Surviving the Workday

Make Your Own Tree and Make Your Own Cards (and that’s our ceppo above in the corner of our living room).

Santa is Christian and Ms. Theologian Takes on the Big Red Guy (but not because he’s Christian)

Ms. Theologian Likes the Obscene and Ms. Theologian Still Likes the Obscene

Ms. Theologian Comments on Holidays at the Office and, additionally, and in detail, Ms. Theologian Comments on the Workplace Holiday Tree. Please don’t call  it a holiday tree. This bothers Ms. Theologian to no end.

Maud Newton writes about Elizabeth Bishop, “unproductive” writing time, and dry spells.

I’m always shocked by “rules” for writing that instructor writers to write every day (or else you’re not a writer). It’s just not true for most people. In any case, Maude does a great riff on Bishop.

Writers on Strike:  Pamie Ribon, who wrote the sweetly amusing Why Girls Are Weird, is also a story editor for Samantha Who? so she’s on strike right now. Her blog details the trials and tribulations of being on strike and is a very interesting read. This post explains why she is personally on strike, and this one explains why the shows that were already written before the strike are full of suckage right now (cough Heroes cough.)

Deporations: Paying the Price for Our Parent’s Deportations is a comparison of experiences: Ruby Takanishi’s experience as a child having her grandfather incarcerated in Hawaii during World War II and the experiences of children of immigrants having their parents removed.  

Tattoos: Discrimination against body art varies greatly depending on the workplace. Some shocking statistics: Thirty-six percent of Americans ages 18 to 25 — and 40 percent ages 26 to 40 — have at least one tattoo, according to a 2006 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.

Religion as Diversity: Religion in the Workplace explores the growing trend to discuss religion in workplaces as part of diversity training. Hmm…what to do with the research that suggests that diversity training just doesn’t work?

here’s a little fun with a Book Quiz from Myf.

You’re Brave New World!
by Aldous Huxley
With an uncanny ability for predicting the future, you are a true psychic. You can see how the world will change and illuminate the fears of future generations. In the world to come, you see the influence of the media, genetic science, drugs, and class warfare. And while all this might make you happy, you claim the right to be unhappy. While pregnancy might seem painful, test tube babies scare you most. You are obsessed with the word “pneumatic”.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Feel free to post your book. And I’ll try to use “pneumatic” in a sentence.

I took the handmade pledge, and I’ve been slowly making my way through Christmas shopping for handmade goods, spending most of my shopping time on Etsy. If you haven’t been there, it’s thousands of individual merchants, all of handmade goods, and all in one place and take Pay Pal.

I don’t have anyone on my shopping list for these items, but I thought I would share a few favorites.

I love cookies bracelet (and I do love cookies)

Hand Gesture Coasters (I can think of a guest for each of these)

Woofy Doggy (So cute.)

Lunchbags with Messages (The Mine Mine Mine one might work)

Dog Puzzle (Apparently I have a thing for dogs.)

I suspected that night shift work caused major body disruptions, but I didn’t link night shift work to cancer. Because I’m simply not that negative a person.

Next month, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization, will add overnight shift work as a probable carcinogen. The American Cancer Society says it will likely follow. Up to now, the U.S. organization has considered the work-cancer link to be “uncertain, controversial or unproven.”

And now the link is certain. Yikes. Jim worked the night shift, and one of his best friends did for years, both as part a clan of workers known as The Night Audit (if you know what the night audit does, you’re in a select group). And we have all sorts of sleep rituals because of the night shift: sleep in a dark room with a fan, drink no coffee 6 hours before bed, get lots of sun and exercise while awake.

But back to the science, because night shift work does not allow you to sleep at work (some of The Night Audit would disagree on this point), your body does not produce the same amount of melatonin as those of us who sleep at night. Yes, melatonin, which suppresses tumors. Hence the increased rate of cancer.

Read about the only area in Metro Atlanta not suffering from a water shortage.

