Surviving the Workday

Devolution of a Literary Correspondence

Added: I do have a rather complicated relationship with all of this (though not a personal relationship, mind you) as a writer and editor and person who has heard the stupid and ugly insults far too often. But, man, it did devolve.

Via Maud

I suppose it’s news that, when the country is in a recession, people find ways to scale back their spending. Even families with only one income! 

This CNN Money article provides some examples of stay-at-home-moms who’ve taken to making their own detergent, planting herb gardens, and concocting their own baby food - all in the name of saving more of their shrinking household monies.

Some concrete statistics would have been nice, otherwise it’s just another “trend” article. I find it a little hard to believe that too many women who weren’t breast-feeding before are doing so now because it’s cheaper than buying formula. And the reference to spending $4.50 for 20 eggs (as though this were inexpensive) is also a little puzzling. 

For my part, I’ve become a patron of  WinCo, a large employee-owned grocery chain. Some years ago, upon first walking into a WinCo, my Whole Foods sensibilities were seriously injured. Women with rollers in their hair, dingy floors, and Hostess desserts in the bakery section were not my idea of a fun food shopping experience. But when I revisited two months ago on an errand with my grandmother, I was won over by their $2.00 Morningstar (vegetarian brand) frozen food products. The same items cost twice as much at my usual store. The lower prices extended across the board, for all food items. They don’t sell free range, hormone-free meat, but are open 24 hours a day, and sell toilet paper as well as non-China organic vegetables. That’s me, doing my part to be a little less snobby.

I’m not feeling particularly word-driven today, but this work-related cartoon is funny: reverse land.

Transgender Inclusion in the Workplace, 2nd edition, and some commentary at Transgender Workplace Diversity.

A story of three professors who are producing their own textbook content and offering it free (sort of) to students fails to illustrate some of the potential problems with this particular enterprise. If you read this blog regularly, you may know that I earn a living providing content for educational publishers in math and science. That’s said in the interest of full disclosure. I do have some vested interest here (though not in college level publishing).

As a student, I actually love the idea of open source textbooks, particularly for content that is fairly static (e.g., lower levels of math). And I love the idea of not having to pay $150 for a textbook (note that the price most often reflects what the bookstore is choosing to charge and not necessarily how much the publisher is making).

However, and this is a big however, as an editor, when I hear about professors writing and distributing their own content, I shudder and wonder who exactly is doing these tasks:

• fact checking and building a bibliography so the text is correct and references correctly;
• developmental editing so the text makes sense in terms of structure;
• copy editing and proofreading so the text isn’t loaded with errors;
• sending the manuscript to reviewers and incorporating the feedback so the text is not the opinion of one sole author, but the consensus of many in the field;
• updating the manuscript as changes in the field occur;
• finding and permissioning use of photographs and illustrations so that the intellectual property of others is respected; and
• graphic designing so the text is easy to read and attractive.

And I fear that no one is doing those tasks. And that’s not really a textbook; that’s the first draft of a manuscript.

Read one woman’s account of her life in the Fundamental Latter Day Saints. The refrain to “keep sweet” becomes utterly poignant as you read her story.

Reasons to Call before 8 a.m.

1. You are related to me and have a medical emergency and are on the way to the hospital.

2. You are a close and personal friend temporarily defined by surviving either a traumatic, semi-traumatic, or simply noteworthy experience (high school, college, grad school, field camp, several jobs), or you’ve seen me naked.

There are no other reasons to call me before 8 a.m. Not to deliver construction materials, not with an editorial emergency, not with the last ticket to Paradise.

The general goal of Bear Stearn’s New Hires Become Job Seekers is to describe life for new hires at Bear Stearns as they find alternative work, but what struck me was the repeated reassurances to new hires that everything was fine during the dying days of Bear Stearns.

Sign #1:  The first sign of trouble came March 12, when Alan D. Schwartz, the chief executive of Bear, appeared on CNBC as rumors swirled that the bank was in trouble. After the program, a Bear human resources staff member e-mailed the clip to a group of incoming analysts and wrote a note telling them the bank was sound.

Sign #2: Even after JPMorgan agreed to buy Bear for a fire-sale $2 a share, Bear staff members assured some students their jobs seemed safe.

Sign #3: Cheyenne Sparrow, a junior at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, said she was skeptical all along, even though her contact at Bear assured her that everything would be fine.

“My parents work in business, and they’ve sold companies, so I know the first thing you do is tell all the employees, ‘Everything will be fine,’ ” Ms. Sparrow said. “It’s a stall tactic.”

At least she knew how to read the signs. You can read more at Bear Stearn’s New Hires Become Job Seekers.

I have a short essay up on Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood about not becoming a minister, and other stuff. If you haven’t been to Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, it is creative nonfiction/essays about specific locations around Manhattan. My essay is about Washington Heights/Fort Tryon Park, 10034. You can navigate by map or by story in the side column.

sometimes inconveniently.

