I’ve been pondering criticism recently, and 8 Ways to Encourage Your Pastor prompted some more thinking.
Some of the difficulty of being a writer (and also a minister) has to do with the regularity of feedback. As a working writer, I receive a lot of feedback, and most of it negative. If I were truly a bad writer, I’m convinced I simply wouldn’t get work (or not repeat work and not repeat clients). So, in my mind, it’s not so much that my writing is bad, but that the feedback is negative because that’s how people are used to operating in the world. They don’t tell you what works; they tell you didn’t work for them.
In 8 Ways to Encourage Your Pastor, the number one way to encourage your minister is to cut the criticism:
Presbyterian minister Fred Rogers, creator and host of television’s “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood,” recently gave an address describing the time he was a student at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and attended a different church each Sunday in order to hear a variety of preachers.
One Sunday he was treated to “the most poorly crafted sermon (he) had ever heard.” But when he turned to the friend who had accompanied him, he found her in tears.
“It was exactly what I needed to hear,” she told Rogers.
“That’s when I realized,” he told his audience, “that the space between someone doing the best he or she can and someone in need is holy ground. The Holy Spirit had transformed that feeble sermon for her and as it turned out, for me too.”
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.
Decorating your cube has long been thought of as the solution to many spirituality at work problems. Unhappy with your boss? Bring in an extra plant. Longing for vacation? How about a photo of you in Hawaii (with a fully-clothed you)? Tired of life without health insurance? How about a calendar with crazy kittens? Pimp My Cubicle demonstrates more of this sort of wisdom:
….you can still show some creativity. Kelley Moore suggests you start by expressing a little flair on the organizational front by using brightly colored file folders and linen-covered containers from Target or The Container Store.
Frankly, I’d like to nominate the sentence above for “Most Depressing Statement about the Modern Workplace.” Unhappy at work? Buy more crap to entertain yourself.
Workers in India have found that the stress of being oursourced labor is often more than they bargained:
As many young people in India’s outsourcing industry are beginning to discover, underneath the heady promise of an exciting job, a good paycheck and attractive career prospects lie long spells of night shifts, ruthless targets and the dreadful monotony of writing code or pacifying angry customers.
The outsourcing industry has long been hailed as a key driver to India’s rise as a global economic power. Now, that growth is beginning to take its toll on its workers who labour for long hours in stressful work environments to meet tight deadlines for customers thousands of miles away.
Workers are suffering from obesity, sleep disorders, depression and broken relationships - problems which can lead to more serious conditions such as diabetes or heart disease. In a country where a public healthcare system is virtually non-existent, overworked outsourcing employees could present a health crisis in the making.
I imagine to some of us it sounds very familiar….
Much like roughly half of Californians, I thought I wanted to be a yoga teacher. The teacher-training programs have become expensive though, and now individual states are attempting to regulate yoga-training programs using a voluntary on-line registry of programs. The yoga industry is resisting regulation with claims of spirituality and the like:
The conflict started in January when a Virginia official directed regulators from more than a dozen states to an online national registry of schools that teach yoga and, in the words of a Kansas official, earn a “handsome income.” Until then, only a few states had been aware of the registry and had acted to regulate yoga instruction, though courses in other disciplines like massage therapy have long been subject to oversight.
The registry was created by the Yoga Alliance, a nonprofit group started in 1999 to establish teaching standards in an effort to have the industry regulate itself. In a recent newsletter, the alliance warned its members that nationwide licensing might be inevitable, “forcing this ancient tradition to conform to Western business practices.”
I guess you can’t regulate something spiritual. Not that we know what “spiritual” means precisely.
Today’s Theme: Workplace Robberies
The best part about this robbery comes at the end. It reads like a Kevin Smith film:
Suspect: “Give it to me, all of it. C’mon, c’mon, hurry.”
Victim: “Whatever, dude.”
Washington appears to be plagued by robberies in fact. This one involves a board spiked with nails and a decidedly less mellow clerk.
Meanwhile, in Dallas, the weapon of choice was a sword. Why do they always want cigarettes? The conclusion here is that smoking leads you to rob places.
As a woman I am strongly against the “she was asking for it” defense. However, when a lone woman delivery driver agrees to venture out after midnight in response to a suspicious call… It’s kind of expected that she will get beaten and robbed by a gang of teens. On the other hand she sounds kind of bad-ass going right back to work and refusing medical treatment.
Meanwhile, if you as a fired employee are going to go back to your former workplace and rob it, make sure your mask’s eyeholes are small enough to actually disguise who you are.
And just to make you feel better about humanity, here’s an exact-opposite-of-robbery story: A store owner returns the quarter of a million dollars (in cash!) that he found on the street, that turned out to most likely be from an armored truck.
