November 29, 2006 12:21

I Hate My Aeron Chair

My office-furniture nemesis, the famous Aeron chair from Herman Miller

I hate my Aeron chair.

In fact, I hate it so much that I don't have it anymore. I wheeled it into a conference room a while back and abandoned it. In its place is a brand-free, standard uphostery seat orphaned from before our office redesign. My new-old chair has pokey wheels and mysterious stains and the faint whiff of other people's butts.

I don't care. So long as it's not an Aeron.

The Aeron came with the aforementioned corporate redesign, which turned the gloomy, grotty corridors of TIME into a glaringly well-lighted, somehow soulless space. Don't get me wrong. I wasn't one of the many who squawked when they separated us from our tea-stained desks and paperclip sculptures. In general I prefer our newly poshified workspace, if only because we no longer need night goggles to find the bathroom. It's true I desperately miss my tweedy old couch, but the new glass doors would have made naps tricky anyway.

The Aeron was the first thing I saw walking into my new office. At first, I was dazzled by the work of art that is this most famous of office chairs (seriously, how many can you name by brand?). Its design is smooth yet innovative, its materials practical yet handsome. Sure, the Aeron defined the '90s, but newsrooms aren't known for cutting-edge cool. By our standards, it bespoke hip.

I sat down and took a spin. Seat: bouncy yet firm. Back: firm lumbar support. Mobility: wheels all move in same direction. I loved my Aeron.

Office furniture is at its best when it doesn't require much contemplation. You want a stapler that staples, not one that states by its color and shape the very essence of your personality (unless, of course, you do). But soon I was thinking way too much about my Aeron--or rather about the throbbing pain in the backs of my thighs.

I'd heard the Aeron, or rather Herman Miller, its design company, prides itself on the chair's easy adjustability. But hours of twisting and pounding and kicking the various knobs and levers resulted in absolutely no adjustment--not in its tilt, its armrests, its now-annoying lumbar.

It turns out the Aeron has a hate club. My colleague Unmesh had the same unprintable comments about the pain in his thighs, apparently caused by the hard frame with what's called a waterfall edge. My brother George, a bond broker, says the mesh material I'd earlier thought so practical tears his pants. "The Aeron Chair Sucks" features hilarious videos of a worker's battles with hers. To be fair, the dozens of heated comments on that site prove the Aeron still has a lot of defenders, too.

It is at this point in my rant that I realize I am going to have to make like a reporter and actually do some reporting. First, some facts. Designers Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf first introduced the Aeron to the world in 1994. Design critics raved. Dot-com bajillionaires stocked their new offices with the $600-$900 chairs. It was named design of the decade by the Industrial Designers Society of America, and remains Herman Miller's best-selling chair.

Stumpf died in September. So I called Herman Miller to share my misgivings with the very patient company spokesperson, Mark Schurman. When I began my rant about my thighs, he immediately asked, "Do you think it's properly sized?" The Aeron apparently comes in three sizes befitting various body types. As far as I know, my chair is the same as my sumo-size brother's. Who knew?

When I mentioned that same brother and his complaint about the mesh material (which is called Pellicle) ripping his pants, Schurman was again a step ahead of me. Chuckling, he said, "Well, we hear that very occasionally--always from men of a certain size wearing chinos with large wallets in their pockets." Okay, so he nailed George--but doesn't that description also fit a lot of other men? True, says Schurman, adding that newer versions of the Pellicle weave are softer and more pliant.

Then there's the adjustability, or impossibility thereof. Here Schurman dances a bit. "I wouldn't say we've ever promoted its ease of adjustability, but rather the ability to finely tune it to your individual need," he says. "Once you've set it--the arm heights, tilt tension--if you're an individual user, the likelihood is you'll never have to make those tailored adjustments again.

"I concede," he adds, "it will take a few minutes, and you'll probably have to consult the manual." Which is too bad. I think mine is still attached to the chair.

Sphere Related Blogs & Articles

|

November 28, 2006 11:16

That Diversity Training Session You Just Sat Through? It Doesn't Work

You're a manager at a large firm. Every so often you sit through a day of diversity training, designed to teach you how to better manage, hire and promote minorities and women. The goal is worthy, you figure, and if your company spends so much money on these sessions then they must work.

