Oh, no one ever seems to be the right temperature with air conditioning on in the office.

I am rapidly reaching the age of irrelevance for women. But I don’t worry. It happens to men too. They just aren’t encouraged to stick poison in their faces. This video starring Sarah Haskins on the marketing of Botox is nicely paired with a disturbing piece from the Wall Street Journal on Botoxing Your Resume (removing the experience!).

I have filed this under “tips”, but that’s mostly a joke.

Scott Sidwell was fired from an investment firm. He used yahoo email at work. He forgot to log out. He alleges that the company that fired him read his email once he had been fired, including emails between him and his attorney discussing strategies for suing the former employer.

This story is just loaded with the sort of stuff that makes me paranoid at work. For example, we assume that an employer can monitor all of our work email all of the time, right? We know this. Often we sign something acknowledging that we know. It’s far murkier legally in terms of whether an employer can monitor your web-based email (yahoo, gmail, hotmail). I would assume that anything that shows up on screen is fair game, but apparently many employeees consider this stuff secret.

Here’s a summary of the legal stuff:

The law governing e-mail communications is still evolving. Generally, courts have found that employers can monitor employees’ e-mail communications on company computers. But courts have also recognized greater privacy protection for e-mail messages sent using personal, Web-based e-mail accounts. For example, this month a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in California ruled that personal text messages sent on two-way pagers provided to police officers in Ontario, Calif., were protected from the department.

Mr. Sidell’s case gives the courts an opportunity to address other questions, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. “This case raises a lot of new issues that reflect the changing place of e-mail in the work place,” Mr. Rotenberg said. “We have Web-based e-mail, which is not directly under the control of the employer.”

In addition to concerns about privacy in the workplace, Mr. Sidell’s claim involves communications between a lawyer and a client. “It’s a nice set of factors that are all compacted into this,” said Matt Zimmerman, senior staff attorney in the San Francisco office of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit civil liberties organization that seeks to protect privacy rights online.

An employer’s ability to read messages worries office workers everywhere, not least because e-mail messages have figured in criminal cases like the one brought last week against two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers. People disclose all manner of personal information in e-mail messages, in the expectation — perhaps unfounded — that what they type will remain confidential.

So I use Firefox, and I’ve developed a system of tagging my links that I’m still kind of working out the kinks on. What’s the only tag that has remained constant this whole time?

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California’s Labor Commission fined a business for not providing “reasonable accomodation” for a worker who was breastfeeding. This is the first fine of its kind in California:

The commission cited International Security Services Inc., a private security firm, after investigating a complaint by one of its employees.

The woman, who was not named in a press release, said she had to express breast milk in a room monitored by security cameras and didn’t get the time she needed.

The labor commission said it was was the first time a company had run afoul of a 2001 state law requiring employers to give workers who are breast feeding privacy and a reasonable amount of time to express the milk.

Seriously? The room had cameras? I understand it was a “security firm”, but cameras? Was that to ensure she wasn’t expressing secrets as well as milk?

I’m thinking I need a “creepy workplace practices” category between this post and the next post that I’m writing.

I have this great link from Shelby about British banning of corporate-speak, and I’ve been trying to remember my favorite phrase of corporate-speak to use as an example. Finally, after a week of trying to retrieve a blocked memory, it is….

 SURFACE ASSUMPTIONS

This is a phrase that I was repeatedly told to use in professional development context (for adults) as a rule for workshop participants to follow. Now, it’s not an adjective and a noun as it might seem (and read). It’s not about assumptions that are on the surface. It’s intended to be a verb and a noun.

My gripes: First of all, it’s a peculiar use of “surface” as a verb. I surface, you surface, he/she surfaces. Whatever. And it’s in the imperative. Surface! Surface! Surface! And second of all, if something is really and truly an  assumption, it’s not going to “surface” all that easily just because the rule is written in the imperative. Surface assumptions! Surface! Oh, wait, wait, my assumptions are surfacing…..no, they’re not. They’re being deeply held on to by my psyche. Sorry.

