December 20, 2007 9:32
And now for Working Mom of the Year
TIME just unveiled its Person of the Year. I know, I know; you're thinking, who what huh? Putin? As my brother-in-law said, "What—next year it'll be Castro?"
I can give you only a tiny behind-the-scenes peek at the process that resulted in his selection because even within TIME, POY (as we call it) is heavily guarded. A few months ago, Adi Ignatius, the executive editor who heads up the effort, sent out e-mails to us staffers asking us who we thought might make good candidates. A bunch of notables, past POYs and past TIME cover subjects were polled for their own nominees. You all responded with thousands of candidates on TIME.com (the obsession with South Korean pop star Rain continues).
The editors talked among themselves and came up with a list. There was a meeting about a month ago open to the staff where the choices were debated. The Burmese monks! Musharraf! Steve Jobs! A lot of names were bandied about, some of whom landed in the issue among the runners-up.
A small team were dispatched to report on the finalists; only a handful knew for certain the identity of the winner. But at a staff holiday lunch the other day, a bunch of us accurately guessed Putin by sussing out who was missing from the office, who had taken sudden trips to Russia and whose name caused the art director to choke on his pasta.
Anyway. Check out TIME.com's truly brilliant package, why dontcha, to learn more about this year's POY, Vladimir Putin, in this incisive article by Adi (who is a longtime Russia hand, late of the Wall Street Journal). Still wondering, Why Putin? Read our managing editor Rick Stengel's explanation.
Bitter about the oversight of the obvious choice, Al Gore? Read Bono's obituary, I mean, appreciation. Pining for a more whimsical, warmer choice? Read Nancy Gibb's beautiful piece on J.K. Rowling.
And now (taiko roll, please) for WiP's own Working Person of the Year: in this, our inaugural year, we select Laura Bennett. Who? She's the red-headed lady who was a finalist in the last Project Runway season. I watched that show like an addict, and was always tickled by her bluntness and dazzled by her gorgeous designs. But what bowled me over was the news that she was the mother of five—and was pregnant with her sixth.
I interviewed Bennett recently for this story I wrote for the magazine about a weird phenomenon being reported in some fancy towns: affluent couples seem to be having a lot of kids. Bennett and her husband Peter Shelton are raising their five young boys in a loft in Manhattan (she has a daughter from a previous marriage who's 19 and doesn't live with them). Five boys! In Manhattan! And she works!
Bennett described her day: a baby sitter arrives early to help manage the morning scrum. They get the oldest ones to school. She and Shelton head off to their offices. Bennett, a former architect, is launching a brand new and high-profile career in clothing design; she's got a new line coming out on QVC in January. She works in a studio in the garmet district, scuttling around making designs and buying materials. Once she called me back on her cell phone from a button shop.
Then, at 3, she and two sitters disperse to pick up the kids and shuttle them to their various activities. Her husband Shelton often pitches in. One sitter leaves around 4; the other stays till the bitter end, when all five boys are tucked in like soldiers side by side in a room Bennett describes as a barracks.
Then I presume she collapses. I would. With a bottle of Scotch.
What I wanted to know was how in hell she does it. I can barely manage the juggle, and I only have one little bugger to deal with. "I think people can manage a lot more than they think they can," she said, after some thought. "If you think about it, almost all the work you do in a given day is done within a five-hour span, anyway. I'd bet you that I get as much done between 10 and 3 as anyone does between 9 and 5. I just have to plan better."
That means cutting out the junk. "I try really hard not to accept appointments outside of that span," she says. But when she has to be, she's flexible. If she has to take a meeting and miss a kiddie concert, so be it. "A lot of mothers are frantic because they don't want to miss a thing. I get to do things six times. And let me tell you, those musical revues can get a little old."
Many of us working parents get caught up thinking, If only I didn't have to hold a job; If only we didn't need the money. But here's a person who really gets a rise out of what she does, who doesn't want motherhood to be her only defining role—who in fact feels her career enriches her parenting. "Work for me is the savior," she says. "People are so stunned when I say I have six kids that they don't even factor in the fact that I work. But for me, it absolutely keeps me sane. Besides, I like my kids better when I haven't seen them in a few hours."
Here's to us working parents everywhere. May the fun outweigh the work. Happy holidays, all. WiP will go on holiday during TIME's dark week and through the beginning of next year. See you in the Year of the Mouse.
December 19, 2007 9:00
When a black reporter turns white
Print and radio reporters toil unseen behind desks, at crime sites, on the campaign tour. Our work is judged for the most part by, well, our work. But for those who work in front of the camera, their appearance is part of the package. I might watch a driving report on subway fares by a local TV reporter and think, Whoa, take a look at that suit. Or a rambling interview by Charlie Rose and think, What is up with that new twitch in his eye?
So I really feel for Lee Thomas, a Fox anchor and entertainment reporter in Detroit. Due to a condition called vitiligo, his black skin is turning white. To compound the horror, it's all happening in front of an audience. According to USA Today,
His once brown, even complexion is now mottled with pale patches around his eyes and mouth, along his nose and on his ears; his arms, shoulders and chest are speckled and blotched.
Though he covers up with makeup for the camera, you can see in the photos they ran that there are Caucasian-looking splotches all over his face and torso. Apparently,
"There is no cause. There is no cure, and it's very random," Thomas says. "I could turn all the way white or mostly white."
