Surviving the Workday

Wired has a short photo essay by Ed Burtynsky on factory life in China. My favorite photo is this one of a cafeteria, but the chicken processing plant is a close second.

What I see in these photos is how human beings, as cheap labor, are essentially physically part of the machine. Now I suppose we’re all part of a machine in some way. I’m part of the publishing machine. But I mean that people seem almost physically incorporated in the machinery in those photos.

Do you have a percent in mind? Go ahead. Just guess.

Is it 13%? That’s the federal estimate of percent of people living in poverty.

The latest Barna research is about attitudes toward poverty. And Barna research is always fascinating, though sometimes unintentionally so. The average estimate among people surveyed by Barna of people in poverty in the United States was 30%. But, as I mentioned above, federal statistics estimate the poverty level at around 13%.

While the summary of the search concludes that people misestimate poverty (and the degree to which they misestimate depends on their own wealth), I’m more interested in the fact that perhaps the federal poverty level is a terribly inaccurate measure of poverty.

For example, if Jim and I, a family of two, earned under $13,691*, we’d qualify as poor under federal poverty guidelines. And that’s really poor. That’s about what I earned for a year of teaching 4/5 time in New Mexico. And it was not livable for one without help.

So when people estimate poverty in the United States at 30%, I’m inclined to think that’s not a bad estimate of real poverty levels rather than a misconception of poverty levels as Barna believes.

Read more about the Barna Institute’s research on attitudes toward poverty.

*$13,691 is based on federa poverty guidelines, and not federal poverty threshold ($13,500).

A few Sundays ago, a new neighbor from two doors down knocked on the door with an offer of cactus. I refrained from asking why I was so special, and just was relieved I was clothed. But I soon found out that another neighbor told her that I respected cacti.

She gave me an enormous six foot high cactus, which I kept in a pot in the front yard, until Jim moved it to the side yard. And there it sat, mainly because neither of us wanted to figure out how exactly to give six feet of spines out of a pot and into the ground in a hundred degree heat.

But, then, last week, it seemed to produce two flowers from little tufts of cactus hair. I was shocked as I had been abusing the plant and withholding not only direct sun, but water. But then cacti like a little abuse. Ask anyone.

I’ve been trying to notice changes in nature, but these blooms were completely unexpected, so much that I was stunned into silence when I saw them.

The next day, the cactus produced two enormous blooms, each bigger than my spread hand, and aromatic too. Again, I was stunned into silence.

I’m afraid the cactus might think its days are numbered and so it must reproduce. So I gave it some water. I might have to find a place in the ground for it too.

I’m sorry, cactus.

A survey about discrimination by Harris Media, sponsored by Careerbuilder.com and Kelly Services, found that 21% of gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender people experience discrimination on a weekly basis. And, importantly, of those who reported the discrimination to their employers, 72% said the offender was not held accountable. That sounds like a problem in the system.

There’s a lot of information in the survey results, but other than what I described above, I found this particularly fascinating:

The most common types of discrimination in the workplace?

• Not receiving credit for their work (55 percent)

• Workload is heavier than others (44 percent)

• Feeling that concerns are not addressed or taken seriously (42 percent)

• My ideas or input are generally ignored (42 percent)

• Not being provided with the same training as other workers (41 percent)

• Co-workers said derogatory comments to them or in front of them (37 percent)

• Co-workers talking behind the worker’s back (28 percent)

• Overlooked for a promotion (24 percent)

Read more about the results of the survey on the Edge.

Reading about Cameron Diaz carrying a bag with a Maoist slogan to Peru reminds me of how of how one of my housemates in college was never without his red star hat. Interesting fashion choices.

I’m a big fan of workers’ rights, but I’m not a fan of communism, mostly because it is always accompanied by totalitarianism and mass deaths. But for some reason, there’s leftist blindness toward this particular aspect of communism. The best exploration of liberal infatuation with communism is Martin Amis’s Koba the Dread, in which he analyzes leftist fascination with Joseph Stalin.

• During the communist insurgency in Peru, 70,000 people were killed during massacres, assassinations, and bombings.

• During Mao Zedong’s regime in China, forty million people died.

• During Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror in Russia, more than twenty million people died.

So if Cameron Diaz wonders why everyone is so upset about her bag, that’s why. It alludes to the death of 70,000 people.