Odd that year after year you look around at the other execs and see the same old faces.

Therein lies the proof: these expensive and time-consuming training programs simply don't work in moving minorities and women into upper management. Those are the findings of a new study published in the American Sociological Review. Worse, it's apparently the first time anyone's actually bothered to check.

Three academics--Frank Dobbin, professor of sociology at Harvard, Alexandra Kalev of the University of California, Berkeley, and Erin Kelly of the University of Minnesota--did bother. They mined 30 years of employment data from 700 companies across nine industries to study the effects of programs to address a chronic shortage of minorities in business's upper ranks.

Those programs typically fall into three categories: diversity training that seeks to change the behavior and attitudes of managers; mentoring or networking; and task forces or staff delegated specifically to help retain and promote minorities and women.

Of the three, diversity task forces work best, boosting black women into management positions by 30%, black men by 10% and white women by 14%.

Mentorships also helped, particularly for black women. In chemicals and engineering, for instance, companies that sponsored mentorship programs saw a 25% jump in black women in management.

Diversity training aimed at tamping bias among managers may actually make things worse: these programs typically were a 6% decrease in the proportion of black women in management.

Why? I called Frank Dobbin to find out. "It's all about accountability," he says. Attending a training program is a passive activity: you sit in a room while some highly paid consultant shows you PowerPoint presentations and videos about racial sensitivity and the benefits of diversity. You eat a donut. Then you go back to your desk and check your e-mail.

On the other hand, task forces set goals. "You sit around a table and brainstorm," says Dobbin. "You say, We're having trouble attracting black men. And someone says, Let's try recruiting at historically black colleges. Then at the next meeting you show your results."

The way to increase diversity among staff, says Dobbin, is "to treat it like any other business goal." Just do it; don't just PowerPoint it.

Sphere Related Blogs & Articles

|

November 27, 2006 11:12

Our $560,000 Mistake

What does half a mil buy these days? A three-bedroom house in New Jersey, college tuition for a couple of kids in a couple of decades, peace of mind in the 401(k). All things a working woman could use.

And yet, working women are routinely tossing $560,000 away. We're doing so by not uttering one all-important sentence during one all-important event. Upon being hired for our first jobs, we're not saying: "Now, can we negotiate my salary?"

The price we pay over the course of our careers by not negotiating our starting salaries: $560,000.

That staggering figure comes up in "The Wage Gap for Women" on Alternet, which in turn quotes the research of Linda Babcock at Carnegie Mellon University. Here's a passage from the article:

A study of master's-degree candidates at Carnegie Mellon University by economist Linda Babcock found that only 7 percent of first-job-seeking women negotiated their salary, as opposed to 57 percent of men. There was no small consequence to this failure to negotiate. In their book Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide (Princeton University Press, 2003), Babcock and co-author Sara Laschever found that candidates who negotiated increased their starting salaries by 7.4 percent (about $4,000), and that the starting salaries of males averaged 7.6 percent higher than the females'.

Babcock calculated that failing to negotiate for a first salary can lead to an overall loss of over $560,000 by age 60. That comprises a good chunk of the estimated overall wage gap between men and women--further exacerbated by such other forms of gender discrimination as mommy tracking and sexual harassment--which Brandeis University Women's Studies Research Center resident scholar Evelyn Murphy projects (using U.S. Census figures) costs women between $700,000 and $2 million over the course of a career.

So buck up and ask. That three-bedroom house is at stake.

Sphere Related Blogs & Articles

|

November 23, 2006 1:21

How Cool Is This: The Telemeeting

Earlier I fretted about missing meetings while I am temporarily homebound. But here I am, watching a PowerPoint presentation on my computer via Microsoft Office Live Meeting. It's an hour-long teleconference being given by the Brookings Institution to teach reporters how to mine Census Bureau numbers for stories.

This is great! As I listen to the presenter, D'vera Cohn of the Washington Post, explaining data points on my speaker phone, I'm a) blogging; b) sending e-mail to a colleague in Beijing; c) eating an over-ripe banana.

I couldn't do that live. Well, I could, but the banana kind of smells and would annoy the other reporters.

Of course, workers have been attending virtual meetings for years. Some workplaces are taking this way further. At Leo Burnett, the ad agency, workers have virtual counterparts called avatars who can attend meetings in cyberspace, according to this piece in the Wall Street Journal.

