January 31, 2008 9:00
TGIT: Reader book review of You, Inc.
This from WiP reader Anne Witkavich (check out her blog here):
You, Inc.: The Art of Selling Yourself
By Harry Beckwith and Christine Clifford Beckwith
Review by Anne Witkavitch
Walk into any bookstore or surf online and there is an overabundance of self-help and motivational books promising something new, something different for the reader—that one nugget of information that is sure to
forever change their lives, make him or her more successful, surge their egos so they can go out and conquer the world.
You, Inc.—written by the husband and wife team of Harry Beckwith and Christine Clifford Beckwith, parents of six—is one of those books, but then again (thankfully) it's not. Instead of promising something new and different, the authors compile personal and professional advice into one resource, organize it into easy-to-read, bite-size chunks, and throw in anecdotal stories to illustrate the points. The result is 300-plus pages of practical advice about what to do, how to act, and what makes good sense in today's professional environment. You'll want to keep this guide within easy reach on the desk,
the credenza, or next to the bed.
You can read You, Inc. from front to back if you're in need of a complete personal and professional overhaul, or to start your new career on the right foot. Or you can randomly flip through the chapters, read sections randomly, and earmark pages for when you need those gentle reminders, self-motivating questions, or positive reflections to stay on track and advance your career.
For example, what is the real role of goal setting? To reach goals set or to learn during the process? What's the best way to make people believe you are an expert? What are the perils of Powerpoint in making your messages clear?
The power of You, Inc. is in its simplicity, logic, and the practical advice it offers. The book provides clarity about selling yourself in a fast-changing world where the rules of engagement have become at times a bit unclear. For people like me, who warm up to a good self-help book now and then, You, Inc. offers a lot of good advice packed into one easy-to-read resource. The authors sum it up best: "Read this book, then act differently. Don't seek reassurance. Seek change."
That is a page worth earmarking.
January 30, 2008 12:00
Rudy's strategy blew. I should know
My sister Emy loves to tell this story.
In high school P.E., we had to run races of varying lengths as part of the Presidential Fitness tests. You might ask why an international school populated only minimally by Americans had to abide by the American president's fitness standards. You might ask if we even knew who the American president was. You might ask. We didn't. We only complained.
The worst race was the 1,200 meter. It involved eight laps around our gravelly field atop a mountain in Kobe, Japan. The view was quite lovely from our school; on a clear day, you could see clear across the bay to Awaji Island. We were not thinking about the view that day. We had 1,200 meters to run.
What happened was inexplicable. I ran in record time. I scored among the highest of the high school girls. The class was shocked. The P.E. teacher was shocked. I was shocked. The fastest anyone had ever seen me move was from Algebra for Retards to cheerleading practice, and that was a deliberate jog to keep intact my Aquanetted hair.
But it turned out my athletic achievement was a huge, huge mistake. The highest-scoring girls would have to run in the all-school athletic day, which I had fully planned to spend sipping sweet lemon tea at our local coffee shop.
I wailed at the injustice. Mrs. Clark, the P.E. teacher, gave me an out. "If you run the 400," she said, "you can skip the 1,200."
Sounds like a good deal, right? That's 800 fewer meters—roughly 1,600 fewer steps of agony! You bet I took it.
Only I had not run the 400 in anything close to a good time. And I was up against a Dutch girl who would cloud my path with her frizzy hair and breathtaking b.o.
But I had a strategy. I would start out slow, then take it in the last lap.
Do I have to tell you it didn't work? Trotting out of the gate, I jogged comfortably for the first 200 meters while the other girls shot past me. By the time I started thinking about picking it up, however, I noticed they were in fact about to lap me. In panic, I willed my legs to go faster, but not being a runner I had all sorts of lactic acid building up and was of course unable. I finished a good half lap behind the other girls, to the shrieking delight of my friends and siblings. Mrs. Clark knocked down my grade for "not trying." But I did try! I just bet on a really stupid strategy.
So, Mayor Giuliani, I understand. I'm not given to any sympathy toward you, understand: I think you're a deeply evil man who would lead this country to ruin. I confess, however, to a pang of empathy as I watched you flounder toward third-place finish in Florida, where you had placed all your primary eggs. Holding back all your efforts in the belief you'll surge midway through the race was about as smart as persecuting your political enemies while you were mayor of New York City. It came back to bite you in the end.