This particular phrasing drove me crazy throughout the summer of 2006, not one of the workshop participants understood it, and every time I tried to bring up that it didn’t really make sense, I was told I was wrong. But the people who loved the phrase, who needed it used….they were all lovely people. They just didn’t understand that this phrase is not particularly comprehensible to others.

So onward to the banning of buzzwords in British bureaucracy:

British bureaucrats have been warned: no more synergies, stakeholders or sustainable communities.

The body that represents the country’s local authorities has told its members to stop using management buzzwords, saying they confuse people and prevent residents from understanding what local governments do.

The Local Government Association, whose members include hundreds of district, town and county councils in England and Wales, on Friday sent out a list of 100 “non-words” that it said officials should avoid if they want to be understood.

The list includes the popular but vague term “empowerment;” “coterminosity,” a situation in which two organizations oversee the same geographical area; and “synergies,” combinations in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Officials were told to ditch the term “revenue stream” for income, as well as the imprecise “sustainable communities.” The association also said councils should stop referring to local residents as “customers” or “stakeholders.”

And there you have it. The problem with corporate jargon and buzzwords is that these words obscure the actual meaning. Most good writing tries not to do that.

Oh, I do enjoy passive-aggressive notes in the workplaces. Five from record stores employees are especially amusing. No more than 2 questions! Such a window into the workplace.

When I spent time in a cube, I was always trying to sneak a little reading time in (when I was done with work! I swear! I swear!). I just came across Read at Work, which disguises every poem, short story, or novel in a work-appropriate Windows environment. No one will ever know. Make sure you open some of the stories in their Powerpoint versions. Hilarious.

I like the idea of happy hour with other employees, presuming that I like the job that I do and my fellow coworkers (I have a general Only Drink With People You Like Policy). I particularly liked (ahem…needed…) happy hour when I taught high school.

Here’s some recent research that the Workplace Prof Blog found about Employee Happy Hour Tendencies:

Twenty-one percent of U.S. workers attend happy hours with their co-workers, according to survey results released June 24 by Careerbuilder.com, a job-search Web site. Among survey respondents who said they attended happy hours, nearly one-fourth said they do so at least once a month. A large majority of respondents who attended happy hours–85 percent–said doing so “did not help them get closer to someone higher up or land a better position in the company,” but 21 percent of happy hour attendees said the events were “good for networking.”

Asked why they attended happy hours, most workers reported going in order to “bond” with co-workers (82 percent), while 20 percent of respondents cited networking opportunities. Another 15 percent said they attend happy hour in order to “hear the latest office gossip,” and 13 percent said they go because they feel obligated to do so.

Do you attend? Do you feel pressured to attend? In any case, cheers! It’s almost Friday.

14% of companies in the United States offered back up care in 2006, but 74% of Human Resources Departments report being interested in offering it.

What is back up care? It’s child care or elder care for an employer’s dependents in case of emergencies (e.g., a baby sitter that doesn’t show up, a sick kid that needs to go home from school immediately, an elder care aide who cancels).

“When we’re concerned about our loved ones, we’re not focusing on our jobs. And I think most people understand that we’re all like that,” said Marilyn Lagerman, chief human resources officer for Milwaukee-based Foley & Lardner, also a Work Options Group client, which has more than 2,500 employees in 22 law offices worldwide. “So we really respect people’s commitments and concern for their families and their loved ones, and we think backup care is a way that we can demonstrate this to the firm - that we care about them not only as employees but we care about them as individuals.”

Read Back Up Care is a Perk that Helps Workers, Employers for more details on the success of these sorts of back up care programs.

From CNN/CareerBuilder’s list:

 1. I hated my last boss.

2. I don’t know anything about the company.

3. No, I don’t have any questions for you.

4. I’m going to need to take these days off.

5. How long until I get a promotion?

6. Are you an active member in your church?

7. As Lady MacBeth put it….

8. And another thing I hate….

I’m sure that none of us said any of these things….

