Not so long ago, at a baby shower composed entirely of editors and writers, we traded stories about the worst editorial positions. And, because I collect bad job stories, I made some notes. The worst editorial jobs are often at trade magazines because the schedules are the tightest and the “trade” is often something you just don’t care for. The worst job I heard was the editor who worked at a soap opera trade magazine where everyone watched soap operas in the afternoon and cried even though they knew the plots ahead of time. If you love soaps and edit, that’s a great editorial job. But if you don’t like soaps…it’s a really bad fit.

Along the same lines, I just had the biggest laugh with another editor. I sent her this ad on Craig’s List as a joke, but it turns out she was actually qualified. I had completely forgotten her illustrious past in cosmetic trade magazines specializing in hair removal.

Here are some choice lines from the ad:

Have you been looking for an opportunity to be known in the Chicagoland area for your knowledge and insight in the hair removal/cosmetic industry?

We don’t want your money - just your writing skills and talents, and dedication to the Chicago-area Hair Removal Industry.

As someone of Greek/Italian origin, I do know a lot about hair removal, but…damn, I’m not in Chicago. Pity.

I forgot that quarterlies were due tomorrow.

I actually was convinced they were due July 15th. Whoops.

Paying estimated quarterlies on federal, state, and social security taxes, plus the fact that it’s a hundred degrees, makes me want to have a tantrum.

My parents are under the impression that the government loved businesses.

This is incorrect.

The government loves large businesses. The government tries to kill small businesses. I have no data to back this up, except for the size of the quarterly payment.

I’m not a big fan of part-time work. At least not for me. Certain kinds of part-time work seem to be a part-time salary for a full-time job.

I ran a youth offender program on 20 hours a week as a contractor at $10 an hour—a terrible arrangement because I had to pay all my own taxes, had no benefits, and still had the expectation of keeping a program running as if there was a full-time staff member present. I quit after 3 months.

I had come to the youth-offender program from two years of teaching including one year in which I was salaried at 2/3 time (for teaching 4 of 6 classes) for a whopping $13,700/year. Because teaching high school was so new to me and so overwhelming, I didn’t realize that it took me more energy to prepare to teach 4 different classes than it did for someone else to teach 6 classes that were the same. And I didn’t realize that I should have objected to substituting for other teachers during my prep periods, even though it was a requirement of my contract. I could chalk these examples to being young and naive, but I hear about these arrangements fairly frequently. By the time I got to graduate school, I had given up on the idea of part-time work, and just worked full-time.

I think this particular challenge originates when a company or institution only finds money for a part-time salary despite the fact that the job and their expectations are for full-time work as with the youth-offender program and teaching. But these arrangements can also be driven by employees when they aren’t clear of their own boundaries For example, someone tries to scale back at work and takes a part-time salary with the expectation of less hours, only she works close to the same amount of hours for half the salary. How Part-time is Part-time, Really, is the experience of a doctor who goes to part-time at….get this…40-50 hours a week.

I’ve certainly had part-time arrangements in college that worked within my schedule for 10-20 hours/week because my expectations were clear and so were those of my employers. Outside of college? Not so much.

Just something to think about. If you want to share part-time arrangements that work or don’t work, please post in comments.

Check out this office space for Three Rings Design, an Internet game design company in San Francisco. Talk about a creative space!

Via BoingBoing

I’m a bit too strapped for cash to buy anything on the sweatshop-free list anytime soon (and I don’t really need anything), but I did buy an Alba TerraGloss for $6 after our non-parabens, non-pthalate makeup discussion.

Pros:

1. It smells great. After I applied it in the car, Jim was convinced I had hidden butterscotch candy somewhere in the glove compartment and not told him about it. Alas, there was no candy and he did not want to try the lip gloss.

2. It doesn’t contain pthalates or parabens or petroleum products, so I’m not eating chemicals that affect my reproductive system or cause breast cancer.