I love this story about hunting for a job post-baby:
I had a great deal of trouble finding a new job, partly because my son never slept for more than 90 minutes at a time, and I was showing up for interviews with raccoon eyes, slapped-together toilette, and a brain composed of Swiss cheese. Eventually, in despair, I consulted a professional career counselor, who attempted to hone my interviewing skills through role-playing.
“Why did you leave your last job?” she asked.
“I have a baby at home, and I need more regular hours.”
“Stop right there! You just lost the job,” she informed me. She explained that “nobody wants an employee who is more concerned with her kids than with her job.” She advised me to “forget you even have a baby” during the interview: “They’re not allowed to ask, so just focus on the professional issues. Tell them your previous job was a ’student job’ and that now that you’ve graduated you are looking for a long-term, career-building position.”
The following week, I had a preliminary phone interview for a student counseling position at a university in another state. Everything seemed to be working in my favor: my son had just fallen asleep when the interview started; the interviewer was impressed with some extra training experiences I had sought out which would prove useful in this position; we discovered some mutual acquaintances in the field. I could hear the enthusiasm in his voice.
Then my son started to whimper. Surreptitiously, I picked him up and began nursing him — and as the prolactin began to kick in, my answers became more vague and dreamy. I jerked myself back to attention, and my son unlatched — and delivered a huge, unmistakable belch into the receiver.
She didn’t get that job, but you can read the positive ending to the job search here.
I’m not sure what it means that I’m terribly amused not only by the office in a box, but by the commentary here, here, and here.
I found Career Coach: Figuring Out the Right Questions had some excellent questions, which I’m going to work with this morning, in between work activities.
1. First, try making a list of all of your vocational aspirations, starting from the earliest. Don’t disqualify any ambition on the grounds that it was ridiculous or unrealistic. For each item, jot down any ideas that come to mind about what attracted you to this vocation. Again, don’t omit details just because they seem silly. When you’re done, look over the list, and see if you can discern any common threads.
2. Now make a similar list, of books, films and TV shows you have loved, again starting with early childhood. What drew you to them? How do these descriptions relate to those on your career aspiration list?
3. Moving into the present, think of activities that fulfill you now, independent of financial gain, social prestige, or other secondary advantages. What is it that you get out of each?
4. Finally, if you were to become financially independent tomorrow, how would you use your time? What would you hope to accomplish?
You can play along at home (or at work), if you wish. Feel free to post responses.
I’m terrible with double negatives.
But here’s an article, The Backlash to Breast is Best, that responds to The Case Against Breastfeeding, which I wrote about a few weeks ago. The writer gets to the heart of the matter (where I was attempting to go), which is that we say “breastfeeding is best for your baby” and then we give absolutely no support for it as a society:
We tell women that breast is best, we tell them to breastfeed exclusively for the first six months, we even tell them it will raise their kid’s IQ (and we should give that a rest), and then we send them home with formula samples, or with a baby whose throat is too sore to suckle, or a mom whose milk is delayed because of surgery, and we don’t teach technique, and we are offended when a woman breastfeeds in public, so we make her feel housebound, and we don’t give a mother and her partner paid leave, and we send her to go back to a workplace without on-site childcare, and so her only alternative to formula is to plug her nipples into a machine, and if she’s lucky she gets periodic breaks and a “non-bathroom lactation room” in which to pump, and if she’s not she gets a toilet, and so on and so forth.
It’s no wonder women are ready to burn their nursing bras.
I find that this particular medical recommendation with little public policy support (especially in the workplace) is just about useless. You want women to breastfeed their kids? Mandate paid leave.
It can be awkward when one friend is employed and another isn’t:
For younger employed adults, that could mean no longer discussing new apartments, comparing salaries or asking the standby question “So, how’s the job going?” If you’re in your 30s or 40s, a topic not to bring up may include your luxurious summer-vacation plans. Fifties and 60s? Investments, property and retirement are first on the list of dinner-party taboos. These days, money talk has climbed to the top of social no-nos. “You don’t want to rub your good fortune in a friend’s face,” says Peter Post, a director at the Emily Post Institute for etiquette. “So you should temper enthusiasm for your own personal well-being.”
I find that last part (”temper enthusiasm for your own personal well-being”) good advice for any time. That’s not to say you can’t celebrate, but perhaps you should cancel the fireworks and grandstanding announcing your celebration.
Dear Ms. Theologian,
My apologies if you’ve covered this before, but my questions concern cover letters and writing samples.
How long should they be? What are some do’s and don’t to be aware of?
