Surviving the Workday

From Gawker’s Jesus Died on the Cross So You Could Tip Your Damn Barrista relating to revelations on Fox News that people think the coffee costs enough and they don’t need to tip: 

I spent many years as a barista, at Starbucks and elsewhere, so I have perhaps a measure more sympathy for their plight than Neil Cavuto, but tipping is the only way I can justify going there. Some days tipping is the only way I know I’m still human. Tipping wherever possible, wherever it is allowed, is your civic fucking duty. Whatever your political stripe, your beef with the way things work in this world– that hard work is insufficiently valued anymore, that market capitalism unfairly rewards elites and hucksters, that the meritocracy is dead or that welfare dissuades anyone from working or that cynicism has permeated our every action these days — tipping is your quickest, easiest, most painless mode of dissent.

In Sleep Deprived Pay the Price for Shift Work, we learn more about the risks to 20% of American workers that are night-shift workers. These are folks who work as police officers, security guards, truck drivers, hotel desk clerks and auditors, pilots, nurses, and more jobs than I can mention. We’ve known that this sort of shift work puts you at higher risk for accidents and stress, and since December, we’ve known that the World Health Organization actually considers it carcinogenic with health effects such as:

* Night-shift workers have a 40% to 50% increased risk of heart disease compared with day workers, various studies have found.

* People who get five hours of sleep, common among night-shift workers, are 50% more likely to be obese than normal sleepers, Columbia University researchers have found. Several dozen other studies have tied sleep loss to weight gain as well.

* Women night-shift workers have higher rates of miscarriage, pre-term birth and low birth-weight babies.

* Night-shift workers show increased rates of breast (by 50%) and colon (by 35%) cancer in numerous, independent studies. And animal studies have shown that exposure to dim light during the night-time can substantially increase tumor development.

But why would this be?

Among the most significant — and startling — reasons: As much as 15% of human genes function on a schedule, with highly regulated, oscillating patterns of activity.

These clocklike genes are common features of most cells and can be found in every major organ in the body. They, in turn, affect the schedule of scores of biological functions, from metabolism to cell division to cognitive processes.

Wow.

About a year ago, my company fielded a laughable survey that, among other things, implied that our friends should react with envy when told where we work, that we should feel our work (marketing) makes a difference in the world, and that we should feel like going to work is the most important and exciting part of our day.

Out of that survey comes an initiative of Dilbertian proportions–a committee to create a feeling of connectivity within the workplace. Today they unveiled their first masterpiece of epic failure: we received an email that proclaimed the first ever “Corporate Connections Week.”

Our first burden? We are all going to be assigned a buddy. Then we are expected to call them or meet up with them in person… to talk about our passions. I was going to spend an hour talking about my cats, but then Ms. T suggested mucus-related medical issues.

I think the important thing that this committee (made up entirely of HR people, since all the sensible people who volunteered quickly dropped out) missed is that you can’t force connections. All they are going to do is make me resent the lost time and energy, and mock their insane efforts at forcing me to essentially go on a blind date with my coworkers.

Car washes are ubiquitous in Southern California because of The Car Obsession, but look at the conditions that the workers deal with:

A Times investigation has found that hand carwashes, automotive beauty shops patronized by tens of thousands of Southern California motorists every day, often brazenly violate basic labor and immigration laws, with little risk of penalty.

Half or more of carwash owners flout the minimum-wage law, estimated David Dorame, the longtime lead investigator for low-wage industries at California’s Division of Labor Standards Enforcement.

Despite many undocumented workers’ reluctance to complain to authorities, employees at a fifth of Southern California’s carwashes in the last five years have formally accused owners of illegally underpaying them, The Times found.

From Santa Monica to Westwood to Koreatown, many workers said they received only tips for some or all of their shifts. Labor division inspectors estimated that about 10% to 20% of car dryers are not paid by owners.

U.S. News has a list of the move overrated careers. These are careers that get a lot of media attention, but often have significant day-to-day hurdles. If you click on a career in the list below, there’s a description of the career as well as an alternative with possibly fewer hurdles.

• Advertising executive
• Architect
• Attorney
• Chef
• Chiropractor
• Clinical psychologist
• Medical scientist
• Nonprofit manager
• Physician
• Police officer
• Real estate agent
• Small-business owner
• Teacher

Thoughts? I’ve done some nonprofit managing, teaching, and small-business owning, and those are pretty difficult jobs.

Newsweek has career advice for the characters on The Office (I suppose this is what happens with a mockumentary—we take it absolutely seriously). Good stuff here. 

