only large apartment building, said she and her roommates often found that their mail was late and, on Thursday, had received a large bundle of unsorted mail. She said she had been “creeped out” by a conversation with Mr. Gagne, whom she saw every day but only acknowledged her once.

“I was getting my mail at the same time he came and he said, ‘Who’s your mail from, your boyfriend? I’d take you out,’ ” she said. “Aside from that he was never friendly.”

I always think how these sorts of descriptions could be used on everyone, including myself. Just change the job and the wording slightly.

We might have: “She did a great job editing,”

and then “She was always very awkward on the phone. She could barely get a sentence out.”

Our Lord! Condemn us not if we forget and fall into error;
Our Lord! Lay not on us a burden
like that which Thou didst lay on those before us;
Our Lord! Lay not on us a burden greater
than we have the strength to bear.
Blot out our sins, and grant us forgiveness.
Have mercy on us.
Thou art our protector;
Help us against those who stand against Faith.

qur’an - 2:286 - al baqarah - the cow

I was that kid who refused to sell crap door to door to raise money for a new choir robe . I’d just as soon babysit as sell smelly candles. But even with babysitting, I hated choosing a rate, hated asking for money, and absolutely loathed people who made me calculate how much they owed.

So it is no surprise that I also hate invoicing as an adult. I probably have some sort of deep issue with money, but I know I’m not alone.

One of the challenges of having your own small business is staying on top of the financial paperwork, but, of course, if you don’t, then you will soon have no money. I now have a high-tech spreadsheet to calculate everything from total billed, to total owed, to taxes owed courtesy of Ghost Girl. This is a good thing. But I still have to bill.

Here’s a summary of the top challenges gleaned from my experience and that of my many freelancing friends*:

1. Every client wants the invoice to appear in a different format, often with a standard template that they have designed. It is important for the template only to be accessible in an obscure software program. If it happens to be in Word or Excel, it usually contains cryptic blanks with “Fill In Here” in Gaelic.

2. Often there are 2-5 secret codes that freelancers or contractors need to complete the invoice. These may be in the contract. They should be in the contract. They may also be in one of the 10,000 emails in the in-box about this project.

3. Once the invoice is sent, it disappears into a Void. Never is any sort of receipt sent, unless, of course, the invoice is rejected. This Void (also know as the Invoicing Void of Despair) is a dark place, my friends, where paper goes and never returns.

4. If there is a “problem” with the invoice, often it is not reported until payment time has elapsed. This is because some accounting departments seem to wait the maximum number of days to pay until there is threat of small claims court looming. We know they are overworked. As are all of us.

5. Here’s a final problem. Tracking down money takes time. And it takes time away from billable working. This is why people hire someone to do it for them. Because from making the invoice to recording the invoice to tracking the invoice to following up when the invoice is lost….time is spent and not necessarily well spent unless it results in payment.

I think this is one of those issues that just is. As in, it simply exists. There is nothing to do to change it. It is the nature of having your own business. Your thoughts?

*Note that there are clients who pay well and regularly and we are blessed to be in their service.

“Once you dehumanize somebody, everything is possible,” said Taina Bien-Aimé, executive director of the women’s advocacy group Equality Now.

Bob wrote an insightful op-ed describing how misogyny is so much a part of our economy and our society that we don’t even comment anymore.

Ten girls were shot and five killed at the Amish school. One girl was killed and a number of others were molested in the Colorado attack.

In the widespread coverage that followed these crimes, very little was made of the fact that only girls were targeted. Imagine if a gunman had gone into a school, separated the kids up on the basis of race or religion, and then shot only the black kids. Or only the white kids. Or only the Jews.

There would have been thunderous outrage. The country would have first recoiled in horror, and then mobilized in an effort to eradicate that kind of murderous bigotry. There would have been calls for action and reflection. And the attack would have been seen for what it really was: a hate crime.

None of that occurred because these were just girls, and we have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that violence against females is more or less to be expected. Stories about the rape, murder and mutilation of women and girls are staples of the news, as familiar to us as weather forecasts. The startling aspect of the Pennsylvania attack was that this terrible thing happened at a school in Amish country, not that it happened to girls.

Read the entire article here.

Via feministing.

Who knew?

Apparently God objects to raising the minimum wage. I had no idea he was a Republican.

Check out this ad here.

Let’s just say that 650 leading economists think that raising the minimum wage yearly would significantly benefit low wage families. The minimum wage has been $5.15 for more than ten years.

Via That Black Lesbian Jew

Dear Miss Theologian:

–Too Busy to meditate

Dear Busy:

You do sound busy. But fear not, there is help for you. Just make sure that you realize that the nature of spirituality is that it isn’t a quick jolt to straighten out your life. It’s a lifetime of daily practice.

