I’m sure you’ve been sitting there in front of your computer, finger twitching on the mouse button, reloading, reloading, reloading, waiting for your Weird Workplace News fix. Me? I was eating cheese and crackers and watching Kitchen Nightmares. Having seen my fill of rotting food and angry customers, I am now ready to give you what you need.
And what you need is a Gordon Ramsay theme! Wooo!
I’m working on a series of posts about women and group behavior, particularly in the workplace, but I thought I could start with a recent incident involving co-rumination.
I’m in an online poetry group with a group of female poets most of whom I know in person. I love the group. It gets me up in the morning. Some months we participate in an early morning exercise in which we write one poem a day, post it in a confidential place, and then critique the work of others. Oftentimes a larger discussion arises out of the poem.
A few days ago, I posted a poem about an incident that affected me at work (I’m working on a collection of work poems). Briefy, a client asked for work, then didn’t respond to my query about deadlines, I worked on the project anyway anticipating a close deadline, and then they decided not to hire me. Fine. I wrote a poem and moved on.
However, posting the poem on-line prompted all sorts of concern for my well-being. Was I standing up for myself? I should be paid for my time! I should be taken to lunch! And flowers! How dare they do this to me! I should drop the client immediately! And to clarify, not everyone said all of this, but this was the sum total of the message I heard.
I came away both flattered, flustered, and feeling as if I wasn’t completely understood. In business, periodically this sort of thing happens. It’s not a lot of money. It’s not a lot of time. And I want to keep the client because they’ve sent me loads of other work. But the discussions prompted by my poem simply continued in this fashion leaving me distressed.
So when I came across Girl Talk Has Its Limits this morning, I read it with great interest (setting aside the fact that I’m annoyed that this article is in Fashion & Style—where the NYT places all things woman—nice):
But recently female friendship and girl talk, particularly among adolescents, has drawn growing interest from psychologists and researchers examining the question of how much talking is too much talking. Some studies have found that excessive talking about problems can contribute to emotional difficulties, including anxiety and depression.
The term researchers use is “co-rumination” to describe frequently or obsessively discussing the same problem. The behavior is typical among teens — Why didn’t he call? Should I break up with him? And, psychologists say, it has intensified significantly with e-mail, text messaging, instant messaging and Facebook. And in certain cases it can spin into a potentially contagious and unhealthy emotional angst, experts say.
So while support and empathy may be what young women seek from one another in these conversations (and may be what they find at first), the discussions also seem to spiral into much larger obsessive discusions about what is right and what should be done, much like with my poetry discussion among adult women.
Toby Sitnick, a Brooklyn psychologist who works with adolescent girls, said therapists had also tried to move away from focusing on problems to focusing on good experiences and solutions.
“There are quite a few adolescent girls who have high levels of obsessive thinking to begin with,” Dr. Sitnick said. “They often do this with their mothers as well. It certainly does seem to be a female behavior, and grown women do it, too, ruminating about certain issues and experiences. It can become a mutual complaint society.”
Rumination and co-rumination don’t seem bad in and of themselves (and I’m certainly not suggesting that thinking and talking are bad), but I’m struck by how much of the co-ruminating with the poets distressed me when I wasn’t previously distressed.
I’ll write about this some more in reference to Sarah Palin. But now I need to get back to work.
Oh, man. More abuse of the adjunct professors:
At San Antonio College, some of those extra courses are coming with an unusual stipulation. Adjuncts are being encouraged to take on extra courses, as the institution can’t afford to hire as many full timers as it would like. But San Antonio also has rules — providing benefits and higher base pay — to those who teach 12 credits or more. What to do? The college is asking some part timers to take on the extra courses that bring their total to 12 or beyond, but then to agree in writing to pretend that they aren’t teaching 12 credits.
I wonder if San Antonio College can be shamed into doing the right thing.
So here’s a good example of how “productivity” data can be used badly and lead to poor morale. In 12 Confessions of a Home Mortgage Collector, we learn that Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Collectors were supposed to be on the phone with clients 98% of the time as that seems to be how “productivity” was rated. But, as we all know, simply being on the phone with a client does not mean you are productive (and read the other 11 tips, and you’ll see how non-productive any phone call to Wells Fargo can be).
Treehugger has perhaps the best suggestion for your used yellow pages: a business card holder.
Now if we could just stop the yellow pages from arriving in the first place…I think we get three or four competing ones thrown at our gate on a regular basis.
With big life events, it often seems that there is a spending spree that ensues. And so it goes with going to college. Greening Your Dorm Room is a helpful introduction to avoiding some of the spending pitfalls. Plants rather than air fresheners, water filters rather than bottled water. You get the idea.
Any other ideas for greening a dorm room (or new apartment) for that matter?
I’m not sure where all this hugging in the workplace came from, but I have noticed that in the last couple of places I’ve worked as a consultant, there have been hugs. Particularly at the end of the gig. And while I appreciate physical affection, it just feels…not so good to me. Sorta fake. These folks aren’t my friends. They employ me. They can fire me.
To Have (as a Running Mate) and Hold (Politely) explores the territory of colleagues hugging one another in the workplace, using the example of John McCain and Sarah Palin.
And some etiquette experts weighed in:
“He’s hugging her to show the world that he’s all for her, and protecting her, but she doesn’t need that,” said Letitia Baldrige, the manners authority and former White House social secretary to Jacqueline Kennedy.
As a general rule, Ms. Baldrige recommends a warm, firm handshake between male and female corporate executives and finds embarrassing “all this fake hugging that goes on when people greet each other on television.”
But for Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin, Ms. Baldrige said, “it’s O.K., because we accept anything now.”
