April 30, 2007 10:31

Lying on a Résumé Hurts Everybody

I was surprised but not stunned to read the headlines last week: "MIT dean resigns over misrepresented credentials." Every few months, it seems, we're treated to another gotcha of a high-powered person fabricating their résumés. To be frank, I was even a little relieved to see higher-education news that didn't have to do with the horror at Virginia Tech.

As the op-eds and follow-ups continued throughout the weekend, I got to wonder about the woman behind the news. Marilee Jones seemed to elicit far more sympathy than your usual résumé liar (remember the guy from RadioShack? Or the one from Bausch & Lomb?). If anything, the media and public seemed to grieve for the self-inflicted fall of this once admired woman.

TIME admired her, too. Jones was a major source in the cover story "Who Needs Harvard?" from last August, about a wave of bright students choosing to forego top-tier schools for smaller ones better suited to them. Rebecca Myers, a TIME.com editor, reminded me that Jones was even asked to take part in a Q&A on our web site.

Jones had much to commend her. According to her bio, still up on the MIT web site,

Marilee Jones is Dean of Admissions at MIT. A scientist by training, she joined the MIT Admissions Office in 1979 to lead the recruitment efforts for women. She has served on many national professional boards including the National Association of College Admissions Counselors (NACAC), the College Board and the Women in Engineering Programs Advisory Network. Marilee is the recipient of MIT’s highest award for administrators, the ‘MIT Excellence Award for Leading Change’, as well as the ‘Gordon Y. Billard Award’ and the Dean for Undergraduate Education Infinite Mile Award for Leadership.

But the real reason for her adulation is her public stand against the pressures of the college admissions race. Take a look at our Q&A; hers is a voice of reason, unflappability and kindness when it comes to applying for college. When a young woman named Colleen bemoans her failure to get into Rice, Jones replies,

The most important thing now is not to take this personally. (Easy for me to say, I know...) Remind yourself what an excellent student you are, that you are a hard worker who is involved in her life and who always makes a difference in the lives of others.

To a mother who wrings her hands over what type of high school her children should attend:

Colleges are all different and some may have a bias one way or the other. But my philosophy here is "one step at a time", meaning I recommend that at this point you focus on picking the best high school for your kids, based on their needs and your family situation, and let the future take care of itself. When the time is right, your children will be admitted to the best colleges for them, regardless of where they went to high school.

Jones kept a sort of blog--it appears to includes just four entries since December 2005--on the site. Her most recent post delves into her anguish over her own daughter's recent struggle to find and then set off for a college. She writes with emotion:

A few weeks ago, the night before she flew out to California for a pre-orientation wilderness trip, Nora had one more evening out with her hometown friends, kids she's known her whole life. When she got home - 2 minutes before her curfew (yay!) - she popped in to give me a quick kiss goodnight. On her way out the door, Nora suddenly spun around, sat on the bed and whispered into the darkness, "I think I've made a terrible mistake, Mom. California is just too far away. I'm afraid I'll never see my family or friends again, or Harry (our cat) or Wills and Skye (our dogs) and maybe I'll never come back. What should I do?" And then she started to cry.

She clearly touched a nerve, as the dozen-plus comments below the post show. You get a sense of her warmth and compassion. But her contributions didn't stop there. The Boston Globe reports that during her very first job in the admissions office at MIT, she set out to "increase the pool of female applicants." Her book, Less Stress, More Success: A New Approach to Guiding Your Teen Through College Admissions and Beyond, with coauthor Dr. Kenneth R. Ginsburg , an associate pediatrics professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, is ranked a very respectable 1,744 on Amazon's list.

"Many of us did not go to top-tier colleges and have managed to lead happy, successful lives," Jones wrote in one of her chapters. "Success, after all, comes in many forms over time."

By lying on her résumé, Jones did more than torpedo her own career. She silenced an important and rare voice in the world of high-stakes education--her own.

April 27, 2007 4:56

I Was a Diversity Hire

I might have been a quota hire. And if I was, I'm glad.