Check out the picture of the worker guy and his avatar, though. I'd be pissed if my avatar was so ugly.

Sphere Related Blogs & Articles

|

November 22, 2006 3:42

Hiring of African-American Men Helped by Background Checks?

An interesting study in the Journal of Law and Economics found that companies that conduct background checks result in higher hiring rates for African-American men. Here, the abstract:

In this paper, we analyze the effect of employer-initiated criminal background checks on the likelihood that employers hire African Americans. We find that employers who check criminal backgrounds are more likely to hire African American workers, especially men. This effect is stronger among those employers who report an aversion to hiring those with criminal records than among those who do not. We also find similar effects of employer aversion to ex-offenders and their tendency to check backgrounds on their willingness to hire other stigmatized workers, such as those with gaps in their employment history. These results suggest that, in the absence of criminal background checks, some employers discriminate statistically against black men and/or those with weak employment records. Such discrimination appears to contribute substantially to observed employment and earnings gaps between white and black young men.

Sphere Related Blogs & Articles

|

November 21, 2006 10:53

I Feel Bad About My Paycheck

The New York Times has run two stories on poor billionaires--rich dudes who are sad because other dudes make more than they do.

In a story this morning, Silicon Valley tycoons wax envious about the two YouTube founders' giant Google payday. One 36-year-old, who scored enough as an exec for PayPal to "retire to a comfortable upper-middle-class lifestyle," calls their billions--and his comparative lack--"embarrassing."

And in "The New Class War: The Haves vs. the Have Mores," in the Week in Review, hotshot Wall Streeters compare the size of their bonuses.

Boo freaking hoo. But this reminds me of an ethical question I heard posed on NPR:

Should we know what others make? Does knowing our colleagues' and bosses' salaries sow discontent among workers, or does it empower us to reevaluate our own financial worth (at least as it relates to our employer)?

Post your thoughts here.

Sphere Related Blogs & Articles

|

November 20, 2006 2:09

How Would You Rate Your CEO?

...according to a poll this week by Monster, almost half--44%--would give the Big Kahuna an approval rating of 25% or lower. Hmm. Wonder if survey results were skewed by folks who list their work address as 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue...

Sphere Related Blogs & Articles

|

November 20, 2006 11:11

Reindeer Handlers, Unite Against Low Pay

As a journalist, I know from retarded press releases. As a workplace correspondent, though, I'm usually spared the worst of the worst: most of the pitches I get involve employment studies and management books and companies that think they're doing fun and innovative things in HR.

In other words, the press releases I get are usually pretty straightforward. (Though I'll always remember one, pitching an M&A expert as a source, that opened with: "Dear Lisa: Most people remember the merger between Time Warner and AOL as the worst in history..." Yeah. Thanks. As if my permanently underwater premerger stock options aren't enough of a reminder. Insulting my employer and my 401(k) is a genius way to get me to return your calls.)

Here's one I have to post, if only for a little holiday levity. Some eggnog-nipping PR type for SnagAJob.com--an otherwise useful job-search site--decided to dress up some Department of Labor stats and call it a survey of salaries at Santa's workshop.

Say what?

Here's SnagAJob's so-called breakdown of elf hourly wages according to the 2006 Elf Wage Index:

Elf Position Mean Hourly Wage (equivalent DoL* occupation)

Candy makers $10.82 (Sugar and confectionery product manufacturing)

Reindeer handler $14.19 (Animal Trainers)

Basic toy maker $14.37 (Production Occupations, including: wood workers, fabric cutters, sewers, cutters, trimmers, leather workers, wood workers, machine tool setters)

Hi-tech toy maker $15.41 (Computer-Controlled Machine Tool Operators)

Sleigh maintenance $23.68 (aircraft mechanics, service technician)

Santa's list keeper $30.41 (database administrators)

Sleigh traffic controller $50.88 (air traffic controller)

Get it? Animal trainers are "reindeer handlers"; database administrators are "Santa's list keepers." It even comes with a footnote:

*Elf wages are based on average hourly wages, as compiled by the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, for positions equivalent to the corresponding elf job requirements.