After despairing that the end of his career was nigh, Thomas instead bucked up, told his bosses and colleagues, and now has written a book titled Turning White: A Memoir of Change. He starred in a three-part documentary on his network that you can watch here.
This all got me to thinking about how appearance-oriented our culture is (see yesterday's post on Hillary's wardrobe). I don't have to face the camera every day, a fact I thanked the stars for when I was hospitalized last year and pumped full of steroids. No, they didn't give me muscles and a .350 batting average; but they did give me a moon face (they actually call it that) that didn't completely go away for a year.
My condition was temporary, and also I don't have as public a job as Thomas does. My bosses even let me work from home during the worst of it. But few of us can conduct our careers in complete isolation, and it often feels like the workplace culture requires us to look if not like Tyson Beckford then at least, well, normal.
I think we're overly sensitive about our appearance on the job. I know I am. When I was sick, probably most of the people I work with just thought I got fat. They may have noticed, but I doubt they cared. I have a very dear friend and mentor, a mother figure, who was diagnosed with Parkinson's a few years ago. The shakes make her self-conscious, but instead of holing up somewhere she's since become one of the top fundraisers for the illness. As for Thomas, his career appears to have taken off since he publicly admitted his condition, and he too has become a spokesperson for the disease.
What I'm saying is that everyone's dealing with something. Just think of that next time you notice your colleague's rosacea or your boss's limp. A little sympathy couldn't hurt, because sooner or later it could be your turn.
December 18, 2007 1:14
What's wrong with Hillary's wardrobe?
I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that the only female candidate for president is subjected to scrutiny that wouldn't befall her male competitors—that is, of her appearance. Sure, Huckabee lost half his weight. Yep, Giuliani ditched the comb-over. Do we harp on that? Nooo.
But Hillary's pantsuit? Why, that merits a whole exegesis in the Washington Post. The article, by fashion writer Robin Givhan, begins:
The mind, so easily distracted by things mauve and lemon yellow, strays from more pressing concerns to ponder the sartorial: How many pantsuits does Hillary Clinton have in her closet? And does she ever wear them in the same combination more than once?
Really? Someone sits around and thinks about this? She continues:
The pantsuit is Clinton's uniform. Hers is a mix-and-match world, a grown-up land of Garanimals: black pants with gray jacket, tan jacket with black pants, tan jacket with tan pants. There are a host of reasons to explain Clinton's attachment to pantsuits. They are comfortable. They can be flattering, although not when the jacket hem aligns with the widest part of the hips (hypothetically speaking, of course). Does she even have hips?
Givhan's piece itself has been blasted by Steve Benen of The Carpetbagger Report:
Now, I try not to be a purist when it comes to articles about political trivia. Presidential campaigns are bound to include some coverage of the candidate's personalities, families, interests, etc. Voters care about some of these details when evaluating presidential hopefuls, so it's probably not realistic to expect major media outlets to be all-policy, all-the-time.
Having said that, this piece about Clinton's pantsuits is more than just silly; it's demeaning.
To be fair, though, it's no different than what executive women go through all the time. Articles about women CEOs, studio heads or editors frequently make mention of the subject's hair, wardrobe, lipstick color. It's true a woman's appearance, even in the upper reaches of corporate America, vary more than a man's, and is thus I suppose more interesting to discuss. What would you say about a guy: "The CEO wore a navy-blue suit and a gray tie, and his hair was neatly combed"?
But the thing that makes me feel for Hillary is that she's really trying, and I'd even go so far as to say she's hit her fashion stride. Remember those awful headbands and dull dresses? Her hair these days is, in my opinion, pretty damn chic. Her pantsuits look comfortable, no-nonsense, and neat. She's no Nancy Pelosi, but who is?
Seems like women leaders not only have to be smarter, cooler and more competent than the men; they have to look better, too. Or is that true of women in any line of work, at any rank?
December 18, 2007 10:08
In praise of slacking
As a card-carrying member of Generation X, I have long resigned myself to being labeled a no-good slacker. I don't really care; caring takes energy, and I'm too busy lying prone on my La-Z-Boy and watching another Simpsons rerun. Could someone pass the Duff Beer?
Seriously, now that I think about it, I haven't heard my generation accused of slothhood in a good long while now. What happened, I wonder? Was it that we grew up, had kids, and realized we needed jobs to feed the little buggers? Was it that the Boomers who gave us the lame stereotype in the first place tired of it or, better yet, suddenly found themselves working for the likes of us? Was it that Boomers and Gen X are now united in thinking up mean labels for those twerpy Millennials?
I don't know. This productivity consultant named David Allen has an unironic piece on The Huffington Post boasting that he extolls the virtues of "sloth, indolence and procrastination." Read a bit:
...when I'm in a loving, whole and healthy state of mind about myself and about life, everything's cool. Where I am, doing what I'm doing, is exactly where I need to be and what I need to do. Tomorrow is just fine right where it is, not showing up until then.
And I don't seem to get to that wonderful state of mind by working harder and faster. Sometimes it helps, but more often it just perpetuates the angst.I get there by letting go, softening my grip, getting quiet. That's when I can get a peek between the seconds, and in the particularly delicious moments experience the grandeur of just being. That doesn't happen by working harder or smarter. It doesn't happen by working at all. It just happens.
