Surviving the Workday

with daily jet travel.

Question to the Governor: Governor, also global warming came up in discussions today and there have been recent reports coming out that you’re flying up and down the state as much as on a daily basis in a jet that puts out a lot of global warming emissions. So how do you reconcile your public rhetoric on global warming versus your personal lifestyle choices?

Answer from the Governer: Are you always that positive? (Laughter) What a positive guy. I explained that one already. To me it’s very important that I serve the people of California, but also at the same time that I serve my family. And so in order to do both I fly two or three times a week up here to Sacramento and fly back again so I can be at night with my family, can do the homework with the kids, can spend time with my wife and everything, which is extremely important. I promised that to them and I promised to the people of California I would take care of the job. And that’s what I do. That’s why I fly up to Sacramento and all over the state. (Applause)

It’s so helpful for the governor to mock reporters in the name of service.

Putting Some Fun Back Into 9 to 5 explores how different workplaces attempt to be more fun. Now part of this reminds me of the forced fun in The Office, which is, of course, no fun at all. And the article does a fair job of pointing out that what is fun to some of us is no fun to others. I also recall writing about an Attack Monkey, who was regarded as hilarious by some (read the comments), and not so funny by others.

Interestingly enough (to me), the notion of pranking keeps coming up:

And then there is Dr. Robert Woo, an oral surgeon of Auburn, Wash., who replaced two of his dental assistant’s teeth with implants. The woman’s family, as it happened, raised potbellied pigs, and she often talked about them with co-workers in the office.

While the patient was under anesthesia for the implants, Dr. Woo played a practical joke of sorts. He installed two bridges, which he had designed to look like boar tusks (which Dr. Woo must have thought were similar to potbellied pig tusks), and then took pictures of his sedated employee. By the time she awoke, proper new teeth were in place.

But the assistant learned what had happened when the photos surfaced at an office party.

She quit and sued, then settled out of court for $250,000.

And you’ll recall yesterday’s post on the Los Angeles Fire Department and the history of litigation related to discrimination, some of which involved pranking.

It seems important to consider empathy when pranking. How would you feel if you were medicated, fitted with pig tusks, and then photographed? Likewise, how would you feel if you were tricked into eating dog food? Not so fun.

I found an interview in Finding My Religion with parapsychology researcher Dean Radin. Radin has studied psychic phenomenon at Princeton and the University of Nevada, and has explored whether intentionally-blessed chocolate tastes better (and it does, apparently, keep that in mind when you’re cooking).

At the end of the interview, the interviewer brings up The Secret.

There has been this craze of late about “The Secret.” And I wonder if you have any thoughts on that, since a lot of the work you do relates to how our minds affect reality.

Well, craze is a good word. I mean, it’s a little overblown and embellished, but I think the general idea that intention can help either push us or pull us towards goals that we have is not a bad idea. It’s not significantly different from the power of positive thinking, nor is it too different from the effects that we see in our intentional chocolate experiment and many other experiments like that. There is something about intention that seems to be the underlying focus for a mind-matter interaction.

One reason people cringe when they hear about “The Secret” is that it suggests we have far more control over our lives than we probably do. So if you get cancer, let’s say, you should be able to cure yourself with your thinking.

It does create this sort of New Age guilt, and actually I think that the intentional effects that we see in the lab (from positive thinking) are pretty small. It’s not as if you’re in a boat without a paddle and you’re about to go over Niagara Falls — you can’t simply zoom off to the shore by wishing that it will happen. But you can, if you pay a little bit of attention beforehand, move it very slightly, and if you do it systematically you might be lucky enough to move it to a place of safety. Obviously, if you are near the falls, it’s too late.

It’s definitely too late for me! But at least I don’t suffer from New Age Guilt. I prefer the centuries old Catholic kind.

You might enjoy reading the entire interview though including an in-depth description of the intentional chocolate experiment.