I'd like to know how the reindeer handlers feel about those Purell-loving sleigh-traffic controllers earning four times their pay. I know I'd be demanding some poop-handling compensation in the Christmas bonus.

Sphere Related Blogs & Articles

|

November 20, 2006 10:20

When Bosses Make Tough Decisions--and Get Egged

So you're an exec who shoots to stardom in a time of crisis and are subsequently given the top job and a mandate to remake your organization. You do so--and that's when the trouble starts. TIME senior writer Christine Gorman writes this week about Julie Gerberding, director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Read it, even if you're not usually interested in the machinations of government bureacracy: it's an incisive lesson in executive power and management.

One interesting stat relevant to many workplaces today: "Perhaps the most immediate problem is the number of senior-level people who are leaving. Part of that is an unavoidable function of aging--40% of the CDC's 9,000 employees will be eligible to retire in 2008."

That's a lot of scientists hitting the hammocks in Florida. And if you've been reading Time you'll know there isn't exactly a coming wave of young American scientists taking their place at places like the CDC. Pretty glum news for the future of AIDS research etc.

Sphere Related Blogs & Articles

|

November 17, 2006 3:23

We're All Totally Stressed

Having recently found myself hospitalized for a stress-related illness, I've been thinking a lot about stress: what it is, what causes it, and how to get rid of it.

It's stressing me out.

Misery loves company, so I was inappropriately delighted to learn practically everyone in America is totally, neurotically stressed.

That's according to the Mental Health America Survey, released Nov. 16 by Mental Health America (formerly known as the National Mental Health Association, says the press release). The national survey of more than 3,000 found:

* Nearly half (48%) of Americans say their biggest stressor is money.

* Health issues stress out 33% of Americans.

* 32% of Americans are stressed by employment issues ranging from on-the-job stress to unemployment.

* Parents are the most stressed-out group, at 39%.

* African-Americans are the most stressed (38%); non-Hispanic whites, the least (30%).

* The college-educated were least stressed (at 25%), most likely because they hold better-paying jobs.

Show of hands: who's not surprised by any of this?

As for how we deal with stress, the study says:

* 82% African-Americans pray or meditate; 77% of Asian-Americans "talk it out" (this sounds totally off to me, but at least we don't "hug it out"); 52% of whites exercise.

* 42% of women eat to reduce stress, vs. 31% of men. Again with the show of hands?

* 82% watch TV, read or listen to music; 26% smoke, drink or do drugs; 12% pop the Rx solution.

Here's something a little more disturbing for someone with a chronic, stress-related illness. The study found 51% of Americans "view chronic stress as a personal weakness rather than a health problem or warning sign." That's especially true among us minorities--57% of Asians and 64% of Latinos (vs. 39% of whites).

So not only are we stressed, we're stressed out by stress. My point to begin with.

Sphere Related Blogs & Articles

|

November 17, 2006 2:42

Here I Am, Opening Pandora's Box: Health Insurance and Disability on the Job

It had to happen sometime. So I may as well launch this blog with a (perfunctory) discussion of employer-sponsored health insurance and disability coverage.

This is what happened when I got sick.

I presented my health insurance card upon entering the ER. Later, I called my employer's human resources department. The very nice manager of such cases arranged a sick leave of one month, during which my salary was paid in full by the disability insurance company.

I was sick and incapable of working for one whole month. And not only did insurance cover almost all of my surely boffo hospital bills, in the meantime my family did not have to subsist on frozen waffles. (Actually, it did, but only because that's all my two-year-old would eat.)

This is what happened when my friend Jennifer Liese got bitten by her cat. The bite festered with infection, and she wound up in the ER of a Rhode Island hospital this summer, where she was admitted for three nights and treated with IV antibiotics.

Jennifer, 36, had recently resigned from an administrative job at the Rhode Island School of Design and thus had lost her insurance coverage. The $400 monthly Cobra payment to continue her former employer's coverage seemed onerous for someone launching a career as a freelance arts editor and writer. Getting new coverage was "on my list of things to do," she says.

The cat got to her first. So did the hospital bill: $9,200.

Then came the bill collectors.

The hospital deemed her income and assets too high to qualify for its community assistance program. Never mind that the income was temporarily nonexistent while the cat bite rendered her typing hand immobile. So the hospital began eyeing her assets.