Gah. Whatever, dude. You could also read this book: The 5 Habits of Highly Successful Slackers (Because 7 is too Many), by K.P. Springfield. He claims that "during his three-year tenure at at Blue Chip Silicon Valley company, he not only received two promotions, positive reviews, a raise and vacations aplenty, but also managed to get appointed to a corporate Hall of Fame for his pseudo efforts - all for doing less than 15 hours of work per week." So what are the five habits? A summary by the author, just for WiP:
The 5 Habits of Highly Successful Slackers
1. Perception is Everything. In the corporate world, it isn't what you actually do but what others think you do that makes the difference.
2. Whatever! A state of mind that must be adopted to avoid the emotional swings that naturally occur when a product launch inevitably fails, your bonus is slashed or any other blow to the psyche which affects mental health.
3. The Team Player. A habit successful slackers adopt to offset their lack of productivity. It's widely proven that managers put up with people who are less productive so long as they're friendly, easy to manage and well-liked.
4. Procrastination. A habit used in order to test the true importance of assigned tasks. This is where the ACTION REQUIRED - Not Really flowchart comes into play.
5. Under the Radar - In the spirit of the SR-71 Blackbird, keeping a low profile gives you low management visibility and enables you to leave work early each day without being detected.
Just to quibble, I'm not sure these are all habits, exactly; they ought to be rendered as verb-driven action commands (be a team player, procrastinate, et cetera). But perhaps Springfield is showing off his slacker creds by not bothering with parallel lists. Regardless, you should go to the source, if it's not too much trouble; his web site's here, and you can take this quiz to find out if you're a "successful slacker" here. But really, don't exert yourself. That would defeat the purpose.
December 17, 2007 10:39
Bill Cosby eats shoots and leaves
You all know I'd rather eat cilantro than read and review a book. But a book jacket? Bring it on. So: just noticed this on The Slot, the terrific blog for and by copy editors:
Just who are these Come On People? Do they hail from the land of lewd solicitations? Is it a secret race of pick-up artists?
What Cosby means, of course, is Come On, People, with the emphasis probably on the On. It's a treatise along the lines of the speeches he's been making around the country recently to try to get African-Americans to buck up and succeed in life.
So where's the all-important comma? Were the copy editors off duty at Thomas Nelson, the publishers? And even if Cosby's grammar chops are lacking, what excuse does his co-author, Harvard professor Alvin F. Poussaint, have? As reader E.K. Hornbeck says in a comment on The Slot,
I am baffled that a book could make it all the way to print without at least someone realizing that it lacked important punctuation in the freaking title -- especially in such an obvious case.
My guess is this was no mere oversight. The publishers—with pressure perhaps from the designers—decided the comma was unnecessary. It would befoul the jacket design, require extra ink, break up the flow of the message or whatever the hell.
It's hardly the first time. I remember scratching my head when Love Actually, the gooey British romantic comedy, came out. Huh? And don't even get me started on song titles: would anyone out there like to Cum on Feel the Noize?
Is punctuation unfashionable in movie, song and book titles? If so, why? Enlighten me here.
December 14, 2007 10:50
When a racist is outed as a...minority
To be filed under N, for nyah, nyah:
You'll recall that James Watson, the Nobel winner and world-famous geneticist, was widely outed recently as a rabid racist. You'll recall that he's been spouting garbage like Africans have lesser intelligence, Latinos are genetically programmed to be horny, and women should abort babies if they find they are predestined to be gay. You'll recall we discussed this insanity at length in this post I titled "Dr. Watson, is racism in your DNA?"
So it was with sheer and unbridled glee that I learned what is in his DNA is some African ancestry. According to Newsday,
News that geneticist James Watson inherited 16 percent of his DNA from an African ancestor may provide the Nobel Prize winner with a new perspective on his ancestry.
I'll say!
Scientists at deCode Genetics, the highly respected enterprise of gene-trackers in Reykjavik, Iceland, used Watson's genome, which he had posted online, to plumb his ancestral roots. Tucked in his DNA was a story never told -- at least not in his biographies.
Watson didn't respond to Newsday's requests for comment. But Watson, who resigned in late October as chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the wake of the furor over his racist remarks, must have seen this coming. After all, he posted his own genetic fingerprint online. After all, this is the day and age of easy genetic testing. After all, he surely knew his comments would make him a target at least of curiosity.
This all reminds me of a terrific and very funny article written by my former colleague, Carolina Miranda, about her own adventures in genetic testing. She writes,
If they held a convention for racial purity, I would never make the guest list. Like most other Latin American families, mine is a multiethnic stew that has left me with the generic black-eyed and olive-skinned look typical of large swaths of the world's population. My father's family is from Peru, my mother's from Chile. Their parents were born and reared in South America. Beyond that, I know nothing about my ancestors. That was fine by me--until the new and growing industry of personal DNA analysis created a need I never knew I had.
I relate. I too am a mutt: my mother's Japanese; my father's German, Irish and Cuban. I guess the difference between Watson and people like me and Carolina is that our impure genetic lines are obvious in our appearance. But just because you look one way doesn't mean your DNA won't tell another story. Here's what I propose: let's ask every prominent racist to volunteer their genomes for testing. Think that'll shut them up?
December 13, 2007 9:39
Paid leave isn't just about working parents
New Jersey is getting a lot of press these days for taking the remarkable and hopefully trend-setting step of abolishing the death penalty. What's getting less notice is Gov. Jon Corzine's wimping out on what would have been the most generous paid leave for employees in the country.
And by generous, I actually mean reasonable. California is the only state that requires employers of more than 50 to offer paid leave for workers who need to care for their newborns or ill family members. We're one of the only developed nations to require no paid leave at all. Of course, the Family and Medical Leave Act allows workers to take up to 12 weeks off for those reasons, but that time is unpaid.
