Surviving the Workday

Apparently I missed Hillary’s breasts while I was gone. And I still miss them, having studied the supposedly revealing photo. I see absolutely nothing. But supposedly this is evidence of her “calculating” behavior, according to the clip. God forbid she’s calculating. As if that’s the same as being a liar.

Honestly, could we stop mandating what women can do to their breasts? Please? I’ve written about it too much before, and I don’t care if you’ve won a Pulitzer prize. Just stop.

I’m reflecting on the best email vacation setting. This seems to be entirely individual, given your own preferences, needs, and those of the job as well.

I used to set a vacation email auto-reply that said when I was gone and would return. As a freelancer, this resulted in the work being handed to someone else. Bad. You’d think people would just wait, but um nope.

Then I moved to a vacation email auto-reply that said when I would return AND gave my cell phone number for work contacts. This also resulted in work going elsewhere. Bad.

I’ve been experimenting with just checking email on vacation. That seems to work best for times when I can check once a day as I did last week. I can respond as I did to a couple offers of work, revise articles if need be, and I can ignore email that can wait.

How do you set your email when you’re on vacation? What works best for you and why?

In America’s Unhealthy Commutes, we learn that the unhealthy part of the commute is the air we breathe on freeways, the traffic delays, and accidents. I’m not sure I entirely agree with the rationale stated by David Rizzo, author of Survive the Drive! How to Beat Freeway Traffic in Southern California:

“It’s a lifestyle choice. We put our health second. To have a big house, we’re willing to put up with smog and a big drive. We sacrifice our longevity for short-term gains.”

I suppose it’s a lifestyle choice in the broadest sense. But since most people I know in Southern California don’t own their homes and hence haven’t prioritized McMansions, many people can barely afford to rent, I think it’s much more a problem of the enormous size of the LA basis and the high housing costs. Indeed, most people I know have switched jobs more often than rentals, which are increasingly hard to find.

Alternatives to car commuting? Public transportation, working at home, biking, walking, and in many cases, simply walking away entirely.

Photo and links via Treehugger

Oh workplace guru,

I start law school at night in about a month and I am finding that am having an increasingly difficult time focusing on the day job. Nothing anyone else has noticed as of yet, but I’m just so bored all the time here. I suspect this feeling comes from my excitement over the changes my life is going through and how I’m in a period of waiting for them, but do you have any advice for making myself slog through subpoenas and prepare petitions in the meantime?

Thanks,

-Future Lawyer

Dear First Person Who Has Used Ms. Theologian’s Appropriate Title (Workplace Guru),

Trouble focusing? Disinterest in tasks? Totally normal in light of life circumstances. You may have some mild anxiety at work brought on by major life changes (going back to school, and planning to continue the day job). This is totally normal. Did I mention that? Totally normal. And, of course, Ms. Theologian is not a doctor; she just hears lots and lots and lots of work stories.

Ms. Theologian suggests mindfulness, that is being present in your distraction, breathing in and out throughout your clicking on the Internet and billable hours, noting when you’re more antsy (Self, I seem particularly antsy right now. I wonder what’s going on), and not judging yourself. Most of us are not mindful, so this may take some practice. You don’t have to go so far as mindfulness meditation at work, just try to be mindful of what you’re doing, thinking, and feeling as you slog through the petitions.

Other “Tricks” for Dealing with Mild Anxiety:

• Practice the best in self-care. Remember to eat, drink water, sleep, and exercise. Treat yourself ever so kindly as if you were precious in the best sense. Seriously. Ms. Theologian isn’t quite sure why we feel we have to beat ourselves into submission at work, but kindness works too.

• Identify your carrot. This is the small reward at the end of each successive tunnel at work. It might be something like reading a web site after you finish an hour of work. It might be something more complicated in which you earn points for hourly work toward lip gloss (it sounds silly, but Ms. Theologian knows someone who swears by the lip gloss carrot).

• Inspire yourself. Ms. Theologian has the delightful collage that she keeps on her desk (you could make a smaller version) of all the things she likes (chocolate croissants, coffee, margaritas, ferns, crystal clear waters, red rocks, forests, and mountains). She looks at it throughout the day when responding to an unpleasant email. Perhaps you could do the same with a course catalogue.

Best wishes to you in this new endeavor,

-Ms. Theologian

Dear Ms Theologian,

Someone from another department asked for a half hour of her time to answer questions about her area of expertise. Miranda was very busy that week but after she had completed most of her work, she started a large report running and went off to meet with this person for half an hour. Surly found out about this and took her aside and yelled at her, stating it was inappropriate that she would go off and neglect her duties, that she hadn’t done XY and Z (she actually had) and that she wasn’t allowed to do anything without his permission. He later apologized for accusing her of not doing her work, but he was still angry and she was as well, since she feels she is a grownup and can manage her own time.

I personally was appalled (I didn’t hide that at all, I guess I’m undermining him too!), and my only advice to her was now she knows in the future that she needs to keep him in the loop for everything. So my question is: What else can she do? And, do I have a duty to coach another manager’s employee (I think I do)? I’d like to mentor her but I’m not sure what to say except I would never stand for that kind of thing from any manager of mine.