That said, you might try using a Soul Byte for reflection. Just read one and then go about your day.

You might try Beliefnet’s Prayer of the Day. You can get those emailed to you.

You might also consider Yoga stretches at your work station.

I hope this helps,

Ms. Theologian

P.S. To ask Ms. Theologian a spirituality and the workplace question, direct your email to ms dot theologian at gmail dot com.

I’d like to highly recommend Mary Pipher’s The Shelter of Each Other: Rebuilding our Families.

Mary Pipher is the author of Reviving Ophelia, which you may remember from the 1990s as the hottest book about the lives of teenage girls.

The Shelter of Each Other analyzes and recommends practices to modify our work-life balance, that is the amount of time that we spend with our families and the amount of time that we spend with our work.

Pipher also critiques some of the ways that we currently deal with challenges in the workplace:

Often insecure adults try to boltster their self-esteem with compliments. Many listen to self-affirmation tapes as they drive to work, or they ply themselves with programmed messages that they are good people. These self-affirmations have a place, but they have been oversold as a panacea for a difficult life. If a person’s work is meaningless and his/her relationships are fragmented, self-validation will go only so far. Then the person needs to make real changes.

This advice resonates with me. I love the Love Yourself affirmation cards that Cheryl Rainfield makes, but they aren’t the solution for every type of problem.

Prayer, meditation, guided journeys–it’s good stuff, but after contemplation you may find that that actual solution to your problem may be in changing your position, your job, or your field. That may be the ultimate way to affirmation yourself.

In an interview with former Trappist monk, James Finley, I learned something new about meditation.

Q: Some believe—we see this on Beliefnet’s discussion boards—that meditation drives thoughts out of your mind and “invites the devil in.”

A: Sometimes I will tell people who express that—well why not try it? Why not try to just quietly and sincerely and silently open your heart to God and see for yourself if you sense something dangerous or bad or dark. And you might discover that the opposite’s the case.

You learn something new every day. Read the entire interview here.

I find you, Lord, in all things and in all
my fellow creatures, pulsing with your life;
as a tiny seed you sleep in what is small
and in the vast you vastly yield yourself.

rainer marie rilke

From World Prayers

I’m ruthless with deleting email, but I know plenty of folks prefer the in-box to be full.

Here’s an article about tips for dealing with email.

Would anyone like to share any tips for when the box overfloweth?

Although this resembles an ad for Microsoft, there are interesting tips for managing your work-life balance in it, including this advice:

Negotiate longer lead times whenever you can and don’t give into the “instant-and-immediate answer” syndrome. Treating everything as top priority is draining and depleting.

Amen.

Read the entire article here.

Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the universe, Who has kept us in life, and has preserved us, and enabled us to reach this season.

Beliefnet’s Prayer of the Day

What is Sukkot?

let me first say this: I am not a copyeditor.

One of the primary struggles that I have as a freelance writer and editor is defining what it is that I do. Often totally random people will call (And how exactly do they get my number? I have no idea) and ask me to work on this or that. And I have to chat with them in order to discern what it is that they want. Because, trust me, it’s not obvious and they often don’t know what they want.

For example, do you want someone to check for typos? Do you want someone to compare a marked version of a document to a clean version? This is something a proofreader does. I rarely do this unless it’s part of a larger project, because I’m not great at it and it always happens last in the publishing process.

Do you want someone to make sure that your document hasn’t any grammatical or spelling mistakes? You need a copyeditor. Copyeditors can also check for style and use issues. Other types of editors do this all along, but it is really the job of the copyeditor to catch all mistakes to the narration (not to the math, not to the science, not to the reasoning, but to the actual prose).

Do you want to make sure your document is factually true? You need a fact checker. I don’t do too much of this because it’s all consuming work.

Do you need someone to shepherd you through multiple drafts of manuscript? Do you need a comparison of your product to others on the market? Do you need someone to work closely with the author to take ideas and turn them into content? This is often what a developmental editor does. I do a lot of this, primarily in science. It’s intellectually stimulating, the authors are usually fascinating (one way or another), and it’s primarily concerned with larger content issues rather than comma use. Though, as I mentioned, good developmental editors note that sort of thing anyway.

Do you need someone to actually generate copy? This is what a writer does, and I do a fair amount of this too though sometimes as a developmental editor, so this distinction can become a bit hazy.