January 30, 2008 11:33
Recycling magazines is excellent. Really
Just got this memo in my inbox from Time Inc.'s corporate leader, Ann Moore:
I want to share the details surrounding our newest sustainability initiative. ReMix (which stands for Recycling Magazines is Excellent) is a national public education campaign aimed at increasing residential recycling of magazines and catalogs. The campaign was created four years ago after a study by Time Inc. and Verso Paper showed that only 17% of magazines from the home were being recycled. The results revealed a huge opportunity to increase awareness for residential recycling. We partnered with the National Recycling Coalition, Verso Paper and Time Warner Cable to pilot the ReMix campaign in cities including Boston, Portland, Milwaukee and the DC Metro area. All four pilots were met with success.
I suffer from eco-anxiety thanks in part to working for a business that puts out 3.75 million copies of about 80 pages of stapled dead tree every week. Let's see. That's about 15 billion pages a year. Holy guacamole. That's a lot of landfill.
So this is a welcome initiative. What I want to know is: what the heck took so long? And where's the part where we print our magazines on recycled toilet paper or, better yet, go all digital? How about ordering some of our 3,000 employees to telecommute? That would a) relieve New York City of some pollution and congestion, b) save millions in office-upkeep costs, and c) generate much-needed revenue by freeing up our Rockefeller Center skyscraper for rental to the likes of Lehman Brothers.
Maybe I should write the next memo. I'd call it Truly Excellent Initiatives to Save Planet Earth and Also Magazines in General, or Teispeamg. Not as catchy, maybe, but I'm keeping it real.
January 30, 2008 9:29
Dreaming about work is normal
I awoke this morning from a disturbing dream. In the dream, I was...typing. Actually, I was cutting and pasting within a document in an effort to format it correctly for a blog post.
I'm not kidding. I wish I was. Of all the places to let my unconscious roam in my too-few hours of sleep, it has to trot straight to the office.
Don't lie to me. You do it, too, particularly if you work for yourself. According to a Staples Small-Business Survey:
...more than half of small-business professionals said that work has actually become part of their dreams. Fifty-one percent of those surveyed said that they "sleepwork" (i.e. dream about work), and nearly 70 percent of those "sleepworkers" report they wake up and put their "work dreams" to action.
Another study finds a far higher number dream about work. On Monster's Career Advice site:
In a 2003 survey of 1,000 adults conducted by British bank NatWest, 80 percent of women and 60 percent of men said they dream about work. Moreover, 65 percent of women and 43 percent of men reported waking up in a cold sweat, worried about their jobs.
I suppose I should feel lucky. My dream, while pointless, was fairly benign. Others aren't:
Another 2003 survey of more than 1,000 adults by British education company learndirect revealed that 57 percent of the respondents said they suffer nightmares about their jobs. Fully 25 percent experience those nightmares once a week or more.
The survey says our work-related dream/nightmares are most frequently about, in order of frequency:
1. Arguing with the boss.
2. Being late for an important meeting.
3. Lusting after a colleague.
4. Having to make an unexpected presentation.
5. Going to work naked.
6. Losing all their files in a fatal computer crash.
7. Getting fired.
8. Killing the boss.
Aiiiiiieeeee! What does the severed head of my boss mean? And what's this bloody knife doing in my hand?! There's got to be some sort of Jungian explanation. MonsterTRAK's career coach, Peter Vogt, reports in this article,
To understand and benefit from your work-related dreams, you need to learn how to read between the lines, says dream expert Gillian Holloway, author of Dreaming Insights: A 5-Step Plan for Discovering the Meaning in Your Dream.
For example, suppose that you have the relatively common dream about showing up for work or an important meeting naked. "This dream usually dramatizes a feeling of vulnerability and exposure in waking life," Holloway notes on her Life Treks Web site. "It is particularly common to people who have accepted a promotion, gone off to a new school or who are coming into public view for some reason." The dream suggests the dreamer may be focusing deeply on some area of his life where he's taken on a new role he hasn't gotten used to yet.Similarly, you might have the common dream about being unprepared for some job-related task or event. "This anxiety dream is most common to people who never allow themselves to be unprepared," Holloway stresses. "The people who have it are generally successful, competent professionals who excel at their work and prepare as much as humanly possible."
So me blogging about formatting a blog post means...I will wake up in 30 minutes and format a blog post. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Go on. Share your work-related dreams. PG-rated ones only, please.
January 29, 2008 11:44
Women aren't dumber. But we think we are
Adrian Furnham is British psychologist who studies perceptions of human intellect. He found that while men and women score pretty much the same in IQ, men tend to think their scores are higher than they are and women think the opposite. He discusses his findings in a magazine we at TIME prefer to call Brand X.
Shakesville, via Alternet, posts:
Does this surprise anyone? It shouldn't. Women in most societies spend their lives being told that they are simply not as capable as men, while men spend their lives being told that they are leaders and doers. Of course people think men are smarter than women. It's the definition of prejudice -- people buy into the notion that men are superior at everything except cleaning and taking care of the home and the kids. (Even that notion is meant not to buoy women, but to demean the very difficult and important job of cleaning and taking care of the home and the kids.) This feeds into our warped concepts of gender norms, and causes women and men alike to devalue the ability of women to compete in the workforce. Another big win for the patriarchy.
