My morning writing partner and I are using prompts since recently we seem to spend a lot of time staring at the blank screen . Here’s our morning prompt from Writer’s Digest.

Look around the room and pick an object. Write one paragraph describing the object in full detail and a second paragraph explaining where it came from.

Here’s mine from this morning. Feel free to play along, if you’d like, with what’s in your workplace. You can post in comments. Every object has a story:

In my office, there is a tropical tree with four brown leaves; I’m tempted to remove them as I type. There. Now they’re gone. Talk about compulsive. I’m not sure what sort of tropical plant it is. It has a bamboo-like stalk, and wide dark green leaves. I’ve seen this tree in restaurants and office buildings. 
 
The tree used to be in my former boss’s enormous corner office. At that point, most of the leaves were brown because we had someone whose job it was to water plants and he overwatered everything as that was his entire job. Really. My boss would trim the brown away with scissors, a practice I found a bit creepy (but she was also an editor, so trimming is really what we do). While she was out of town at her mother’s funeral, our nonprofit was evicted and I took her plant home rather than leaving it in the office to die. I asked her if she wanted it when she returned, but a dying plant after having her mother die wasn’t what she wanted. Four years later, the tropical tree lives in the desert and is still alive.

Airline Passenger Complaints Soaring. In fact there are 60% more complaints than last year. US Airways had the most, and Southwest had the least.

Yes, it is from page 6 of the New York Post, which I, regretfully, read, but I thought this was sort of a classic case of a boss having an (untreated) mental illness that had a great effect on everyone. This is supposedly text from an email sent from the head of Prada to all corporate employees at the 51st street offices:

Desk and work surfaces should be clean and uncluttered. Pictures, calendars, etc. should not be taped to cubicle/office walls. Pets may not be brought to the corporate office or the store. For corporate employees, all coats should be hung in the appropriate coatroom and not kept in offices or hung over cubicle walls. Window shades should be even (either completely up or completely down) throughout one side of the floor. Items may not be placed on the window sills … In addition, it is important to take a break from your workday and enjoy your lunch. Therefore, absent extenuating circumstances, lunch may not be eaten at your desk.” The memo ends with a warning that violators “may be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment.” 

Some requests seem semi-all right. Some requests seem pretty wacky to me, but then I lack style, especially Prada style. I especially like the threat at the end.

There more than half a million realtors in California, but their numbers are declining in the recession as they shift careers. Former realtor Jaime Gutierrez now drives a cab.:

Gutierrez, the cab driver, said he’s glad he had his first career to fall back on. Now, in addition to driving his cab, he has a new second job: a substitute teacher.

He said he figures there will always be a need for subs, even if it doesn’t pay as well as real estate.

“My income level did double,” Gutierrez said of his time in real estate. “But there was a lot of hang time in between paychecks. I was fortunate to have another job to do at nights and weekends to keep the bills paid.”

As with other kinds of independent contracting, the time between starting the work and getting paid can be the biggest challenge to surviving the profession.

I love stories like this perhaps a bit too much for my own good.

David Sneath has worked at a Ford Motor Co. parts warehouse for 34 years, but it didn’t take him any time at all to walk out once he discovered he had won a $136 million Mega Millions jackpot.

“I yelled to the boss, ‘I’m out of here,’” Sneath said Thursday after going to state lottery headquarters in downtown Lansing to pick up his first $1 million check.

He plans to buy a cottage on the lake and a new fishing boat. Possibly get laser surgery for his vision. Maybe go back to school and finish his degree. He’s 60 years old.

Apparently I missed this etiquette lesson at some point, because I had to train myself not to point at others, and I still do occasionally. Here’s some advice for dealing with a vice-president who points. Repeatedly. At everyone.

Or not. It’s hard to tell in the article.

Kelly Services case goes to jury describes an interesting case in terms of workplace rights and religious affiliation. An employee at Kelly Services claims she was not promoted because she was not part of a religious group to which other Kelly Services employees belonged.