Most publishing houses have a coterie of all types of these roles in-house and freelance. A copyeditor might do a freelance editor’s job, and a developmental editor might do copyediting, but the tasks are usually distinct and done at different stages. Developmental editing comes first, then manuscript might be handed off to a project editor (sometimes a developmental editor and project editor are the same person) and after much review from many different editors and authors a manuscript is just about finalized and given to a copyeditor and later to a proofreader to check that the copyeditor’s changes were implemented correctly.

Freelancing is different. Freelancing is messy.

I say this because often clients think that hiring an editor means an instant transformation of complete dreck into Pulitzer Prize material for $40/hour (but they only want to pay for 10 hours). That’s just not going to happen. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try. But it does mean that an occasional comma might be misplaced, if I was hired to edit the content.

Because, as I said, I’m not a copyeditor.

Check the Editorial Freelance Association for more information on these tasks.

Oh, sometimes it is just one of those days.

It sounds like Maud is having one too. But the lovely Maud has given us this gift of workplace delight and humor:

The Chronicles of George

You know you’ve worked with George. You know you have.

Today, October 11, 2006, is National Coming Out Day.

As sexual identity is a huge part of who we are as human beings, I’ve assembled some reading information to help us inform ourselves.

Here’s A Straight Guide to GLBT Americans from the Human Rights Campaign and PFLAG. That arrived in my mail box this morning.

And here is some guidance on coming out to your parents (though mired in those stages of grief that we talked about on Sunday–they’re not stages, people! it’s a process and it’s recursive), a guide to coming out for gay and bi men, tips for lesbian and bi women, and the fine art of being come out to. And, finally, because this blog is about work, here’s the Coming Out at Work Guide (some things to consider).

It’s hard to run a magazine. The costs are enormous both in terms of time and money. So whenever a new magazine comes out, I’m impressed. It takes guts to start a magazine (and investors). But why did this have to be the cover?

This is 02138, which is a new magazine for Harvard alums. It’s supposed to be hip. Yes, I sound like my father when I say that. Cliff wrote about it a couple of weeks ago, and I thought I had been (fortunately) left off the subscription list. But no. It arrived. It sat on the kitchen table. And then it provoked a small tantrum and got tossed into recycling.

Because I’m sure the magazine is run by people who google themselves constantly, let me say this, I would gladly pay money for 02138 if it did not have a cover with a shirtless woman and copy that was all about smug attitude. I don’t pay money for that sort of representation of women–body sans intellect (or perhaps body despite intellect). I get that for free every time I turn on a TV. I’m tired of celebrities. I’m even more tired of the children of celebrities. And I think it’s fair to say that I’m doubly tired of shirtless children of celebrities. I don’t care if she went to Harvard. This is not a model of success that I aspire to. Ever.

I think that I’m clearly not in the demographic for this magazine because I’d like to tell 02138 to take their smarty pants education and grow up.

Nickel and Dimed is one of my favorite books. It’s nonfiction (but don’t cringe if you’re a fiction fan, there is a veritable story) and it is about surviving the work day (nickel and dime at a time). In the book, the author, Barbara Ehrenreich, goes undercover and takes on a series of minimum wage jobs and attempts to live with her wages.

Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed, answers some questions about Nickel and Dimed on her blog as she celebrates the 109th week on the NY Times best seller list:

What shocked you most?

Two things: One, the totalitarian nature of so many low-wage workplaces. On two jobs, for example, there was a rule against talking with your fellow employees. The other major surprise to me was that the jobs were all mentally as well as physically challenging – and I have a Ph.D. in biology. I struggled to learn the computer ordering systems in restaurants, to memorize the names and dietary restrictions of 30 Alzheimer’s patients, and, at Wal-Mart, to memorize the exact locations of all the items in ladies’ wear – which would then be rotated every few days, no doubt to convince me that I had Alzheimer’s.

Read the entire interview here.

I’ve been a bit anxious for the past 24 hours at work and in the evening, my self-contained bubble burst mostly by North Korea and its nuclear testing, the mounting body count in Iraq, and every new article I read about Darfur and rape while gathering firewood.

I feel a bit as I did in junior high, during the Cold War, where it seemed that crazy men were in charge marching the world toward World War III and some folks somewhere were making a bundle. Everything felt out of control, out of my control at least, and that’s distressing.

I found this lovely poem, written on September 12, 2001, and it made me feel much better.

Wage peace with your breath.

Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists
and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields.

Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.

Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.

Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.

Play music, memorize the words for thank you in three languages.

Learn to knit, and make a hat.

Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief
as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish.

Swim for the other side.

Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious:

Have a cup of tea and rejoice.

Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today.

wage peace - judyth hill - september 12, 2001

From World Prayer for Peace

I think this is heavily influenced by Tonglen breathing. You might want to read more about it. To order an illustrated version of this poem, click here.