And while I’m thinking about it, what about requested writing samples? Should they be specifically tailored for the job to which you are applying, or should they be generally representative of your best work, regardless of topic or content?
-Applying for a Job
Dear Applying:
Let’s take the writing sample question first, which seems easiest.
You should choose from your portfolio or create from scratch a writing sample that is similar to the type of writing that the job expects in terms of content, format, and length. Did I just hear you groan? Ms. Theologian feels your pain.
Several years ago, Ms. Theologian was in the position of evaluating writing samples for writing positions. You would be surprised at the variety of samples people sent. Most of them were completely inappropriate. What does Ms. Theologian mean by that? They weren’t similar in any way to the type of writing required in the job, and it was difficult to see if the writer had the abilities to do the work. You want the person reviewing your sample to say, “Wow, here’s someone who has experience with this sort of writing and does it well,” and not, “What the hell is this?” Ms. Theologian said, “What the hell…” quite a bit in that job.
Funny story. In th same job, Ms. Theologian had a colleague who was responsible for evaluating graphic design samples, and he had exactly the same problem. Graphic designers submitted everything and anything, including some nice naked people for a job designing children’s books, which gave everyone a laugh. They were nice naked people as naked people go, but particularly inappropriate.
Ms. Theologian wishes you well with your samples.
-Ms. Theologian
P.S. If you’d like to write to Ms. Theologian, send an email to ms dot theologian at gmail dot com.
I’ve watched the Los Angeles County Supervisors in action, but I did not realize that they had customized water bottles (to avoid advertising one brand). And, with that, you might suspect that removing the real labels and replacing them with the LA County Supervisor’s label was someone’s job:
Every week, a college student who earns $9.92 an hour for a range of tasks peels the labels off water bottles, uses a computer to print out new ones emblazoned with the county seal and slaps them on. The customized bottles are waiting for the five supervisors as they take on the official business of the nation’s most populous county.
Some suspect the real brand is Arrowhead. Some suspect that the college student will look back on this job and laugh.
As a reading audience who appreciates workplace memos, I thought you might appreciate the AIG: Enhanced Security Memo.
I really shouldn’t find it funny. Those are real people, and they’re scared. Must. Not. Laugh. Channel Empathy.
We send a lot of mixed messages to teachers in California: Students are important, but we’re going to treat the people who teach them well. We value the whole student, but we’re going to value teaching based entirely on tests. Don’t teach to the tests, but your entire performance depends on them.
Perhaps one of the most insidious is the “teacher shortage” message that gets trotted out year after year, especially in math and science. There may be a teacher shortage, but we lay off teachers in California every year. Here’s the latest from Ed Week:
In a spring rite that has become as predictable as the cherry blossoms in the nation’s capital, public school employees throughout California have been warned of wrenching classroom cuts as districts face a deadline for issuing layoff notices.
Most years many of those notices would be rescinded, but this year the ritual is more fraught with uncertainty because of the economy.
The state Department of Education estimates that preliminary pink slips will have been handed to 26,500 teachers by the Sunday cutoff — two-and-a-half times as many as were issued last year.
Some of my coworkers have been with the company almost a decade. So when they say it’s “historical” that the offices were closed today for a snow day, I believe them. Long Island Schools were also closed, so I had figured I was justified in saying I was working from home in the first place. Then we got the email saying it was all closed down anyway.
“Good!” I think, smelling the cinnamon rolls in the oven. “A nice quiet day.”
Alas, people seemed to think “The Show Must Go On” and I had to work anyway. AND cover for those coworkers who either unthinkingly or cleverly left their laptops at work. But I wrapped things up as fast as I could and just rebelliously signed off before my boss could IM me with more pointless crap.
I wish I could say I had a themed WWN for you today but I don’t.
The most horrifying story I read recently is about a Walmart (NOT Wal-Mart) worker immolating himself in the parking lot.
Almost as horrifying, the web site selling wifebeater T-shirts that gave a discount to convicted wife beaters.
Also horrifying, that there are parents out there who don’t realize it is their JOB to teach their kids about things like disabled people and that the rest of the world isn’t always perfect or exactly like them.
Funny, and horrifying, is the man who was attacked on the job by a Komodo Dragon. Not funny to him, I know. But… my god. Of all the animals.
And finally, just plain funny. A grocery store plagued by balsamic vinegar thieves takes things into their own hands.
Well, that was depressing. On that note, I’m off to enjoy what is left of my snow day. Have a good one.
One trend in the current recession is shrinking the five-day work week to four days or three days. It’s an interesting phenomenon. On the one hand, it sort of equalizes the loss (if everyone works reduced hours) rather than laying off a few people who had poor reviews or happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But on the other hand, if you rely on your total income to pay the bills, which many of us do, working less days for less money (and less benefits) is an awful thing.