Cons:

1. It makes a farting sound if you squeeze it too quickly. A skilled professional might be able to squeeze just the right amount out without making a farting noise. I’m still learning. *

2. It’s hard to gauge how much to apply. With too much, the lip gloss wandered from my lips to the rest of my face. With too little, my lips were dry.

So can I recommend it? It’s fine for working at home. If you wear it to a workplace where people actually notice your lips, you may need some extra time to make sure it’s not smeared on your face.

*This may also be a temperature issue. It’s hot where I live and TerraGloss is a liquid already, but becomes less viscous in the heat.

Is it easy to find sweatshop-free clothes?

It depends how you go about it. If you go to Target or Ann Taylor and start looking as I first did, you’re not going to have a lot of luck. If you start with on-line research to find a manufacturer that incorporates “sweatshop-free” as part of the mission statement, you’ll be better off.

Is it expensive to buy sweatshop free clothes?

It depends. Just as there is a range of prices for clothes made in sweatshops, there is a range of prices for clothes that are sweatshop free. Here’s a list I made relatively quickly of moderately priced items from businesses that don’t use sweatshops (and often use organic cotton). If you’ve purchased clothes from any of these places, let me know.

T-Shirts: Liberation Ink, Bamboosa, Downbound, Esperanza Threads
Men’s Dress Shirts: Justice Clothing
Women’s Underwear and Bras: Rawganique, Bella, Make Your Own, Justice Clothing
Yoga Pants: Bamboosa
Socks: Esperanza Threads
Sneakers: No Sweat
Baby Clothes: BamboosaBaby, Babywit
Makeup (vegan): Downbound
Honey, Not Tonight Nightgowns: Esperanza Threads

A large list of fair trade and non-sweatshop vendors exists at the Conscious Consumer Marketplace. You might also check Scott’s posts at Boy in the Bands on union made goods.

Within the last year, I had a weak consumer moment. By this, I mean that: I saw, I wanted, I bought, and I didn’t think too much about it. My purchase was underwear. The location was a drugstore. (And this is because I lack, what is generally regarded as “class.”) So I own some Hanes underwear simply because of this thought process: Oooh, underwear! Cheap! Buy!

Where did those underwear come from? If only I knew someone who specialized in underwear sales and marketing….oh wait! I do. She tells me that my underwear are actually made by Sara Lee. And what do I know about Sara Lee? Oh, that’s right. They’re a wee bit evil.

From Coop America’s report on Sara Lee’s sweatshop in Mexico, “In an August 11, 2006 press conference, three women spoke out against worker violations in the textile factory. Workers cited 10 hour workdays, significant decreases in salaries though production levels increased, and the lack of medical assistance as examples of labor violations.” (I see that another branch of Sara Lee also poisoned people with deli meat in 1998.) God, these poor women may have sewn my underwear.

Despite the fact Sara Lee’s marketing campaigns are so powerful that I have their stupid song in my head right now, I am still concerned about sweatshops. Why? On the practical level, these are places of routine violations in human rights. On the broader scale, my growing awareness is that because the first world is obsessed with consuming cheap goods we are essentially creating an underclass of people in economic slavery in the third world to keep our supply of cheap crap. Read Why do sweatshops exist? for details.

So what can you do? You can seek out non-sweat shop sources.

With the exception of underwear, I’m leaning toward used clothing, because of items like these pants. Kidding aside, there are some very decent looking union made clothes. Jim wanted a V-neck fleece pullover last Christmas, and I couldn’t find one, but here it is. And here are some camisoles from Maggie Organics made with fair labor practices. They aren’t bad either. But I’m still looking for underwear.

Boy in the Bands does much more research on union-made goods with much better results.

Another practice of mindfulness that I try to employ daily is to notice how different elements in nature change. I take my morning hike and sit under an oak tree for a while. I always try to remember to notice how the light shines through the oak leaves. It’s slightly different each day.

I also have a basil plant growing at the window next to my desk. I have been watching it grow for over a month, and now watch as the leaves orient themselves toward the light (and then I turn the pot).