Isn't this so true in the workplace, folks? There are legions of studies showing biases in promotions, raises and hiring in favor of men, due at least in part to this perception of higher intelligence and capability. Even if it's just a self-perception, it comes across in behavior: if I believe I'm smarter and better and more deserving than you, you're going to believe it, too.
Jezebel posts:
Furnham doesn't think self-esteem training is the cure. He's more into positive feedback and whatnot. But, he warns, "Beliefs may be more important than actual ability in certain settings." Meaning that a dude who thinks he's a genius may get a job instead of a women who's supersmart but doesn't think she is.
How do we counteract that? I think it's already happening, to some extent. Girls and young women today are encouraged by their parents and teachers to excel. We've all read about how women have become the majorities in law and med schools. Here come a generation of gals who are confident, competent and totally ready to whump a lesser dude in their path.
Still, many of their bosses will be men and women of past generations who still labor under the incorrect presumption that boys are just, well, smarter. And I daresay 99% of teenage girls still must run the gauntlet of low self-esteem and self-doubt. How many come out with confidence intact, I can't begin to guess. I can only sit by and hope for the revolution.
January 29, 2008 9:40
Can sick Californians be fired for smoking pot?
No smoking at work. Or at home.
True or false:
Californians are permitted to grow and possess marijuana if a doctor says they need it for medicinal purposes.
True! A 1996 "compassionate use" law makes pot legal for those whose health is aided by its use.
True or false:
Private employers in California can fire you for using marijuana, even if you do so with a doctor's note.
Also true! Says Hot Document in Slate today:
Because of "well-documented problems" of absenteeism, low productivity, and physical injury, employers exercise their legal right to test workers and, if results are positive for illegal substances, to deny them employment.
Case example, involving a vet, no less:
Veteran Gary Ross was badly injured while serving in the U.S. Air Force and became eligible for government disability benefits. He suffers chronic pain, which is eased by physician-recommended marijuana treatment. In 2001, Sacramento-based RagingWire Telecommunications hired Ross, but when his pre-employment drug test came back positive for THC, the company quickly fired him. Ross sued, arguing that he was not consuming marijuana on the job and that state fair-employment laws required "reasonable accommodation" for his disability. Last week, the California Supreme Court upheld the dismissal, noting that the compassionate use law does not "require employers to accommodate marijuana" (see excerpts of the court's affirmation below and on the following five pages).
January 28, 2008 6:03
I so did not get a kudos (singular)
About an hour ago, 100-plus TIME staffers gathered in a large auditorium here at Time Inc. for what were billed as the Kudos Awards.
The whatos? is what I thought when I got the e-mailed invite. The invite looked important: it came from Ed McCarrick, the business chief of TIME, and the reminder note came from Rick Stengel, our managing editor (which, in Time Inc.'s weird masthead parlance, is the equivalent of an editor-in-chief). I decided it would behoove me to attend. Plus, there would be food.
It was, as advertised, a fancy gathering to celebrate those among us who had performed extraordinary work during the past year. For TIME, the past year was extraordinary in and of itself: we redesigned the entire book and kicked off a whole new production schedule (for the 94% of you who don't buy the print version, what that means is that we now come out on Friday instead of Monday—a huge, huge change for a weekly).
I say we like I had any part in the effort, which I didn't, except to complain about it when it inconvenienced me. Some of my far more deserving colleagues were singled out, including Josh Tyrangiel, editor of Time.com; Art Hochstein, our head art director; Brooke Twyford, our valiant production chief; and a bunch of business-side types who did their part to make sure our paychecks kept coming.
It'll surprise none of you that I didn't get a kudos award. I felt better after seeing one: it's a glass plaque about the size and weight of a tombstone. And I might have been the only edit staffer whose clip did not appear in the long newsreel preceding the ceremony, an oversight that made me realize I did absolutely zilch TV last year. (This must be what my bosses meant when they told me to raise my profile. That click you heard just now is the sound of the 25-watt lightbulb over my head flickering on.)
No matter. I am left with some pressing questions. Rick kicked off the presentation of awards by explaining that kudos is, in fact, not plural, as is often thought, but rather singular; kudoses is the noun, he said. He pronounced it "kew-dos." Before that, Ed pronounced it "koo-doh," with a silent "s."
I pointed this discrepancy out later to some colleagues. This is what I do at workplace cocktail parties; I make stupid conversation about inconsequential matters with people I work with but never see. One said he will forever pronounce it kew-dos because our fearless leader does. This strategy of blind devotion to top management may be what earned him his promotion last year. I must learn from him. I must.