It was 1997. I was working as an editor at a trade magazine and attending journalism school at night when I got an out-of-the-blue call from another magazine here at Time Inc. The managing editor of that publication had pulled out a freelance article I'd written for The New York Times and asked his editors why they hadn't come up with it. An enterprising editor on his staff tracked me down, and a few interviews later, here I was with a job offer. Or so I was told.

For a young reporter with a scrappy background, a job offer from this vaunted institution isn't something you think about. You take it, then think about it later. So I did.

About a month later, a couple of my new colleagues took me to lunch (this was back in the Palaeozaic Era, when Time Inc. financed such things). "Ah," one said, about our boss. "You know he's the king of the diversity hire."

The rumor--and it's merely a rumor, but it was well circulated in those days--was that our boss led the company in hirings of women and minorities (I'm two-in-one--bingo!). My colleagues told me he had financial incentive to do so--that division bosses were compensated in part for the diversity of their staffs. Our boss, it had just come out in Adweek magazine, was the highest paid magazine editor in the country.

I have to tell you I was put out at first. I'd never gotten anywhere at all on my connections, which is rightful, seeing as I had none. Why should I get somewhere on my race and gender? Moreover, why should someone else get an extra check in his Christmas stocking because of my race and gender?

In this week's TIME, I wrote about some surprising new research about diversity programs at work--what works and what doesn't in hiring and promoting women and minorities. It begins:

Some decades ago, the powers that be declared that employee diversity was a good thing, as desirable as double-digit profit margins. It's proving just as difficult to achieve. Companies try all sorts of things to attract and promote minorities and women. They hire organizational psychologists. They staff booths at diversity fairs. They host dim-sum brunches and salsa nights. The most popular--and expensive--approach is diversity training, or workshops to teach executives to embrace the benefits of a diverse staff. Too bad it doesn't work.

Their findings:

A groundbreaking new study by three sociologists shows that diversity training has little to no effect on the racial and gender mix of a company's top ranks. Frank Dobbin of Harvard, Alexandra Kalev of the University of California, Berkeley, and Erin Kelly of the University of Minnesota sifted through decades of federal employment statistics provided by companies. Their analysis found no real change in the number of women and minority managers after companies began diversity training. That's right--none. Networking didn't do much, either. Mentorships did. Among the least common tactics, one--assigning a diversity point person or task force--has the best record of success. "Companies have spent millions of dollars a year on these programs without actually knowing, Are these efforts worth it?" Dobbin says. "In the case of diversity training, the answer is no."

Here's what it comes down to: accountability. If the big boss considers staff diversity important--whatever his motivation, be it professional pride or a little bonus or sincere good intent--then things happen. My boss back then, for the record, did well by me. Besides hiring me, he immediately assigned me to meaty stories and talented editors. I hope I did well by him, too, by working hard and enthusiastically. I stayed at that publication for four years before moving to a sister magazine.

I might have been hired in part because of my race and gender. But I believe my race and gender give me value here by lending me unique insights that reflect more and more of our readers'. Maybe he saw that, too. So, to that old boss, I say: thanks.

April 26, 2007 3:00

Coming Out as Transgender at Work

I just finished reading this stunning piece by Los Angeles Times sportwriter Mike Penner. It begins:

During my 23 years with The Times' sports department, I have held a wide variety of roles and titles. Tennis writer. Angels beat reporter. Olympics writer. Essayist. Sports media critic. NFL columnist. Recent keeper of the Morning Briefing flame.

Today I leave for a few weeks' vacation, and when I return, I will come back in yet another incarnation.

As Christine.

Holy sashimi. What a lead. It continues:

I am a transsexual sportswriter. It has taken more than 40 years, a million tears and hundreds of hours of soul-wrenching therapy for me to work up the courage to type those words. I realize many readers and colleagues and friends will be shocked to read them.

That's OK. I understand that I am not the only one in transition as I move from Mike to Christine. Everyone who knows me and my work will be transitioning as well. That will take time. And that's all right. To borrow a piece of well-worn sports parlance, we will take it one day at a time.