The photograph is of a flowering sage plant in the garden, and the mystery plant in front of it (eclarkia? four o’clock?). I’ve been studying the mystery plant as it blooms and playing battle of the botanists with the neighbors (I’m losing).

Does anyone else monitor an element of nature at work?

What happens when you place an order for a laptop? I found this description on Gen X PC about ordering an HP Pavilion.

1. You place an order in the US for an HP Pavilion.

2. Your order is transmitted to a factory in Shanghai.

3. Your laptop is assembled in China from parts from all over the world.

4. Your laptop is shipped along with many others via freight back to the US.

5. Your laptop is shipped to you from HP within the US.

Scroll down on Gen X PC to follow the process with some graphics.

And there’s even some information on who exactly outsources almost entirely (Dell, Gateway, Apple, and HP) and who outsources much less (Toshiba, IBM, Sony)

Today felt a bit absurd to me. Titles changing, text making no sense, and the word “snakes” just appearing randomly in a document—I’m glad today is almost over. But my job is not the most absurd in the world. I see that the Pentagon Confirms It Sought to Develop ‘Gay’ Bomb:

Edward Hammond, of Berkeley’s Sunshine Project, had used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of the proposal from the Air Force’s Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.

As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, “One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior.”

The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.

“The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soliders to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistably attractive to one another,” Hammond said after reviewing the documents.

Please tell me this is a joke. It’s disturbing on so many levels.

Dear Ms. Theologian,

Ungrateful Bitch

Dear Ungrateful Bitch:

Ms. Theologian notes that it more difficult to gauge how much thanks is appropriate in business than you might think. Acknowledging receipt is not necessarily widely done in business; neither is thanking. And you have both many times over. But is the abuse of the exclamation point that really gets Ms. Theologian’s goat. Occasional use is fine, but several in a row is an abomination.

In any case, take a deep breath, close your eyes, and think of the empire. This too shall pass.

You’re welcome,

-Ms. Theologian

Cultivating an intentional awareness when you are at work can be hard. We may not really want to be at work, so we fantasize of being elsewhere. We may be planning mode where our thoughts are hours or days ahead of us, thinking of how we will approach an issue or person.

One of the techniques I learned as a naturalist also works well for creating mindfulness at work. It’s very simple. You close your eyes and listen for ten seconds or so. This immediately grounds you in the present, and makes you aware of any recurring thoughts.

As a naturalist with a group of kids, I could take them to a point on the trail, and ask them to close their eyes and listen. After 10 seconds or so, I asked them to open their eyes and describe what they heard. They found this very exciting, because an entire new world opens up when you are more aware.

This morning, I used this technique in the backcountry behind our house and heard:

myself swallow;
my dog pant;
a woodpecker nearby;
a chickadee;
the wind in the oak trees; and
an airplane overhead.

And then later in my home office, I heard:

the refrigerator hum in the next room;
my dog pant under the desk;
my computer fan; and
the creaks of the house.

You might try it today and let me know what happens. It almost immediately makes me more mindful.

Joel posted a great example in comments of a conflict between respectful pluralism, as we’ve discussed it, and religious accommodation:

These are great ideals, but I’m not so sure this can be done in the US as it is today. For example, I voluntarily concealed my Pagan beliefs at one place I worked at not because I feared my boss’ reaction, but his customers, most of whom were fundamental Christians. Had it been known that he employed a “devil worshipper” (as those Christians defined all non-Christians) he would have been out of business overnight. It would have been unfair of me to seek religious equality at the expense of all our jobs.

Indeed. So here is the conflict: Douglas Hicks proposes a model of respectful pluralism in which Joel should be able to express his beliefs and hang a symbol in his workplace. But religious accommodation in the workplace means that legally an employer does not have to accommodate if it causes undue hardship (financial loss).

Did you get that? Federal law requires reasonable accommodation of religious beliefs, but not if it causes undue hardship. And interpreting “reasonable accommodation” and “undue hardship” is why people hire lawyers.