Corzine and other Democratic lawmakers had backed the requirement of 10 weeks of paid leave. California offers six. But after big business balked, Corzine and his crew backed down--but not completely; it now offers to cover six weeks. According to the Star Ledger,
The proposal would grant paid time off to any worker dealing with a family medical crisis or the arrival of a new child. Workers would get two-thirds of their weekly salaries up to $502. The bill would make New Jersey the second state, after California, to offer some form of paid family leave.
Don't get me wrong: six weeks is better than none. But it irks me that big employers still don't realize what an important benefit this has become to workers. And by workers I mean all workers, not just working moms. Consider this excellent article in USA Today by Stephanie Armour titled "Workplace tensions rise as dads seek family time." She begins be detailing the conflict between a Gen X dad who expects to work flexibly in order to care for his children, and his Boomer boss who thinks that's preposterous.
Their situation reflects the conflicts that are becoming increasingly common in workplaces across the nation, as fathers press for more family time and something other than a traditional career path. As dads demand paternity leave, flexible work schedules, telecommuting and other new benefits, they've ignited what workplace specialists are calling the Daddy Wars.
Those Daddy Wars are not just rhetorical; they're legal. Armour writes that
They've also prompted several Fortune 500 companies to begin pitching such family-friendly benefits to men — and inspired a new wave of workplace discrimination complaints filed by dads.
For years, women who say their employers have discriminated against them because of their care-giving roles have filed complaints with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC has not released precise figures, but it reports that it now is seeing a shift: filings by fathers.For example, the EEOC says, some employers have wrongly denied male employees' requests for leave for child care purposes while granting similar requests from female employees. Under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, fathers are allowed to take unpaid leave for the birth, adoption or medical illness of a child. They are allowed up to 12 weeks of leave in a year, although some states grant additional rights for dads.
Not to cast Boomers as the Brontosauruses of the work world. Many workers in their 40s and 50s are madly juggling their commitments to their jobs with their need to care for aged parents and needy teens.
What's in it for employers, you ask? Our commitment; our loyalty; our continued good work. We're not asking to work less, just to work differently. And on the unusual occasion we need to fly to Dubuque to care for a mother who's broken her hip, we'd greatly appreciate the comfort of knowing we won't lose our jobs.
How are your states handling these issues?
December 12, 2007 9:00
Would you dye your hair for work?
I found a white hair the other day.
It wasn't gray. It wasn't ashy. It was wiry, long and white. And as vehemently as I've always vowed to gray gracefully, I'm telling you I totally wigged out. Then I yanked it.
I'm 36, so I figure I have a few years before head-tweezing becomes a regular occurence. My mom only began to go gray in her late 50s, and she doesn't do a damn thing about it; it looks pretty chic, actually. But she doesn't have to go to work. And my pop, well, he's been bald since he was a seminary student in his 20s. Besides, it's different for men. What would I do if my grays hit while I'm still trying to do the corporate thang?
It sounds like a ridiculous conundrum in this day and age. But maybe it's not. Read this excellent article in a recent TIME called "The War Over Going Gray," in which the author Anne Kreamer likens the Gray Wars to the Mommy Wars:
There are differences between the gray wars and the mommy wars, of course. For starters, the stakes in the debate between stay-at-home mothers vs. working mothers are plainly, unequivocally serious, since that's a zero-sum game between maximum professional fulfillment and maximum parental availability. But there are serious and similar social crosscurrents underlying the apparently trivial issue of hair color as well, and the divide is of roughly the same scale. Three-quarters of women from 25 to 54 are in the labor force these days, twice as many as worked a half-century ago — which is why the decision to be a stay-at-home mother became a difficult and fraught minority choice. And according to a 2005 Procter & Gamble survey, 65% of women had colored their hair in the previous year, several times as many as in the 1950s, which is why going gray has become a difficult and an equally fraught choice for modern women to make.
Kreamer argues this is for the most part a women's problem. The Wall Street Journal says otherwise—at least, that is, not in China. Apparently,
Very few of China's political and business leaders these days seem to go gray.
It is possible that could have something to do with genes, but something else is involved, too. For aging men of influence here, the dye job appears to have become as commonplace as the Mao suit once was.Though they range in age from 52 to 67, the most senior leaders in the Politburo Standing Committee include nine men with nary a white strand of hair.
In the TIME article, Kreamer reports a longstanding bias in the workplace against people with gray hair. My own industry is famously ageist, and now that I think about it, there aren't that many gray or white heads walking around the building.
Do you, or would you, dye your hair for work?
December 11, 2007 11:29
Cancer rots. But try working with cancer
My mom has cancer. She's had some type of cancer for over 10 years now; the latest was diagnosed at Stage 4 about two years ago. Since then, her body has acted like a fireworks factory: stuff just keeps exploding. But she somehow struggles on.
Living with cancer sucks. But you know what's worse? Working with cancer. Read this moving story in the Wall Street Journal today:
Andrew Flaton survived a brain tumor as a child, but he still suffers from the effects of his cancer treatments. One of his most challenging tasks: holding down a job. He was left almost entirely deaf after undergoing chemotherapy. He can't work more than four hours a day without feeling exhausted, and he often suffers from panic attacks, which he struggles to keep under control. The 25-year-old Oakville, Mo., resident earns less than $700 a month and lives with his grandparents, and the longest period he has spent in one job -- doing part-time filing work for an anesthesiologist -- is two years.
