October 31, 2007 10:25
Scary thought: I must change my life
The most ghoulish thing you may confront today are your colleague's costumes. Says Marketwatch,
According to research from the National Retail Federation, 33.8% of adults plan on dressing in costume for Halloween this year. And there's a good chance many of them will be dressing up in the office: A CareerBuilder.com survey in 2005 found that almost one-third of workers planned to wear a costume work that year.
Not me. First of all, I'm working from home in order to attend my preschooler's parade, then escort her on her candy-begging rounds. Second, I've never been one for adult costumes. As a woman, your choices at any American Halloween store are a) slutty nurse, b) slutty cheerleader, c) slutty pink pirate (an inexplicably hot outfit this year). And who needs to parade around the workplace dressed like a prostitute doing role play?
No, the scary for me comes not from the holiday but from something that's been haunting me these past few days. Two women I know are leaving my company. They're kind of eerily similar in resumé: both rank Number Two on their mastheads at our marquee publications; both have worked in the building for over 20 years; both are making the leap to futures unknown, meaning they're not leaving explicitly for another job.
Now, these are both women I admire tremendously. They're scary-smart, ambitious, accomplished people who nevertheless remain, well, nice. I've marveled at the way they've managed rocket-speed careers along with motherhood, and still manage to come to work with their hair combed.
And now they're abandoning those carefully crafted, hard-fought careers. "I realized I could be working another 20 years," said one, cheerfully, when I interviewed her before an audience of colleagues for her send-off. "I thought: Is this what I want to be forever? Is there something else? I'm ready for Act Two."
So here's the terrifying part. That's me in 10 years. I've already worked as a journalist for 15 years, 10 of them at this company. Not in my wildest dreams do I expect to reach the heights they have. Yet, I admit I've never really considered doing something else. What will I be 10 years from now? What's my Act Two?
Sometimes, in between packing my kid's lunch and running for the bus and meeting that deadline by a hair, I think of that line in the Rilke poem: "You must change your life." And it hits me like a ton of bricks. I must change my life. How?
October 30, 2007 12:00
Would you wear guyliner for a raise?
Zac Efron (there, two High School Musical references in a day--my life's work is done) does it. So does John Mayer, Ryan Seacrest and any CEO who has ever spent time under the hot glare of TV lights.
So would you, gentlemen, wear men's makeup for work?
Nah, says this article by Kibun Kim in Salon today. It cites:
A GQ survey in 2005 reported that "92 percent of men would not wear makeup even if it guaranteed them a more fulfilling sex life."
It wasn't always this way.
Male makeup has a long history, starting with the Egyptians, whose men applied thick eyeliner to ward off the "evil eye." Roman men used chalk-based foundation to brighten their complexions, and, in the 18th century, Louis XV and his court made it vogue for men to put on gobs of toxic lead-based makeup and rouge. Interest in men's grooming ebbed in the 20th century, and more recent examples of men wearing makeup, like Kiss and David Bowie, have been either garish or intentionally provocative.
But even in the age of unabashed male grooming, makeup is still a hard sell.
The aforementioned GQ survey found that 65 percent of men thought plastic surgery acceptable but that only 14 percent would consider using makeup for a 25 percent salary increase. It seems men would rather go under the knife than get paid to put on some makeup to cover up wrinkles.
So let me get this straight. Eighty-six percent of men wouldn't wear a dab of the mancake for a 25% raise? Are you all nuts? Is your antiquated notion of masculinity so fragile you'd forfeit a fortnight in Paris, a nicer apartment or whatever else you'd do with a 25% raise?
Maybe we women should threaten to toss the mascara and lipstick unless the boss gives us more pay. That oughtta scare them good.
October 30, 2007 10:03
Countdown to Hollywood writers strike!
As you may have heard, the union that represents movie and TV writers is about to launch a strike. As of October 31, Guild members are to lay down their pens and refuse to write another word for their studio bosses. Of course, as a good buddy of mine who's a successful TV producer grumbles, this edict won't affect 90% of members, whom nobody pays to write anyway. Still, he and most others have all vowed to honor the plan.
We ink-stained equivalents in the journalism world are watching the developments with interest. Newspaper writers have been known to strike. At magazines, not so much, if only because so few magazines even employ full-time staff writers anymore. Still, what would that be like--to walk out on the job in the interests of the group? United we strike, divided we make our mortgage payments?
More interestingly: what does a writer do when she isn't allowed to write? I don't know that a day goes by that I don't jot down something, whether it's for an article, a blog post or a future imaginary project. But as Brooks Barns of The New York Times reported yesterday,
...the writers union also tossed in a provision called a “script validation program” that has some members rooting, at least behind the scenes, for the enemy on this one topic.
The union wants members to submit copies of any half-finished scripts to headquarters.
So not only can writers not write during the strike, they have to turn in any fractionally finished project. For instance, as Reuters reports,
.
..scribes are feverishly putting finishing touches on their projects and having them biked or messenger-pouched over to the studios. One sigh of relief went up over at Sony Pictures late last week: Oscar-winning "Crash" filmmaker Paul Haggis delivered his draft for the 22nd Bond installment.
To which I was like, wha--Crash guy is writing the new Bond movie? What has the world come to?