Some summary from attorneys:

“We live in a culture of blame, don’t we?” asked Kelly Services attorney E. Joseph Connaughton. “The coffee’s too hot, there’s a lawsuit. Our kid doesn’t make the sports team, there’s a lawsuit.”

“We have juries who can say, ‘Enough is enough,’” Connaughton continued, asking jurors during his closing argument Thursday in the federal court case in Sacramento to find that Nevada City resident Noyes, 59, was dealt with fairly at work by her office manager, then a member of the Yuba County-based Fellowship.

Attorney M. Catherine Jones, representing Noyes, said her client should have been promoted to software development manager and that Kelly Services “needs to be punished” for its indifference to Noyes workplace rights. Jones said Fellowship members were favored in hiring, promotion and pay at the Nevada City office where Noyes worked.

In Blue Collar, Bare Cupboard, author Sasha Abramsky describes life for the working poor in communities outside of Eugene, Oregon. What was always called “hungry” by the government has now been categorized as having “very low food security”:

In 2006, the USDA instructed government agencies to no longer refer to this group as being hungry. The change came about after a Committee on National Statistics of the National Academies reported it could not conclusively determine whether people who couldn’t afford to buy food actually experienced “discomfort, illness, weakness or pain that goes beyond the usual uneasy sensation.”

As a result, the 11 million Americans who cannot afford to stock their houses with food are now classfied as experiencing “very low food security.”

In the decades since the Great Depression of the 1930s, this category would have been made up largely of the long-term unemployed, the homeless, perhaps the mentally ill and other marginalized groups.

These days, however, increasingly it is the working poor—whose wages have stagnated, whose cost of living has gone up with higher gas, food and healthcare expenses, and whose time is now spent standing in line at food banks.

 Scott mentioned giving to Friends of the World Food Program. I would add (an addition, mind you, not substitution) your local food pantry to the list.

Via Heart Happy

Cashback tells the story of how an art student/supermarket worker grieves for the loss of his girlfriend by learning how to stop time. How? We don’t know. Why? It seems to bring out the beauty in all things, especially the women he strips while they are unaware of stopped time while shopping at the supermarket where he works. But, no, it’s not exploitative; he’s “admiring their beauty.”  If you are gagging, that is the appropriate response.

Still, the film is genuinely beautiful, but sort of seems like watching a Sophia Coppola film in which you wish there was some actual substance behind the slick shots.

If you want to see a good drama that takes place in a supermarket, see 10 Items or Less. It’s much much much better and more satisfying without stripping women against their will to “admire their beauty.” That offended me.

It seems like a great idea when a company offers to pay your relocation expenses. Except if you find that your job is awful right away (as happened to a friend) or you find a much better new job soon. If you quit before the time allotted by HR, you’ll have to pay back your relocation costs as this guy found out—to the tune of 20K. Yikes.

There’s a fun article in the LA Times about LA’s Brewery district, which is an industrial area inhabited by artists and gardeners who have literally survived (and thrived) by rescuing plants to create an oasis in which to create art. There’s also a slideshow of art and plants and homes.

When you think of a service dog, you may think of a dog helping a visually impaired person to navigate. Or perhaps a seizure alert dog. However, there are a number of other ways in which dogs can perform as service dogs including Psychiatric Service Dogs for people with Major Depressive Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Autism, Anxiety Disorder, and Schizophrenia. I mention this after coming across the story of Wal-Mart kicking out a service dog-in-training (Why is Wal-Mart always the non-example of decent behavior? Why?) and remembering a story of a fellow writer in workshop regarding how her service dog often gets her kicked out of businesses because she doesn’t look obviously blind.

 You can read a story about the need for and about the work of psychiatric service dogs here.

Finding Health Insurance if You Are Self-Employed is an article with a number of resources for the self-employed. You know the problem, right? For self-employed people, health insurance costs more and covers a lot less.

Notes from an Intergenerational Conversation is a brief chat between a Gen X author and Gen Y author, and covers any number of workplace issues including, What’s up with Gen Y’s sense of entitlement? and Why won’t Gen X mentor Gen Y?

A Marked Increase in the Number of Pregnancy Discrimination claims analyzes the situation from a legal and historical point of view.