My boss, a respected and longtime editor here, had a nasty form of cancer a few years back. He worked throughout his illness and his treatment. I guess it didn't occur to me until I read this Journal piece that my editor is lucky: he was already an established professional by the time his illness hit, in a workplace that wanted to stick by him.
Imagine surviving the most dreaded of childhood diseases only to discover you can't attain many of your dreams and goals anyway.
Over my recent visit to tend to my mom in Japan, I picked up a novel that my sister had left there. It was My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult, and it's about a family who struggles with one daughter's cancer.
I suppose it had particular resonance for my sister, who is a pediatric oncology nurse; for many years before she left to have four kids of her own, she nursed children with cancer. Me, I read it as a parent, trying to fathom the choices these people had to make to care for their children. It made me wonder: if, gods forfend, my own progeny suffered such a fate, would I do what they did to save them? And at what cost?
...at the cost of a fulfilling career for the patient, for one. As a parent, you think that's a small price to pay for the survival of your child. But if I was the child—if I had battled childhood cancer and won, and then discovered I would never hold down a job as a journalist—I think the victory would feel bittersweet.
Sorry for the downer post. It's a contemplative day. Let's end it on a kumbaya note and give thanks for our own relative health. Anyone else out there working through chronic and debilitating illness?
December 10, 2007 9:39
All I want for Christmas is to telecommute
My commute blows.
Okay, a lot of people fare far worse. I once had an editor who commuted from Philadelphia to New York City—that's 95 miles. And for this story I wrote on commuter couples, I interviewed folks who on Monday mornings head not for the train station but for the airport.
Me, I live just about as close to the city where I work without actually residing in one of its zip codes. My house is in Leonia, N.J., a mere 10 miles from my office building in midtown Manhattan. But because my destination is one of the world's great workplace hubs, the commute is a crapshoot. Depending on the time of day, the mode of transportation, the weather, the traffic, the flap of a butterfly's wings half a world away, the commute can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half.
I think of all this as I read this Washington Post story about a survey on telecommuting:
A survey released Tuesday by Citrix Online found that 23 percent of American workers regularly do their jobs from someplace besides the office, and that 62 percent of respondents who cannot work off-site would like to.
What's more,
The survey also found that workers prized the ability to telecommute more highly than stock options or on-site child care.
A number of recent changes are making my commute less attractive. For one thing, it's costing more and more. Starting next week, according to Newsday, all fares going into New York City will rise--bridge and tunnel tolls, subway fares and rail tickets.
For another, like many companies, mine is trying to cut costs by scaling back on employee services. One perk of working past 8 p.m. on winter evenings was that a car service would take us home. A luxury, I know, but try hiking through the bitter cold to the Port Authority and catching an off-peak bus. We don't get paid overtime, and yet are often required to work quite late, was the reasoning; the least the company could do was ensure we got to our doors safely. Starting in January, though, the service will be rolled back to 9 p.m., and its use is being strongly discouraged.
As far as I know, my company hasn't issued a decree about telecommuting. At my own magazine, it's tolerated at best, but management makes clear it likes to see its minions toiling in company-owned real estate. But the silly thing is that the company is losing money by my being here. When I'm in the office, it pays for my electricity use, my refuse disposal, my transportation (after 9 p.m.). It loses at least two hours of my productivity in the time I spend on the bus. Most importantly though less quantifiably, the quality of my work suffers.
In my absence, it loses my valued input at meetings, my glamourous presence at the coffee counter, my evocative scent. I kid. It loses little if not nothing. I am the boss of no one, and therefore dispensable in physical presence.
All I want for Christmas is to work from home. What about you?
December 7, 2007 12:00
Where my baby-mama gift at?
I so did not get a push present. And believe me, my pregnancy and delivery bit.
Gifts for new mothers are all the rage these days, say propoganda sites like BabyCenter.com. Said The New York Times yesterday:
In a more innocent age, new mothers generally considered their babies to be the greatest gift imaginable. Today, they are likely to want some sort of tangible bonus as well.
This bonus goes by various names. Some call it the “baby mama gift.” Others refer to it as the “baby bauble.” But it’s most popularly known as the “push present.”That’s “push” as in, “I the mother, having been through the wringer and pushed out this blessed event, hereby claim my reward.” Or “push” as in, “I’ve delivered something special and now I’m pushing you, my husband/boyfriend, to follow suit.”
This is offensive on so many levels I don't know where to begin. Yes, I do. First off, no one I know got diamond baubles or pricey art work just for having a baby. Secondly, no mom I know would ever demand such a thing as the price of pushing out a pup. But thirdly, if a new daddy wanted, on his own volition, to bestow his honey with a token of his love and appreciation, what the hell is wrong with that? Fourth, the article denies it, but this smacks of one more corporate plot to invent another gift-giving occasion.
Clara Jeffery of Mother Jones captures my sentiment exactly in a blog post titled, "Here's Your Damn Baby, Now Where Are My #@%&ing Diamond Earrings?"
It is not the fact that Moms are getting a token of their hard work that bugs me, it is that you know that the diamond industry has their hands in this. Just as they invented a "tradition" of diamond wedding rings, the "three months salary" rule, and the "three-stone anniversary ring." Hey, you can hear DeBeers' pitchmen saying: Why not a carat for each pound of baby? Don't you care, Dad?