I was thinking about why exactly Children are not decor sickened me so much, and think I’ve identified part of the reason. The families, as described in the article, seemed to fit into the narcissistic family model, which coincidentally relates to the book I’m reading right now, The Narcissistic Family. (more…)

It’s the last day to vote in the UU Blog Awards. You can vote for Surviving the Workday. Or not. You don’t need to be a UU to vote in the awards, just a reader.

News  Some stereotypes about women at work sound a wee bit familiar for those of us in the workplace (and watching the primary races). There’s been a huge increase in the number of discriminatory remarks in UK workplaces.  And people had some strong opinions about guns in the workplace parking lot.

Notes  Time off to vote in the United States isn’t a federal matter as much as an issue of state law. You can check your state here. And managers should pay attention to conflict in the workplace because it may be the key to preventing workplace violence.

Religion Books on Buddhism and the workplace seem especially effective because of the emphasis on impermanence.

Spirituality  Sharing information is not usually gossip, and one of the best ways to know what’s going on at work. And February is best understood as a time of transition rather than a gray gray month of despair.

If you’ve ever worried that perhaps you spend too much time at the water cooler, read Gossip is Information by Another Name:

The word “gossip” has a negative connotation, but you could also call it strategic information sharing, counseling or mentoring, said Michael Morris, a research psychologist and professor of organizational behavior at Columbia Business School who studies social cognition.

As long as the information you’re spreading is not intended to hurt another person, it can actually be good for the company. Especially during times of major change, like downsizing or layoffs, gossip can be cathartic for employees, Professor Morris said.

I wrote something similar in Gossip in the Workplace and Hildegaard and Bartholomew: Subjects of Intense Gossip.

Like many people, this is a month with which I struggle. It’s often rainy, even in Southern California. It’s often gray. And then there’s that strange faux-love holiday in the middle of it. I often wish I could just go to sleep on Ground Hog Day and wake up on Easter.

Maud Newton has a meditation on February. I’ve excerpted my favorite part:

There is in every life a February time. It stands between our time of barrenness and those of increased hope. It is not very exciting. It lacks Autumn’s glory and Spring’s festooned splendor. It is just there, a pause, a connection, a bridge between events of loss and gain, a road that leads from emptiness to fullness.

Read the complete meditation, including the Jesus-related material, here.

Ethical Consuming: Neat things from Etsy that support independent artists.

Fun: Dip Your Chip Only Once this Superbowl Sunday. And, come Monday, engage in a little freak out.

News: Legislators consider the people in Watts (but only if they are considering buying an SUV), and, speaking of taking advantage of the poor for political gain, apparently the Iraq war is now staffed by Latin America. Lovely. We were ticked off by some of the extraordinarily stupid rhetoric of second wave feminism. And helicopter parents help out their college kids. And the kids like it. Speaking of kids, talk to your kids about the workplace, including workplace safety and their rights. And, finally, companies in Japan consider divorce a reason for time-off. Makes sense to me.

Notes: The Worst Things to Say at Work (some of which seem perfectly reasonable to us). And negotiating with drunks when you’re a vintner. And we attempted to categorize Generation X and their experiences in the workplace.

Spirituality: The Mid-Life Crisis. It’s real.

I began a post on how to create rules for a small workshop or retreat based on a comment that Shelby made, but my post has stalled for a week or so. 

It seems to me that if you decide that you want to meet in a small workshop or retreat, you might want to spend the first hour discussing and deciding upon rules. The primary challenges that I’ve found are that rules can easily be too general, too numerous, or too complicated to keep track of. They can also be a laundry list of things not to do. None of these seems helpful. And, of course, you don’t want to spend hours and hours developing rules rather than actually workshopping.  

So I’d like to open it up in comments to ways that you’ve found to develop rules for group work in workshops or retreats or even larger conferences. What has worked? What has not? Have you ever shown up with a draft of rules to work from rather than starting from scratch?

Resources

Establishing Ground Rules for Groups

A while ago, ChaliceChick wrote about the mid-life crises, wondering if they really existed, if they happened to women as well as men. Her thinking was prompted by an article about narcissism justified by mid-life crises.