So what will these temporarily out-of-work screenwriters do? Here's how Guild members Gregg Rossen and Bryan Sawyer imagine the likes of Paul Guay (who wrote Liar, Liar) and Douglas Eboch (Sweet Home Alabama) will while the time away:
October 29, 2007 3:22
Young boss, old worker: BFFs! Not!
...or so worries Donald Trump, according to his blog. (Donald Trump blogs! Fo real? I put my so-not-Trumpesque fortune on an intern tapping out his infrequent, blandly written posts.) He/the intern writes:
In today’s multi-generational workplace, it’s not unusual for an older worker to have a younger boss. In order for that relationship to survive, both partners have to capitalize on each other’s experiences and strengths.
Trump/intern cites a study by staffing company Randstad, but the link leads instead to this well-reported Atlanta Journal-Constitution article that says:
One-fifth of employed adults are older than their bosses, according to a survey last year by Randstad USA, an Atlanta-based staffing company.
Wow! One in five! What's more:
And that number is likely to increase as more older workers say they plan to stay in the work force even after they retire. This year, an average of 4.6 adults turn 65 each minute, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That rate will almost double by 2025.
A well-documented retirement boom has begun already, as the oldest baby boomers (people born between 1946 and 1964) begin to take early retirement and approach the age for traditional retirement. A 2005 Merrill Lynch study of baby boomers' retirement plans found that more than three-quarters see themselves doing some sort of work during their retirement years.
So here's the prob. Millions of working Americans are hitting retirement age with no intention of retiring. Some will remain in the corner office; no biggie there, office politics-wise. But the worker bees among them will see ever younger people hoisted into management roles above them. And many retirees will try new lines of work in which they'll begin at the bottom rung.
And that could mean a cultural clash. Again from the AJC:
There are some potential pitfalls ahead. The Randstad survey found that three-quarters of older workers (age 55 and older) said they relate well to younger workers, but only 56 percent of all employees said they relate well to older workers, and 77 percent said younger workers do not seek advice from employees older than 50.
I see this already in my workplace. Over the past year, some of my peers have been promoted into seriously senior positions, leapfrogging over many of their own seniors. I strongly believe in promotions based on merit, and in my view every single one of my peers deserve the new responsibilities. But I've overheard plenty of grumbling from skipped-over longtime staffers. And as I slip from young whippersnapper to mid-career line worker, I do wonder what lies ahead for me in a notoriously ageist industry. How will I feel about being edited by a twentysomething twerp? How will she feel about editing me, a thirtysomething geezer?
Any of you out there with younger bosses? What's that like?
October 29, 2007 11:48
Wanted: English teachers. Asians, don't apply
China is desperate for English teachers. With the Beijing Olympics looming and the exploding middle class eager to prepare their children for a global marketplace, Chinese parents are scrounging for people to teach their kids the lingua franca. Which makes for a terrific job market for, say, a recent college grad hankering to see the Great Wall, get a crash course in Mandarin and make some yuan as well.
Just one hitch: only whites need apply.
The Los Angeles Times has a terrific story today by Kevin Zhou titled "Where English teachers have to look the part: Asian Americans can't compete with white instructors in China." It begins:
When Douglas Lee started searching for a job as an English instructor in Chengdu, he seemed just like any other American to his potential employers. He was raised in Oklahoma, enjoyed listening to jazz and was a big fan of Woody Allen movies like "Crimes and Misdemeanors."
But when he submitted a photo of himself, the 26-year-old graduate of San Diego State University discovered that he had one blemish on his application: He looked too Chinese.By the end of a two-month job search, Lee had been rejected by seven employers, and for no other reason, he says, than being a Chinese American.
"Some of them just straight up said they wanted someone more foreign," said Lee, who settled for a job as an administrator at North America ESL School in Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province in western China.
But that's...illegal. Isn't it?
As in the U.S., there are laws in China prohibiting job discrimination based on sex, race or religion. But in practice, many Chinese employers place hiring ads with specific requirements on age, gender and residence. Companies routinely ask applicants for photos.
"Most of the regulations are just general principle. . . and not enough to protect against discrimination in real life," said Liu Haobin, a labor lawyer in Beijing.
This isn't true just in China. In Japan, ads for English tutoring services feature smiling white faces--never Asians, blacks or Hispanics. I had a Chinese-American friend who taught in Japan, and she says she was constantly being mistaken for Japanese. It was a problem, she said. Japanese parents are famously education-minded, and I wouldn't be surprised if they expressed quiet surprise at an Asian teaching their kids a non-Asian language. But the Chinese don't have the same hang-ups about politeness that Japanese do, according to Benjamin Newbry, associate director of the Princeton Review test-preparation company in Shanghai (who's white):
Most Chinese consumers expect a white teacher at a foreign-language school, he said. And when the teacher isn't white, Chinese parents aren't shy about complaining.
"A lot of them were up in my face," Newbry said. "They're pretty aggressive when it comes to their kid's learning environment."
White teachers are such hot commodities that some schools have taken to hiring whites who don't even speak English as a first language:
The demand for white teachers has led some schools to hire people from France, Germany and other countries where English is not the primary language, said Maosi Yan, program director at Interlingua School, a small, privately owned center in Guizhou province, in south-central China.
Good thing teaching in China isn't part of my five-year plan. I'd have to dye my hair blond.