I don't know Mike, but I'm familiar with his byline and I have a few friends who work at the LAT. In other words, I feel like I know him. It occurs to me: this could be anyone on my staff, too.

I'm trying to imagine being in his, soon to be her, shoes. I'm imagining growing up wanting to be a journalist, and finally landing that dream job of jobs, a full-time post at the LAT. He doesn't delve into it in his piece, but I'm imagining the hyper-macho world of sports journalism, and how he's going to adjust in that realm. What'll happen the next time he steps into the Angels' locker room?

I'm imagining the many hours of staring at the computer as he wrote those words: "I am a transsexual sportswriter."

He tells of breaking the news to his colleagues, his boss, his soccer buddies. His boss had a funny reaction:

When I told my boss Randy Harvey, he leaned back in his chair, looked through his office window to scan the newsroom and mused, "Well, no one can ever say we don't have diversity on this staff."

Revealing a secret about yourself at work is wrenching enough. It's exponentially more so when you're in the public eye. Penner chose to seize the moment and his platform and share his story with the world. In doing so, he's done an incalculable service to the many others who must struggle with his predicament.

Carry on, Christine. We're with you.

April 25, 2007 2:56

Guys Still Earn More, But Young Dads in Asia Want More Family Time

Wanted to point you to two excellent TIME articles currently on our site. One is by my smart colleague Julie Rawe, who wrote a piece yesterday for TIME.com titled, "Women's Pay: Lagging From the Start." It begins (bolds mine):

If you heard a lot of fuming or sighing around the water cooler on Monday, it's because word is spreading about new data that shows women are already earning less than men before the ink on their college diplomas has dried. The study, which looked at more than 10,000 people who received bachelor's degrees in 1999-2000, found that just one year after graduation, women who are working full time earn only 80% as much as their male counterparts do. True, female students tend to major in fields associated with lower earnings, such as education and health professions, which accounts for part of the wage gap. But even among co-eds who majored in the same subject in college, men are still earning more money than their female counterparts just 12 months out of the college gate.

Yick! Those findings come from the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, which also found that "the salary gap gets considerably wider over time, with women earning 69% of what men earn 10 years after graduation," as Rawe writes. She adds:

But the one-year data is particularly telling, since new graduates are not likely to have had children yet and since they are entering the work force without significant prior experience than can affect starting salaries.

Men in the workforce may still be financially advantaged. But more men of my generation are feeling the stresses of working parenthood--at least in Asia. An unnamed reader of yesterday's post about Gloria Steinem reminded me of the terrific recent cover story in TIME ASIA, written by my talented colleague Liam Fitzpatrick (who, like me, is half Asian despite his Emerald-Isle name). It's titled "Dad's Dilemma":

Fathers all over Asia share that sense of guilt over their inability to balance work and parenthood. Dr. Sanjay Chugh, a New Delhi psychiatrist, says these harried, overburdened men stream through his consulting rooms: "Indian fathers have less and less time to spend with their children. When stress goes up for a father, it affects not only the quantity of time he spends with his children but the quality." Some, like a 35-year-old human-resources manager in Tokyo, who asked not to be named, blame unsympathetic employers. "At my old workplace, most of the people in my department didn't have children," he says. "I don't think they understood the importance. I was unable to take any holidays after the birth of my son." Others point to the old Asian culture of networking, in which deals are done over endless cups of sake and soju. "I really thought I'd be the kind of father who spends a lot of time with his kids," sighs Ahn Chan, an office worker in Seoul. But, come evening, he feels obliged to drink with colleagues and clients, and hardly sees his 4-year-old. "Sometimes when we run into each other, she looks very sad and starts demanding that I stay at home," he says.