One of the reasons I’m trying to raise awareness of some of the abuses within China (workers’ rights, torture, executions, severe pollution) is because the upcoming Olympics (Beijing 2008) will bring more attention to China. As a result, China has launched an enormous PR campaign to convince the rest of the world that, say, the air quality isn’t so bad….

But the air quality is horrendous in Beijing. Ask anyone who has ever visited. It’s the world’s most polluted capital. Now Beijing will shut down heavy polluters during games. How nice for the athletes. And how awful for the Chinese who live in the smog the rest of the year.

And were you thinking of buying Olympic goods? Because they may be made by children in China. Playfair, an alliance of trade unions, found that factories in China making Olympic goods paid half of the legal wage for adult labor, and often hired workers as young as 12. Other violations? Forced overtime, poor safety conditions, and workers being forced to lie to inspectors.

The BBC followed up the report by Playfair with their own inspections and found that Leikit, a factory that makes paper products with the Olympic logo, employs children and forces them to work 13 hours a day.

Have you ever had tension at work because of generational differences? I certainly have. I’m firmly in the middle of Generation X, but I seem to always have Baby Boomer bosses. And they don’t particularly get me, and I don’t particularly get them.

In fact, if I had to describe how a former Baby Boomer boss views me, it would be as a sort of slacker, who over prioritized personal time and hobbies, and felt entitled to leave at 5 p.m. (or, god forbid, earlier). Meanwhile, I saw her as a workaholic with a penchant for useless meetings.

Pleasant, eh?

Why was I like that? So judgmental and unkind in my thoughts of her. I think I expected her to be more like me. And she expected me to more like her. Even though we tend to talk the talk of diversity in the workplace, we often expect people to have similar work styles to our own. We didn’t respect that there are significant generational differences in attitudes toward work.

The Workplace generation gap gives a helpful overview of the workplace attitudes of different generations. I found this extremely useful, but rather than summarizing each generation, you should read the entire article. It also gives tips for Generation X and Baby Boomer work relationships. I’ve excerpted a few strategies below.

Strategies for Generation X with Baby Boomers

Show respect. We need to let the Boomers know that they do indeed have experience and that we can learn from them.

Choose face-to-face conversations. We need to create opportunities that are less-technology-oriented with some Boomers.

Give Boomers your full attention (avoid multitasking when they are talking to you).

Play the game. Boomers are known for being able to play office politics well.

Learn the corporate history. Respect that there was a past before you, the Gen X, came into the world.

Strategies for Baby Boomers with Generation X

Get to the point. Avoid corporate jargon. This tends to annoy the hell out of Gen X.

Use e-mail. Gen X tends to love The Email.

Don’t micromanage. Give members of Gen X direction and then allow them to figure out the best way to get results.

Get over the notion of dues paying. Gen X isn’t wed to this idea as Boomers are. They don’t want to suffer forever in hopes of some ultimate payoff.

Remind yourself that it’s OK for work to be fun. Please.

Read the full article at Workplace generation gap: Understand differences among colleagues.

Maxed Out is a documentary about life and debt in the United States. Through interviews and statistics, it underscores government complicity in the dirtiest corporate practices, including giving credit cards with high limits to college students with no income (except future income), wooing back the recently bankrupted, and ultimately fees of $2 for every $1 in principal.

There are some terribly sad stories in Maxed Out: the couple on the margins who was talked by their pastor (!) into a high interest mortgage rather than their government-sponsored low-interest one (they’re losing their house), the widow who is losing her home due to debt and contemplating suicide (as she sells off possessions at a garage sale), the mom who secretly shopped until creditors threatened her (she drove her car into the river), and the suicides of two college students who got into more debt than they could ever pay back.