Here's the push present I'd want: sleep.
December 7, 2007 9:42
I knew my dog was dangerous
So the hate mail from animal lovers responding to my essay this summer about my dog is finally dying down. Believe it or not, I still get comments on this follow-up post and this one. The haters far outnumber the sympathizers, but this doesn't bother me; working moms who profess to feel exactly the same way are too busy to Google me and hunt down my e-mail account (to make it easier for you, friends and haters alike, it's above at right).
Like I said on those posts, I do not hate my dog. My essay was an attempt to explain the dramatic and completely unexpected change of heart I had toward him after the birth of my child. I know with absolute certainty that I'm not alone in this, but I am possibly the first mom to bring it up (at least to an audience of 3.25 million). For this I blame the cult of canine sainthood in this culture, in which we aren't allowed to admit anything but utter adulation of our four-legged pets. Also I blame my tendency to view the essay page of the magazine as a confessional.
Anyway, I dredge all this up again at the risk of further inciting a hate-mail torrent because I came across the news earlier today that my dog might be dangerous after all. Despite my annoyance at his quirks—the inexplicable howling, the prolific shedding, the endless pacing—even I have to admit he poses no harm at all to my child.
But his farts might be endangering the world.
According to Slate: "Scientists are trying to fight global warming by changing animal flatulence." Read:
Emissions from livestock reportedly account for up to half of greenhouse gas emissions in some countries. Kangaroos have stomach bacteria that eliminate methane from their gas; scientists want to transfer these bacteria to sheep and cattle. Bonus: The bacteria could improve digestive efficiency by 10 to 15 percent, thereby reducing feed costs. Alternative proposal: Eat less cattle and more kangaroo meat: "It's low in fat, it's got high protein levels," and "it's the ultimate free range animal."
Okay, okay, so they're talking about cows and pigs. But I'm telling you, my dog can lay one. Now that he's in old age, his gas emissions are frequent, sudden and can clear a room. They're of the SBD variety, which leads my husband and I to eye each other with suspicion when the stink hits. But our befouled air is nothing compared to the earth's. As you all know, I'm trying somewhat seriously to reduce my household's carbon footprint. Do they sell carbon credits toward an environmentally offensive dog? Any suggestions?
December 6, 2007 1:00
Are evaluations a waste of time?
I got evaluated this year for the first time in my nearly seven years at TIME. It was pretty painless; my immediate supervisor is a laid-back kinda guy, and he basically gave me a thumbs up and that was that. It was over so quickly that I found myself trying to use the time to ask about how the magazine was doing, what goals I should set for the coming year, what skills I should work on, what new management wanted. I'm pretty sure I talked more than my boss did. I left feeling relieved I'd missed a whupping, but also a little dissatisfied.
A lot of folks think employee evaluations are a waste of time, according to a recent survey in the U.K. According to the BBC,
Investors in People, which works to improve workplace relations and staff development, said appraisals could be "enormously beneficial" for motivating staff and making them feel wanted but only if done properly.However,
Its survey of 2,900 workers found that 29% of people felt the experience was a waste of time, while 44% believed their appraiser had been dishonest. Other concerns include managers failing to address issues raised and a lack of continuous feedback during the year.
So tell me: have you had an evaluation that you felt was really on the mark and improved your job performance? Alternatively, have you had a horrible one that snuffed out the last flickering flame of your company loyalty?
Below are some notes by supervisors on employee job evaluations from Gavel2gavel.com. I don't believe they're real, mainly because I doubt most managers are smart enough to produce such witticisms. But they're funny all the same.
1. This person is not really so much of a has-been, but more definitely a won't-be.
2. To hear him speak, his accomplishments are so big they can only be compared to that of a black hole in space -- unfortunately, neither have been confirmed to exist.3. Create a new title to make him feel appreciated, e.g., jester, dunce, former employee, etc.
4. Gates are down, lights are flashing, but the train just isn't coming.
5. A clock watcher who's in a different time zone than the rest of us.
6. He's so dense, light bends around him.
7. This employee should go far -- and the sooner he starts, the better.
8. He sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them.
9. Got into the gene pool when the lifeguard wasn't looking.
10. Is still able to get the job done -- if someone else helps.
December 5, 2007 7:08
At least my marriage is green
Okay, so I'm a little eco-anxious. As I put it in an essay in last week's TIME:
I am not particularly eco-conscious. But I am increasingly eco-anxious. Every day, it seems, I hear of some new way the world around me is going aggressively green. Workers in Portland, Ore., are cycling to the office. Ireland has slapped a tax on plastic bags. Incoming freshmen at California colleges are asked to keep their Red Bulls in thermoelectric fridges. David Duchovny says he recycles, has solar power and drives an electric car. Now every time I purchase a single-serving water bottle, I hear the opening theme from The X-Files.
But I'm not alone!
So it was with some relief that I learned that eco-anxiety is a diagnosable condition. A so-called eco-therapist in Santa Fe, N.M., reportedly sees up to 80 patients a month who complain of panic attacks, loss of appetite, irritability and what she describes as some sort of a twitchy sensation in their cells. Eco-anxiety is not new--the etymology website WordSpy found it mentioned in a 1990 Washington Post article--but it's only now becoming widespread. Environmental consciousness is no longer just another lifestyle choice, like open marriages or joining the circus; it has been upgraded to a moral imperative. That forces Americans to add environmentalism to their already endless checklist of things to fret about. Did I remember to turn out the kitchen light? Couldn't I memorize the directions to my job interview instead of print them out? Why, for the love of Pete, did I use a napkin to wipe my mouth when I have here a perfectly good sleeve?
