From News of the Weird:

A 2006 Church of England report warned that disagreeable congregants, together with the pressures of the church’s “feudal system” bureaucracy, were turning priests harshly negative and creating an “irritable clergy syndrome.” One of the report’s authors told The Times of London in December that priests are bothered by “having to be nice all the time to everyone, even when confronted with extremes of nastiness,” such as aggressive and neurotic parishioners. [The Times (London), 12-9-06

It seems to me that Irritable Clergy Syndrom is entirely justified. And I’m actually thinking that “disagreeable congregants” could be likened to “disagreeable coworkers” and “feudal system bureaucracy” to “corporate practices,” in which case we have a much wider phenomenon.

I’ve been making some notes for a little piece of my particularly Bitchy Month (I’m re-naming it The Truth Telling Month), so this mention of Irritable Clergy Syndrome struck me as totally appropriate. Being “nice” all the time does not make for a healthy psyche; neither does being bitchy. But somewhere in between there must be a balance between tact and truth telling.

I’ve seen quite a few movies relating to spirituality and the workplace recently, so I thought I’d share.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated is probably the best documentary of censorship in the United States relating to the movie industry. I’ve often wondered how rape of women ends up in just about every other film, not to mention people’s heads being blown off casually, but I’ve yet to see that much voluntary sex. I mean, the sort of sex that people actually have. Well, this film is probably the most damning investigation of the MPAA ratings that you can imagine, and that’s all explained by the filmmaker, Kirby Dick, in terms of fear, control, and the threat of NC-17 ratings.

The Celluloid Closet is also a documentary, which exclusively explores the portrayal of GLBT people on-screen. Hence, it’s really about censorship too. One point that you’ll find that is similar to This Film Is Not Yet Rated is that films are more highly censored in terms of sexual content in the United States than they’ve ever been before. I’d hope that artists could find that they could express themselves without an agency (that would be the MPAA) needing to “protect” people from free expression. God knows what people would actually do if they saw the full spectrum of human experience in a film (that was angry, bitter sarcasm).

The Closet is a French film in which someone pretends to be gay so as not to be fired at work. I found it in the gay and lesbian section at Netflix, but…I’m not exactly sure why. In any case, it’s an interesting portrayal of the workplace politics of a condom factory and it’s not as shallow as it seems. It’s about identity, meaning, and alienation, and how it’s quite possible to not know our coworkers in any sort of meaningful way, despite sitting in the same room as them for years.

The Magdalene Sisters is a fictionalized account of the lives of 3 of the 30,000 women who were sent to work as slaves in laundries by the Catholic church in Ireland in order to atone for their perceived sins (being raped, talking to boys, and in one case, actually having a baby without being married). The women are supposed to “wash away their sins,” by doing other people’s laundry, but they are abused by the nuns and priests, unpaid, and often live out their entire lives in the laundries sentenced by some backward perception of female sexuality. And the laundries run by the Catholic Church in Ireland closed in 1996, which is to say, rather recently, enough to make us all feel a bit ashamed.

In Doctor’s Personal Beliefs Can Hinder Care, we see evidence of what I’ve feared for years: Many doctors will not tell you or refer you to a treatment that is against their religious beliefs.

It’s my belief that you should honor your own beliefs about ethics and morals in the workplace, but if these beliefs prevent you from doing your job, you need to make sure you find a replacement who can do this portion of your job. Apparently many doctors disagree.

This is of particular concern when a patient asks for EC, emergency contraception to help prevent a pregnancy. Because EC is poorly understood (see a recent episode of Veronica Mars for a complete misunderstanding of the difference between EC and RU486).

So I guess I’m going to be talking to my doctor.

It’s bitterly cold in most of the country, so you might consider turning your attention to spring planting, including the plants you keep around your workspace. Consider this:

1. Planting a seed in a pot at your desk can an act of faith. (Read Sarah York’s Into the Wilderness and her essay, The Growing Season)

2. Watching a seedling grow can be a delightful experience of nurture. (It can also be an experience of death, but I usually keep those thoughts to myself).

I usually order seeds from Seeds of Change, which is an organic seed distributor based in northern New Mexico. Their garden seeds are the most diverse I’ve ever seen, and recently I’ve begun to interplant with a lot of flowers (pinwheel marigolds, mostly). I’ve also ordered their seedlings as gifts, because who wouldn’t want to get six basil varieties in the mail? I’m planting a small windowbox basil garden at my desk too.