But...I am not as finely attuned to the machinations of workplace heirarchy, as evidenced by my utter lack of a promotion in seven years. Also I am a writer who is procrastinating on a deadline. Therefore I must look it up.
And what I learned is that my boss is sort of right, but also wrong. From Dictionary.com:
In the 19th century, kudos entered English as a singular noun, a transliteration of a Greek singular noun kŷdos meaning “praise or renown.” It was at first used largely in academic circles, but it gained wider currency in the 1920s in journalistic use, particularly in headlines: Playwright receives kudos. Kudos given to track record breakers. Kudos is often used, as in these examples, in contexts that do not clearly indicate whether it is singular or plural; and because it ends in -s, the marker of regular plurals in English, kudos has come to be widely regarded and used as a plural noun meaning “accolades” rather than as a singular mass noun meaning “honor or glory.”
And:
The singular form kudo has been produced from kudos by back formation, the same process that gave us the singular pea from pease, originally both singular and plural, sherry from Xeres (an earlier spelling of the Spanish city Jerez), and cherry from the French singular noun cherise. This singular form has developed the meanings “honor” and “statement of praise, accolade.” Both the singular form kudo and kudos as a plural are today most common in journalistic writing. Some usage guides warn against using them.
As so happens in the English language, looks like our incorrect popular usage seeped into and rewrote the lexicon. Though kudos is indeed singular, apparently some schmo on Wikipedia has decided that the proper singular ought now be kudo. Like judo, only with a glass plaque. I am deeply saddened to report that nowhere have I found any reference to kudoses.
I won't be informing my boss. What—I'm not a complete dolt. While my shot at a kudos/kudo/kew-doh remains slim, I don't want to endanger my access to free afternoon canapés.
January 28, 2008 11:24
Broken heart? Take a leave
This link from Reuters via Yahoo! News, sent by my pal Gerry, who writes, "I don't know which is odder, that heartache leave exists or that it's only a couple of days." Get this:
Lovelorn staff at a Japanese marketing company can take paid time off after a bad break-up with a partner, with more "heartache leave" on offer as they get older.
What!
Tokyo-based Hime & Company, which also gives staff paid time off to hit the shops during sales season, says heartache leave allows staff to cry themselves out and return to work refreshed. "Not everyone needs to take maternity leave but with heartbreak, everyone needs time off, just like when you get sick," CEO Miki Hiradate, whose company of six women markets cosmetics and other goods targeted for women, told Reuters by telephone.
For extra funny, the heartache leave increases with seniority:
Staff aged 24 years or younger can take one day off per year, while those between 25 and 29 can take two days off and those older can take three days off, the company said.
The older we get, the harder we fall? Apparently so:
"Women in their 20s can find their next love quickly, but it's tougher for women in their 30s, and their break-ups tend to be more serious," Hiradate said.
I hadn't heard that theory. But I guess it makes sense. Now about that shopping leave:
Hime & Company staff can also take two mornings off twice a year as "sales shopping leave", so they can race to stores to hunt for bargains. "Before, women could take half-days off to go to sales, but you'd have to hide your shopping bags in lockers by the train station," Hiradate said. "But with paid leave, we don't have to feel guilty about bringing our shopping bags to work, and we can enjoy the best part about sales shopping -- talking about our purchases afterwards."
I've got an idea. How about combining the two leaves for a little company-approved retail therapy post breakup?
More seriously: I can't decide if this company is really woman-friendly, or if publicizing these policies sets the already bass-ackwards women's movement in Japan back another century.
Then again, she never says the leaves apply only to women (though admittedly her staff is all female). I'm trying to imagine the policy on offer at, say, an investment bank. Men have enough trouble manning up to take paternity leave. Heartache leave? That's strictly for the weaker sex.
Oh, and while they're on leave, they can feed this to Taro the pooch:
A chew toy for dogs belonging to the broken-hearted. / Bamboopet.com
Designed with dog psychology in mind, The Ex features Fat Cat’s “Maximum Floppability®” technology – aka floppy, dangling extremities – to give both you and your dog the pleasure of seeing him surrender to your pup’s mighty bite. The Ex also features a fun yet safe squeaker inside; there’s even a place to write your least favorite ex’s name on the back (just remember to use a non-toxic permanent marker). Now that’s what we call therapy!
January 28, 2008 10:07
A beat worse than mine: commuting
Lately I've been complaining about my chosen beat. While my smarter colleagues were picking topics like TV and architecture and national politics, I picked...work. Why? I dunno. Like most of my decisions in life, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Turns out my bosses were questioning my choice, too. I write frequently for the magazine, if I do say so myself, but rarely on said topic or under my "branded" banner, Work in Progress. I've been told I need to raise my profile. That they want to see more of me, and in other parts of the magazine.