But (drum roll, please) it’s real! It’s real! Yes, Middle Aged Misery Spans the Globe. It’s apparently a real phenomenon. Data from two million people from 80 countries demonstrated that there is a dramatic dip in happiness and life satisfaction around mid-life. The low point for women is age 40 and for men is age 50.

“Some people suffer more than others, but in our data the average effect is large,’’ said Dr. Oswald [one of the researchers]. “It happens to men and women, to single and married people, to rich and poor, and to those with and without children. Nobody knows why we see this consistency.”

Despair in midlife comes on slowly, but the good news is that it doesn’t last.

“It looks from the data like something happens deep inside humans,’’ Dr. Oswald said. “Only in their 50s do most people emerge from the low period. But encouragingly, by the time you are 70, if you are still physically fit, then on average you are as happy and mentally healthy as a 20-year-old. Perhaps realizing that such feelings are completely normal in midlife might even help individuals survive this phase better.”

So while a dip in happiness and satisfaction isn’t synonymous with a mid-life crisis, this is evidence that there definitely something seemingly unpleasant going on in middle age across cultures that isn’t necessarily related to sex, class, marital status, or child status. So that feeling? It’s not just in your head. It’s in the head of millions of other people too. What a relief. And keep exercising until you hit the other side.

I’ve divided the Spirituality at Work Roundups into categories by theme. This is a round up on daily struggles and survival at work.

Losing Weight at Work Bringing Home the Bacon, Keeping Off the Weight tells the weight loss struggles of three individuals in the workplaces with a lot of food and sedentary tasks.

Communal Living What chores would Jesus do? documents the difficulty of attempting to be Jesus-like in a communal home with adults, children, and dirty dishes.

Freelance Musicians Freeway Philharmonic is a documentary that follows the lives of seven Bay Area freelance classical musicians. You can see the trailer here, and sympathize with the musicians. That looks like a hard day.

Flex Time for Lawyers Ever so slowly, law firms are allowing for more flexible use of hours, including reducing the number that must be billed for, and using alternative plans for time.

English-Only at Work  Apparently there are some businesses that don’t allow people to speak Spanish. I’m guessing these businesses are not in Southern California. Yep, it’s the Salvation Army in Framingham, Massachusetts, which fired two clothing sorters for speaking Spanish. I can’t come up with any comment other than Dumbass Salvation Army—that’s illegal unless it’s for safety reasons and it seems to go against your own Christian doctrine.

This is just about the oddest diet I have ever heard of (and I will put something in parentheses here in order to avoid that dangling participle.) It is by grace you have been saved, so ask Jesus if you’re allowed to eat before saying grace:

Gwen Shamblin, a former dietician turned weight-loss guru, founded the Weigh Down Workshop on a simple premise in 1986: Let God tell you when you’re hungry and when to stop eating.

But as it turns out, letting God tell you when to eat isn’t exactly the safest idea in the world:

A woman in California said she developed bulimia after participating in the Weigh Down Workshop and said she knew lots of others who had developed severe eating disorders as well, fearing that if they gained weight it could somehow affect their ability to go to heaven.

My idea of heaven being a giant bag of salt-and-vinegar potato chips, a pile of bacon, and some brie, I don’t think I want to go to this heaven they keep mentioning.

I love the idea of a bicycling paradise where cars aren’t allowed and bicyclists are safe. I don’t live in that world. And knowing someone who was killed on a bicycle by a drunk motorist makes me hesitant to suggest this vision to anyone as ideal. But this is a stunning example of ignorance and hatred. Melissa Arrington killed a bicyclist while she was drunk in her car. And then she laughed about it with a friend expressing homophobia, xenophobia, and anti-bicyclist, anti-environment sentiments.

During the conversation, the man told Arrington that an acquaintance believed she should get a medal and a parade because she had “taken out” a “tree hugger, a bicyclist, a Frenchman and a gay guy all in one shot.”

Arrington laughed. When the man said he knew it was a terrible thing to say, she responded, “No, it’s not.”

