Today’s theme is: Keystone Cops!
I now know that the exact value of a police hat in New Zealand is $78.17. And that the man would not have stolen them if he was sober. Natch.
For the billionth time, if you are going to stage some sort of mock workplace violence as part of a joke, drill, or in this case class lesson, please warn people first, because it is not the panicking people who call police that are the idiots in this situation.
I am completely angered by this story of a nurse who was handcuffed for following procedure. A police officer asked her to draw blood as part of a sobriety check. When she stated that the alleged drunk needed to be admitted first, she was handcuffed and hauled outside.
Two more cases of cops making asses of themselves: undercover drug officers caught playing Wii during a raid, and Bagelgate.
And finally, in Florida, garbage men and other “mobile professionals” are being trained to fight crime. I’m loving the phrase “mobile professionals.”
Wow, we just started getting a torrential downpour. Time to put buckets under the leaks in my roof. Tune in next week!
Here are some tips for gracefully asking someone for her/his name when you’ve forgotten it. Here’s my favorite:
4. The “You’re brilliant!” dodge:
“Wow, you have a terrific memory. I can’t believe you remember my name from that meeting six months ago. I can’t remember the names of people I met yesterday! So of course I have to ask you your name.”
The Chronicle of Higher Ed has an interesting article about blogging as an academic on a job search. The long and short of the advice? Just don’t do it.
We all have quirks. In a traditional interview process, we try our best to stifle them, or keep them below the threshold of annoyance and distraction. The search committee is composed of humans, who know that the applicants are humans, too, who have those things to hide. It’s in your interest, as an applicant, for them to stay hidden, not laid out in exquisite detail for all the world to read. If you stick your foot in your mouth during an interview, no one will interrupt to prevent you from doing further damage. So why risk doing it many times over by blabbing away in a blog?
We’ve seen the hapless job seekers who destroy the good thing they’ve got going on paper by being so irritating in person that we can’t wait to put them back on a plane. Our blogger applicants came off reasonably well at the initial interview, but once we hung up the phone and called up their blogs, we got to know “the real them” — better than we wanted, enough to conclude we didn’t want to know more.
It’s probably worth noting that most of the blogs that candidates had were personal blogs, in which they overshared their lives.
Today, it’s all about duality.
Nudity in the workplace, two different ways:
Seems that some off-duty police officers decided to have a Chinese Firedrill (hey, I don’t make up the racist names) — naked.
On the other side of the coin, a couple is suing Walmart, where photo counter employees turned them in for having nude photos of their children taking a bath. While I totally agree that the charges were ridiculous, I wonder if they have ever heard of digital cameras and home photo printers.
Cops and Robbers:
This week I found articles about a well-dressed elderly man with an oxygen tank who robbed a bank, and a man who was impersonating a cop in order to get through traffic, and pulled over the wrong guy — the mayor.
Alternatively, I could contrast that first story with the story of an elderly man who is actually earning his keep the traditional way–as a bartender. He’s 97 years old and he plans to be there until the place closes.
Positive and Negative:
Finally, here is the story of a woman using her powers for good, and one about two women using their powers for evil. Or at least for something rude and obnoxious.
In Arguments Against ENDA, Dr. Jillian Weiss describes the arguments against transgender people in the workplace as “business necessity,” a common type of prejudice. Examples include, “It’s not me, but the customers won’t stand for it.” “I can’t have this person working for me because I’ll go out of business.” Generally, it is a way of transferring the prejudice to others in the interest of saving the business.
David Lazarus uses his column to describe some of the history and problems with employer-based healthcare:
Since the employer-based system took root during World War II as a way for businesses to cope with a government-imposed wage freeze, the deal has been fairly straightforward: Employers would offer this great benefit as a way to attract and retain workers, and workers in turn would be guaranteed affordable coverage for themselves and their families.
Your basic win-win situation.
But things have radically changed as healthcare costs continue to soar and as employers cut back on coverage, or require workers to shoulder an ever-growing share of expenses. Or both.