Shame is everywhere in Maxed Out, and if there’s one thing we don’t like to talk about, it’s shame. Oh, and money. Shame and money. And while consumer culture is partly to blame for brainwashing the idea that more is more into us, there are some other huge problems: lack of health insurance makes many people pay with credit, unemployment that runs out, and the altogether sad minimum wage that few people can actually live on.

If you have a pre-teen or teenager, I would suggest watching this film with your kid. There is a lot of serious marketing of credit cards to teenagers, including college students, and just as you should have a continuous dialogue about other topics (sex, for example), money and debt seems to be a worthy topic. You don’t need to see the entire interview with the moms of the dead college students to hear how much they wished they had talked to their children about credit cards and debt rather than assuming it was a non-issue.

While students at Harvard Business School, Annette Friskopp and Sharon Silverstein surveyed gay and lesbian alumni of HBS and interviewed 100 gay and lesbian people in depth about being gay or lesbian and their work lives. The stories from their interviews became the book Straight Jobs Gay Lives.

I’ve been reading this book for a long time because it is a lot of stories to take in, and it’s a lot of gross business practices to process. I don’t think it’s possible to extrapolate the findings from a group of HBS grads to the rest of the world, but the book is interesting all the same.

Here are a few key points, some of which may seem obvious, and some of which may surprise you (my editorial notes are in parens):

1. People in the study who concealed their sexual orientation ran the risk of being blackmailed in the business environment.

2. Sexual harrassment was much less a problem for gay men in the study than for lesbians.

3. When someone in the study was outed at work, the person doing the outing was more likely gay than straight.

4. Discrimination in hiring practices is often described as “lack of fit” of an individual.

5. The most common form of discrimination that created a hostile work environment for those surveyed was antigay jokes, not comments.

6. There was a strong correlation between a person’s desire to remain closeted and overt personal discrimination. This doesn’t mean that a desire to remain closeted causes discrimination. A person might choose to remain closeted because of discrimination. Or vice versa. But people who were out to some people at work reported feeling less discriminated against than those who were closeted.

I have to admit that I haven’t completely finished the book. It is a lot of stories to take in. I’ll post more if there are additional points.

Any observations?

I’m attending a poetry workshop in the Sierras this summer and have to figure out my housing options. Yes, this sounds petty, but I’m really stuck for some reason. I’ve been to the facilities before and it is highly reminiscent of De Benneville Pines, the UU Church camp in the San Bernadino mountains. There’s a main lodge, and a lot of surrounding buildings, except in this case, there are also hotels, campgrounds, and summer rentals.

Here’s the brief run-down of options:

a. Camp I could camp in a formal campground by the river. I like this option the best, in theory, except that there may be drunk people, which we’ve found in every formal camp site in California. I really fear drunk people, far more than bears or rattlesnakes. And my husband is not thrilled with the idea of me camping alone. That’s putting it mildly. This also might be lonely. On the other hand, I like making fires, cooking outside, and sleeping outside. This would cost maybe $100.

b. Hotel I could stay in a nearby hotel, which is very nice, but somewhat expensive for a week, like $140/night x 7. This also might be lonely though it would provide reliable Internet access. But do I really want to be in the Sierras on the Internet? No.

c. A Single Room in a Rental I could stay in a summer rental through the conference in a single room ($525). The summer rentals range from really posh homes to basic condos. You can’t predict what you get, but you do get to put down some preferences on the housing form (vegetarian, non-smoker, female, quiet).

d. A Double Room in a Rental I could stay in a summer rental through the conference in a double room ($325). Now this is the option I’ve done twice before but I’ve known my roommate ahead of time. I’m not sure how I feel about sharing a room with a stranger.

Other relevant information: I’m half way between an introvert and an extrovert. I need alone time or I turn evil, but I like being around people when I’m not evil. I wouldn’t say the money is no object, but the money isn’t the most important thing. I’m also very new to poetry.

Opinions on the best housing option for me?