How sad. Here's why it's important that Asian dads--no, make that dads everywhere--figure this out:

Every day, pleading overwork, millions of men cancel millions of promises made to millions of children. Dads cannot read bedtime stories or go to the park. Dads are in their offices, or on the road, or on conference calls. The effects of this physical or emotional absenteeism are actually quantifiable: numerous academic studies have shown that children with distant fathers score lower on tests of empathy, reasoning and brain development than those whose fathers are more involved. The former behave more aggressively, don't get on as well with siblings, tend to be less popular in school and are more reluctant to take responsibility for their misbehavior. In 2002, the U.S. National Center for Policy Analysis concluded that kids with physically absent fathers were up to three times more likely to use drugs and engage in criminal behavior. Last month, an Israeli study reported that children with absent fathers were more likely to have trouble forming new relationships, whether the absences were permanent or shorter term. When children reach school age, Australian psychologist Paul Amato found, fathers are even more important to self-esteem than mothers.

Back to Gloria Steinem's point: work/life conflicts affect mom, dad and the kids. Let's make it matter to our employers.

April 24, 2007 10:39

Work/Life Conflict Is About Men, Too, Says Gloria Steinem

Why are all the stories about juggling work and family focused on women?

That's what Gloria Steinem wants to know. The celebrated activist and author was in the house today, speaking at an editors' roundtable about women in the media. She's a founder--along with Jane Fonda and other boldface names--of the Women's Media Center, a nonprofit dedicated to growing the number of women journalists as well as the coverage of women in the media.

Gloria Steinem says she's "hooked on the stories that don't get told." / Photo courtesy of Women's Media Center

Carol Jenkins, the longtime local New York TV news anchor and current president of WMC, begins by telling us women hold only 3% of "positions of clout" in the media. She speaks of a recent gathering of women producers and bookers at all the top networks, and how elated she was to meet them--until she discovered every single one of them reported to a male boss. One-quarter of op-eds are written by women, she adds.

Longtime TV anchor Carol Jenkins says women in the media face some of the same issues they faced 30 years ago. / Photo courtesy of Women's Media Center

"We're not here to complain but to offer help," says Steinem. She ticks off the "stories that don't get told," the angles that editors missed in recent news: real-life examples of women affected by the recent Supreme Court ruling on abortion. The tendency among police to chalk off killings of women as domestic incidents, as in the case of the Virginia Tech shooter's first victim. The pervasive, horrifying and ongoing global trade in women and children.

But one story seems to stick in her craw: the media's take on what she calls the "work/life conflict." She tells of a recent Today show segment on the topic that failed to depict one dad dealing with the issue. Studies show that men are just as interested in the topic, and that men are more likely to watch those segments if other men are portrayed. "We miss a lot of our audience" with this knee-jerk kind of coverage, she says.

After the meeting, I checked out the WMC web site. Fellow journalists and workplace bloggers: it's still pretty new, but it's already a rich resource.

There's a wire-type service with exclusive interviews, opinions and coverage of news related to women. Under "Resources," the site lists women columnists with short descriptions of their works and links to their own sites (though the late Molly Ivins, spelled "Ivans," is somehow still there--and, no, it doesn't link to heaven). It also lists women- and media-related organizations, media web sites and blogs.

It would be useful if WMC added a searchable database of women experts. Both Steinem and Jenkins chided us gently of their absence in our Rolodexes. An openly accessibly source that includes, say, women entymologists and women historians would be helpful.

Check it out. At the bottom of the home page, you can take the WMC Poll:

Can Hillary Clinton win the General Election?

Yes
No
Don't know
I agree with Gloria Steinem, this is the wrong question*

* In response to the question, "Do you support Hillary or Obama?" Steinem answers: yes.

April 23, 2007 7:31

We Commute. Is That Terrible?

New York City and its suburbs are all abuzz today about Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Earth Day proposals. Among them is to slap a toll on drivers who dare to trek into Manhattan below 86th Street. (For my friends with the good fortune to live far, far away, most anyone who drives into town is heading below 86th Street.)

I care, because this affects me, or, rather, a member of my household.