My household sucks down energy and spits out waste like a voracious beast. According to the calculator on ClimateCrisis.net, my household produces 15 tons of carbon dioxide a year. The average is 7.5. Mine is the Sasquatch of carbon footprints.
Turns out, though, that at least I'm doing something right: I'm staying married. Says this article in USA Today:
Divorce isn't green, according to a new study. The research, led by ecologist Jianguo "Jack" Liu, a Michigan State University professor of fisheries and wildlife, looked at international data comparing utility consumption and housing space per capita in married and divorced households. He found that divorce creates more households with fewer people, using more energy and water and taking up more space.
Of course, I haven't even got that right all the time; for two years, my husband and I lived 8,000 miles apart as I worked in Japan and he worked in New York. Not only did we produce two households worth of waste, we burned up tons of carbon dioxide doing the bimonthly visits.
Also turns out I have company in my grudging but well-meaning efforts to greenify my very brown lifestyle. (Is that the color of carbon? Or would it be gray, like smoke?) Reader Mark Olson told me about Vanessa Farquharson's blog, Greenasathistle.com. The reporter for the National Post in Toronto is at the tail end of a 365-day effort to go green. Read it; it's great fun. But I gotta say I draw the line at not shaving my legs forevermore; that may put my marriage in peril, and, like the good professor said, that union does more toward being green than a few razors in a landfill.
December 4, 2007 11:43
Lessons for Hillary in new management study?
Annoying fact:
Female managers who are seen as unkind, insensitive and unaware of others’ feelings are judged as worse bosses because of it – yet men who exhibit the same qualities aren’t.
That's what Kristin Byron, assistant professor of management in the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University, found when she set out to see if "being good at spotting emotions meant managers had more satisfied staff." Her results were published last week in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology.
In her study, Byron looked at 44 part-time students who were designated "supervisors" in an MBA course, as well as 78 managers from four companies in the hospitality industry. She also asked these managers' staff to rate them on supportiveness, persuasiveness and the workers' own satisfaction.
Her findings:
...female managers who couldn’t read unspoken emotions, such as facial expressions, posture, and tone of voice, were seen as less caring and thus received lower ratings of satisfaction from their staff. But male leaders who were bad at spotting emotions were not subject to the same expectations.
Byron notes,
“It seems female managers may be expected to be sensitive to others’ emotions and to demonstrate this sensitivity by providing emotional support. Because of this, female managers’ job performance is judged on them being understanding, kind, supportive and sensitive,” says Byron. “In contrast, this is not the basis to evaluate the performance of male managers. It is far more important for male managers, and men, in general, to be seen as analytical, logical and good at reasoning than showing care and concern for others.”
I thought of this as I read about Hillary Clinton's recent responses to attacks by her competition for the Democratic presidential nomination. Observers have described her manner as even-toned, even as the words that come out of her mouth (or her aides') are less than kind. In other words, I think the candidate, Senator and former First Lady has learned a heck of a lot about how when it comes to being a lady boss, perception is everything.
Of course, it wasn't always this way. Take this New York Times profile of her back in 1992, as her husband campaigned for the same job she's currently seeking:
Mrs. Clinton has stepped into the eye of the stormy debate about the role of women in society and in politics, and about the image of feminism.
Back then, her manner was considered a liability by many:
Republicans now regard the outspoken wife of the Arkansas Governor as one more vulnerability in an already vulnerable Clinton campaign. Even though it is now clear that Nancy Reagan helped run the country, with astrological charts and her own political agenda, and even though it is apparent that Barbara Bush is a significant voice on politics, the Republicans are busy mining fears as old as Adam and Eve about the dangers of an assertive, ambitious woman speaking into the ear of her man.
But the perceived dangers of an assertive, ambitious woman speaking into the ear of her man is nothing compared to that of an assertive, ambitious woman speaking directly to the crowd, no? Apparently not--so long as she doesn't appear unkind, insensitive and unaware of others’ feelings. That would make her a bad boss and a bad leader.
December 4, 2007 9:00
Red Cross scandal proves peril of office nookie
The very thought of hooking up with someone I work with makes me a little vomitous. Come to think of it, the very thought of the baked beans in the cafeteria yesterday makes me a little vomitous. Maybe it's residual motion sickness from my 16-hour flight Sunday.
Anyway, that's just me. According to Stephanie Losee and Helaine Olen, co-authors of Office Mate: The Employee Handbook for Finding—and Managing—Romance on the Job, the workplace is a terrif place to find a honey. My colleague Andrea Sachs interviewed them in this fascinating Q&A on Time.com.
Olen tells Sachs:
When we began to research the book, we were as shocked as anyone to discover that about half of all Americans at some point in their career will date on the job, and one in five of them will end up in a long-term relationship.
Sachs then alludes to the sex scandal at the Red Cross to question the authors about the wisdom of any office romance. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune,
the American Red Cross ousted its president, Mark Everson, on Tuesday for engaging in a "personal relationship" with one of his subordinates. He took the challenging job only six months ago.
Apparently, Everson, who's married and has two kids, was having an affair with a staffer.
The Red Cross said its board of governors asked for and received Everson's resignation, effective immediately, after being notified about 10 days ago by a senior executive at the national office about Everson's relationship with a woman on the staff. The woman's name was not released.