How would you respond to that? You'd take it as criticism, right? Even couched in sweet nothings like "I'm a big fan" and "we need more talent of your caliber," it sounds like a boot in the butt, right? As if the unsaid part is, "...so get off your fat arse and carry a little more weight around here. Remember who pays for your kid's Cheerios." It's a little hard to hear when you feel like your arse is pretty much worn flat from work and your shoulders ache from carrying weight and you've got another Cheerio-eater on the way.
The thing is, I kind of love my beat...at least, in this here medium. As narrow as it might sound compared to the nonstop scrum that is the presidential election, I still don't seem to have any trouble coming up with new posts. If I didn't have a job—if I didn't have to justify those Cheerios by contributing articles to the print magazine—I'd blog 24/7. Maybe 23/6. Maybe 22/5. But you know. A lot.
Still, when the boss says jump, I say how high do you want my triple salchow. So this weekend I set about thinking up new beats. This is where you, my friends, come in. Because my ideas suck. I wound up instead coming up with beats that suck way, way worse than mine. I think of it as a glass-half-full approach: yes, I write about cubicle decor. But I could be writing about...
* commuting. The New York Times recently added a commuting beat. Let me repeat that. A beat that involves nothing but riding the New Jersey Transit buses and the No. 7 subway and the Staten Island ferry. The ferry part sounds okay. But the PATH train from Hoboken at 7 a.m., especially with the new cattle-herding at the Wall Street exit that my brother-in-law says delays riders up to 15 minutes due to construction on the Freedom Tower? Holy seventh circle of hell.
* sectarian violence in Iraq. Last Friday, I hosted a discussion at Time Inc. with Bobby Ghosh, TIME's World editor and until recently our Baghdad bureau chief. He alighted there during the initial shock and awe in '93, and has since become the longest-serving print reporter in that war zone. He survived kidnap attempts (once by telling kidnappers he was Indian, and therefore had no money for ransom—it worked), neighborhood bombings, dangerous sources, and the slow diminishing of the foreign press corp around him. It's probably the most important beat of our time, he told the crowd last week, and the least desirable. For the past five years, while I was deciding which handbag to carry to work, Bobby was fitting himself with a flak jacket. Even among the handful of Western journalists who venture over, few stay longer than a few months, and most never leave the Green Zone (unlike Bobby, whose bald head, full beard and South Asian features allowed him unusual and frequent passage among locals).
Other beats worse than mine:
* municipal waste.
* interest rates.
* American football.
The thing is, all those beats could be interesting. (Now that I think of it, I wrote about commuting just a few months ago in this story about long-distance marriages.) I believe it's possible to get excited about covering the science of potable waste water or the selection of a new Mormon leader or the marketing of eco-friendly hearses. That's why I'm a journalist. That's what the luckiest among us get to do at TIME: write about anything and everything that excites us.
So that's it in a nutshell, folks. As of 2008, I'll be expanding my coverage in the magazine to things far beyond the world of work. Not that that's any different from 2007, or 2006, etc etc. The fact is, I've always been a generalist. Back when my bosses got all hepped up about us holding specific beats—way back in 2006—I tried to narrow my focus. It didn't stick.
I'm hereby stating a renewed commitment to stories of all types, races, genders, body shapes and countries of origin. I'm hereby open to ideas from readers and, to a lesser extent, pitches from p.r. types about stories to do with interesting trends, people and discoveries. Give me a good lead on municipal waste, folks, and watch me go.
As for the blog, you're stuck with me ranting at the corner of Work and Life. For now. Like the blog says, I am as ever a work in progress.
January 25, 2008 9:00
Smart ways to recession-proof your job
Lately I'm getting a lot of press releases from career coaches, staffing companies and head hunters advising me to tell you that they know how to "recession-proof your job." If I were being all analytical and boring, I'd say it's one indicator of voter jitters about the direction of the economy.
But then I got to thinking. My own company had painful layoffs two years in a row. It skipped a big round this year, but you gotta figure that if the economy does hit the skids, the first thing marketers cut is their advertising, which means TIME Magazine loses pages, which means me and my colleagues lose our jobs.
I have never operated heavy machinery and I believe I never should for the good and safety of all. So I decided to read the latest note. It's from John Challenger of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outsourcing firm in Chicago. I like John; we've visited a couple of times, and he's always good for a lively quote about the job market. So here's his advice on how to recession-proof your job:
• Solidify the relationship with your boss. If the relationship with your supervisor is need of repair, now is the time to do it. Take steps to ensure that whatever characteristics or factors inspired your boss to hire you are still recognized. Schedule a lunch. Meet with him or her regularly to make sure you are on the same page. If your relationship has suffered, figure out what changed. If you cannot figure it out on your own, ask your boss directly in a non-confrontational, “I-only-want-to-please-you” way. Be prepared for the fact that you will be the one who must change, even if it’s your boss that caused the relationship to suffer.