Ann Marie Sabath, the founder of At Ease Inc., a business etiquette training firm, deemed the hugging “perfectly fine” and said that once Mr. McCain, the top rooster in the pecking order, started the hugging, Ms. Palin was welcome to initiate a hug with him. “It’s a form of professional endearment,” she said. “Getting closer than two arms’ length when you know the other person says, ‘I respect you, we have a comfort level, we have a professional bond.’
So for the first time I appear to agree with Letitia Baldrige. Hmmm.
Of course, there are some issues of power here too, especially if you follow these rules about how hugs are initiated, but the article doesn’t really explore that. Perhaps that’s why I’m uncomfortable with them (not between friends, mind you, just colleagues who are not particularly friends).
My problem today is with too little focus, unlike the article below. I’m a crankypants. I don’t wanna wait another day for Spore. I am currently debating the ethics of pirating it. Tropical Storm Hanna is coming. There is no chocolate in the house. And why the hell is my computer so slow?
Anyway since I’m unfocused, I present to you a series of links in no particular order and with no categorization. Feel free to draw your own connections.
There’s a good article in the Boston Globe on the importance of daydreaming to creative thinking, which includes this anecdote:
ON A SUNDAY morning in 1974, Arthur Fry sat in the front pews of a Presbyterian church in north St. Paul, Minn. An engineer at 3M, Fry was also a singer in the church choir. He had gotten into the habit of inserting little scraps of paper into his choir book, so that he could quickly find the right hymns during the service. The problem, however, was that the papers would often fall out, causing Fry to lose his place.
But then, while listening to the Sunday sermon, Fry started to daydream. Instead of focusing on the pastor’s words, he began to mull over his bookmark problem. “It was during the sermon,” Fry remembers, “that I first thought, ‘What I really need is a little bookmark that will stick to the paper but will not tear the paper when I remove it.’ ” That errant thought - the byproduct of a wandering mind - would later become the yellow Post-it note, one of the most successful office products of all time.
Hey, and it happened in church! Keep in mind that not only is the actual daydream important, but being able to take note of the daydream is key as Fry was able to.
Y’all need to lay off Sarah Palin with the mothering critiques. You’re hurting yourselves. You’re hurting the chances for Obama in the fall. And you’re looking mighty petty, silly, and alienating many people. Not to mention I’ve been frothing at the mouth for several days in support of Palin, which is the last place I thought I would be.
You’ve probably seen enough on the news and Internet to know you can’t always believe what you read. And more importantly, you can’t say feminism is all about choices and then attack a person who makes choices you don’t agree with. You just can’t.
Attack the vetting process. Attack the alleged ethics violations. Attack the oil connections and pork barrel projects and the bridge to nowhere opinion swap. But I’d lay off any attacks on your perceptions of the mothering violations (e.g., she didn’t go the hospital at the appropriate time, she returned to work too soon after having a baby, she’s not breastfeeding, she works too much to be a good mom, she’s not providing appropriate care for a special needs baby, and her kid got pregnant and this signifies something).
As someone who studies issues of women in the workplace, trust me: this is not the path you want to travel.
One of the most popular posts on this blog was Average Raise? in which I simply asked readers what their raises looked like. Seems like something lots of people try to find out by using google to compare their raises to averages.
When I’ve been employed by someone, I think my raise always fell in between 3-5%, which was sort of standard wherever I worked. It looks like that’s still standard:
A study released Tuesday by Hewitt Associates, a human resources consulting firm, found base pay will rise by 3.8 percent in 2009, marking the seventh consecutive year of flat growth.
So it looks like your raise is not going to be big in 2009. But you probably already knew that. You may be able to earn more as merit or performance pay though. Employers tend to like that sort of bonus because it’s a one time thing.
James Miller makes some excellent arguments for why assistant professors should be paid more than tenured professors (not a lot more, mind you, just a bit):
Organizations often pay high salaries to (1) attract new employees, (2) keep existing employees, (3) compensate workers for unpleasant working conditions and (4) compensate workers for taking on risks. These four criteria support colleges giving relatively higher salaries to assistant professors.
Some tips from Surviving the Post-Vacation Blues:
Throw a party. “I would suggest that offices have post-vacation office parties that allow people to show photos from their vacations and talk about their vacations, and thus bring some of their vacation spirit back to work with them,” advises Virginia Commonwealth’s Humphrey. “For example, if some of the people went at beach locations, they could have beach parties, with beach blankets, etc. More importantly, if companies use good motivational principles throughout the year, then employees shouldn’t feel too blue about coming back to work.” ? Step away from the e-mail. You know your e-mail inbox is going to be overflowing, so take time before you jump in, recommends workplace communications trainer Laurent Duperval. “Most people receive too much e-mail every day, and if the first thing you see upon your return is that you have 328 e-mails waiting, that’s a good recipe for the blues,” she says. Pamper yourself. “Schedule a meal at a fabulous restaurant for when you return. Ditto for a spa, concert or whatever else turns you on,” says Adrian Miller, a sales training expert. Get a jump on work. While it might sound counterintuitive, “some people find it helpful to go into the office early on their first day back, or even on the night before their first day back, in order to clear out their inbox,” says Joseph Weiner, chief of consultation psychiatry at North Shore University Hospital. Bring a bit of sand to the office. Photos of your vacation or souvenirs are a great way to relive the fun you had. “Good feelings aren’t over because vacation has ended. You can conjure up a good memory anytime you like,” notes Debbie Mandel, author of the upcoming book, “Addicted to Stress: A Woman’s 7-Step Program to Reclaim Joy and Spontaneity in Life.”
Would these help? I’m not particularly into the party and photos idea. Not everyone takes a vacation (and not everyone deserves to see your photos!).
Rather than say critiquing Sarah Palin or her daughter’s pregnancy or abstinence-only education, I offer this via Miss Cellania.