Pretty sure there’s a circle in hell with her name on it. At least the judge seemed to agree.

Via Treehugger

Just in case you want to nominate me for any particular posts for cultural commentary anecdotes at the UU Blog awards, I’ve skimmed through the last year’s writing and picked out some favorites:

In Cultivating Religious Skin, I recount an experience with zealotry at a spa while naked for a facial (Why? Explain the nakedness.) Enter the Extractor. Aee!

In This is Not About Starr King, I tell the story of how I said, “That sucks!” in reference to a financial aid package at a seminary while considering UU ministry and was told I was being homophobic. I did not point out that anyone can suck, but probably should have. Instead, a decade or so later, I consulted the OED and made my point (Yes, much like George Costanza with the shrimp joke, I cannot let it go.)

Free Samples in which I stop doing work for free. Except, of course, on this blog. And volunteer work. And other stuff. But I stop doing paid work for free! It was an important step.

Southwest Doesn’t Like Breasts and Policing Women’s Attire were written during that weird period of time in the summer of 2007 when Southwest flight attendants kicked women off of planes for being scantily clad. Clearly they had never been to Abercrombie & Fitch.

The Sexualized Workplace describes the nature of a specific type of harassment that seems popular at the liberal darling, American Apparel. I hate them. I’m a hater.

And then there were the Job Titles series of posts on titles, tasks, and authority: Editor, Artist, Teacher, Doctors, Lawyers, and Minsters, oh my! I thought those were pretty good. Thorough, at least.

And the No China Diet: General Thoughts, Motivation, Overcoming Objections, Where Does Your Food Come From?, What Trader Joe’s Says, Food, Reading Labels on Food. That’s probably enough for anyone of my China tirade.

You can nominate them on the UU Awards. You don’t need to be a UU as far as I know. Ms. Kitty said so. And you don’t have to nominate me. I said so.

Sunday I flew back from our poetry workshop and was reading O Magazine (at this point in the narrative, a small devilish voice is heard in my head that says, “Oh really? And what other bourgeosie things were you doing? Pilates? Eating organic dark chocolate? Planning a trip to William Sonoma? It’s not a very nice voice). And I came across Oprah’s interview with Pema Chodron. Chodron is famous for speaking about tonglen breathing, which is just about the only technique I’ve ever used that seems to manage pain of all sorts. The problem is that it’s so painful to use that I often simply forget about it. Like in the dentist’s chair. Or after a miscarriage (or during, for that matter). Or when dealing with capricious clients. 

Here’s an excerpt that struck me as particularly helpful:  

 Pema: Of what it feels like, which is always—feels really bad, and it’s usually in the throat or the heart or the solar plexus. And it feels like a tightening. If you can stay with that feeling and breathe very deeply in and very deeply out, and say to yourself, millions of people all over the world share this kind of fear, discomfort what—I don’t even have to call it anything—they share this not wanting things to be this way. And it’s my link with humanity. And why—and it gives birth to a chain reaction which causes people to strike out and hurt other people or self-destruct. In other words, not staying with the feeling cuts you off from your compassion for others, your empathy for others, and also from the largeness of your own heart and mind.

I’ve had that tightness in my chest on and off for a few months. It’s worse with some of the stress of recent work, but it’s more or less always there. I had understood it as anxiety and pain in the unpredictable and unwanted circumstances. But I drew a great deal of affirmation from Chodron’s words in that I can be with the pain, in the sense of be here now, and don’t need to chase it away and move on to a happy place with bunnies, babies, and tulips.

Read the whole interview.

Here is the best photo ever of a Santa networking group, the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas. Heard of them? The membership requirements are simply working as Santa and having a real beard.

The group meets yearly for lunch to reminisce about the Christmas season as well as plan their moves for the next year. Members approach being Santa from a variety of angles, including, my favorite angle for work, ministry:

Patrick Cunningham, 53, a United Methodist minister from Tucson, said he played Santa at churches to help spread the spirit of God.