October 29, 2007 10:25
I saw a giant pumpkin on my way to work
And you all thought I worked in New York City. Seriously: as I walked through Times Square today, I saw a sight that made me wonder where I was. Not to mention what kind of fertilizer farmers today are using on their squash.
Just to prove my location:
What were a batch of ginormous pumpkins doing smack dab in the middle of the country's largest city, you ask? Seeking fame, of course. They were parked outside Good Morning America's studios. I think it was the segment between new thigh-busters and flattering fall make-up.
October 26, 2007 4:00
Unbelievable NYT correction
An article last Sunday about the fashion industry's reticence to use black models referred incorrectly to a black woman in a maid's outfit pictured in the September issue of Italian Vogue. She was, in fact, a maid at the hotel where the pictures were taken, and was included, the Vogue photographer said, because of her attractiveness and her ability to underscore the pictures' theme of a stereotypical rich white woman who hires ethnic servants; the black woman was not a model dressed as a maid.
Here's the article in question.
Wow.
October 26, 2007 2:00
End of Food Week: a Rice-Off!
My husband's friend Janey Choi sent a link to this procrastinator-friendly computer game. Called Free Rice, this web site poses spelling-bee-level vocab words and four multiple-choice definitions. For each correct response, the org donates 10 grains of rice through the United Nations to "help end world hunger." I got to 110 grains: calumny means slander! A slammer is a wrench! Carillon are bells! But brogan is a shoe, not a pixie.
Happy Friday.
Count 'em: 160 grains of rice. That'll fill some poor starving Somalian's belly.
October 26, 2007 12:00
Eww! Your desk is grosser than the loo
Listen to this:
In a recent survey of American adults conducted by Booth Research, one in four respondents (25%) pointed to their office as “the germiest place” they are exposed to on a regular basis. Shedding more light on how Americans view the office, the top “germiest” response was selected more frequently than public restrooms and schools (19% and 17% respectively).
And that's just a survey. This is an evergreen story favored by cable news channels, in which they take a blacklight and shine it around people's offices and other common areas to see how germy they are. I remember a CNN report from a couple years back in which the reporter had the balls to sneak into Anderson Cooper's office and show us what a disgusting slob he is. Oh, Anderson. And I thought I loved thee.
Me, I confess to a touch of the OCD when it comes to my desk. I have a family-sized can of Lysol disinfectant ("spring scent") and a roll of disposable Lysol wet wipes. Not to mention a boffo bottle of Purell that I use with alarming frequency.
But who am I fooling? Not the germs. After all, I eat at my desk. Which means crumbs, drips and schmears that my obsessive Lysol wipes inevitably miss. I might eat a bite of sandwich, wipe my hands, then tap out an e-mail. I'll take a handful of bran flakes--all right, all right, Cheetos--shove most in my mouth and brush the crumbs off my lap.
All this means my office is hosting an international convention of bacteria. The office john, after all, gets cleaned every day by a very nice lady. She comes by to show me pictures of her adorable grandbaby, then empties my trash and leaves. It's not her job to disinfect my keyboard.
In fact, according to one study, the desk in your office has 400 times more germs than the toilet seat. Ewwww! Here's Katie Couric talking about this topic, including the answer to this question: whose offices are germier--women's or men's?
October 26, 2007 9:00
My job is endangered. Is yours?
From Forbes.com:
Health care, education and financial services--if you're looking for work in the coming decades, these are the fields to get into.
What are the worst careers you could pick in the 21st century?
The usual suspects. According to the projections by the U.S. government, manufacturing jobs are expected to decline by more than 5% by 2014 as production moves overseas. Same goes for textile workers, such as sewing machine operators, who will see a 36% drop in employment. Technology will kill off more office positions, such as file clerks. They'll see a 36% drop in their ranks by 2014. Digital cameras will zap the manual photo processing industry by about 30%. And that guy who comes around to read your electric meter? Expect to see a lot less of him, too.
Some surprises: computer programming jobs will increase by only about 2% over the next decade because most of that work will be outsourced. Radio announcers, travel agents (duh) and federal workers are also endangered. But guess who'll have the toughest time finding her next gig? You know it. Moi.
Another endangered species: journalists. Despite the proliferation of media outlets, newspapers, where the bulk of U.S. reporters work, will cut costs and jobs as the Internet replaces print. While current events will always need to be covered (we hope), the number of reporting positions is expected to grow by just 5% in the coming decade, the Labor Department says. Most jobs will be in small (read: low-paying) markets.
Methinks it's time to start training as a plumber. Those guys always have work. I think I have a pair of jeans here somewhere that show some crack.
October 25, 2007 4:11
Trees could do the work of dead-tree journos
Today, from Gawker:
The New York Times will make all its employees feel better by installing $110,000 worth of trees in the lobby. Seriously! They announced today that they're building an "open-air birch and moss garden" on the ground floor of their fancy new building. An open-air birch and moss garden. So maybe this season's $15 million in staff cuts ("certainly not the largest that we've had," says the Times) were just to pay for the 50-foot trees and several tons of moss (moss!!) that they're shipping in from Jersey this weekend. Some intrepid citizen journalists should go document the sure-to-be-astounding installation (cranes hoisting trees over a 70-foot glass wall in the middle of midtown!). Maybe all the people laid off from their printing plants should go into the tree nursery business? Or maybe they should talk to the Sulzbergers about building them the world's largest wooden aero-plane!