Here’s how salary-cuts from a shrinking work week can play out in real life:
Ms. Christopher, who is single and does not have children, says that while most of the five Vera employees are taking the three-day week in stride, a single mother is very concerned about supporting a family on such a reduced paycheck.
Elsewhere, Nancy Hoffman, a senior development associate at the House Ear Institute, an organization based in Los Angeles that advances hearing science, recently went from a four-day to a three-day workweek and is concerned about the loss of income.
“I thought I would help the budget in my department and take the 40 percent pay cut, but the reality of that pay cut is much worse than I imagined,” said Ms. Hoffman, who is divorced and has two grown children. “I’m digging into my retirement money.” The bright spot, she says, is that her benefits have not been cut.
I suppose that’s a positive aspect, but the shrinking salary doesn’t seem like much of an alternative for most families.
I think my title says it all: Office Worker Sacked.
I’m sure her job was boring because other employees must have had extra time on their hands as they were digging around in her facebook profile.
This isn’t about drugs.
Many of us have been told that we need to draw boundaries at work, and say “no” to those last minute assignments, to working late, to working on the weekends. Just say no! And, in fact, I think I’ve given that as advice. But here’s the rub: if you say no, you often find yourself cutting off opportunities. And those opportunities add up.
The price of saying ‘no’ details the lives of three women who are now at the top of their professions and got there by saying yes:
Go ahead, they’d all tell you, say no anytime you want. Say no to the relocation 500 miles away from the one house and one town that your kids know as home. Say no to working one weekend so you can be with your ailing father before it’s too late. Say no to the client who wants it done tomorrow so you can go on the vacation you’ve been planning for a year with your best friend. But before you utter that word, know the consequences of that answer, or, as my friend the corporate president calls it dryly: the consequence kickback.
“You can say no, and you can restore some order and balance to your life,” she says. “And your career can even thrive, but you will have narrowed the opportunities. That’s the way it is.”
What’s striking to me is that I’m clearly not at the top of my profession, but I’ve definitely had this experience as well. When I say no, I definitely lose something, and it’s often something I want.
I really have only one thought for today: Why are the days getting longer (since the solstice) and yet conversely they feel so much shorter?
Today I have for you a study in contrasts, which I guess fits with the above musing.
One young man wants a job so much that he shows up to the job interview after being stabbed, sans medical care. Or the guy who returned to work with a slug still in his head. And then there’s the guy who really, really didn’t want to work, so he beat himself up. Literally.
A man in Tokyo died after being rejected by 14 different hospitals, who had no room for him (more about the terrors of the Japanese healthcare system at Homesick Home…) Meanwhile, of course, in America actually being IN the hospital is more dangerous.
There’s the woman who cried while robbing a restaurant, saying “If I wasn’t down and out, I wouldn’t be doing this.” And then there’s the woman who brazenly convinced a Danish bank to exchange Monopoly money for real money.
At McDonald’s, you can find the woman who has worked for them for 39 years–behind the counter. Or you can find a woman who is suing them for sexual harassment and claims they discriminated against her because of her psoriasis.
So you see, it’s not just me.
When I was in seminary and interviewing for parish internships, one of the older members of a church board basically said to me, “Why should we let you be our intern? You’re all over the place in your job history. California. New England. New Mexico. Where are you going to settle?”
He was right in that in a ten year period, I went from childhood in California, to college and graduate school in New England with three years in between in New Mexico. I’d also worked at a school, a non-profit, and a corporation in addition in shorter stints for summer employment. In retrospect, it actually wasn’t that much bouncing around compared to peers, especially for someone with a decade of job history. However, for Baby Boomers and an older generation who have lived in the same place and been employed by the same people for decades, it seemed as though I was highly unstable and likely to depart at any time to dance naked and beat drums and so on and so forth.
One of the hiring challenges for Generation X (and soon for Generation Y) is getting around attitudes toward job hopping (especially with older hiring managers). For many people in Generation X, and especially in some industries (e.g., technical, publishing), frequent job changes are a common thing. Even yearly switches are not unheard of.
So what should I have said to the older church board member? Oh, probably nothing. They ended up hiring someone as an intern who was much older and had only one long-term job before choosing ministry. I think they got someone who was a good fit as an intern for their congregation.
But if I wanted to avoid the question, I might have considered reorganizing my resume by skill set rather than in reverse chronological order (a layout that makes job hopping pop right out to the reader). Skills sets are often consistent and well developed where as jobs can be all over the place.
More tips on addressing job-hopping here.