• Be an expert and a generalist at the same time. Knowing more than anyone else on a specific issue or topic will help make you the “go-to” person for anyone in the company who has a question on that subject. However, you also want to be well-versed in many areas of your company so that managers see you as being able to contribute in a variety of ways.
• Seek assignments on core projects. Find a way to be part of long-term projects that are core to the company and more likely to survive a downturn. Job security will be strongest for those who demonstrate expertise, particularly on projects where there are few experts. The company will consider you essential to an area of the business that is mission-critical. In other words, the company cannot afford to lose you.
• Meet your boss’s bosses and peers. Go out of your way to meet those at or above your supervisor’s level in the company. Attend all company events and introduce yourself to upper-level managers and executives. Let them know what projects you are working on and share your contributions. If layoffs occur and your boss is among the victims, there is no one to carry your torch unless you have built relationships with surviving managers and executives.
• Carry the company flag. If job cuts become necessary, employers are more likely to keep workers who are “true believers” in the company’s mission. Sporting a company-logo tattoo is not enough. You must demonstrate that you share all of the company’s concerns and goals. In addition to attending all corporate morale and team-building functions, you should be part of the committees that plan them. Be an advocate internally and externally. The company will recognize and reward those who are true “company men and women.”
Solid advice, I guess. Go ahead and follow it if you're the advice-following type. Here for the rest of you are my alternative tips on how to recession-proof your job:
• Gather dirt on the boss.
• Make known to boss you have gathered said dirt.
• Make him/her squirm as you blithely hint at spilling said dirt.
• Keep job.
So much easier.
January 24, 2008 12:22
How the KFC Famous Bowl led me to a story
Americans are gluttons. This we know. I have seen the Sunday night buffet at a barbecue joint in Wilson, N.C. I have watched contestants weigh in at 400 lbs.-plus on The Biggest Loser. What's worse, we pretend we're not. We gobble up books like Skinny Bitch, a vegan manifesto, and yet 85% of Americans scarf down the fried-meat sandwich known as a burger at least once a month.
So the success of the KFC Famous Bowl should not surprise us. It is a boffo, fat-assed, best-selling bonanza for Yum Brands, owner of KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and more.
You know what it is? It's a plastic bowl, filled with breaded, deep fried chicken strips; corn; shredded cheese; gravy; and a thick layer of mashed potatoes. Thus:
Who needs utensils? Just give me a straw. / Yum Brands
I am completely fascinated by the KFC Famous Bowl. Have you all seen this classic Patton Oswalt routine?
So when David Novak, CEO of Yum Brands, offered to drop by last fall to flog his book, I happily accepted. I'd leafed through the galleys of his book about growing up in trailer parks or whatever. All I wanted to know was, How did they come up with the Bowl?
Turns out it's not that different from what Oswalt describes. The lab scientists (yes, Yum tests every menu addition exhaustively) tried it out. Some execs thought it could never work, but Novak (the iconoclast of fast food!) became a huge champion.
But we couldn't talk for 30 minutes just about one dish, so we got to to chatting about Yum's global strategy. Turned out Yum's international business had soared from 20% of profits at the time of its spin-off from PepsiCo to 50% today. What's more, it was about to invade some very promising markets with Yankee interpretations of the local cuisine: notably, by bringing Taco Bell to Mexico, and opening a chain of Chinese restaurants in China (where Chinese food is usually referred to as "food").
We had a story. Check it out in this week's edition; you'll see I worked in Oswalt's best line in the penultimate graf.
For all my horrified fascination with the Famous Bowl, I've never worked up the intestinal fortitude to eat one. Have any of you? If so, review in comments, please.
January 24, 2008 9:43
Everybody hates Mitt, office edition
Everybody Hates Romney
is the headline Alternet gives its reprinting of this post by Steve Benen of The Carpetbagger Report. He writes:
A couple of days before the Republicans' New Hampshire primary, ABC hosted a debate for the GOP field, during which every candidate on the stage attacked Mitt Romney. Huckabee hit him on Iraq, Thompson hit him on healthcare, Giuliani hit him on immigration, and McCain hit him on everything. Romney wasn't actually leading in the polls at that point -- that would have made the criticisms easier to explain -- and hadn't picked any fights during the debate.
It was a reminder that, for all the competing interests and personalities in the Republican contest, these guys really don't like Mitt Romney.