October 25, 2007 11:15
Gay men earn less. But not lesbians.
So says a new study:
Gay men working in management and traditional blue-collar, male-dominated jobs make less than straight men because they are discriminated against by their employers, according to new research released today by the University of New Hampshire Whittemore School of Business and Economics. Lesbians, however, do not experience similar discrimination in the labor market.
Bruce Elmslie, professor of economics, and his co-author Edinaldo Tebaldi, former assistant professor of economics at UNH and now at Bryant University, published their research in the Journal of Labor Research in an article titled “Sexual Orientation and Labor Market Discrimination.” The authors analyzed labor and wage information from more than 91,000 heterosexual and homosexual couples collected by the U.S. Census March 2004 Current Population Survey.
According to the authors, "gay men who live together earn 23% less than married men, and 9% less than unmarried heterosexual men who live with a woman. Discrimination is most pronounced in management and blue-collar, male-dominated occupations such as building and grounds cleaning and maintenance; construction and extraction; and production."
This isn't true for gay women, however. The authors conclude that
while negative attitudes toward lesbians could affect them, lesbians may benefit from the perception that they are more career-focused and less likely to leave the labor market to raise children than heterosexual women. According to their study, 18.1% of lesbians have children, compared with 49.4% of straight women.
So employers stereotype lesbians as being more committed to the job and not as likely to have kids. But why should gay men earn less? Three reasons, say the authors: bias by employers, bias by customers and fear of AIDS.
“Employers may disapprove of gay lifestyles and act on this bias in making hiring decisions,” the authors said. Employers also may discriminate against gay men in response to the desires of the majority of employees. If employers consider mixing heterosexual and homosexual employees distracting and detrimental to productivity, the authors said the employers may consider it profitable to discriminate.
Gay men also may experience labor market discrimination because customers may not want to interact with them, thus influencing hiring practices. “If customers prefer to interact with heterosexual employees, the owner will act on the customer’s taste for discrimination,” the authors said.Finally, discrimination may occur as a result of anti-gay attitudes associated with AIDS and misunderstanding as to how HIV is transmitted. Previous research shows that people with HIV/AIDS have higher rates of absenteeism from work. The authors theorize that biased employers may be reluctant to hire gay men because they are concerned about a loss of productivity if a worker becomes infected with HIV/AIDS.
I mean, really? Are employers so stupid? They still think the most productive and thus worthy of highest compensation is the married, hetero male? Friends--I give up. Please discuss among yourselves. I'll give you a topic: biased bosses.
October 24, 2007 3:27
10 career killers (or 9, or 26, whatever)
My colleague Julie Rawe forwarded me this piece of joy. It's from someone named Merilee at Kern Communications, and promotes "world-class career coach John M. McKee, author of Career Wisdom among other business success titles." McKee, she says, "details 10 key self-destructive workplace habits sure to endanger one’s longevity on the job." The advice itself isn't bad, though I don't like the pejorative losers to describe people who apparently don't display enough career wisdom. Also, the tips listed don't exactly add up to 10. Take a look:
1.2. Not keeping your skill set current – The business landscape is ever-changing and there is more demand for jobs than supply. Not staying on par with colleagues and those vying for your job will be a death knell.
3.
4.
5. Failing to deliver results – Winners in business know that it’s all about accountability. Those who harbor a sense of entitlement for simply having put forth effort, irrespective of the results of those efforts, are guaranteed to fall by the wayside.
6.
7.
8. Confusing efficiency with effectiveness – Those who think that communicating via e-mail replaces the need to actually talk with people around them fail to recognize the importance of personally connecting with others in today’s highly automated and technological environment. Communicating in person whenever possible is imperative for success-seekers.
9.
10.
11. Believing that you are irreplaceable – There is no room for “divas” in the workplace. As soon as you convince yourself that you and only you can do the job “right”, your star will surely start to fall.
12.
13.
14. Knowing all the answers – The old adage remains true: knowledge is power. Professing to know it all can readily stagnate a career. Winners remain unceasingly interested in learning new ideas and approaches.
15.
16.
17. Surrounding your self with “brown-nosers” – Losers like having people tell them how smart they are, whether or not it’s true, while successful managers and other professionals accept and encourage intelligence and creativity in others.
18.
19.
20. Forgetting to give credit to others – Losers inappropriately take full credit for positive events despite the help or input received by others, while Winners give credit where credit is due. Losers inevitably reap what they sow.
21.
22.
23. Failing to self promote – Bragging is one thing, but letting colleagues throughout your industry know of your success through case studies, promotion bulletins, or other such tools is quite another. Losers often fail to recognize the importance of letting others know about their successes, or go about it in entirely the wrong way.
24.
25.
26. Losing perspective – Intuitive business people recognize that, despite their best attempts to do everything right, sometimes they approach roadblocks and seek the advice and perspective of a respected friend, colleague or even a business coach. Those who fail to recognize their shortcomings are destined for the unemployment line.
And if you count them, technically there are nine, not 10, tips. Counting. Such a forgotten skill.
October 24, 2007 11:11
So many ways to suck at parenting
"Snack."