You haven’t seen me endorsing American Apparel as I searched for non-sweat shop clothes. That wasn’t an oversight. They’re anti-union for one thing. But, equally important in terms of human rights, they are a classic example of a sexualized workplace in the United States.

Dov Charney, founder and CEO, intentionally creates the highly sexualized atmosphere at American Apparel:

It doesn’t help Charney’s case that his stores are papered with Penthouse and Oui magazine snapshots and that he happily admits to having sex with his employees. Nor does it help that he brags about his penchant for masturbating in front of women. So much so, that he masturbated in front of reporter Claudine Ko while she interviewed him for Jane magazine.

Yes, you read that right. He masturbates in front of people. At work. The CEO of American Apparel masturbates in front of reporters. And also employees. Talk about an abuse of power.

But you don’t need to masturbate in front of your employees to create a sexualized workplace. You just need an atmosphere in which any of the following are common: obscenities, sexual jokes, sexually explicit graffiti, pornography, and sexually degrading posters.

Why is a sexualized workplace not good for work? There is, after all, a sexual charge to it. And you might enjoy that at first. But research suggests that a sexualized workplace makes sexual harassment much more likely. When obscenities or sexual jokes are commonly used at work, women are 3 to 7 times more likely to be harassed. Where do I recall sexual jokes as a tool of discrimination? Oh, that’s right—Straight jobs, Gay Lives also described how sexual jokes are often used to create a hostile work environment.

What can you do if you work in a sexualized workplace?

If you have a management position, you may be able to change workplace culture. If you are an employee at low or mid level, for your own sake, prepare your resume, so that you can leave. I wish I could give practical tips for surviving a sexualized workplace, but I honestly think it is better to find a way to leave than a way to survive.

I Like Killing Flies is a documentary about Shopsin’s, a Village eatery, which is forced to relocate due to neighborhood gentrification. The kitchen scares the bejeezus out of me, but the food looks good, and the wisdom served up by chef and philosopher, Kenny Shopsin, is coarse (at least three sexual metaphors that made me cringe), painful, and almost always true.

You can’t just go to Shopsin’s for a bit to eat. You have to know somebody or you’ll be kicked out. And if you arrive with more than four people in your party, god help you. I’m not sure how exactly to view Kenny Shopsin. He’s verbally abusive to just about everyone, but has a few moments of peace in the kitchen in which he’s not a total asshole. Speaking of assholes, he definitely enforces the No Asshole Rule, and my new favorite, The Customer Is Not Always Right.

It is really hard to move your stuff when you move homes. If you hire someone to move it for you, they may damage your stuff, lose your stuff, or hold is hostage. If you rent a truck or tow a trailer, you encounter other risks.

I think Jim and I have rented from all the big companies (U-Haul, Alamo, Penske, Budget) and never been happy with what we rented: dollies were missing, mirrors swiveled at 55 mph, and trucks were oddly misaligned. None of it seemed particularly safe, but U-Haul was undoubtedly the worst in terms of safety and hidden costs. If you add an unsafe vehicle to driving on unfamiliar roads to the crazy mental state of most of us when we move, you have a really dangerous situation.

The Los Angeles Times investigated U-Haul and found that their practices raised the risk of accidents. If you’re considering renting a truck, trailer, or tow-in, please read Driving with rented risks, the first in a three-part investigative series on U-Haul. It will scare you.

When I go to a store in the middle of a weekday and it’s crowded, often I wonder who all the people are. But I have discovered something relevant on the Department of Labor’s web site:

Only 66% of people in US over the age of 16 work!

That’s who all these people are—the 34% of the population that is not working!

Mystery sort of solved.

Now why are they not working? That’s the other part of the mystery. I did find some answers in Why Aren’t You Working? If I run through the people that I know that might account for the 34%*, I know a lot of folks home with babies, some home with older kids, some on disability, and some retired. And then there’s the folks working non-traditional schedules: some who work the night shift, some working part-time, and many self-employed.

So I just need to move on and deal with crowds.

*In this post, I’m using “work” as the Department of Labor uses it, which means you need to derive an income. But I do think staying home with kids is work. I think keeping a house running is work.

Aha! Some closure!

Scott has purchased a used laptop. You can read about his ethical reasoning here and follow our searches for vendors here and here.

I am still searching for mine, but the presumed-to-be-dying HP laptop has stopped chirping like a squirrel, so we’re temporarily okay.

In my head, I have been preparing a long post about ethical decision making leading with the Purity Test. Yes, the Purity Test. Do you remember it from college? It’s totally adolescent in the worst way, but sort of fun.