In response to Sachs' question, Losee responds:
What this proves is that a leader's personal conduct is more important than any success he has in leading the organization. And I think that is a problem in our society right now. What the board did when they fired him was signal that all of his wins as head of the Red Cross, the way in which he has turned around the organization, the six months of good notices that he had received, not to mention the 18-month investment that the board made in the hiring process trying to find just the right person for the job, was less important than his distasteful personal behavior. There was another way to signal their disapproval than firing him and starting over. They could have sanctioned him. They could have signaled their public disapproval...There are a lot of CEOs out there who lose hundreds of millions of dollars of shareholder money, and they're not fired. But if they have an extramarital affair — goodbye, Charlie.
There's the crux of it. If you're single, the authors say, the cubicles are your dating grounds (if you proceed with caution). But if the hottie in your sights is wearing a wedding band, then prepare to find yourself a new job. Not to mention a shrink for when the whole mess explodes.
Anyone find their spouse at work? Do spill.
December 3, 2007 12:22
One more reason to work from home
So we had an emergency action drill today. A fire marshall with a thick New York accent and an even thicker white moustache gathered us by our respectively designated exits and handed out instruction sheets. At the top of the sheet were the various emergencies we were preparing for:
• chemical release
• blackout
• natural disaster
• biological
• nuclear
@$#%$%&^$? This is a drill for nuclear disaster? Don't you think if a nuclear bomb hit midtown Manhattan, our only viable emergency action would be to pray?
Anyway, so the gentleman gives us a series of instructions that sound increasingly dire. Like, if you suffer a chronic disease like diabetes of heart illness, make sure to keep three days worth of medications in your office just in case we're locked down for that long. "And check the expiration dates," he says, which sounds like a good idea even in the case of non-emergency ingestion.
He tells us ladies who wear high heels to keep a pair of sneakers on hand, then launches into a story about how the women who escaped the World Trade Center "fell behind" and a colleague had to buy out a sneaker store so they could continue. Women. Always in need of rescue.
But it's the Q&A session that really gets me worried. Sheila, our office manager, mentions that we don't have a specifically designated place we're supposed to evacuate to. Malik points out that the door knob on our emergency exit is broken. Deirdre asks about a fire tower, and Mr. Moustache says they can prove to be faulty exits (while I'm thinking, what's a fire tower?). Mr. M. says the first thing would be to call the fire director, but Josh notices that the list of emergency phone numbers posted by the exit doesn't actually include the fire director's.
So here's my emergency action plan. I'm going to work from home. I figure, in case of nuclear attack on New York, I'm toast anyway. If there's a blackout, I prefer not to hoof it 100 blocks to the bridge, like I did in 2003. My snack drawer may sustain me for a day in case we have to "shelter in place," but one tires of Triscuits and raisins. And a nutjob is much likelier to target my building smack-dab in the very epicenter of Manhattan than he is my little house in New Jersey. No one ever sent any anthrax to Leonia.
December 3, 2007 8:56
Why friends keep us working
There's an uplifting story in the health section of the New York Times today. Tara Parker-Pope reports:
Researchers have long known that work stress can take a heavy toll on health. Studies have shown that stress at work increases the risk for depression, heart attack and other health worries. But now a new report shows that the solution to work stress may be found in the cubicle next door. Employees who feel social support at work are far less likely to suffer serious depression problems, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health.
The study found work-related depression is rampant, some cases serious:
Researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Center studied data collected from more than 24,000 Canadian workers in 2002. They found that 5 percent of the workers suffered from serious bouts of depression. Notably, men who endured high job strain were two times more likely to succumb to depression than men with minimal job stress. Women who had little decision-making authority had twice the depression risk compared to women with more power.
Here's the good news.
People who said they felt generally supported by their colleagues and could lean on co-workers in a time of crisis were spared the rigors of job stress. In the study, men and women who felt little social support at work were two to three times more likely to suffer major bouts of depression.
You might have noticed by now that I'm a social type. The problem is I have an asocial job. Writers are loners who prefer to hunker alone in our cave-like offices, emerging only for the mandatory meeting and only then at special bequest. We keep the lights out to better discourage impromptu visits. We pile the entryway high with unopened packages. We keep our heads down in the corridors. When appropriate, we wear masks. (Just kidding about that last part.)
By personality, I should probably have been a schoolteacher or a party planner. But here I am in a profession that best suits the unfriendly. I try my hardest to fit the stereotype, but it's hard. Sometimes I find myself lurking in the toilet just to have a chat.
And then I got my blog. I started it, as some of you longtime readers know, when I was grossly sick and confined to my house for months. By the time I hobbled in to my New York office, I felt I had a stronger connection with some of you than with my workplace acquaintances. Case in point: when I got back to my office today after two weeks tending to my mother in Japan, what do I find but a pile of lovely comments from you all following my last post telling me to have a great break and wishing my family well. I don't even think my real colleagues noticed I was gone.
Not that I'm whining here. Seriously. Nobody's done a study about the psychological effects of work-related relationships formed online, as best I know. But I bet the benefits are similar to those in the nondigital world. Thanks for the boost, friends. I need it.
About Work In Progress
Nina Subin
Lisa Takeuchi Cullen is a staff writer for TIME. She blogs about work. Why? Because TV was taken. Think of her as the grumpy colleague ranting by the water cooler.
More about the Author
Email her here:
lisa_cullen at timemagazine.com
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