The collection agent first asked Jennifer to drain her bank account. Alarmed, Jennifer told her the $2,000 was earmarked to pay her taxes. Then the agent began to push for the $5,000 in her 401(k).

"I was a little shocked," she says. "I mean, that's my retirement money!"

In the end the hospital knocked 10% off the bill and worked out a payment plan by which Jennifer will pay it off in $75 monthly installments for the next nine years.

And Jennifer got insurance. She now pays $140 a month for a high-deductible Blue Cross plan, and she's looking into adding a worker's disability plan from Aflac. (She considered the Freelancers Union, which offers group insurance for unaffiliated workers like her, but the group didn't cover her state.)

"Obviously," she says, "the main lesson here is: don't let insurance slide."

Sphere Related Blogs & Articles

|

November 17, 2006 1:20

Why I Love (Okay--Need) My Job

I meant to start this blog on another note.

I have a mountain of notes on topics I wanted to kick off with. Like how military vets returning from Iraq are having trouble finding jobs. Or an interesting study from Harvard about why diversity efforts at big companies don't necessarily work. Or about mentorships that do. Or about how I hate my Aeron chair, with apologies to its recently dead designer.

I'll get to those reports. But life took another turn, and it has fundamentally affected how I do my job and possibly even the course of my career. Jobs and careers are the subject of this blog. So at the risk of way TMI, I'm going to launch this space by talking about how illness can knock your job and career for a loop.

Seeing as I'm making my debut here in a metaphorical hospital gown (backside open), let me at least attempt some dignity in this introduction. I'm Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, a staff writer at Time, where I focus for the most part on workplace, business and society trends. I wanted to write this blog to bring you news, ideas and thoughts on The Office--not the sitcom, whose Brit version I snootily prefer to Steve Carrell's--but the one you're sitting in now.

I wanted to talk about your boss, your inbox, your plans for corner-office domination, your snack drawer (come on, you have one), your daycare center calling to tell you your toddler's nose is still running and can you come pick her up now please.

I wanted to report on labor issues and retirement plans and how you can find a better job. I wanted to tell you about management trends and worker psychology and all the hoopla about balancing work and family, as if anyone has figured that out.

And I will. But first:

SICKNESS SUCKS

TMI ALERT: Skip this part if a) blood makes you queasy; b) you really don't want to know that much about me; c) you'd rather watch Katie Couric's colonoscopy on YouTube; d) all of the above.

So I have this chronic illness called ulcerative colitis. It first started when I entered the workforce at 21 (now that I think about it). Most of the time it's an afterthought, the reason I take fistfuls of drugs and avoid lactose. Occasionally it's a real nuisance, when some sort of stress triggers my colon to inflame and bleed like a geyser.

That most recent trigger was probably multifold. My first book, Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death, came out in August. I'd been trying to flog it in my off time while holding down my real job as a writer at TIME, where, you might have heard, there has been some major ongoing change. I was also trying to coexist, with my freelance musician husband, in a household that is ruled by an exceedingly talkative two-year-old.

I tried my usual course of treatment, of which I'll spare you the details. But in early October, I keeled over in pain and was ordered to the ER. Two hospitals, six roommates, eight doctors, countless needles, not nearly enough painkillers, and 16 days of absolutely terrible food later--let's not forget the staph infection (bonus!)--I am now home and flare-up free. The massive dosage of IV steroids did not work but have left me looking and acting like Jabba the Hutt's not-cute sister. An immunosuppressant has convinced my body not to reject my colon, so for now surgery remains a dark daydream.

The meds and weakened immune system render me homebound for now. It's my rare luck that I have the kind of job that can be performed from a home office equipped with a computer, phone, fax and high-speed Internet line. It's my incredible fortune that I have the kind of bosses who'll let me work this way for a time.

But I'm missing out. I'm missing the morning meetings in which the editors talk about the upcoming issue. I'm missing the weekly story meetings in which writers meet with section editors to pitch and discuss ideas. I'm missing reporting in the field, hobnobbing with colleagues, conferences around town, lunches with sources.

My illness made me change how I handle my job, at least temporarily. But I know I'm lucky. Over these weeks I've talked to many who aren't (see my next post)...

Sphere Related Blogs & Articles

|