However, I know that most (if not all) of you read at work, and I didn’t really want anyone to mark their sexual decisions on their work computer (I’m looking out for you!) and click calculate for a purity value. That would not be wise.

In All or Nothing thinking, you are either right or wrong (black or white, pure or impure). But the purity test is demonstrates that “purity” is composed of hundreds of decisions. Of course, the purity test has nothing to do with “purity,” but with sexual experience and variety. But it is an example of a shift away from All or Nothing thinking. That’s important to ethical decision making.

In order to buy an ethically-produced laptop, Scott and I have to make decisions about what our (separate) values are and how to fulfill those values in the marketplace. There’s no right choice, no wrong choice, just a series of decisions about values. So, bravo, Scott!

Bob Sutton writes in the Huffington Post of the the Virtues of Emotional Detachment. You’ll remember Sutton as the author of the No Asshole Rule. Knowing how not to care, and learning when not to care are extremely useful skills in the workplace. If you care about everything, you’re going to be very unhappy. And if you care about nothing….well, you’re probably not reading thi.

Here’s Sutton’s philosophy in a nutshell:

I have argued for years that learning when not care, what not care about, and how to not care is just as important to career success and personal well-being as being passionate. I especially think that it is an essential skill for people who are trapped in asshole-infested workplaces and can’t get out — at least for now. If people treat you like dirt, they don’t deserve your passion and best efforts. And, as I say in The No Asshole Rule, going through the motions without letting the creeps that surround you touch your soul is, unfortunately, the best - or least bad — option at times.

Points awarded for “asshole-infested workplaces.” Protect the soul at all costs, folks.

People seem to google writing conferences a lot and find my blog, so I’ve pulled together all of my posts on writing conferences in one place. My descriptions are based entirely on my own experience at the conference. You should check the conference websites for prices because those vary tremendously. And keep in mind that a “workshop” is twelve people sitting around a table usually commenting on one person’s short story. A “class” or “lecture” is what it seems, but it’s not a workshop.

Tin House Summer Writers Workshop is a writing conference and workshop on the lovely Reed College in Portland, Oregon. It felt a lot like being in college again, including the fact that I couldn’t sleep because the dorm was so noisy. But the teaching in workshop was excellent all around; everyone said so.
+ great teaching in workshops
+ collegial feel between all writers
+ relaxed scheduling of events allowed for social time
- dorm living
- agents were around, which makes many writers crazy and convinced they’re about to be discovered
Advice: Apply early in January. If accepted, send your deposit immediately. This helps to guarantee your spot in the workshop of your choice. Without the $800 deposit, no spot in the workshop you want.

Squaw Valley Writers Workshop is a writing conference and workshop in Squaw Valley in the Sierra Nevada mountains. I did a fair amount of hiking in the high country on an afternoon off, and down below in between workshops and class. Besides hiking, I also went to workshop. The faculty rotate through workshops, which means that you only have one faculty person one morning in workshop before he/she moves on. This is done on purpose to give you a sense of what many types of writers, editors, and agents are like in workshop. I don’t necessarily like it, but it does mean you don’t get stuck with a turkey.
+ relaxed camp-like feel in gorgeous setting
+ helpful one-on-one feedback from faculty
+ lovely outdoor evening meals with socializing
- rotating faculty
- agents were around, which makes writers crazy as I’ve noted above
Advice: Watch your alcohol consumption at high altitudes. Don’t have conference sex.

The Algonkian Writer Conference through Web del Sol is a writing conference that has changed a lot since I attended at a farm near Half Moon Bay, California. At the time, I appreciated the rural setting, the small group (four students!), and the short time frame (a long weekend). It has a much more intensive and formal curriculum than the other conferences, and is not a workshop.
+ small groups
+ formal instruction in novel-length construction
+ short
- relevant details (food? time? money?) seemed missing or disorganized at times
- no housing provided
Advice: Come with a novel mostly done for polishing work.

Desert Nights, Rising Stars is short conference on the campus of Arizona State University. It features small groups for workshops (five people!), and while it’s not in anywhere as glamorous as Half Moon Bay, Tempe in February is extremely pleasant.
+ small workshops with excellent instruction
+ participatory classes in all forms (poetry, memoir, and fiction) during non-workshop time
+ short
- no housing provided
- not a great deal of writerly bonding (though I went with a friend, which solved that problem)
Advice: Avoid the Twin Palms hotel unless you love parrots and visiting athletic teams. Pay extra for the small workshop, which is optional, but the best part.