As a result, what was once a win-win now works primarily in employers’ favor. More than ever, their role as the provider of insurance for the vast majority of Americans serves as businesses’ most powerful tool in maintaining a stable and complacent workforce.
Clearly I’m playing with templates. You’ll just have to ride it out.
Neuroscience can contribute to better managing techniques. Here are two particularly interesting reviews of books from Psychology Today that examine “constructive feedback”:
Charles Jacobs, author of Management Rewired: Why Feedback Doesn’t Work and Other Supervisory Lessons From The Latest Brain Science, says the brain is wired to resist what is commonly termed constructive feedback, but is usually negative. When people encounter information that is in conflict with their self-image, their tendency is to change he information, rather than changing themselves. So when mangers give critical feedback to employees, the employees’ brain defense mechanism is activated because that information conflicts with what the brain remembers and knows.
Jacobs’ views are supported by management guru Aubrey C. Daniels, writing in his book, Oops! 13 Management Practices That Waste Time and Money. He cites a study by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) which found that 90% of performance appraisals are both painful and don’t work and further, produce an extremely low percentage of top performers. Modern brain research questions the validly of psychological testing, such as the Myers-Briggs test, used for employment decisions. These tests were developed long before we knew very much about how the brain processes anything.
A health care industry journalist chooses not to have health care (and he can afford it). I’ve definitely had similar thoughts. If you are self-employed and subject to recession, it’s just as seemingly risky to have health insurance as to live without it. If you become sick and are insured, you can be out of cash, and out of insurance fairly quickly.
Indian women have welcomed female-only trains to avoid harassment on the way to work:
For many years, women traveling by train sat with men, until crowding and security concerns prompted the railroad to reserve two compartments per train for women. But with trains badly overcrowded, men would break into cars for women and claim seats. Mumbai started operating two women-only trains in 1992, yet the program was never expanded. Then, with complaints rising from female passengers, Mamata Banerjee, the new minister of railways, announced the eight new Ladies Specials trains.
Possibly the Ladies Specials is not the best name for these trains.
Retroactively announced theme of the week: nice move, dumbass!
The key word of this article is the word “eventually.” As in, just how long were people watching p*rn in Walmart before somebody spoke up?
Speaking of stupid moves by employees, I am hoping this guy didn’t let a passenger drive a LIRR train on one of the days my parents were here. (Wrong train line… whew!)
Oooh! Ooooh! Another stupid move. I think we have our theme for the day. I’m going to go and update my header: When holding a safety drill in which employees will be held at gunpoint, you MIGHT want to let them in on the plan. Just a thought.
Here’s a meme I was completely unaware of. The “Lying Down Game” sounds stupid to me. And their employers agreed.
If you are employed by a public school, you probably shouldn’t cart a bus load of students over to your church to be baptized. I think that’s only okay in Texas.
Let these all serve as warnings to you. You’re welcome.
The LA Times has a photo-essay on work and school lunches the same day as the New York Times. Must be time for back to school lunch packing. Also, this seems totally disgusting to me, and I really like empanadas.
I’ve never run into a chaplain at the airport, but it sounds like a great job in community ministry.
I’ve written about Bento box lunches before because I think it’s a great way to create an artistically pleasing lunch, if that’s important to you, but today the New York Times has a slideshow here that is delicious. And look how much they are enjoyed.
I just wrote the most horrendously huge check last week to put my baby girl in daycare. That’s why it comes as absolutely no surprise to me that this woman who ran an illegal daycare was able to afford a Jaguar and a 7,600-square-foot home with an indoor swimming pool and indoor basketball court.
There’s the traditional plumber’s crack, and then there is exposing your genitals to multiple women while claiming to have burned one’s self (while fixing plumbing?)
Requiring a thumbprint from a non-customer who is trying to cash a check at your bank may sound perfectly reasonable until you encounter someone who has no arms. At which point you might want to consider having alternatives?