• What to do with a boss like Michael Scott (advice for all of us who deal with a narcissistic incompetent boss)
• Management Tips Dwight Schrute Could Use (advice for those of us who hope to move up to management, but never quite get there)
• Jim Halpert and the First Job Trap (advice for those of us who seem trapped by our first (or much later) job and are unable to leave despite knowing we must)
• How Pam Beesly Can Find a Dream Job (advice for those of who labor in jobs we hate while dreaming of making our hobbies into jobs)
• Ways to Reboot Your Career Mid-Life (advice for those of us who are laid-off mid-career)

I find this decision from a Massachusetts court fascinating. Basically two firms created workplace manuals that were full of the crappy sorts of cliches and jargon.

One firm accused the other of stealing its ideas in creating its manuals. In fact, the second company was made up of ex-employees from the first company, and they admit to using what they learned at the first company in producing their own manual. However, the judge eloquently points out that these vapid concepts are not protected by copyright.

If you follow intellectual property law at all, you might want to read more.

This is the most general graph I’ve seen in a while (go ahead, check out), but I think it actually illustrates a key point of work in the United States, namely, that productivity on a national scale isn’t necessarily related to wage growth on a national scale. 

Now, I’ve written before that I have some big issues with granting rights to people based on their productivity at work, and I have big issues with measuring individual productivity. But there are decent ways of measuring national productivity in terms of money and overall units generated and there are decent ways of measuring wages.

So note how the myth of meritocracy seems relevant as you look at this graph that shows national productivity increasing while wages remain relatively stagnant. Many of us are under the impression that if we work harder, faster, longer, more productive in some way, that we will demonstrate our merit to our boss and be justly rewarded with a wage increase. Certainly on a national level, generally speaking, this is not happening.

The Great Copy Machine Epidemic apparently is striking copy machines in schools across the country.

An unidentified contagious disease is striking school photocopiers across America, and causing them to chew up trees at an amazing rate. Using tremendous amounts of energy throughout the process, and contributing to global warming.

Symptoms were first observed by the students and staff at the Robert Moses Middle School in North Babylon NY, and now we’re asking schools across America to join in a national day of action to stop global warming on April 17th by putting their school photocopiers under quarantine, and pledging not to make or use any photocopies in classes on that day.

I’m not quite sure why teachers and students love photocopies so much but they do. I think it’s something to do with the idea that if you fill out a worksheet, you’re in your seat, relatively quiet, and on-task. In any case, your school can also take action by putting your school photocopies under quarantine on April 17th and experience a day in school without copies (or with copies made ahead of time). 

Via Treehugger

As much as Bear Stearns calling employee assistance professionals to help their employees deal with impending job loss or loss of life savings seems like a good idea, I am left wondering if this is far too little, too late.

Employee assistance professionals, who compare their work to grief counseling, told ABC News that the sudden shock of learning that you have lost your life savings or job is akin to the emotional jolt felt when learning you have a terminal disease. Symptoms of dealing with the trauma can include anxiety, depression, irritability, withdrawal, loss of appetite and sleeplessness.

And much like with a terminal disease, you probably wonder what would happen if you caught it sooner. Man. That’s tough news to bear.

It’s more likely than it sounds, but I’m not sure I totally believe it.

What different generations look for in a job is a gallery of odd photos along with comments about Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Gen Y. Were you so inclined to contrast it to Workplace Generational Differences, you certainly could as in where did the Veterans go? I guess that’s what happens when you get old. Sort of depressing in that many Veterans (born 1922-1945) still work.

This summer I wrote a poem, A Prayer for Ryan Seacrest, in which I asked God to make Ryan stop the cosmetic surgery because every time I saw his new face on a billboard I would almost drive off the road. Now Gawker has tips for noticing the differences in Ryan’s multiple faces. And, trust me, he didn’t used to look like either of these.

Possibly more information on office sports betting than my brain can handle: Dipping Carefully into the Office Betting Pool. Of particular note:  Vault.com, the online recruiting company in New York, published a survey estimating that about 37 million of the nation’s 140 million workers have participated in N.C.A.A. pools. That’s more than a quarter of all workers!

Letters  Ms. Theologian gives advice about rude coworkers.

News  David Byrne (yes, that David Byrne) finds out that free wireless at Denver’s airport comes with a price. Workers accuse their Gulf Coast employer of slavery. Certainly, it’s indentured servitude. A cop kills two bicyclists and blames day light savings time and his extreme shifts. We have more sympathy than we should. The state of California prepares to lay off 10,000 teachers because we can’t manage a budget in California and simply prefer to layoff and rehire. That reminds me of some of my favorite corporations.