Twenty-seven years ago, the Chinese government developed the one-child policy in an attempt to curb population growth. Fines (including seizure of property) and work demotions are the “traditional” punishments for having more than one child.

Although abortions and sterilizations are illegal, they are widespread practices, not just at the request of women either. Late-term abortions, even at nine months, were reportedly forced on women who were either unmarried or married and carried a second child.

And objecting to the policy results in jail time. Chen Guangcheng, an activist against this policy, has been jailed and beaten, according to Amnesty International, both by jailers and his fellow prisoners. Yes, jailed for objecting to human rights violations.

This is not uncommon.

Like pick up his dry cleaning?

Babysit his kids?

Set up a trampoline at his house? Or move a set of weights?

And what if your boss happened to be the City Attorney for Los Angeles?

You might feel obliged to say yes.

When people have positions of power at work, unless they have done a hell of a lot of self-reflection (and even then), they tend not to understand the effect their position of power has on others. So when the City Attorney says that all of these chores were done on employees’ “personal time” I have to snort out loud. As if they “chose” to run his errands on their personal time.

The Los Angeles Times interviewed employees at the City Attorney’s office and seven (yes, seven) former or current employees said that the city attorney uses the staff for personal errands, including all the examples I listed above. And all feared being named. Yes, the Los Angeles City Attorney, Delgadillo, uses his staff for babysitting and errands. That’s an abuse of power and authority.

Let me be really clear: when you are in a position of power and make requests of others, they may feel obligated to comply. Their compliance does not make your requests all right. It may mean your requests were coercive and your staff may fear retaliation (You don’t pick up dry cleaning for me, well, then you’re not a team player and you may not get a raise). Fortunately, the Los Angeles Ethics Commissioner agrees.

Here’s an idea from Lewis Richmond’s Work as a Spiritual Practice that complements our discussion of achieving a moment of mindfulness at work by listening:

See if you can spend even ten minutes on your way to or from work just listening without making any judgments at all, without honking back when someone honks at you, without turning on the radio to block it all out. If you read the paper on the train, trying folding it up. If you are one of those people whose briefcase is open the minute you board the bus, leave it closed. You have another job to do now, the practice of pure listening. (p. 94)

Give it a shot and let me know what you hear.

I’ve been to at least nine conferences in the past five years—some for education, some for writing, but all for work in some fashion. Here are a few things I’ve learned to survive conferences, which may be helpful to GA attendees or those attending writer conferences:

1. Attend to your basic needs. This means making an intentional effort to sleep enough and eat enough so that you can focus on what is important. We know that when we do not attend to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs we are desperately unhappy. Exercise in some fashion is one of my basic needs. I try to take a morning and evening walk. When it’s too dangerous or dark to walk, I do yoga in my room.

2. Watch your alcohol consumption. And I don’t mean that in a “Watch as it goes down your throat” type of way. If you are an introvert, a conference may make you uncomfortable, which may make you drink more than you do normally. If you meet new friends (or old friends) at the conference, you may go out for drinks (frequently). I’ve found that since I can go for months and months without any alcohol, even a glass is more than normal and will make me woozy the next day.

3. Watch your caffeine consumption. Conferences often have free coffee and fat pills (Danishes), and you may be drawn to the coffee to compensate for a lack of sleep. If you have more caffeine than you normally do, be prepared for your sleep patterns to be disrupted in some fashion. Try water instead.

4. Watch out for the Energy Vampires. These are the folks who identify you immediately as prey, flatter you into submission, and then attach themselves to you for the rest of the conference while they suck your life blood. They want to make dinner plans with you. They want your cell number. They want to be your best friend for life. Learn how to say no. Learn how to say that you need alone time. Speaking of which…

5. Find time to be alone. Lying on your bed with the TV off is a good idea. It allows you to process information. And there can be a lot of information, particularly if you’ve given a presentation or had a story critiqued. You need time to think. Make that time.

6. Watch out for folks looking to hook up. And then see point 2. I don’t have to mention Richard Ford’s short story collection, Multitude of Sins, right? People hook up at conferences because they’re bored, anxious, or maybe just horny. There are other ways to attend to boredom, anxiety, and horniness than conference sex.