That's the word that woke L.A. Times columnist Rosa Brooks up in a cold sweat recently. She'd remembered that she'd promised to supply her child's class with snacks the next morning, an ordeal she recounts in a column this week titled, "Modern 'parenting' insanity:
having kids today has turned into a full-time job and career killer, especially for mothers."
I had forgotten -- how could I have forgotten? -- that I had volunteered to bring snack food for 30 children to my daughter's preschool at 8:30 a.m. And not just any snack food. It had to consist of fruit and/or vegetable plus protein and/or complex carbohydrate and be prepared in individual, child-sized servings.
Frantic, I searched the cupboards. Pasta, cereal -- who was I kidding?Bad parent.
It's a feeling I suspect most parents -- particularly mothers -- get a lot these days.
My friend Gerry sent me this link, adding the note: "Are we all nuts?" To which his wife Rachel answered, "Nuts? She can't put nuts in the snack. My God, are you crazy!?!" ...which, of course, is Gerry's point precisely.
I totally empathize with Brooks.
Modern parenting is wildly labor-intensive from Day 1. Modern babies, we're told, won't even sleep unless their parents camp out on the floor and stagger up blearily to provide reassurance every few hours. Then there's the infant feeding mantra "breast is best," which requires someone-who-just-happens-to-be-female to be physically attached either to a baby or to a milk-pumping machine every couple of hours for, oh . . . a year or so per child. Hey, no problem! It's not like you wanted to get any work done, right, ladies?
From there, we move smoothly (or not) to infant swim classes and play groups (miss those crucial early skills-building opportunities and your child may never catch up). Then there's preschool and the making of complex snacks and lunches. Next, there's soccer and ballet and tutoring and the endless chauffeuring of children to activities, a process that pretty much eliminates parental free time on the weekends, in addition to eliminating children's time for free, unstructured play.
A couple weekends ago, I had dinner in the city with some girlfriends. Let me say that again: I had dinner, out, with just grown-ups, in a nice West Village restaurant, on a weekend. At night. This never happens. And yet I felt awful as I left my tot with a sitter. As we gorged on heirloom tomatoes and fried zucchini blossoms, one friend recounted her Saturday thus far: swim lessons, then soccer, then ballet. Time for a pedicure? Nah. Another friend told of how guilty she felt moving her home office for her fast-growing business from the hallway, where her daughter could regularly pay visits, to a room with a door.
Guilt. It's the defining emotion of working parenthood. But why? All our kids are healthy, thriving, positively adored. Even though I don't get to watch her eat it, I manage to make my kid a nice lunch every day. Like so:
Clockwise from top left: banana; fruit cup; pretzels; lunch, including two onigiri (rice balls), celery, Japanese pickles, carrots, one turkey meatball, bits of leftover bulgogi Korean beef barbecue. Eat that, Jessica Seinfeld.
October 23, 2007 9:00
I work, therefore I eat at home
"Me want food." Anyone else watch 30 Rock? This is the thought bubble floating above my head at all times these days, so I thought it appropriate to blog consecutively about said subject matter.
My colleague Jeninne Lee-St. John pointed me to this article in Ad Age (did I mention I interned there? Worst internship of my life, except for Rolling Stone). It's about how the drop in revenues suffered by the restaurant industry is due to the rise of stay-at-home moms.
Come again?
It begins:
For the first time since June Cleaver donned pearls and aprons in the 1950s, the percentage of women choosing to work outside the home has been flat to down for several years running. Not coincidentally, the number of meals purchased at restaurants per person has stopped growing too, for the longest sustained stretch in the 23 years NPD Group has tracked the number.
The decades-long rise of women in the work force -- and the related rise of meals bought from restaurants -- has ground to halt and begun to reverse since the turn of the millennium. The numbers have gotten little attention, and they fly in the face of conventional wisdom, but their ramifications are huge for restaurant, supermarket and food marketers.
Why?
Women's participation rate in the paid U.S. labor force topped out at just above 60% in 1999 and again in 2001 but has fallen since then, according to the Labor Department. Restaurant meals, fueled for decades by the migration of moms to the work force, also topped out at 211 per person per year in 2001 according to NPD and likewise have been bouncing lower since, hitting 207 this year.
Okay. I have soooo many problems with this, I don't know where to begin. Yes, I do. Let's take on the fallacy that more women are staying at home. This 2005 New York Times article helped spur the media spitathon on this subject by reporting that some female graduates of elite universities were shunning careers to make babies. And many scholars hotly protest the study that alleges a very slight drop-off in women's labor force participation, complaining of all manner of counting errors.
But most of all I protest because I am a working mom, and I eat at home. I'm an eat-at-home mom, as Jeninne cleverly put it. I eat at home because I prefer it to eating with strangers, colleagues or business clients (see post below). I eat at home because I like to share meals with my family. I eat at home because I'm cheap. I eat at home because I live in the 'burbs and going out is a pain in the ass. I eat at home because I like to eat, and I like to know what's in my food, and also I would like to remain this side of enormous for at least a few more years.
So listen up, you food marketers who read Ad Age (which, despite my internship experience, is a fine publication). Sell me tasty, nutritious packaged meals that I can whip up in a jiffy. Market all you want to my sisters who stay home with the kids, but don't forget to target me. We're all eat-at-home moms, dammit.
Where do you other working parents dine? LaDawn, PunditMom, Gerry?