P.S. I changed to McAfee as my virus protection, and it’s “protecting” me from uploading photos. Nothing happens when I click on the photo icon in blogger. I can’t find anything about this in the help section, so if anyone has any suggestions, let me know, because I have lovely art of seed packets.

Have you sent an email to the Department of Labor supporting the Federal Medical Leave Act (FMLA)? Because it will be gutted by corporate interests if you do not. This isn’t a threat—it is the reality.

Corporate interests, including employer groups have the ear of the Department of Labor, and are proposing a number of modifications to FMLA, all of which make it much more difficult to use:

A more restrictive definition of “serious health condition.” Some have argued that an acute condition should last 10 days, instead of the current three days, to be classified as serious.

Restrictions on the use of unforeseen intermittent leave. Employers argue that the regulations on such leave are particularly burdensome. Some argue that an employee be forced to use at least four hours leave for each occurrence, and that an employee be required to produce a doctor’s excuse each time he or she is out.

Fewer restrictions on the employer’s ability to contact an employee’s personal physician to verify information.

Re-examination of the two-day time period for providing specific notification of the procedures for obtaining FMLA.

Provisions that would allow an employer to deny FMLA if an employee does not submit a written request for FMLA within a certain period of time.

Do you know what is missing from the discussion at the Department of Labor? The opinions of employees. You do not have to be an expert, but it is important to participate.

I have a dream that one day maternity and paternity leave will be paid in the United States.

I have a dream that one day that all workers will have a right to paid sick days.

I have a dream that one day women will have the right to have a space to breast feed at work.

I have a dream that one day there will be a limit to the number of hours in the work week.

This is not too much to ask. These are the sorts of rights that exist in other developed countries. In the meantime, we have FMLA, unpaid leave, and it’s about to be gutted. And my apologies to the late Dr. King for riffing on dreams and society.

To help, first read the Center for Labor Education and Research’s Alert here.

Then read the Department of Labor’s request for information here.

Send your email to via email to whdcomments@dol.gov and use FMLA in the subject line. you have until February 16, 2007 5 p.m. EST to comment. If you’ve done any advocacy work, you know that it’s the volume of responses that matters. So send an email, and get your family members to submit separate emails.

It’s not sexy, it’s not particularly interesting, but if you live in the United States, and you work in some form, I think you are morally obligated to exercise your civic right (and responsibility) and let the Department of Labor know how you feel about weakening the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which is under review.

Employer organizations are aggressively lobbying to weaken this law making it much more difficult to take unpaid leave. We have relatively few workers’ rights laws this country compared to other developed countries, and this law is about to be absolutely gutted. (read more here).

Around 2.4 million Americans used this law in 2005, mostly for time with new babies. The law only applies to companies with 50 or more employees within 75 miles of the work site, which means that small businesses (with under 50 employees) are excluded. Yet corporations are arguing that this law is being abused. And by “abused,” I’m pretty sure corporations actually mean “used.”

If you only do one work-related item this week, please consider sending a comment supporting FMLA in its current form to whdcomments@dol.gov.

I hear a lot of complaints about work, and you actually have an opportunity to do something about it at the federal level, but I’ve heard only silence (and the gurgle of hundreds of people googling “anti-valentine’s day”). Sigh. So I’m not posting new stuff until folks respond.

With all the hits that I get about people being in love with their coworkers (especially the boss), it should come as no surprise when one astronaut tries to kidnap her “love rival.” Yet, for some reason, I sort of assumed that astronauts were more level-headed than the rest of us. Possibly because they operate those billion dollar machines. But no. I was wrong. So wrong.

Here’s the cast of characters in this particular opera:

Lisa Nowak, an astronaut, who is married and has three children, and still seems to have enough free time to kidnap

Colleen Shipman, supposed rival for the attentions of

Bill Oefelein, another astronaut

Our story involves Lisa and a trenchcoat, a hood, and a wig. In a parking garage. But that’s not the weirdest detail. I’ve saved that for last:

In a search of Nowak’s car, police later found diapers that Nowak told them she wore so she wouldn’t have to stop to urinate during her drive. They also discovered a letter describing how much Nowak loved Oefelein, e-mails from Shipman to Oefelein, directions to Shipman’s house and receipts indicating Nowak paid only in cash during her trip from Houston, including for her hotel stay.

Let’s make a simple rule. If you find yourself both slipping into spy movie cliches and purchasing diapers because you don’t want to wet yourself during the kidnap of your love rival, pull over and call your loved ones, your therapist, and the police. Do not choose the Way of the Diaper.

Mentorship — at a basic level it’s someone with a little more experience in the world showing the ropes to someone with less.