Notes  It was the week following daylight savings time. Some of us had a lot of trouble functioning (other than the cop above). Juana Rivas had to work, and she starts her day around 2:30 a.m. scavenging in dumpsters for recyclables. And Vilma Serralta appears to have worked six days a week 14 hours a day as maid/servant/nanny for a really awful San Mateo family who she is now suing.

Religion  We made some notes from a local church’s marketing brochure and respond to some questions about not attending church.

I’ve been reading the large number of comments that have been appearing on my church-related posts, but haven’t responded individually. I hope that’s something we can live with as I appreciate the comments but don’t seem to have the time or energy to respond comment by comment.  It’s me,  not you. :) 

However, there are some really thought-provoking comments on the Why I Don’t Go to Church Post, some of which I’m going to call out here.

Kel, after a lifetime of work in church and church organizations, including being a pastor’s kid, says,

“Yeah sure, church might be a good place to serve people, but after many years of it, you wonder when it’s your turn to be served . . . but because you don’t have kids that never happens.”

That is exactly how I feel. And I think that attending seminary, working in a church, and training to be a minister sort of made this feeling worse. It seems a bit harder for me to be a congregant again and I have to curb the urge to jump at every leadership opportunity. There is a place of balance between service to others and others providing some service to you.

Chuck asks,

“If your church had a series of social events in connection with other UU churches in the region that was geared not toward just families, but had families in mind would you go? I’m thinking of annual jamboree’s or the like where you could meet other UU singles to just hang with.”

Your question is a good one as I think there is always room for UUs to connect across communities. However, for me, I’m not interested in social events as church functions. I have enough social stuff going on.

Jim says,

“Why pick on folk dancing? Did you have a traumatic folk dance experience as a child? Were you frightened by a freilekh? Did a square dance make you squeamish? I’ve attended several UU churches and have not yet been to one that hosts folk dances, but, if one of them did, I hope I wouldn’t hold it against them.   I can relate to the “what’s in it for me?” stuff, but it also frustrates and disappoints me. Being a part of any community requires a certain amount of inconvenience and discomfort, right?”

I mostly mentioned folk dancing because it started with an “f” and so did “family game night” and I like alliteration (as do you!). The UU church I grew up in had folk dancing, and it was very popular. My parents went as did all their UU friends. My point, which apparently was obscured by alliteration and my sense of humor, is that these don’t represent programming that will draw me in as a 35-year-old child-free adult.

Since writing the original post, I’ve scoured roughly 50 UU church calendars looking for programming and have come up with the UU bible study, meditation, and prayer groups, but I actually think specific programs that interest me are beside the point. I had four reasons for not going to church anymore and my own disinterest in current programming was only one of them.

Marmota asks the next logical question,

“Whose responsibility is it to make your local UU congregation fulfill you?”

I feel like the discussion shifted at some point from my reasons for not going to church (any church, mind you, not just the closest UU one)  to trying to label programs that will bring me in or fulfill me. I may have caused that shift by mentioning folk dancing and disinterest, and for that I apologize. What I was trying to do in my original post is describe why I ended up in the 76% of Unitarian Universalists who affiliate as such and don’t attend church. And for the record, I’ve also written about when UU church and UU groups worked well for me and I was of service to them here and here and here.

In response to your specific query, I suppose it’s my own responsibility to make my UU church fulfill me, and I admire how you were able to do that in your own church. However, after say 10 years of leadership positions (formal and informal) in UU churches plus attending seminary, all of which was mainly about serving others to build a better church, I’ve decided that I don’t want to attend only in order to serve. I’ve done that.

Terri left a related comment on Lessons from a local church,

“When I moved away from Rochester, and talked about how disappointed I was in the available UU options, and how my solution was to become a leader and “give, give, give”, I remember a UU minister saying to me– “Yes, but you need to be fed too.”

That’s a good point. I think I’d need to be fed too as part of the service-served balance. But here’s the rub for me. I’m already fed. It’s just not at church. It’s at a half dozen other places, including my own home.  And that’s okay, but it’s also why I don’t go to church at this time.

I’m not asking churches to change to accomodate me; I’m simply explaining why I no longer go.

I just received a glossy brochure in the mail from a local Christian church, and thought it was doing some interesting things. First, there’s no denomination listed. It’s a “community” church and meets in a high school gymnasium and has three Sunday services. I assume it’s non-denominational, but leaning toward the conservative and evangelical side of the spectrum (but that’s just my best guess and gut instinct based on where I live).

Second, I noticed that the theme of the brochure is the church bringing “harmony to your home” and that there are six sermons in March and April based around family harmony. In case you’re curious (and I was), those are: 1. How to build winning relationships; 2 Avoiding a Financial Collapse; 3. Building a Great Marriage; 4. Raising Great Kids; 5. How to Fight Fair; and 6. Making Time for Each Other.