October 22, 2007 10:28
Why I'll never take another breakfast meeting
I don't usually waste this space commenting on other workplace columnists' work, but Lisa Belkin's piece in this Sunday's New York Times got under my skin. Not that I disagreed with it. Titled "Oh, Joy! Breakfast With the Boss," she begins,
PLEASE do not invite me to breakfast.
It’s not that I don’t like breakfast. To the contrary, I could happily eat eggs or cereal at every meal. But I write about life-work balance, and it feels a little contradictory to conduct an interview, or attend a conference, or give a speech, when everyone involved had to sacrifice sleep to attend.
I haven't taken a breakfast meeting in--I think the last time was in 2002, when I'd just come back from assignment in Tokyo and wanted desperately to have a sit-down with my new boss, TIME's then editor Jim Kelly. I'd been trying without result to get on his docket for weeks, so when his assistant asked if I would have a meal with him before work, I jumped at the chance.
Of all the occasions in the day during which we break bread, I consider the morning meal the most sacred. It is dictated by ritual and habit, right down to the menu. I prepare my decaf with soy, my whole wheat toast slathered with some sort of non-butter product and marmalade, short glass of calcium-fortified OJ. I scan the headlines, listen to Morning Edition on NPR, exchange a few words on the day's logistics with my spouse.
This, of course, was before I had a child. My own routine has remained much the same, except for the addition of another person's meal preparation and a conversation conducted in kitty language. But the value of it to me has ballooned. It's the one meal of the day I'm guaranteed to eat with my daughter. I still scan the headlines, but mostly I gaze at her like a dope, admiring her bed head and urging her to try another bite of scrambled eggs.
So back to that last breakfast meeting. I met my new boss at a restaurant on the Upper West Side, where he lived. It was one of those precious places preferred by women, specializing in a kind of pastry. It had teddy bears in the windows. I think my boss ordered yoghurt and granola, though I question my memory because he's more of a rare steak kind of guy. I can't remember what I ate, even though I was starving and, like Lisa Belkin, I could survive on carby breakfast foods.
It was the weirdest meeting. He was in a hurry to get to work, which of course I understood. I felt badly for taking up his time when I was sure he, like me, would prefer his granola sitting across from his young son. I was anxious because it was my first-ever meal with my boss, and I wanted to come across as smart, funny, worthy of continuing employment.
And then, to cap off this awkwardathon, we walked out to the curb where I'd parked my car. I've told you all before about my current ride, a stinky 1998 Camry that is a golden chariot compared to the bomb on wheels I drove back then. It was--get this--a Mercury Topaz that my husband's dad had unloaded on us for free. The exterior was crusted with maple seed pods. The seats were sticky. And what did I do? I offered my new boss a ride.
He graciously accepted, and we sputtered toward Midtown. Do I have to tell you the air conditioner didn't work, and that the hand-crank windows were stuck? After my 12th apology, my boss said, lightly, that he found women apologized too often. I retorted that any one of any gender of any species would apologize for this abomination.
I don't know how or if my boss remembers that breakfast meeting. But I dare say both he and I would have been more comfortable over a nice plate of pasta at lunch at a restaurant within walking distance.
In the years since, I've been asked a number of times to meet with sources for breakfast. At times they were VIP sources, the kind difficult to access at other times of day. I see the argument of cornering an elusive client before the busyness of the day begins. I see the draws of a morning meal for executives who are up before dawn on the treadmill, and who have to take breakfast somewhere anyway. I like the general idea of somebody's company paying for my fancy food.
But I always say no. Unlike Belkin, I don't struggle with this decision, nor do I think it's just about drawing clear boundaries between work time and family time. I think putting on a performance and being evaluated is a horrible way to start out a day. I just want my decaf and toast in the privacy of my home, admiring the crust in my little girl's eyes.
October 19, 2007 11:10
Dr. Watson, is racism in your DNA?
Never mind the bumbling Seinfeld promo. Let's talk real racism from a prominent, highly heralded member of society.
Like many of you, I read The Double Helix in school. Like many of you, I haven't given Dr. James Watson a whole lot of thought since then.
Until now. The legendary scientist, who won the Nobel for his part in discovering the structure of DNA, is currently promoting a new book titled Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science. In an interview he gave to Britain's The Sunday Times, titled "Black people 'less intelligent' scientist claims," he said some startling things:
The 79-year-old geneticist said he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really.". He said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”.
Say what?
Turns out Watson's been spouting garbage like this for some time. The resulting uproar caused the muck-loving press there to dig up previous statements (in the Daily Mail):
And he is no stranger to controversy, reportedly saying that a woman should have the right to abort her unborn child if tests could determine it would be homosexual.
He has also suggested a link between skin colour and sex drive, proposing a theory that black people have higher libidos.In addition, he also stated that beauty could be genetically manufactured, saying: "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great."
So here's a man who's done great, even revolutionary, work. He helped discover the structure of DNA, among the greatest single scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century. And he's been recognized for it, sharing the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with colleagues Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins. Over the past decades, he's been director of the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y., a world leader in research into cancer and genetics.
But he's long been known in the scientific community to make racist, sexist and just plain crazy statements. In a speech he gave at Berkeley seven years ago:
During his talk, Watson suggested that there was a biochemical link between exposure to sunlight and sexual urges.