How is that possible? They learned to re-use wastewater by filtering it through wetlands and resevoirs and eventually turning it into drinking water. Smart. And good news for all of us except developers (less developable land because it’s now wetlands).

Via Treehugger

Resource

How much water do you use?

I have to say that I am uncomfortable with paying others to touch me. And it has always been the case since I started paying for hair cuts in college. I had one manicure at GhostGirl’s request prior to her wedding, but I think it was her m-i-l’s idea. And I had one facial with Anne P where it was revealed that I have the dryest skin on the planet (I guess we know how I choose contributors). But for the most part, I’ve shyed away from spa culture, which has made its way into being part of a middle class female in the United States:

It’s hard to pinpoint when this began to change, but it’s been a gradual creep, with one treatment after another redefined from an option to a necessity, the required armor of modern femininity. Treatments once performed at home, like manicures and eyebrow-plucking, are conventionally outsourced. Others, like massage, are regarded as cures, the antidote to an epidemic of female stress. Each day, a set of treatments—from exfoliation to bikini waxing—gets nudged toward the mainstream (in the pages of women’s magazines, in conversations between friends dressing for a party, in mothers’ comments to their daughters), shifting from treats to basics: the pubic “landing strip,” nearly a required part of the dating uniform for younger women; perfect nails and shaped eyebrows a requisite for professionals. Even little girls get spa treatments at birthday parties. Having such procedures done professionally is a signal (to yourself and to others) that you have it together: You are a pointedly urban creation, in control of your own body.

While I totally understand that many of us don’t have sisters and moms to paint our nails and braid our hair, and many of us travel for business and are exhausted and crave soothing touch, while I really think female stress does need to be dealt with, I just can’t shake the power inequity that exists when I hire someone for $20 to get down on her knees and scrub my feet.

This isn’t to say that massage is a bad idea or hair cuts by a professional are a terrible thing. Like everything else, I think it’s possible to seek arrangements in which people are fairly paid and treated well. However, in a booming industry where, just about across the board, minority women workers are paid minimum wage or less to deal with toxic materials, calluses, and pubic hair, one has to wonder what exactly we’re paying for.

You’ll want to read the rest of An inside look at the spa industry, which investigates the economics of touch.

Via Jezebel

Late to the party on this one.

Perhaps if turkeys were slaughtered humanely, I would feel more predisposed to eat them on Thanksgiving: Bill Maher on George Bush: Pardon all the Turkeys.

Here’s an interesting article about a so-far minor movement regarding gay marriage. A few churches have decided that, if they can’t perform legal marriages for gay couples, they won’t be doing it for straight ones either.

First Congregational Church, also of Minneapolis, became the third church to join the protest when it approved a ban on legal marriage in early 2007. David Anger, who had his union with longtime partner Jim Broberg blessed there in 1991, says the time has come to force the issue. “There can’t be a gay door and a straight door,” he argues.

Most churches seem to be taking an activist standpoint with the issue, but these three churches have an interesting take on the matter. Some traditionalists understandably have trouble giving up their privileges (and possibly fail to see the irony in that.) But I never really understood the preoccupation with having a “real” wedding.

Looks like churches are going to be the vanguard of the gay marriage movement in years to come. What a surprise, churches actually following the teachings of Christ* and promoting tolerance.

*Note that I am not trying to exclude non-Christian religions with this statement. But I think that with the majority of our country professing to be Christian, they are the ones who will have the most influence in years to come.

Rand reports on several workplace trends in the United States:

• an increase in non-traditional staffing, which includes freelance and contract help as well as temporary employees;
• a decrease in traditional benefits packages for full-time employees;
• retraining and lifelong learning for older employees in the workplace and as they semi-retire;
• decentralization of the physical workplace

Resources

The Future at Work — Trends and Implications

The Department of Labor reports on a few related trends.

Work Trends in New Zealand just for the hell of it.

I’ve got billions, but I don’t like to spend it reads like a curious anthropological expedition into the territory of the frugal rich. I actually thought that most people who were rich were frugal. I thought that’s why they were still rich.