It’s been my experience that many workers in the United States don’t know they are employed “at-will”. That means that you can be fired for a good reason, and you can be fired for no reason at all. Now there are exceptions, such as union employees, and people who are members of protected classes, but many of us are “at-will” employees and don’t know it:

“Most workers in the private sector don’t understand that, unless they live in Montana and Arizona, their job is at-will,” Paul Secunda, an assistant professor of law at the University of Mississippi, told Yahoo! HotJobs. “At-will means an employee can be fired for good cause or no cause at all,” Secunda said.

Federal job protections include gender, race, religion, and national origin, as well as disability. “Some state laws forbid discrimination on other bases, including sexual orientation, or status as a smoker,” said Rick Bales, a professor at Northern Kentucky University/Chase College of Law. Smokers in the tobacco-growing state of Kentucky, for example, are safe from termination, he said.

For more on the sorts of behaviors that can get you fired, check out 5 Lifestyle Activities that Can Get You Fired.

Hello everybody! Happy First Day of Summer to you all. Though, for us east coasters, summer started last week with that terrible heat wave. I have to say, I do miss the California summers. This is because I did not live in the desert as Ms T does.

Anyway, on with the show.

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Steve Roesler takes on the myth of intelligence in all areas in But She’s So Intelligent! Generally speaking, the myth is that we assume that because a person is really spectacular in one area of her life (great sermons, perhaps, or great sales or great writing, or great interpersonal skills), we assume that she is really spectacular all over and are shocked to find out that people hate her, resent her, or don’t want to work with her.

Roesler offers these scenarios as examples:

Global Operations Director who hits all of the monetary goals but no one wants to work with her. They don’t trust her because she withholds information and doesn’t include other managers in decisions that impact how they do their work.

Brilliant Vice President of Finance who can’t conduct meetings, doesn’t like to plan, and knows more ways to help the company earn money on its money than its bankers do. Up for promotion for top job. Really doesn’t want it. People love working with him because they learn from him. He wants to continue developing investment methods and models.

Director of Regulatory Compliance. No one explains new (regulated) products to the government better than this guy. So what’s the problem? To the company it means the difference between a commercial product or nothing new to sell. His direct reports described their feelings toward him as “hate” (never a real good sign). They say he is a “bully,” “condescending,” and “has no patience with anyone he thinks is less intelligent than him.” When offered the possibility of being a high-level individual contributor, the director digs in his heels and says, “No. I want to be a manager.”

Those all seemed pretty darn familiar to me from time in corporate and non-profit life. He also offers five tips for dealing with these “intelligent” folks.

Not that I needed another reason to pay cash and avoid the credit card entirely, but apparently one credit card company will penalize you for the types of places you use your card, including marriage counseling:

 The allegations, in part, focus on CompuCredit’s Aspire Visa, a subprime credit card for risky borrowers. The FTC claims that CompuCredit didn’t properly disclose that it monitored spending and cut credit lines if consumers used their cards at certain places. Among them: tire and retreading shops, massage parlors, bars, billiard halls, and marriage counseling offices. “The company touted that cardholders could use their credit cards anywhere,” says J. Reilly Dolan, assistant director for financial practices at the FTC. “What they didn’t say was that you could be punished for specific kinds of purchases.” The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is also seeking $200 million in penalties from CompuCredit in the matter.

Very creepy. And what is disturbing is that often trends like this start in subprime markets before they are picked up by the rest. I’ve had my own credit card denied at Sears while attempting to purchase a circular saw blade, supposedly because it was outside of my consumer profile of stores I shopped at. Nice. Again, not that I needed another reason to pay cash….

I suppose we all knew that the amount of caffeine in regular and decaf varied, right? But according to Consumer Reports, there can be a huge range in terms of how much caffeine is in both types:

There are no laws about the level of caffeine in brewed decaffeinated coffee in brewed. A cup of regular coffee is typically considered to have about 100 milligrams.