Here's my favorite quote from an article in the New York Times today by Michael Luo on the same subject. It's made by Dan Schnur, "a Republican strategist who worked on Mr. McCain’s presidential campaign bid in 2000 but is not affiliated with any campaign now":
“John McCain and his friends used to beat up Mitt Romney at recess,” Mr. Schnur said.
In workplace terms, Romney's that guy who started the same day as you but always lurked around the boss's office and laughed a little too loud at his jokes. He frequently mentioned his superior academic credentials and his privileged upbringing, and gave the achievements of you and your other colleagues the hairy eyeball. He leapfrogged you all to senior management at a very young age. The other senior managers admire his hard work and intensity. But the hoi-polloi know they can trust him just about as far as they can hurl an eyelash.
I'm a little too specific in my description, aren't I? You guessed it: I used to work with Mitt Romney. No, not the one running for president. I mean a carbon copy of his younger self. Though the guy has mellowed a lot in time (each success seemed to mollify some of his raging insecurity), I still don't like or trust him. I'd never vote for him.
That's the way I think a lot of people feel about Romney. It's not his Mormonism, though it's easy for us in the media to single out his religion. It's that they feel they know the guy. They feel they've worked with and for the guy. And the guy is not to be trusted.
That's why it was kind of sad to read Dean Barnett's op-ed piece in the NYT, acknowledging Romney's baldly obvious ambition but clinging to a memory of the man as truly decent, intelligent and hard-working.
I often marvel at how the public perception of Mr. Romney differs so radically from the man I know. The blame for this lies in the campaign he has run.
I'd kind of been cutting Romney a break all this time, choosing instead to focus my hatred on Rudy Giuliani, whom I believe is truly diabolical. If Rudy were my boss, I'd quit before he sucked the blood from my neck. But the Michigan primaries really stuck in my craw. There, Romney focused on the economy, promising all sorts of stuff to the beleaguered workers in that state: he'd spend his first 100 days in office figuring out the problems in the U.S. car industry, he said. He'd consider rolling back tougher laws on car emissions, even though he said the exact opposite in 2005, as Jennifer Rubin of American Standard points out.
Punditish says it best:
I can't imagine it's easy to both succeed in the world of politics and be completely honest at the same time. I, and most other voters, have accepted the fact that politicians must emphasize certain parts of their record (and downplay others) depending on who they're speaking or appealing to at any given moment. But Romney's promises to the voters of Michigan are untenable. They promise special treatment that goes against his broader stated principles.I think Mitt Romney is a good man, and I think there's a good candidate underneath all this politicking waiting to get out. But his desperation to win Michigan has, I think, brought out the worst in his campaign.
January 23, 2008 4:24
Where's my old girls' network?
Over the years, I've heard a lot about a supposed old girls' network. You know what I mean by this: the old, white men who used to run industry are slowly being joined by a cadre of women who exert similar power.
Take this piece in the Washington Post, by Carrie Johnson, about just such a network in techology.
Fewer women enroll in college-level computer science courses today than 20 years ago. Female entrepreneurs collect a pittance of the venture capital handed out by money men. The region's tech millionaires are mostly white males approaching middle age.
Yet the doom-filled studies all neglect a phenomenon that's thriving, though often invisible: a groundswell among women with technical skills to recruit more of their own into well-paying, intellectually challenging professions. Nowhere is this practice more evident than in the virtual communities and user groups that tech-savvy women are creating for themselves.
A similar trend is seen in Hollywood, says the New York Times' Nancy Hass:
Four of the six major studios have women in the top creative decision-making roles, as Ms. Berman joins Stacey Snider, chairman of Universal; Amy Pascal, chairman of Sony Pictures; and Nina Jacobson, president of Walt Disney Company's Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group. Earlier this month, Ms. Snider announced that Mary Parent and Scott Stuber, would be stepping down as vice chairmen at Universal to become producers on the lot; their replacement is Donna Langley, the Universal executive who oversaw "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason" and "In Good Company."
Though men still figure most prominently in the corporate echelons of the media companies that own the studios, and talent agencies like William Morris and Creative Artists Agency are still male dominated, these women, who over the years have fought and fostered one another as part of a loose sisterhood, have finally buried the notion that Hollywood is a man's world.
Kate Stone Lombardi laments in the NYT about having to claw her way into a writing career before such a network existed:
I didn’t have much guidance. I remember being frustrated a good deal of the time. All of my bosses were male. Several of them made advances, but “sexual harassment” was not yet in the public lexicon, at least not on Capitol Hill. Instead, you ducked away gracefully, taking care not to antagonize the man to whom you still had to report.