Black people had more powerful libidos, he said. This was supported by the fact that when the skin of a number of white men had turned black as a side-effect of a scientific test, they had immediately become sexually aroused."That's why you have Latin lovers," he explained. "You've never heard of an English lover. Only an English patient."
He went on to show a slide of a melancholy Kate Moss, saying that thin people were unhappy and therefore more ambitious.
"Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad because you know you're not going to hire them," Watson said.
Some boss. Some scientist. Some hero.
October 19, 2007 9:51
That Seinfeld promo on Asian animators
Thanks to reader Batsheva, here's that promo we so heatedly discussed earlier this week. Seinfeld begins, "It takes 350 people to make an animated movie. They come from all over the world--sometimes, through an electrified fence." Take a look, and tell me your reaction:
a) I giggled. Anything Jerry Seinfeld does is giggleable.
b) I sat in open-mouthed horror. This is racially insensitive.
c) I fell asleep. It's not offensive, but it just ain't funny.
October 18, 2007 2:00
I'm so fat I need a treadmill at my desk
American workers are fat--and it's our employers' fault. According to The Marlin Company’s just-released 2007 workplace poll conducted by Harris Interactive,
just 36% of workers in 2004 said their company was “very active” or “somewhat active” in offering information about exercise and healthy eating, 22% fewer than in 2007. The number of employees whose companies were “not at all” or “not very active” has dropped from 63% in 2004 to 41% in 2007. Meanwhile, it seems that companies have not made the same strides to discourage junk food consumption. In the 2004 survey, 84% of workers whose companies had vending machines said their workplace vending machines were stocked with snacks, such as potato chips, cookies, and candy bars, a difference of just 9% over 2007.
Yeah! I'd be Ashley Olsen if it weren't for that damn Snickers bar singing an aria at me from the kitchen vending machine. Whoever put that there is the one to blame for my creeping weight gain. If only they'd replace the oily, sugary snacks with a basketful of raw cabbage--well, hello, America's Next Top Middle-Aged Model.
So what's the answer, other than planting an IED in the snack-food dispenser? Steelcase and Dr. James Levine of the Mayo Clinic think they've got one: the treadmill cubicle.
You read me right. It's called the Walkstation. From Steelcase:
Designed to encourage more movement by walking slowly at work, Dr. Levine estimates that users of the walkstation have the potential to increase energy expenditure and burn calories even when walking at a 1 mph rate. For some individuals, particularly for obese individuals and those who do not otherwise exercise daily, use of the walkstation may result in actual weight loss. Additional benefits of movement at work can include less stress, increased productivity and improved focus.
Check it out:
Now, you TIME subscribers might remember my "newbicles" article of 2006 (a trend which, I might point out, the Wall Street Journal got around to discovering just this week). You can read my article online but if you've got 'em lying around, dig up the July 9, 2006, issue for the terrific graphics. Even those newfangled cubicles, you'll see, focus more on things like increased privacy, interchangeability and hip design--not on flab reduction.
Would I want to exercise at my desk while, say, interviewing a CEO on the phone and scribbling notes? More importantly: could I pull it off without collapsing in a humiliating heap? I may go check it out myself at the press event; says here there'll be refreshments. Wonder if I can walk 1 mph, type, and talk on the phone without getting nougaty Snickers crumbs on my dress.
October 17, 2007 3:03
Beauty pageants are hard work
...especially if you have no talent. Ah, YouTube. Where no humiliation goes undisseminated. (Thanks to reader Whit Honea, who pointed me to the great daddy blog Dadcentric.com, where I first saw this clip.)
October 17, 2007 11:21
How we retaliate when the boss is a pig
New research from Florida State University was triggered by this observation:
Considerable attention, both in blogs and in popular media, has been given to abusive bosses over the past few years. (See the Web sites HateBoss.com and WorkRant.com, for example.) Less discussed are employees’ responses to such behavior. How do employees react to abusive supervisors? Do they simply take what is dished out, or do they actively seek to change the situation?
Wayne Hochwarter, a professor of management at FSU, and research associate Samantha Engelhardt sought to answer those questions by examining the responses of more than 180 employees from a wide variety of professions who reported supervisor abuse.
Here's how employees reacted to boss abuse:
• 30% of those who reported abuse slowed down or purposely made errors, compared with 6% of those not reporting abuse.
• 27% of those who reported abuse purposely hid from the boss, compared with 4% of those not reporting abuse.
• 33% of those who reported abuse confessed to not putting in maximum effort, compared with 9% of those not reporting abuse.
• 29% of those who reported abuse took sick time off even when not ill, compared with 4% of those not reporting abuse.
• 25% of those who reported abuse took more or longer breaks, compared with 7% of those not reporting abuse.
Basically, abused workers take some act of vengeance on their bosses--by mucking up their work, slacking off or taking crazy long coffee breaks. The point is that employers shouldn't assume their dictatorial behavior of managers don't take a significant toll on worker productivity.
What the study doesn't address is the effect this retaliatory behavior has on the jackass bosses. Did it curb their rants? Cut short their tirades? Transform them into Liz's boss (see previous post comments)? Doubt it. And because a drop in productivity is harder to quantify than the bully boss's dazzling annual sales record, the employer typically doesn't see a problem until after the guy has driven his entire team to the competition.