Signed,…And don’t call me “Surly.”

Dear And Don’t Call Me,

First of all, Surly sounds like a controlling asshole and a bad manager, but that’s probably beside the point. Breathe in compassion for Surly. Breathe out disgust with bad managers.

First question: What else can she (Miranda) do?

Ms. Theologian thinks your advice to keep Surly in the loop is fine, except that she suggests amping it up with the Kathie Lee Gifford (TM) approach, in which Miranda gives Surly much more information about her work than he needs. Have you seen Kathie Lee chatter? Bring the spirit of Kathie Lee to Miranda’s sharing of exactly where she is. Will this eventually be annoying? Hopefully. But it will give him what he is explicitly asking for.

Second question: And, do you have a duty to coach or mentor another manager’s employee?

Do you mean “duty” as in moral obligation? We could debate whether this is coaching or mentoring, but I happen to know that you like Miranda, and she likes you, and you have the ability to help her without hurting yourself, hurting her, hurting Surly, hurting the workplace…so end of story.

-Ms. Theologian

Why exactly is there this sense in business in the United States that you have to be an asshole in order to be successful?

That’s mostly a rhetorical question, of course.

However, here is some evidence that cranky bosses are not good bosses from Sigal Barsade, an associate professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and Donald Gibson, an associate professor of management at Fairfield University’s Dolan School of Business in their paper, “Why Does Affect Matter in Organizations?” in Academy of Management Perspectives:

Looking at studies of large companies and small companies, companies run by women and by men, their conclusion is clear. “The evidence is overwhelming,” the authors write. “Expressing positive emotions and moods tends to enhance performance at individual, group, and organizational levels.” Employee moods, they find, affect just about everything anyone does at work—job performance, decision making, creativity, turnover, teamwork, negotiations, and leadership.

The authors of the study encourage managers to regulate their emotions.

One of the decent tips from the Etiquette Tips was to google any future boss. And although it feels a bit creepy at first to some of us, I think it’s worth knowing the sorts of information that are out there regarding a future boss (and future employer). Some questions to investigate:

How many places is your boss associated with?
Has she had lots and lots of jobs? Or just one for years and years?
Can you find a basic profile on linkedin?
Is this someone who has a lot of volunteer affiliations? Which ones?

None of this is to suggest that all of the information you can google is factually accurate and necessarily relatable to your boss. But it is information, and that can often illuminate your future boss and workplace. We often enter new jobs almost blind. I think that’s not a great idea for long-term happiness in the workplace.

Please suggest other google-able facts in comments and we’ll make a more complete list here.

And now the second story that just makes my heart hurt.

Yahoo offers email services inside China, which makes the email under Chinese jurisdiction. Yahoo handed over information about the account of a Chinese journalist, Shi Tao, resulting in a ten-year prison sentence for “divulging state secrets,” a phrase often denoting activities involving political dissent (no secrets necessarily revealed, mind you, simply disagreeing is enough). Yahoo claimed it was only complying and had no knowledge of the sorts of crimes Shi Tao was accused of, and then condemned human rights abuses even as it handed over information on Shi Tao’s account. New information suggests that Yahoo did indeed know the nature of the investigation beforehand.

Read analysis here and here. And here’s a blog for Dui Hua, which documents human rights abuses in China.

Three journalists are keeping a blog as they attempt to cross the Sonoran desert from Mexico to the United States (Arizona), the same route attempted by about a million people a year:

Walking to America

It’s hard to imagine a three day hike in 120 degrees with few supplies. Actually, it’s relatively easy for me to imagine it (since it gets to 115 here during the day), but I can’t understand how exactly it is done successfully.

What would a sustainable food supply look like for a family? Scott McGuire, a renter in Ashland, Oregon, embarked on an experiment in growing his family’s food supply.

You-Tube clip includes moments of great humor halfway through when host begins to cluck like a chicken.

I do think that human beings have a fundamental need to belong. And one of the great strengths of a traditional work environment is that it gave workers a sense of belonging to something greater than themselves.

That work environment has changed for many of us. I work at home, for example, and have a sense of loosely belonging to many professional communities, but not strongly belonging to any one in particular. And even for those in a traditional work environment, with the advent of temporary work on contracts, many of us still feel we do not fully belong because we’re not permanent in employee status.

So it was with great shock this week that I found a community of which I felt fully a part. And even as the week passed, and the community of poets separated into contingencies I still felt like I had found people who I could talk to and have real conversations with: non-consumer conversations, non-practical conversations. It literally left me stunned, and crying just about all the way home.

So with that said, I know it’s Sunday, and that many of you find non-work community at church. (Ministers, I’m afraid, may be in a totally separate category, since church is “work.”) And for the unchurched, I offer this: I do believe you can find community. It may be somewhere unexpected, and it may be temporary, but I do think it’s possible to find it. So don’t stop looking.

If you’d like to describe your work or non-work community, please leave a comment.

If you follow Ten New Etiquette Tips for the Workplace, I think you can basically guarantee that you’ll get fired.