We’ve discussion mentorship in terms of finding a mentor, mentoring yourself, coaching others, and mentoring as one of the elements of great managing. There’s no doubt that mentorship (both on the part of the mentor and the mentee) involves finding acceptance and community at work and making work better—it is an important practice. But we haven’t discussed mentoring in life (as opposed to mentoring only at work), which gets far less treatment in the literature, and we haven’t discussed how difficult mentoring is.

In the best case scenario, a mentor will provide you not only with help and contacts to make the most of your work, constructive criticism about your own work, and the ins and outs of your job, but with ideas about how to have a happy and productive life. As the mentee, you will gratefully accept and apply the advice. And it does happen.

More often mentorship involves struggles. Milena’s Mentor Stays on the Case describe how Milena Slatten, a Russian “orphan” who was thrown from a third floor window by her mother, spent time in orphanages in Russia, and foster homes here, and her mentor, Thomas Higgins, a career prosecutor with the city of LA relate to one another. Struggles and conflict are central to the story. Not only did Higgins get Milena a job at the court house, but he’s slowly showing her some of the skills she needs to succeed (at least in our version in Los Angeles). It’s a story about extreme alienation brought on by abuse and hardship and about finding acceptance not only in the workplace, but in life. I hope you’ll give it a read because I’ve been thinking about it for days.

I hate Valentine’s Day on both intellectual and emotional levels. I dislike the gross consumerist nature of the beast (Do you love me? Because if you do, you’ll want to buy me something nice).

And then there’s the way I always end up feeling: a little hollow.

Now there is a lot of love in my life, but this holiday seems to involve highlighting the lack of it because love is equated with stuff, including diamonds, chocolate, and scented massage oil.

Last year we decided to actually celebrate Valentine’s day. Jim felt obligated to buy chocolate and then had some sort of consumer trauma with a matronly woman pushing chocolate onto hundreds of obligated men in a long line at at See’s, and I felt terribly guilty about the entire thing. Then I ate my chocolate all in one day, with the exception of the chews, because they remove dental work. Now I’ve always thought of See’s as the good stuff, possibly because I worked at a mall in high school with a See’s.

But let’s be truthful. See’s candy tastes good, but See’s cocoa practices are despicable because of how they purchase their chocolate. It’s a good idea to purchase fair trade organic chocolate because otherwise it appears that 43% of all cocoa is picked by children (some in slavery) on the Ivory Coast. Ay-eee! Read the Bitter Truth About Chocolate. It’s not at all romantic.

You might want to read 50 Ways to Please Your Lover on Treehugger (Warning: most ways actually involve purchases and, of course, you have to read the word “lover” over and over again, which I find to be a hideous abuse of the notion of love—lover, lover, lover, ew). You might check out Be My Anti-Valentine’s Day.

is an unfortunate place to work in at times.

If you’ve been following the discussions around raising the minimum wage, you’ll probably agree. What I’d like to do is pay Congress and the President the minimum wage for a week and see how quickly the minimum wage is raised to $400/hour.

Setting the minimum wage aside, the U.S. workplace is still probably one of the worst of the developed nations. There are many items related to worker’s rights that are guaranteed in other countries, but not here. In fact, just reading through the list sort of astounds me.

From U.S. Workplace Not Family-Oriented:

Fathers are granted paid paternity leave or paid parental leave in 65 countries, including 31 offering at least 14 weeks of paid leave. The U.S. guarantees fathers no such paid leaves.

At least 107 countries protect working women’s right to breast-feed; the breaks are paid in at least 73 of them. The U.S. does not have federal legislation guaranteeing the right to breast-feed at work.

At least 145 countries provide paid sick days, with 127 providing a week or more annually. The U.S. provides unpaid leave through the Family and Medical Leave Act, which does not cover all workers; there is no federal law providing for paid sick days.

At least 134 countries have laws setting the maximum length of the work week. The U.S. does not have a maximum work week length or a limit on mandatory overtime per week.

Sometimes seeing the differences in black and white is enough to prompt me to consider moving elsewhere.

Thanks to GhostGirl for the link

You might think I’m recommending this device to bring a sense of nature into your workplace. You know, birds, nature. But no. I’m recommending that you not buy this unless you want to push your coworkers to acts of violence. It is solar powered (a plus), but it also hums random songs and tweets when it senses vibrations. Such as a coworker hurling it from your desk into a wall. Yes, the Takaratomy Kotoridayori bird hums. A lot.