Dear Ms. Theologian,

One of my employees made a completely inappropriate comment to an executive during a training session. It wasn’t anything offensive (sexist/racist etc), just obnoxious and unprofessional. She brought him down a notch but he has sort of blown it off as just a bad joke. I did tell him it made me cringe and that he needs to watch himself.

He has a history of this sort of thing–jokes in poor taste, self-aggrandizement, and “missing the point.” However, our department is moving towards interacting more with our clients (in fact, that’s what the training class was about) and I have serious reservations about letting him interact with our clients. My manager has also expressed concerns.

However, this guy is jumping in enthusiastically with both feet and has already done a conference call with our biggest client by scheduling it before he consulted me. It took me hours of work to coach him to a point where it wasn’t a complete disaster. It actually came out rather well, but there were moments when I wanted to crawl off and die. Short of beating him over the head, what can I do to head off some of his more egregious missteps? I can’t tell him not to interact with clients since this is a major initiative in our group and he’s just doing what (he thinks) he’s been told.

This is why I hate management. Please kill me.

Dear Please Kill Me,

You are doing exactly the right thing. You could ship him off to a manners workshop, but Ms. Theologian isn’t really convinced that one-day trainings that requires changes in attitude work.

Instead you are coaching him. And read this post on coaching from 2006 in which Ms. Theologian defined coaching as:

Employee coaching can be done when employees are properly and fully trained, but their actions have ethical or legal ramifications, they are repeating behaviors that cause them to fail, or they are not functioning well as part of the team.

After emails back and forth with you…I’d say that describes your employee perfectly. You could also take it up a notch to mentoring, if you wished, but keep up the coaching.

-Ms. Theologian

If you’d like to write to Ms. Theologian, send an email to ms dot theologian at gmail dot com.

Dear Ms. Theologian,

When you are working on a long-term project, one that has stages of completion, but which can’t be considered truly done until it’s done, how do you recommend rewarding yourself, or even “celebrating” the parts you complete along the way so that you don’t, as I have, feel as though you must wait and suffer and wait and suffer before you can give yourself kudos for a job well done?

Signed,
Long-Suffering

Dear Long-Suffering,

Ms. Theologian is not sure of the exact origin of your penchant for suffering, but she does feel for you. She has been known to flog herself for no reason other than she thinks it’s what writers do to feel alive. But let’s not go down that path.

Often Ms. Theologian hears this advice to break a task into parts (to avoid procrastination) and to self-reward along the way. But, what, exactly are these mystical rewards?

Rewards can be very small. They are things you enjoy, which may be self-nurturing or self-soothing. Anything that brings you pleasure. Ms. Theologian likes reading gawker. She likes Federico’s, the Italian bakery in Pasadena. She likes her garden. She likes playing in the nearby creek with her dog. These are not big things though. They don’t involve calling friends, going out to dinner, throwing a party, or buying something, although those are all fine rewards too. It’s just that the big rewards can take up a lot of time and energy and sometimes feel less like a reward than like work.

So perhaps you just need a little reward along the way. Surely you can make room for a little pleasure?

-Ms. Theologian

I can’t find edamame grown in the United States, but it appears I can grow soybeans (edamame) outside in the garden.

My original source for edamame was Trader Joe’s until my husband noticed that our edamame came from China. Then we researched food from China. And we were scared.

Trader Joe’s has suggested that if I don’t like products from China, I shouldn’t buy them. I should “vote with my wallet.” Well, all right. I don’t need to be told twice.

These seedlings came from organic seeds from Seeds of Change, which I would love to recommend as I’ve bought seeds from them since 1994. However Femminista has pointed out that they are now owned by Mars and listed in her greenwashing book, so my fantasy about supporting small organic farmers is no more.

I’m not a great gardener, but I can grow some things. I have carrots and red chard left over from the winter that I haven’t pulled out.

And there are some pumpkins, which love the heat of the summer.

This is Jim’s paste tomato plant. It seems happy enough, and hard as it is to believe, we have trouble buying local tomatoes. Most of the ones in the grocery store and Trader Joe’s are from Mexico.