My husband Chris is a freelance classical musician, meaning he drives into town almost every day, typically at odd hours inconvenient for mass transit. We live across the Hudson River, meaning he pays $6 to cross the George Washington Bridge. Gas lately costs about $2.60 a gallon in New Jersey, and even in our efficient Toyota Camry a tank doesn't last long. He typically parks way uptown, only because it's easier to find a free spot, then hoofs or subways it to gigs downtown. But sometimes he'll shell out up to $20 for a lot in midtown if, say, he has a tight run to another gig out of town.

According to staffing company Kelly Services' Global Workforce Index, he's hardly alone:

Only 34% of the Americans surveyed prefer public transportation over their own vehicle for their daily commute. That's about half the global average of 64% and the second-lowest rate among all countries surveyed (Turkey came in at 29%).

He's not alone in his reasons, either:

The survey strongly suggests that it may be a lack of convenience and accessibility -- not anti-environment attitudes -- that is steering many Americans to their own wheels. Only 51% of those surveyed said they had the choice of public transportation, compared with a global average of 72% and as much as 90% or more in Hong Kong, Hungary, Indonesia and Russia.

Asked what single factor would encourage greater use of public transportation, the largest group of Americans (32%) cited more convenient access, followed by more frequent services (16%) and lower prices (10%). Concerns about safety and comfort ranked relatively low.

Globally, the biggest users of public transportation were in Asia. Indonesia topped the list with 93%, followed by Hong Kong (88%) and Singapore (86%).

I take the bus. Sometimes I take three modes of transit: car to bus, bus to subway, subway to office. I'd bike, but it's just so dang far. Plus I don't own a bike. Are we terrible?

April 20, 2007 4:00

More Action in Video Resumes

The country's biggest job board is plunging into the vidumé (thanks, Gerry) scene. This week it announced plans to "be the first major online job site to launch a new video résumé service, enabling job seekers to enhance their online applications with videos highlighting their qualifications, accomplishments and other key information."

Not sure yet how this product qualifies them as "first," considering Jobster's and Vault's already existing vidumé capabilities. CareerBuilder's Video BrandBuilder launches in the second quarter, which, for us non-analysts, means late spring/early summer.

CareerBuilder did introduce video functionality for employers in September 2006. Employers can purchase 60-second or 90-second videos "featuring footage of their work environment, products, benefits, mission, community involvement and more to attract qualified applicants."

And this is kinda cool: CareerBuilder offers "script creation, a videographer shoot of multiple locations, full editing with transitional effects, animation, professional voice-over and music background."

According to a late 2006 Harris Interactive survey sponsored by CareerBuilder:

• 60% of over 2,200 hiring managers and human resource professionals expressed some interest in viewing video résumés of potential candidates.

• Nearly half (49%) of over 6,000 workers expressed some willingness to post a video resume of themselves to capture the attention of prospective employers.

Video BrandBuilder packages are to include

end-to-end video creation; conversion and streaming of all videos to CareerBuilder.com's patent-pending One-Click format; full streaming from CareerBuilder.com's dedicated video services for 12 months; and a DVD copy in broadcast quality.

April 19, 2007 10:36

Do You Care If Your Employer Is Green or Charitable?

I've recently started getting press releases from companies touting how green or how charitable they are. They're not just honking their horns as good corporate citizens; they're claiming these strategies help them recruit.

Take this notice I got from Deloitte & Touche yesterday. It began by noting the coming "talent crunch" due to the tidal wave of baby boomers supposedly shifting into rocking chairs, and helpfully adds its interest in hiring young workers. Then it says:

A new survey of Gen Y by Deloitte & Touche USA LLP (Deloitte) reveals that companies with compelling community involvement programs could receive a serious windfall when it comes to recruiting workers ages 18-26. In fact, nearly two-thirds of respondents (62%) in Deloitte's 2007 Volunteer IMPACT survey said they would prefer to work for companies that let their people volunteer their workplace skills and knowledge to nonprofits in the community.