Here’s what strongly appeals to me from this brochure:

1. Admittance of Struggle This church and ministry appear to admit that there is actual struggling going on in our middle class town. I like that. I relate to that. And that feels different to me than churches I’ve been to where it would have been s-h-o-c-k-i-n-g to talk about financial problems or marital woes right up until a bankruptcy or divorce was announced. We might whisper about those issues during coffee hour, but we wouldn’t hear about it from the pulpit. And yet we all have these problems periodically. Why aren’t we preaching about them regularly?  

2. Practical Theology  Although the sermon titles are self-helpy, I’d bet the house that the sermons are full of Jesus, and that interests me. I just want to see these discusssions from a Unitarian Universalist point of view because my gut sense is this church is way too conservative for me to attend. Now in the comments for my most popular post ever, Why I Don’t Go to Church, someone asked what sort of programming would be of interest to me since I made fun of folk dancing at Unitarian Universalist Churches and someone else seemed frustrated with my What’s in it for me? attitude (funny in that I was going to basically give my career to ministry, and now, actually want something from my church, how dare I). I thought about all of this for a while as two weeks passed in which I was in Utah hiking for one Sunday morning and out to brunch with friends for another Sunday morning. Truth be told, those sermons highly interest me. They would be enough to drag me to church and rearrange my life in order to hear the message. And what else in terms of programming?  I’m interested in a UU Bible study. I’m interested in a prayer group to deepen my practice. I’m interested in a meditation group. I’m interested in social justice work. The more I think about it, the more I think I’m looking to church for actual religion. Imagine that.

Or can the state of California really not manage a budget?

More than 10,000 public school teachers in California will be laid off in the coming months because of a budget problem (no money). Teachers are laid-off based on seniority with new hires pink slipped first.  

“I think more than anything, it’s insulting,” said first-year teacher Robin McFadden. “I worked so hard this year and before that preparing to be a teacher.”

McFadden is a kindergarten teacher at Paul Revere Elementary in San Francisco, where 21 of 30 credentialed staff members will see those pink slips.

“I specifically wanted to work with at-risk students in an urban area,” she said. “Everyone who works here wants to be here.”

You may recall that in 2003, California had to lay off 20,000 teachers because of similar budgetary issues (no money). And people wonder why it’s hard to encourage young people to become teachers.

There are stories about abused domestic workers in the papers with some regularity. Working in isolation seems to make workers vulnerable both to not knowing their rights and to abuse by employers. From Nanny Sues Former Bosses:

A 69-year-old San Mateo woman who spent four years working as a live-in housekeeper and nanny for an Atherton couple filed suit Thursday in federal court against her former employers, alleging that they violated labor laws by working her 14 hours a day, six days a week, and failed to give her the minimum wage, overtime pay or breaks.

In her suit, Vilma Serralta says she was paid $1,000 to $1,300 a month to vacuum, mop and dust the 9,300-square-foot home, wash windows, cook, serve meals, hand-wash china and silver, make beds, launder and iron clothes, and bathe, dress and supervise the couple’s young daughter.

Colleen at Arbitrary Marks writes about generational values in her Generation Y classroom, which got me thinking about generational differences in the workplace again.

One of the best overviews of generational differences at work is Mixing and Managing Four Generations of Employees, which, as the title suggests, incorporates all four generations (not just the Baby Boomers and Generation X).

This table is from the article. And while we know that generalizations always leave some people out, I’ve found this information helpful, if only in understanding my parents’ attitudes (Veterans) to my generation (Generation X) about work.

Perhaps I’m more sympathetic to difficulties in adjusting to time changes and schedule changes this week, but it struck me as entirely likely that the Santa Clara County sheriff’s deputy, James Council,  who struck and killed two competitive bicyclists in Cupertino over the weekend, was affected adversely by only 10.5 hours off between 12 hour shifts:

Council was 4 1/2 hours into a 12 1/2-hour shift when the accident occurred at 10:25 a.m. Sunday. He worked a 6 a.m.-to-6:30 p.m. shift on Saturday, the sheriff’s office said, meaning that with the switch to daylight-saving time Sunday, Council had 10 1/2 hours off between shifts.

“A 12 1/2-hour shift is brutal,” said Sansen, who specializes in representing law enforcement officers. “You’re not sitting behind a desk. Even if you don’t work in a high-crime area, you’re always on alert for 12 1/2 hours. It is exhausting.”

She added, “Nobody goes home at the end of a 12 1/2-hour shift and goes right to bed.”