In any case, there’s an editorial gem here:

Canadian Cheriton [the Stanford professor who introduced google founders to venture capitalists] says he prefers to ride his bike around his Palo Alto, Calif., neighborhood, and relies on an old Volkswagen van or a Honda sedan when he needs to get behind the wheel. He says he only flies commercial, prefers jeans to designer clothes and claims to reuse his teabags. He also cuts his own hair to save time going to a barber. His indulgence: two windsurfers.

As GhostGirl said, That word you use, I do not think it means what you think it means. I wonder if the writer means wind surf boards or sailboards. Or maybe not.

On a side note, you might notice how all the rich people in the article cut their own hair. I’m not sure what to make of that.

We’ve talked before about people not turning their cell phones off during work time. Apparently a ringing cell phone resulted in jail time for an entire court room: Judge sends courtroom to jail over ringing phone.

How many hours of leisure time do you have each week?

Seriously. Count them. Count the weekend, count down-time at night, but do not count sleep time.

I came up with 12. Not so good. I’d be average if I had 20.

A recent poll suggests that we have fewer hours of leisure time (20 hours) than we did in the 1970s (27) hours. And why is this? Is it the 24/7 hour expectations at work? Our own obsessiveness?

Raymond Folen, an Argosy University psychologist suggests that, “Some people may avoid — or at the very least intensely dislike — vacation, because taking the time off makes them feel bad or worthless,” Mr. Folen said. “Often, these individuals were raised by parents who instilled in them the notion that a good child is a productive child.”

I find that fascinating. I don’t think that’s my problem, but I’m willing to entertain the notion.

On a side note, dining out is a favorite leisure activity as is entertaining at home, reading, and barbecuing.

If you hang around here long enough, you’ll notice I get very bent out of shape when we talk about “productivity in the workplace,” particularly in terms of granting basic human rights to someone based on his or her productivity. And frequently spirituality in the workplace discussions are motivated by the desire to make workers more productive on an individual level. None of this makes me happy. Most of it disturbs me in the way that capitalism seems to take over the discussion of human rights in a way that turns humans into machines with input and output.

(more…)

I wonder.

Alice Waters has come under attack recently because of affiliation with the Ameya Preserve, a “green” vacation home development outside of Livingston, Montana. I actually attended geology field training one summer just outside of Livingston, splitting my time between being screamed at by a structural geologist who thought all women needed to be humiliated into submisssion and a local bar. I assume others do not have the same psychological hurdles to living in Livingston. In any case, if you pay $2.3 million dollars for a 10 acre lot on Ameya, then Waters herself will cook you dinner (once, I assume). 

Oh Alice. As Charlotte McGuinn Freeman points out on Ethicurean, luxury and sustainability are utterly incompatible. And that’s luxury with a conventional definition of expensive and available to a few.

And, there are some nasty words from the rich developmnt supporters to the local objectors, who have criticized the development in letters to the newspaper and on blogs.

“The real anger of those letters and blogs seems to be class envy directed at those who have had more success in life than the letter writers and blog writers. Perhaps they were smarter. Perhaps they worked harder. Perhaps they were more ambitious. Perhaps they managed their money better. Perhaps they inherited.”

Indeed. I haven’t seen the myth of meritocracy so clearly spelled out in a long time. Rich people are smarter, work harder, and are simply better with money. Right.

 Via Gift Hub and Living Small

Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books weigh in on redefining “bitch”:

The funny thing is, I’m drafting a paper right now about how we here at Smart Bitches have tried to jokingly co-opt the word “bitch” at the same time we try to redefine the word “trashy,” and each time I sit down to write, I have to question whether the word “bitch” will ever lose it’s power. Other more famous examples of co-opted words, such as “nigger,” “queer,” or “gay” seem to have had more success with redefinition in popular culture than “bitch.” Within the communities described by those pejorative terms, there’s sometimes an almost celebratory use of the words, but then, those words are more often used to refer to men. I don’t see any lesbians saying, “Whee! I’m a dyke!” Words that apply pejoratively solely to women - those are some difficult words to subvert.