I’ve worked in a lot of different environments (churches, schools, non-profits, and very corporate places) and I can’t think of one place where this toy would go over well. It doesn’t create a sense of community. It’s sole purpose seems to be to annoy.

This toy also creates an everlasting temptation in the office for those us who can’t resist creating a little vibration to make it go all atwitter. Temptation isn’t just about adultery. It’s also about resisting those far smaller urges that erode the goodwill and happiness of others.

Via engadet

Please do not buy it.

First, the UU Blog Awards have been awarded, and congratulations to the winners here, here, and here. And all of them here. Thank you to everyone who voted for me. I appreciate it.

The best consequence of the blog competition (and this is the sort of thing you say when you don’t win) is that I learned about new blogs, such as Ms. Kitty’s and Spirituality and Sunflowers.

This week we examined two businesses that choose their own values over those proferred by society: Junk Mail Gems, which recycles and reuses junk mail to make accessories and Fin Tech Enterprise, which chooses to value time with family and friends over making millions. And what a lovely view from Fin Tech Enterprise!

The rest of the posts seem to largely be about things that make me angry (or others angry) or relating to assholes. Julianna Baggott responded to Esquire’s napkin project in a way that pleased me greatly, because Esquire was sort of an asshole to her in the first place (write something on a napkin, and perhaps we’ll throw some money at you).

We learned that marketers are pursuing the “shallow-pocketed” who they deem actually “have lives,” a statement that seems to categorize the marketers as assholes.

Ms. Theologian commented on the master cleanse at work and ending a work relationship. Ms. Theologian also got to use this particular piece of art, of the creation of a cat-monster, which again pleased her greatly. Look at the man cowering in the rushes! Yes, no one wants to work with a monster (though many of us like to work with cats).

Speaking yet again of assholes, we discussed Robert Sutton’s book, The No Asshole Rule, a rule which seemed to please just about everyone.

We discussed empathy and following rules. And, trust me, we had a number of examples of people who were assholes and give parking tickets to terminal patients trying to remove an oxygen tank from the trunk of the car or don’t give EC to rape survivors.

Oy. Through it all, I managed to at least write a bit of a mission statement regarding these case studies of religious beliefs in the workplace, which says that please honor your religious beliefs in the workplace, but if these beliefs get in the way of doing your job, then you need to find someone else to step in for you.

This weekend’s interview is with Jon North, owner of Fin Tech Enterprise. He currently handles all sales and marketing activities for FundCount in the North American market. In short, he sells accounting software to folks with hedge funds.

Now what’s a hedge fund? And why don’t I have one? Jon tells me that hedge funds are group investments only available to the wealthiest people in the country. To invest in a hedge fund you must be a qualified by the bank with 1.5 million, or you can show the IRS that you are guaranteed to earn 300K+ for the next three years. So, ahem, that’s why I don’t have one.

As the owner of his own company, Jon works from home, a house barge on Long Island with this rather spectacular view. I sent Jon three questions, but today we’re going to focus on one, and it’s a recurring issue on this blog (and not just by me): jealousy. Despite initial claims not to know how to answer the question, you’ll find Jon’s response insightful in terms of assessing his own values and the sacrifices wealth requires.

As someone who sells financial software for hedge fund management, you work with really wealthy people—so how do you keep yourself from getting jealous (or do you)?

I don’t really know how to answer this, since I have never really felt a tremendous amount of jealousy towards these people. The majority of the people I work with do make a tremendous amount of money, but they also have worked extremely hard to make it happen. I think I don’t worry about this so much since I grew up in a town of insane wealth. To be completely honest, I grew up in an upper-middle class family. Yet, because the town I grew up in was populated by tremendous wealth, I grew up feeling poor. My friends would get brand new cars, BMW’s not Honda’s, total them, and have a brand new car the next day. So, I think I experienced all of my jealousy as a child.

When I wonder about why I didn’t make millions, or why I am not a qualified investor, I have to think about the choices I have made and whether they are the choices I would still make. When I do this I find that I am happy with the decisions and would not change them. Due to the contacts I have made and the exclusive nature of the hedge fund industry, I have been offered two job interviews in the last year for positions that pay a lot more than I currently make. However, with these positions comes a lot of other baggage—more travel, more commuting, more hours spent working, and more corporate BS to get through. I know if I made these changes I could get a lot close to being a millionaire, but I don’t think it will help me be happier. I will also have less time to enjoy my money, less time with my family, and less time for me.