A Tampa Bay Rays employee planted a fake bomb at Tropicana Field. As a practical joke. We’ve seen stuff like this before but the stupidity of some people never ceases to astound me.
I have a sort of random fondness for Fritz Coleman, weatherman… but never would I believe that God wants me to harass him. But hey, her book sounds, um, fascinating.
Workers for a Harrisburg company had their health insurance premiums subtracted from their paychecks by their employer, who then did some sort of magic trick with the premiums, and did not pay the entirety.
Workers now have no health insurance (and didn’t have any for months), and are supposed to retroactively reimburse the insurer.
Somehow I doubt that is going to happen.
There is very little information in this article or photo essay to really explain Harvard’s new brand of clothing (coming soon!), but I found this T-shirt in the photo essay hilarious. Clearly someone raided my wardrobe. From 1979. And the vacant-eyed models sporting Harvard apparel are equally funny.
Everyone who freelances has a story of a client who attempts to low ball, not necessarily intentionally. Here are four potential approaches to combat this:
- The educational approach. In this approach you assume that the client really doesn’t know that the pay they are offering is too low for the type and amount of work required. Your tactic is to inform them of the proper rate for your work and refer them to a neutral site that lists average costs or pay rates for the type of project they are requesting.
- The expertise approach. This approach is particularly effective for freelancers with a lot of experience. In this approach you highlight your experience and explain why it allows you to do a better job on the project (making you worth more to the client).
- The task approach. This is often used as a follow up to one of the other approaches. Clients often assume that projects are much easier to complete than they actually are. For this approach you use the strategy of listing the actual tasks that you will perform.
- The walk-away approach. This response is typically used only when a potential client shows that they are totally unwilling to negotiate. While sometimes a client may relent on their low price if they were bluffing, be aware that this tactic usually sends a client elsewhere.
A new study reveals widespread violations of low-wage workers:
68% of more than 4,000 low-wage workers surveyed (average wage was $8.02/hour) had experienced at least one wage violation in the week prior. Wage violations included: not receiving overtime pay, not being given any breaks, having deductions illegally taken from paychecks, being forced to work past their scheduled finishing time, having their tips inappropriately garnished, and being paid less than the legal minimum wage. Critical to keep in mind as you advocate for workers’ rights: the overall quality of the the workplace correlates strongly to the likelihood of wage violations.
Dan Pallotta has a nice article on the Data of Martyrdom on the Harvard Business Blogs. In it, he makes the case that claiming psychic benefits are the only reward for nonprofit work is terribly outdated thinking:
In what can only be called an effort to maintain a culture of martyrdom, when all else fails, traditionalists argue that higher compensation offerings in the nonprofit sector will not attract better talent. This effort at argument is actually progress. They used to simply declare that it was immoral for anyone to make money in the nonprofit sector. When confronted with the notion that this might restrict progress, because higher salaries would attract leaders who can achieve greater impact for those in need, they resort to the argument that money makes no difference. People do this work out of love of humanity and receive psychic benefit in return. Money will only contaminate things, attract greedy people, and we won?t get any better impact. The world?s most urgent problems are immune to financial incentive.
And, apparently, it’s annoying enough to be fired over (but quite appealable):
The Employment Relations Authority ruled that Walker was not fairly terminated from her position after sending the emails to co-workers.
ProCare told the authority Walker - who was fired in December 2007 after two years of employment - had caused disharmony in the workplace by using block capitals, bold typeface and red text in her emailsShe had also acted provocatively in seeking to view complaints laid against her by colleagues.
But Walker said they talked about a number of emails she had sent, yet used only one in evidence. The email, which advises her team how to fill out staff claim forms, specifies a time and date highlighted in bold red, and a sentence written in capitals and highlighted in bold blue. It reads: “To ensure your staff claim is processed and paid, please do follow the below checklist.”
I’m pretty sure I’ve received emails like this (though not from this woman).