We’ve written about Bitch in the workplace at the B-word and How do we beat the bitch? I will say that I’ve been called a bitch a lot, and have grown to just take it as a backhanded compliment. The label inevitably comes out when I do something that doesn’t please men. Oh well. I probably am a bitch.

These links are getting a bit old and we remain uninspired, so thought it was time to do a little cleanup. This is pretty much a joint effort between us all, but I (GhostGirl) seem to pick up the most random links without having the energy to actually write about them. Hence, all roundups in my name.

We Do Like Our Pasta What do Tupperware and pasta have to do with religion? The American Academy of Religion’s annual conference examines the definition of religion in a panel focusing on the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, aka Pastafarianism:

Indeed, the tale of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and its followers cuts to the heart of the one of the thorniest questions in religious studies: What defines a religion? Does it require a genuine theological belief? Or simply a set of rituals and a community joining together as a way of signaling their cultural alliances to others?

While I wouldn’t go so far as to call Tupperware parties a religious gathering, I can certainly see how some sports fans could be called religious.

The No China Diet Finally Meshes with the Religion Theme: Crucifixes sold in religious giftshops in the US were made by Chinese sweatshop workers. Jesus wouldn’t be proud.

No Crosses in Utah  Atheists are complaining about crosses as roadside memorials for fallen Highway Patrol Troopers violate the First Amendment. Oh, atheists, won’t you get on the God-boat with the rest of us?

Not so Healthy Habits It seems to us that many of us form some very unhealthy habits in college that affect us deeply once we enter the workforce (providing we’re not already in the workforce). Yes, Campus Living Not the Picture of Health.

Wow. Just, wow. Another example of corporate assholery, along with a free sample of what is wrong with the insurance industry. Folks, be sure to read your insurance paperwork throughly before signing. And for god’s sake, just avoid Mall-Wart.

Only read this if you want to cry This is exponentially more horrifying than the girl whose mother pierced her genitals and shaved her head. I tried to write something substantial about this, but words failed me.

Start Brainwashing ‘em Early The CIA has a Kids page. So if your little angel has an aim to be the next Clarice Starling, this here is your #1 resource.

Oh woe, DC socialites and politicos now have to shop at Costco like the rest of us.

Some of my favoritest quotes include:

Indeed, some hostesses today aren’t above serving Costco salmon, nicely dressed up with a dollop of crème fraîche.

…

The ultimate awkwardness, she said, is when clients want to buy their food from Costco but disguise it: “They’ll say: ‘Why don’t you bring the fancy glassware, and we’ll get the rest from Costco. And could you put it on one of your fancy plates? Oh, and how about some of your fancy ice cream on top?’”

It is at this point that I must quote our Costco Axiom: You can never get out of there for less than $300. Washington’s elite might think they are being pennypinching Joe Blows, but they can still afford to shop there a lot more than I can.

It’s getting closer to the end of the year, which is my time for evaluating how I calendar and keep track of clients, projects, and money.

I’m curious how people keep track of their business contacts or clients. Do you do it exclusively electronically? Rely on your Outlook or Palm? Use good old fashioned rolodex technology?

 I use a Word document to list key business contacts, and I update and print it monthly. Very low-tech.

And you? I’m looking for ideas.

Food pantries are running into dire shortages this year due to rising costs in gas and food eating into working class salaries:

“We have food banks in virtually every city in the country, and what we are hearing is that they are all facing severe shortages with demand so high,” Ross Fraser, a spokesman for America’s Second Harvest — The Nation’s Food Bank Network, the nation’s largest hunger relief group, said Friday. “One of our food banks in Florida said demand is up 35 percent over this time last year.”

It is very hard to function (let alone survive the workday) when you are hungry. If you can afford to, you might consider a donation to your local food bank.