More than half of our decafs had less than 5 mg of caffeine, but some had quite a bit more. One of the six cups from Dunkin’ Donuts had 32 mg; one from Seattle’s Best had 29 mg; and one from Starbucks had 21 mg. Levels of caffeine in the decaffeinated coffees we tested varied within chains, but in our sample, McDonald’s decaf consistently had less than 5 mg.

Our shoppers bought caffeinated coffee at the same chains, and we found a surprise there, too. Caffeine per cup ranged from 58 mg to 281 mg, providing less or more of a java jolt than you might expect.

I’ve seen a lot of shitty copywriting/copyediting jobs. I’ve even interviewed for a couple.

And all I can say about this one is, yes, it’s $18/hour, and you get to edit a variety of materials, but you double as a security guard. Here’s a little excerpt in which your prospective employer spins how cool it is to work evenings as a security guard/copyeditor/copywriter:

The twist: while you are writing copy you will also fill the role of security guard, working 6:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday. We will buy your uniform. You won’t carry a gun. Applicants must be able to pass a drug screen as well as a criminal background check. The security guard spends most of the shift seated at the reception desk, and there will be very minimal security duties. Practically the entire shift you will be able to focus on writing copy – you’ll just happen to be wearing a uniform.

You just happen to be wearing a uniform!!! I’m abusing the exclamation point because I think that’s such an outrageous combination of duties. I’m trying to imagine exactly how this came about. “Maybe we should fire the security guard. He doesn’t do much. Security isn’t really that important And then we can have the copywriter/copyeditor sit at his desk! Yes!”

Read the full ad in all its outrageousness here.

Oh, man, a real lay-off story, and the timing couldn’t be worse.

$700,000 verdict gives chaperones pause. Indeed.

In my early twenties, I worked for a TRIO program, which took low-income, first-generation students (to consider college) on college trips.  I took many overnight visits with students around New Mexico and Colorado, arranging everything from bus transportation to chaperones to specialized college tours. In retrospect, it was a really tough job.

Part of the reason it was so tough was that I was essentially responsible for lots of other people’s children while on the trip, and liable for their safety. Now I thought about that, but not deeply enough. I didn’t have a homeowner’s insurance policy with personal liability insurance, and I don’t know if my employer did. My only insurance was that I stayed up for all night, sitting outside the kids’ dorm rooms reading the paper, mostly to make sure that they weren’t planning midnight excursions or drinking in their rooms. I would never take that sort of risk now, which doesn’t mean that it wasn’t an important job. Just that I would want some protection.

Many small non-profit groups do not have liability insurance and are great risk of being sued if something goes wrong, particularly on a school trip. In the case I opened with, a chaperone was sued for the death of one of the cheerleaders she accompanied to Hawaii to the tune of $700,000. The cheerleader was 18, and had been drinking within hours of arriving in Hawaii. This doesn’t particularly blame the cheerleader or the chaperone, but if you chaperone, consider asking about liability insurance from your organization or your homeowner’s policy in order to protect yourself.

I think she’s hilarious.

File this under “Conversations I can’t believe we’re still having.”

Apparently there are dads that stay at home withe kids. Shocking, I know, because it’s not normal! They’re supposed to be out shooting things (at least metaphorically)!

Now normally I try not to post self-evident articles, but there were some survival tips for dads who stay at home, and how to make it successful:

Those who are most happy in their new roles have strong support from friends and kin, along with confidence in their parenting skills and in their masculinity. That’s the finding from a new series of studies completed this year by psychologist Aaron Rochlen and his colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin.

“These few key factors essentially predict how well the adjustment process goes,” both in terms of the dads’ happiness in their marriage and as individuals, says Rochlen, an associate psychology professor who estimates there are roughly 2 million stay-at-home dads.

The rest of the article is fairly annoying, from a dad who had to visit a sports bar to reclaim his masculinity at the end of the day to a dad who had to overcome repulsion of stinky diapers.