I got this one from a company called Genesys, which describes itself as a "leader in the multimedia collaboration space," whatever the heck that means. Its release, titled "Genesys Customer Survey Says More than Half of Respondents Now Have Green Programs in Their Workplace and Find Meeting Travel to Be #1 Polluter," states:

• More than half of respondents (56%) say that their company has put policies into place to help preserve our natural environment

• A full 88% believe that car and air travel to meetings have the largest negative impact on the environment--far larger than paper and plastic goods used in the course of physical meetings

• 65% believe that using web collaboration for virtual meetings to reduce travel can make a significant positive impact on the environment.

• A preference for conducting virtual meetings from one's office at work (45%) won out over a preference to meet from a home office (33%), showing that people still seek personal interaction although not necessarily where meetings are concerned.

Genesys even adds a link to a section on its web site that can help you "calculate the cost of attending a meeting in-person, in terms of CO2 emissions and travel costs." (Ah. Now I have a vague idea of what Genesys does: it must sell technology and services for virtual meetings.)

Anyway, it got me to thinking. As much sleep as I lose about the acres of forestry my employer dessimates with every printing, would I quit my job over it? Would I, in a job interview, make a point of asking if the employer ran its copiers on flax-seed oil or stocked its bathrooms with recycled toilet paper? Does the flier in the elevator bank advertising some sort of "clean up New York day" make me feel better that I work here?

The answer, for me, is not really. Like a lot of people I know of my generation (X, for the record), I care about the environment and about conducting organized acts of kindness. It's just that I care more about parenting my kid and paying the mortgage and getting my assignments done on time. Living green and charitably feels to me like a personal issue. I realize my corporation has a far bigger impact on earth than my household does, but somehow it feels hypocritical to demand that my employer mulch its coffee grounds when I don't, either.

I don't know. What do you all think? LaDawn, Gerry? (Hi, friends. Nice to be back.)

UPDATE: Here's yet another "green" pitch from staffing company Adecco, in my inbox this morning. According to a survey it conducted with Harris Interactive:

• 1/3 of Americans would be more inclined to work for a green company compared to an organization that does not make conscious efforts to promote socially and environmentally friendly practices.

• About half of employed adults (52%) think their company should do more
to be environmentally friendly.

• While about 7 in 10 employed adults (69%) know that their company has an environmental policy, only about a third (32%) knows what that policy is.

• Employed men are more likely than their female counterparts to say they know their company's environmental policy (35% men vs. 28% women).

April 18, 2007 10:26

Asian Journalists Debate: How Should We Cover VA Tech Shooter's Race?

The e-mails began early Monday, as news of the shootings at Virginia Tech was breaking. "Mention of race?" read the subject line of an e-mail from Sree Sreenivasan, dean of students at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. The note went out to a listserv I get for Asian journalists in the New York area. Sree quoted Matt Drudge, who was quoting Sky News:

SKY NEWS: Witnesses said he was heavily armed and entered the college looking for his girlfriend... He reportedly lined up students and opened fire at them. He was said to be a young Asian...

There followed a barrage of e-mails from my fellow journalists. The initial ones attempted to corroborate this news; it was, after all, before any such police pronouncements. Later, after his race was confirmed, passionate discussion ensued about how and if the media ought to cover his ethnic background.

Some of the debate was spurred on by the Asian American Journalists Association, which issued this statement dated April 17:

As coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting continues to unfold, AAJA urges all media to avoid using racial identifiers unless there is a compelling or germane reason. There is no evidence at this early point that the race or ethnicity of the suspected gunman has anything to do with the incident, and to include such mention serves only to unfairly portray an entire people.

The effect of mentioning race can be powerfully harmful. It can subject people to unfair treatment based simply on skin color and heritage.

The media's coverage of Cho Seung-Hui's race--and of the subsequent reaction of other Asians--is indeed fodder for debate. Some of my Asian journalist colleagues argued that, whatever his color, the guy was simply a nut. Yet a CNN report titled "South Korea's Shame" described a "collective guilt" felt in his birth country.