Here's one retaliatory action the study didn't ask about: gossip. In every job I've had as a writer, editors who acted irrationally, lobbed mean comments or otherwise sucked at their jobs found that, somehow, their own bosses always found out. The general likes to know when the captain can't lead his troops. (How do you respond when your boss acts like the village idiot? Do share in the comments.)
Okay, so this is a little extreme, but here's the kind of boss whose behavior is likely to put a dent in this worker's productivity:
October 16, 2007 11:15
Happy Boss Day. Seriously.
So here's how I imagine this taking shape. The bigwigs at Hallmark are sitting around, brainstorming more occasions that would necessitate cards.
BIGWIG 1: So we've got Secretaries Day, Favorite Colleague Day, Bonus Day...
BIGWIG 2: How come we never get any cards?
BIGWIG 3: Huh?
BIGWIG 2: We give out cards all the time. How come nobody ever gives the boss a card?
TABLE OF BIGWIGS: Eureka!
I didn't pick up a card for my bosses. It's not that I don't like them. But I think I'd be laughed out of the room and branded an incurable suck-up if I bounced in to thank a guy for being my boss. It ain't natural.
If you, too, suffer from my jaundiced view of the work world, Jeffrey Yamaguchi's book Working For the Man: Inspiring and Subversive Projects For Residents of Cubicle Land is probably for you. (It hits shelves Nov. 6.; look for it on Yamaguchi's web site) Below he offers us some ideas of what Boss Day greeting cards could say, if he were to write them. Safe bet no bigwig from Hallmark will be calling him anytime soon. For more, check out his other site.
Got any of your own? Show your gratitude toward your boss in the comments below. Advice: don't sign your name.
"Thanks for 'working from home' so much."
"Thanks for giving me that copy of Who Moved My Cheese? -- I was able to use it as a joke gift at a recent party."
"Thanks for speaking up so frequently at the all-hands meetings, thereby revealing to everyone in the company just how bad your ideas can be."
"Thanks for taking credit on that project that ended up going south."
"Thanks for calling me during my vacation -- I knew something was missing, and when all that work stress flooded back into my core, I figured it out immediately."
"Thanks for getting on that jury that ended up being sequestered."
"Thanks for using your expense account to buy our holiday gifts -- at least we got something decent this year."
"Thanks for 'running late' so often and causing our never-ending staff meetings to be cancelled."
"Thanks for dancing like that at the office party and even giving the thumbs up while I captured the whole thing on video with my cell phone."
"Thanks for leaving that threatening, out-of-control, vulgar, totally inappropriate message on my voice mail, which I have converted to an mp3 and email around to friends and colleagues (and for which they in turn forward on to their friends and colleagues)."
"Thanks for all the keen insights on how NOT to manage people."
"Thanks for always thinking of us.We've come to love and cherish the leftover danish from your meetings, given that that's about all we ever get.Happy Boss's Day!"
"Thanks for running such a tip top ship.From the copy machine on up, this place is simply out of order.Happy Boss's Day!"
"Thanks for always keeping me in the loop.For example, I love how you come by my desk and tell me the coffee pot is empty, every damn time.Happy Boss's Day!"
"Thanks for always stepping in front and taking the lead.You really know how to take credit for everyone else's ideas and hard work.Happy Boss's Day!"
"Thanks for all your efforts.Such as the way you can just keep on talking about absolutely nothing and make those staff meetings drag on forever, to the point where everyone just wants to stab their own eyeballs out.Happy Boss's Day!"
October 16, 2007 9:00
Daddy blogs: sex, work, poop and boogies
Over the summer, I spent a lot of time on daddy blogs. You know: the male equivalent of the explosivley popular mommy blog genre. Turns out this is almost as hot a category, if judging by the proliferation of new entries. Men who spend a lot of time with children feel a great urge to share the experience. Reminds me of something from my and Lev Grossman's recent article, Fatherhood 2.0:
Once upon a Darwinian time, a man was the one spearing the woolly mammoth. And it wasn't so long ago that a man was that strong and silent fellow over there at the bar with the dry martini or a cold can of beer--a hardworking guy in a gray flannel suit or blue-collar work shirt. He sired children, yes, but he drew the line at diapering them. He didn't know what to expect when his wife was expecting, he didn't review bottle warmers on his daddy blog, and he most certainly didn't participate in little-girl tea parties. Today's dads plead guilty to all of the above--so what does that make them?
Though some are years into the experiment, many of the daddy bloggers exhibit the wonderment of explorers in an undiscovered land. This makes sense: unlike women who learn to be moms by imitating their mothers, these men had few of their fathering practices imprinted upon them by their own fathers. So in many ways it really is a new world, and when man discovers a new world, man records it.
A lot of the daddy blogs were highly readable, well written and just plain funny. Most referenced their children by code names (Devil, Three) and their wives too (MRS, My Lady). A number talk about sex. Many diverge from the professed topic of parenting and veer into reviews of video games, thoughts on politics and sports trivia.
Up until a few hours before the presses rolled, we had planned a box highlighting some of the best of these blogs in the magazine. Alas, Britney happened, and the editors decided our readers would be far better edified by a morsel of information about fathers who win custody. So here below is an extended version of my daddy blog roll.
Daddytypes: Greg Allen, a Washington–based work-at-home filmmaker, says he created t