After several “bowel incidents” at work, a man was given a number of nicknames (Mr. Shitty, for one, Poopy, for another), and a poop-related children’s book was left at his desk. The story continues for a while*, but results in this man then suing his employer alleging disability-based discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act. What’s particularly interesting to me is that much of the discussion about this case revolves around whether the employee told his employer he had MS or not (to explain the “bowel incidents”). There’s actually quite a lot to the story.

 *and involves Dodgeball, which combined with the Poopy comment makes me wonder how old these people are

Here’s some Advice for freelance workers on dressing for success. I can’t say I follow any of this advice, except for the suit part. I do have a suit that I own and wear and like. I also try not to smell bad.

Here’s another story about a surge protector and electrical smouldering after a power surge. You’ll recall that after oral surgery, our power went out and when it came back on the surge was so significant that a ball of flames shot out the back of Jim’s computer. And, yes, it was plugged into a surge protector though not particularly a new one. Read more tips about surge protectors here.

You can enter the contest at Pimp Your Work by leaving a comment that responds to the question. The prize is a $25 B & N gift card.

 The German edition….

A flash mob of striking department store employees hits Stuttgart and leaves the store in chaos. What’s a flash mob? You’ll have to read the article. And how many times did it take for me to spell Stuttgart correctly? Four.

Workers at a small German computer company were fired for not smoking. Actually, they were fired for complaining about the smoke of coworkers:

“I can’t be bothered with trouble-makers,” [the owner] was quoted saying. “We’re on the phone all the time and it’s just easier to work while smoking. Everyone picks on smokers these days. It’s time for revenge. I’m only going to hire smokers from now on.”

A restaurant review in Philadelphia has spurred a debate about the ethics of tipping. Or perhaps it’s about the ethics of a restaurant paying above what it has to in order to confiscate tips from its employees. It claims to be using the tips for remodeling. And, it’s important to note that customers don’t know that the tip doesn’t go to the server.

This is kind of a fun graphic from Good Magazine. You can see that most “organic” snack brands sold in big supermarkets have giant parent companies with names you’ve heard of. The great tragedy of my life occurred several years ago when I found out from a friend that Seeds of Change is really owned by M&M/Mars. Not the end of the world, but I prefer to buy from Johnny’s Seeds now. Just don’t tell me they’re owned by Halliburton. Please.

5 Useful Things You Could Do Tomorrow has some tips for being more “productive”. You probably can’t use the first one (get up earlier) right now, but as the title suggests, these tips are for tomorrow.

Here’s part of David Robinson’s of the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, take on being hired as a temporary employee:

Where you should be concerned is if you are joining a firm that has armies of long-serving temporary employees, where you see no seasonal fluctuation in hiring. Clearly, this is bad HR practice as it sets up two groups of people within one company, the “haves” and the “have-nots.” The excessive use of temporary workers comes up where management has given existing workers pay or benefits that are too high compared with comparable firms in the same industry. Afraid of locking in to high labor costs, they begin hiring more and more temporary workers on lower salary scales and reduced benefits in an attempt to get their costs into line. This invariably leads to an unpleasant work environment where people doing the same work are paid unequally.

When you hear that government-funded research involved covering backyards of low-income black families in Baltimore with sludge to check how it interacted with lead, you just have to wonder who wasn’t paying attention to Tuskegee.

“Our hearing will include an investigation of the risks associated with application of sludge in neighborhoods as reportedly took place in Baltimore,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the committee’s chairman.

The head of the Maryland chapter of the NAACP asked Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler to investigate the circumstances of the research and whether participants in the Baltimore study gave informed consent.

“These experiments harken back to the infamous Tuskegee experiments” in which syphilis treatment was denied to black men in order to study the illness, Gerald Stansbury, president of the Maryland Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said in letter to Gansler.

Researchers said the families were assured the sludge was safe, but were not told that there have been some health concerns over the use of sludge.

These families were told that the sludge was safe. It is not. It is made from sewage and industrial waste and contains heavy minerals. That doesn’t sound like the families gave informed consent to me.  More disgusting (and I don’t mean the sludge) details here.

The New York Times has a little informal series here: seemingly high paying prestigious jobs that actually suck. I recall one on doctors and lawyers, and now here’s one on pilots. Being a commercial pilot sucks in some of the same ways being a doctor or lawyer does, mainly in that you enter the profession with an enormous debt load, don’t earn very much necessarily as you begin (perhaps lawyer are the exception here) and end up with some of the worse assignments. If you suffer and persevere, it gets better. Eventually.

There’s some new research from the Barna Institute on tithing. Not too many surprises here. The more conservative, evangelical, regular Bible-reader/church attender you are, the more you give to your church approaching the 10% of your income, which is the formal definition used here for tithing.

And because it is Barna, there are some strange turns of phrase within the article:

Strangely, tithing is a Jewish practice….

Strangely it’s Jewish! Oh my God! Like…um…Jesus….