I disagree strongly with at least four tips. Which ones do you disagree (or agree) with?

Some observations about poets:

1. They like The Alone Time.

2. They like The Nature.

3. Female poets seem to be able to wear skirts and dresses without any sense of irony. It’s sort of cute.

4. Just about everything is absolutely autobiographical, and acknowledged as such, where as fiction (and even memoir) writers tend to pretend the narrator or characters have no relationship with the author.

That’s all I got. Second to the last workshop with Jimmy Santiago Baca is about to begin.

If you identify with those words, you’re in good company. This is the sort of research results that make me cringe:

Most Americans think of themselves as leaders (71%) and believe they are well-informed about current events (81%). They almost unanimously view themselves as independent thinkers (95%), and as loyal and reliable people (98%). They also say they are able to easily adapt to changes and a whopping four out of five people believe they are making a positive difference in the world. Two out of three adults noted that they like to be in control of situations.

Well informed about current events? Good Lord in Heavens Above. Independent Thinkers? Really? Read the full report at American Individualism Shines Through.

On a totally separate note, a chipmunk just tried to scale my leg. Aeee! The trials and tribulations of blogging while in the Sierras.

Read Shannon’s take on Boycotting China, which focuses on conscious consuming and choices with children:

Mostly, it’s the whole conscious consuming thing. Now, more than ever before, I am analyzing each and every purchase that I make. I look at labels without even thinking about it. I am not only thinking about where it is made, but the total, overall impact that the purchase of this product has in terms of human quality of life issues, climate change issues or other eco-concerns, and simply thinking more and more about the value of “stuff” in our lives.

Shannon has four kids, and writes practical tips for those of you with little (or big) ones.

In How Loud Is Too Loud? we learn that the Loud Talker is the number one pet peeve of office workers. The Loud Talker is closely followed by the Person With Annoying Cell Phone Ring and the Person Who Insists on Using Speaker Phone.

The solution to these pet peeves? Actually opening your own mouth to say something (shocking, I know):

Do that by saying what’s bothering you and explaining the effect it has on your work. Then ask the person to either lower his or her voice or take personal calls out of the office. Then, ask if that’s OK, to make sure the other person understands and will comply. Pachter offers a more specific example: “Hey, you might not realize–I hear your conversation and it’s distracting to me. I’m having a hard time working. Could you please lower your voice? OK?”

Works for me.

So here are a few thoughts about the Squaw Poetry workshop at the mid-week point:

1. We workshop a new poem each day. It is so useful to get positive feedback on what works in a first draft. We’ve also been reading out poems to each other at night in our respective houses (see view from house) over a bit of wine (and I do mean a bit).

2. The program is small, around 65 participants, and we workshop with different people each day until we’ve workshopped with everyone after seven days. Exhausting? Yes. But it sure makes for a community feel and a chance to hear 64 other poets.

3. The lack of agents is awesome. I don’t object to agents in principle, but the presence of agents makes writers crazy. People think, even in the back of their minds, that they are going to be discovered. And that makes them crazy. No agents, no craziness (at least of that variety).

4. People think I’m really funny, so I’m not going to be funny in my poem today, just as an exercise in using language differently.

5. No one seems to be blogging from the conference or understand my need for email. I bought some wireless access in the Squaw Valley, and simply the fact that I did this blows people’s minds.

I saw David Lukas, fame naturalist eat poop this morning and my reaction was literally, “That’s awesome.”

Of course, it wasn’t really poop. It was a chocolate coconut haystack that he had shaped into poop and put on the trail in the Sierras this morning, but I was tired enough that poop-eating seemed totally possible. It didn’t look like any poop I’d seen, but I’m certainly not a scat expert.

Don’t eat poop. It’s bad for you.

I had a great workshop this morning with Jimmy Santiago Baca and my Prayer for Ryan Seacrest. This afternoon…some more poetry writing on the porch, and perhaps some yoga.

This is a much more low-key program than Squaw for fiction and non-fiction. We write a new poem every day (seven total), workshop our new poems, and that’s about it. Other than yoga and nature walks. But few craft talks. And no agents. More on that later.

This morning, I’m workshopping a poem I wrote last night. It was intended to be a prayer, but it ended up being a Prayer for Ryan Seacrest, which isn’t so much a prayer as a plea for the plastic surgery to stop.

We’ll see how that goes. The workshop poet leader is Jimmy Santiago Baca.

I’m waiting for a nature walk with David Lukas to begin. Some poets write poems about the natural world and need to know the names of birds and animals. I don’t appear to be one of those poets, but I like his nature walks a lot. And since I’ve been up since 5:30 a.m….

Squaw Valley Writers is an annual event, and this particular week in the Sierras is just for poets. I’m staying at a little mountain chalet with three other poets. I have a roommate, and we’re all exceptionally quiet. Unlike the scene above.

This morning I went to yoga at 8 and workshop at 10 with Sharon Olds and then drove to Donner Lake with a peanut butter sandwich. It’s been very relaxing.

Now I’m waiting for a lecture by Sharon Olds to begin….