Instead, I have chosen to take long shots, working for smaller companies, acquiring equity in the small company, and working hard to make the company an attractive company to buy. While this is a high risk/high reward approach, it allows me to work out of home, to set my own schedule, and to avoid the corporate crap that I despise. In the end, the majority of people with wealth work extremely hard. Most of them have sacrificed something to get there—be it marriage, friends, personal life, or family. I do not put enough value on money to sacrifice these things.

For questions, you can contact Jonathan North at jonathanfnorth@hotmail.com or visit www.fundcount.com.

I’m feeling very blah right now and I wonder if you might be too. (Blah seems to be a self-defined term. I’m using it to mean relatively unfocused and grumpy.)

Is it because it’s a long work week? Or that Rush Limbaugh was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize? The rain and clouds? Molly Ivin’s death? The UU blog awards?

Couldn’t tell you. Possibly all of the above.

My normal coping strategies for feeling better don’t seem to be working. Self-examination, exercise, finding beauty in nature, and meditation have not rid me of the feeling. I’ve even checked Wesleying, the social site of my alma mater, which I usually find amusing, but right now I’m just struck by the fact that weekends used to start on Thursday.

Of course, there’s a strong belief in our culture that we should never feel blah, and certainly never feel bad for too long. So I’m going to attempt to stay with the feeling for a while.

Ever since I saw my neighbor, Kathy, with a Capri Sun bag, I’ve been quite taken with accessories made from…well…trash.

So, I was thrilled to see Treehugger featuring Junk Mail Gems, a small business that makes items from junk mail. Check out their other products here, including wallets, beads, and magnets.

My focus on businesses that re-use materials is motivated from a belief that small businesses (and even large businesses) can make the world a better place when they are driven by values, particularly those of conservation.

Corporations, for the most part, are driven by keeping their prices low and keeping many of the actual costs external (e.g., of paying low wages so people need public benefits or can’t pay their emergency room costs, of polluting the land, air, and water). Corporations don’t want their products to reflect these costs, the so-called negative externalities, so they make other people (taxpayers) pay for them.

So a mass marketer that mails out crap to everyone and anyone includes their costs as the design and printing of the mailers, but not the cost of customers throwing out their products and filling up landfills. That’s a negative externality.

And that’s what makes Junk Mail Gems a brilliant idea—it transforms a negative externality (junk mail) into materials for products.

Via Treehugger

One snowy January, I worked for Public Safety at my college and gave out parking tickets. At nineteen, I had a lot of power with that ticket book. I could ticket some cars and not others, or none at all, if I didn’t feel like removing my gloves. I had trouble with this flexibility, and so I ticketed everyone who had parked her car illegally. Even the president of the college. Needless to say, I did not keep the job.

Now that I’m older, I realize that ticketing everyone was just the lazy way out. It didn’t require judgment, understanding, or empathy, just a pen and a ticket book. Perhaps it’s just the recent paradigm with which I’m viewing the world, but it seems that many of the problems at work begin with a lack of empathy.

Empathy is more than understanding, it’s more than kindness. Empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and feel what that person might feel. It does require understanding, but it goes so much further. Empathy is complex and multi-faceted. It’s the snowflake of emotions. It is so specific to the person and the situation that once you feel that swell of empathy for that one person in one situation, you will never feel that exact sort of empathy again. It’s unique that way.

Steve Lopez’s column in the LA Times, Parking Cop had no empathy on his meter, details how a terminal woman’s husband was given a parking ticket as he shifted his wife’s oxygen tank from car to curb. The cop didn’t want to hear that she was terminally ill or that they had a disabled placard. The car was in the red zone. It got a ticket.

And then there are Wal-Mart’s PR Bloopers, many of which seem entirely about a company without empathy for employees or customers (not to mention without ethics).

In my search for planning and organization tools, I’ve written about the Hipster PDA, a stack of index cards and a binder clip that serves as a low-tech alternative to the Franklin Planner or Palm. The Hipster PDA is the invention of Merlin Mann who touts the beauty and simplicity of said device. This sample is from bamse16, but you can see other samples here.

When I first saw it, I thought, Oh, that’s what my friend, Paul, carries around. And has been for years. He’s a writer. He writes thoughts on it. I get vaguely uncomfortable when he writes down something I said.

So I’ve been trying it. I write the date on each card and keep a week’s worth with me as well as a little Moleskine journal. I also keep cards for ongoing issues, which eventually allows the issues to be resolved so that the monkey mind we all hear about in meditation is somewhat calmed. For example, I have one labeled TAXES, one for HEALTH, and one for GROCERIES. And that about sums up my life.

And apparently the Hipster PDA now comes with music, which you can see here. I’m pretty disturbed that I dance like those guys.