“I actually see being Santa as a ministry,” he said. “It’s a way of touching people with love.”

I’m always interested in this question, because it’s my general experience that just about all people think they are middle class in the United States. Poor people. Rich people. And middle class people. In fact, in college, I noticed how apparently other students thought they were middle class even though their parents were frequently executives with second homes. “But it’s not a big second home! It’s just a cottage!”

So just to get one thing out of the way: middle class income is somewhere between 25 and 100K depending who you ask. I think mathematically speaking, it’s closer to a range of 45-95K but that depends how you define “middle” (You probably recall the median v. average issue from middle grades math. It’s related to that). So we have one large rangish and then we have people often indicating that they’re considered middle class with incomes up to 200K, which has no mathematical relationship to middleclassness, but everything to do with how they perceive their reality.

Why are we so confused about what it means to be middle class? Partially because 50K buys a lot less or more in certain parts of the country than others, especially in terms of housing. Partially because whether or not you perceive yourself as middle class depends less on what you earn than on what your neighbors earn. Here’s an experiment from Why People Believe Weird Things About Money:

Would you rather earn $50,000 a year while other people make $25,000, or would you rather earn $100,000 a year while other people get $250,000? Assume for the moment that prices of goods and services will stay the same.

Most people choose the first option. Seriously. It seems very important that we earn more than others and/or perceive that we are slightly (or greatly) better off. You could say that your neighbor’s paycheck is as important as your own in terms of how you perceive your class status. That’s how we get families with incomes of 200K describing themselves as middle class. For their neighborhoods, they may be in the middle.

Resources

Middle Class Barely Treads Water

Do you suffer from middle class envy?

Who or what is middle class?

A review of Mark Ames’s book Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion suggests that there are so many school and workplace shootings because of the nature of corporate culture:

“Rather than looking outside of the office world for an explanation,” Ames writes of workplace shootings, “why not consider the changes within America’s corporate culture itself?” Because it results in the death of innocents, a massacre by a heretofore unknown entity obscures what causes it. Difficulty identifying exactly who was targeted masks the motive. But Ames chronicles case after case of a worker who’s singled out for scut work and judged by separate standards. Wilting under the pressure, he invites further abuse, before ultimately erupting in a random shooting.Except, Ames maintains, there’s nothing random about it. Besides hunting down a hated supervisor or executive, the killer also mows down co-workers. Why? Because he seeks to destroy the company as an entity. This is the stuff of which uprisings are made.In fact, Ames devotes part two of Going Postal to building the case that today’s workplace shootings are akin to slave rebellions. At the time, outbreaks like Nat Turner’s were viewed as inchoate and devoid of political context by a public blissfully unaware that the victims of slavery might have a problem with the institution.

Wow.

We’ve talked about gift giving the workplace quite a bit with making a culturally-specific gift, giving Christmas gifts to people at work who are Jewish, and giving gifts to the boss. All of these posts raised some substantial issues of what it means to give a gift.

A friendly reader sent an account of a workplace “gift” she was given this year from the company. It was a small symbol of the company, a collectible, which other employees are now selling on ebay because few people seem to want the gift.

Workplace gifts often have a symbolic role to play. They are not things that you want; they are items that your employer thinks are important.

Workplace gifts can also be more personal. I had a boss give me a silver bracelet when she returned from Mexico (she gave another female co-worker a bracelet, and a male co-worker a knife….we wanted the knife and to know how she got through security). Choosing a personal gift is much more difficult because you have to either know the worker better or be comfortable with general stereotypes for giving (women like jewelry; men like weapons).

It has always seemed to me that the best gifts were those that clearly communicated that you, the giver, had listened and paid attention to habits and likes of the receiver and were trying to give them a little bit of pleasure: chocolate, a gift card for coffee, a nice notebook (clearly these are my own objects of pleasure, your own may vary). But I’m inclined to think that that sort of gift doesn’t work in many workplaces where symbols are what matters.

Thoughts? Favorite gifts at work? Most loathesome?