7. Read up ahead of time. Reading the conference program ahead of time will help you plan your time. For writing conferences, I read the faculty’s work, but am surprised by how many people don’t. After all, how do I know if someone is a decent writer whose opinion I’m going to take seriously unless I read their work? Reading up will also help you make small talk with other conference members.

8. Spend time with non-conference people. If you have family and friends in the city that you are visiting, spend an evening with them rather than the conference folks. This inevitably relieves your own stress and gives you a deeper perception of the community that you’re visiting. One of my nicest memories of a conference in Philadelphia was the evening with a minister-friend and his dog at the dog park. One of my nicest memories of Tin House was going out with a designer-friend for sushi in the evening.

More specific writing conference notes to come.

I’m reading Work as a Spiritual Practice, and the author, Lewis Richmond, describes how he sends people from his workshops and meditation retreats back to their respective workplaces with, “What is the question?” in mind.

This is a practice for dealing with worry, and it has three more parts, but first you have to decide what The Question is for you. For example, past work Questions that I’ve worried consistently about are:

Am I going to be laid off? Will my contract be renewed?
Are there enough new projects coming in?
Can I pay the freelance help at month’s end?

You have to decide what The Question is for you at work. It’s something that is frequently on your mind during the workday and that you devote energy to with worrying. If you decide what it is for you, you can post it here. And tomorrow, we’ll move to the remaining parts of the exercise.

Last week, we talked about mindfulness to our surroundings at work. I introduced a technique I use with kids to make them more aware in nature (ten seconds of listening with eyes closed). And many of you described the noises of work. So how do you deal with those noise at work?

As I started to type this a helicopter started circling the neighborhood. I went outside to watch. It seems to have been some sort of LA County Fire patrol for brush or fires or maybe pot. In any case, I eventually went inside and back to work.

Short of the sound of a helicopter circling your workplace, there are often other noises at work that bother us and make work more difficult: coworkers typing, talking, or laughing on the phone, elevator noises, even opening and shutting of doors. These can all be distractions when we’re trying to focus.

Wildmind Buddhist Meditation gives some helpful advice about meditating among noise, “Trying to fight the noise is unlikely to work. The noise is not going to go away because you don’t like it. If you respond aggressively to it then you’re just getting yourself into a fight that you cannot win.”

That reminds me of how I learned to handle migraines by giving in to the pain (with tonglen meditation) rather than fighting it. You have to accept the noise, and see the noise as part of your practice of work, not as a separate distraction.

You know how intellectual property theft works, right? Well, it works in a lot of ways. But here’s one example:

You design something. The plans or a model of it ends up in China (or Russia, for that matter). It’s copied with reverse engineering and mass produced with cheap labor. You’re totally screwed because although you spent years on the design, it was copied in a matter of weeks. And everybody wants the cheap version, not yours.

Read Someone Stole My Bike for a firsthand account by a bike designer, and Intellectual Property Violations Expanding Globally for the U.S. State Department’s perspective.

Thanks to Dennis, spouse to poet Sharon Hurlbut, for the link!

Concerned about toys from China? I certainly am, and I hardly buy toys.

Under the Bush administration, the number of staff at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which regulates imported toys, has been cut by 10%. That means fewer imports from China are being checked to see if they are safe. Meanwhile, 70-80% of toys sold in this country come from China.

You’ll remember that 1.5 million Thomas & Friends toys were recalled recently because they were coated in lead paint while they were made in China. Last month, strange eyeball toys were recalled because they were full of kerosene. Yes, kerosene. And then there was the Easy Bake Oven that could trap and burn fingers. All made in China. All sold in U.S.

There are a lot of reasons not to buy products made in China, which I’ve discussed before. So if supporting workers’ rights isn’t enough incentive for you, the threat of finding kerosene in your children’s toys might be.

Consider reading As More Toys Are Recalled, Trail Ends in China and then signing up for notifications of recalls on the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission.

I’ve written about how I perceive lender, Capital One, as the Devil Incarnate. Capital One is willing to lend anyone money for anything, and has innumerable tricks up their sleeve to screw you.

Myfanwy emailed me yesterday about some new ways to screw you! What about a baby? They do ivf. Isn’t that what you want to finance at 23.99% over five years? What about new breasts? Also a specialty of Capital One. I’m not surprised.

We were discussing what exactly makes us squeamish about this. Capital One is bad to begin with. But Capital One seems to have very cozy relationships with medical folks. You could certainly perceive that Capital One was something other than a predatory lender when your doctor refers you to them for financing.