CNN was hardly the only media outlet to focus on Asians' reaction to Cho's race; an article by Connie K. Kang for the Los Angeles Times is titled "Korean community in L.A. reacts to Va. Tech shooting," and begins,

The disclosure today that the gunman suspected of carrying out the Virginia Tech massacre was a South Korean national made the killings all the more shocking and painful for Los Angeles' huge Korean American community.

"My heart sank when I heard the news," the Rev. John J. Park, president of the Council of Korean Churches in Southern California, said at a hurriedly called meeting of community leaders in Koreatown.

The Reverend's quote reveals a deep anxiety among us Asians--not just journalists of Asian descent--about the killer's identity. As Andrew Lam of New America Media writes in a piece titled, "Let It Be Some Other 'Asian'":

All across America, no doubt, non-Korean Asian-Americans are now heaving a sigh of relief. "Asian," after all, was the four-alarm-fire word we saw throughout the day after the shootings that took the lives of 33 people at Virginia Tech. The shooter was "Asian," the news reports said. But who was this "Asian" exactly?

Before the news identified the killer as Cho Seung-hui, a 23-year-old English major from South Korea, all ethnic backgrounds were up for grabs. A friend from a small college town on the East Coast, who is Chinese, called to say: "Please, please let it be some other Asian. We'll be in deep if it's Chinese."

As a person of Japanese ethnicity, I didn't feel relieved when I learned of Cho's nationality; I felt terrible and sad. As a journalist of Asian descent, I think everything about the shooter's background including his race is germane when parsing his mental state. The Columbine shooters' social status played into their deadly act. Did Cho's immigrant status lead to his social isolation? Did he feel persecuted or marginalized because of his race?

We don't know yet, and we may never know. But it's deeply important to consider these possibilities in trying to understand. And it's our job as journalists to report everything we know so that others might try to understand.

April 17, 2007 1:14

Violence in the Workplace: It Can Happen Anywhere

Like everyone else in the country today, I'm reeling with shock and horror at the massacre in Virginia.

I first heard about it at the office. My colleague Malik, our blog mastermind, poked his head in my office door. "Turn on your TV," he said. (Being a news organization, we all have TVs, though mine is, inexplicably, a wood-paneled antiquity that I turn on and off by hitting real hard.)

CNN, MSNBC, Fox--all the news channels were showing the same reels, of armored police crouching around the campus of Virginia Tech, of scared students scurrying or huddled in groups. It looked like it was snowing, but some of them were wearing T-shirts.

News accounts today are full of interviews with those students, and with professors and administrators who had been trapped in the buildings as the gunman wended his deadly way through. All of those people got up that morning expecting a normal day at work or at class. They expected to write or grade papers and take or give tests and eat or cook the cafeteria food. They met instead with terror.

As I took the subway home, all I could think was: why? With the gunman dead, the answer is almost certainly unknowable. Then I thought, who's to say the same thing couldn't happen at my workplace? Is anyone safe?

The answer, in a word, is no, according to the International Labour Office:

Violence at work, ranging from bullying and mobbing, threats by psychologically unstable co-workers, sexual harassment and homicide, is increasing worldwide and has reached epidemic levels in some countries.

The findings are based on a new study titled Violence at Work (third edition) by Vittorio Di Martino, described on the ILO web site as "an international expert on stress and workplace violence," and Duncan Chappell, "past president of the New South Wales Mental Health Review, Australia, and the Commonwealth Secretariat Arbitral Tribunal, United Kingdom."

Here's some small comfort, from the same research:

In the United States, however, where homicide is the third-leading cause of death at work, the number of workplace murders has declined in recent years, with a similar trend for non-fatal assaults. The report says women represent approximately 61 percent of all victimized workers because of their concentration in jobs considered high-risk for assault.

A review of the headlines doesn't make me feel much safer. Here's a history of murderous incidents, courtesy of The Guardian of the U.K.:

October 1991 Previously, the worst mass shooting had been when George Hennard drove his pickup to Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, then shot dead 23 people and himself.

July 1984 Some 21 people were killed when a 41-year-old opened fire at a McDonald's restaurant in San Diego. He was shot by police.

August 1966 A gunman holed up in a clocktower at the University of Texas campus in Austin killed 15 people before being shot by police. Prior to yesterday, this was the worst campus shooting in US history.

August 1986 A former postal worker entered a post office in Oklahoma, and shot 14 workers before killing himself.

February 1983 Three men shot dead 14 people in the Wah Mee club in Seattle's Chinatown.

April 1999 The most notorious campus shooting of modern times: two students at Columbine high school in Littleton, Colorado, killed 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves.

March 2005 A student at Red Lake high school in Minnesota killed five students, a teacher, a security guard, and then himself. Before school he had shot dead his grandfather and grandfather's companion.

July 1993 A businessman, 55, entered a law office in San Francisco and shot dead eight people, then himself.

February 1988 An ex-employee returned to his laboratory in Sunnyvale, California, and killed seven people, and injured three - including a woman he had been stalking.

January 2006 A woman killed seven people then herself at her former postal workplace in Goleta, California.

March 2006 A loner shot six people at party in Seattle, then himself.

April 1, 2007 9:00

Foolish Pranks to Try at the Office

Happy April Fool's Day, friends. I'm off to Japan today to visit my folks, and thus hereby declare a two-week hiatus for WORK IN PROGRESS. (I know, I know...a real blogger wouldn't take a vacation...a real blogger would send thoughts and observations and snapshots from her trip. Here, I'll sum it up for you real quick. Day 1: 24-hour airplane ride with two-year-old. Days 2 to 5: Jet lag. Days 2 to 14: clean windows, weatherproof deck, wash dishes, roast 11 lb. smuggled ham, take mother to doctor, wash dishes, physically assault 400-year-old father for telling same retarded jokes. Day 15: 24-hour airplane ride with two-year-old.)

I'm going with my sister, Emy, a mother of four and pediatric oncology nurse who is also the prime minister of pranks. Here's one she pulled during my brother George's wedding.

Dad was driving some wedding guests back to their hotel when suddenly he was surrounded by cops. Japanese police don't carry guns, so about a dozen of them swarmed the car, holding out their night sticks and screaming at Dad to get out. They pointed at the trunk of the car, from which protruded a human leg.

You know those fake legs you can buy at gag shops? Emy had smuggled one in her suitcase and affixed it to the car trunk. As Dad made his way through the city, the local police had received a surge of phone calls from other drivers swearing they'd seen a man driving by with a dead guy in the back of his car.

My colleague Lev writes in a recent book review that, as children, he and his siblings all read a book about "art, mathematics, music, philosophy, symbolic logic, computers, genetics, paradoxes, palindromes and Zen koans." He called it their "nerd bible." My family didn't read much, but if we did, it'd be more of an idiot bible.

Anyway, sometimes I find myself wishing I worked with more people who live by the idiot bible, people who pull pranks on the first day of April just because we have nothing better to do. Here's a list from the funny folks at Careerbuilder.com, who polled their members to find the silliest stunts pulled at the office on April Fool's Day:

1. Sent a letter signed by the president of the company that informed employees they would have to take potty breaks in alphabetical order.

2. Decreased the size of boss's lab coat. Joke continued after April 1 with boss perplexed by his coats getting tighter each week while he was dieting so diligently.

3. Made for a very foggy day with dry ice in the urinal.

4. Changed all of boss's reading glasses to clear glass.

5. Sent a note to co-worker's pager that said to contact "George." The number was to the White House.

6. Employee went to the restroom and when he came out, he ran into a wall of tape draped across the doorway, courtesy of his team.

7. Put "random burping" program on boss's computer that would loudly burp every few seconds. It went on for days.

8. Brought in jelly doughnuts filled with ketchup.

9. Had someone with a "questionable" profession call the office and ask for directions.

10. CEO placed a very large and official-looking "For Sale" sign in front of the building.