Here's what strikes me. The female workforce is far more fluid for reasons that include family, career goals and changing personal needs. That means that even as women scrabble their way into top jobs, they may quickly leave those posts and be replaced—most often—by men.
And then what?
Some who leave reach back to help those who stay behind. This from BusinessWeek:
Few women in the venture-capital community understand the power of branding better than Isabella Capital founder Peg Wyant, a former general manager for Procter & Gamble. Now, Wyant wants to brand Isabella Capital the top venture-capitalist firm led by women, specializing in women's startups.
As a case study, I offer up my own workplace. I'm pretty sure the term "old boys network" was coined by TIME. There are still staffers who remember the days when newly hired women were shuttled to the researcher's pen, while men with the exact same degrees and experience were ushered on to the writing track. By a year ago, some of the names highest on the masthead belonged to women. The second in command, along with the editors who ran international coverage, the human interest section, arts, photos, copy, plus our marquee writers—all were women.
And then something shifted. Our deputy, Priscilla Painton, left after two decades at TIME to seek a second career—as it turned out, in book publishing. A few other top editors and writers left, some of them disillusioned by the new direction of the magazine, others wanting a different work-life balance. Some were pushed out in the restructuring.
We still have women in important jobs at my workplace, as you probably do in yours; and while some have left, others have risen. But I've long felt that women simply have a different relationship to their jobs than do men. The old boys' network came about because a clutch of men hunkered down and became indispensable to their companies and industries, and thus were able to call the shots, including the hiring of more people just like them. We women don't seem to have that same territorial instinct about our jobs.
I think that doesn't have to hurt us, or to stop our sisters from trying to get a leg up. We just have to expand the definition of network beyond the company that happens to employ us just then. In fact, one editor who departed recently called to tell me about a job opening at a company where neither of us had ever worked.
That's the kind of old girl I want to be.
January 23, 2008 11:44
Fortune says I should work at Google
Fortune, our sister magazine, just came out with its annual list of the 100 best companies to work for (check out its dazzling web treatment, then buy the Feb. 4 issue, you cheapskate). Google is its top employer, and yes, it's like deja vu all over again: they ranked #1 last year, too.
What makes Google great? Watch this video, if you can (the audio was all scratchy on my player). The short answer is: great pay; awesome perks; room and incentive to grow.
I'm a little sick of all the gushing over Google. So your cafeteria features gourmet cuisine for free and you get chauffered to work on a company-owned shuttle bus with WiFi. So your stock is at $700 and your retirement is already financed at 28. So your boss is the Angel Gabriel and your company-provided iPhone is made of diamonds.
Enough. I want to know: how can I work there?
Getting a job at Google presents some immediate problems for me, the first among them being that all I know about computers is how to turn them on and off, and sometimes I get that part wrong. The closest I get to code is the gobbledygook that shows up while formatting my blog. What could I offer of value to the greatest, most selective employer in Silicon Valley?
Fortune offers some helpful hints:
These cool job openings aren't just for techies. Are you an animal health expert? Lawyer? Submarine cable negotiator? Time to send your resume.
Hmm. I'm not much of an animal person, let alone a vet. I didn't go to law school, opting instead for the much more practical and lucrative profession of writing. Submarine—what? I keep going down the list and see this: Director of Other.
I could do that! I am, if anything, the master of other! I don't know much, but everything I do know can be categorized under "other"! Here's the job description, via Fortune:
Google is known for collecting experts in any field it wants. It already has on staff a chief economist, a former bullfight promoter and an epidemiologist who helped eradicate smallpox. Now it's looking for an expert in "other." That's Googlespeak for the last part of the company's famous 70/20/10 work ethic, whereby employees spend 70 percent of their time on the core business, 20 percent on related projects, and 10 percent on other projects of their own initiative. Coding in Java isn't a requirement, but you must be a successful "inventor and builder."
So if I understand correctly, 100% of my time would be spent directing everybody else's 10% of downtime.
Google, I hereby submit myself for this job opening. I am an inventor of ideas, a builder of dreams. Plus I really like free cafeteria food. Hire me.
January 23, 2008 10:25
Why tourists make me appreciate work
As far as I'm concerned, humans have three walking speeds: fast, slow and tourist. There's little that irritates me more on my morning commute through Times Square than getting stuck on a sidewalk behind a pack of Midwesterners who have decided against bipedal forward movement. Nothing against you folks from the middle states. I'm just saying that perhaps you spend a lot of time in cars and have forgotten or do not know that some commutes involve leg muscles.
I'm what you'd call a fast walker. When I had a baby, that was among the first things I had to learn: kids are a major drag on speed. On recent reporting trips made solo, I marveled at the sensation of being the first off the plane once again. It felt like victory.
Workdays involve a lot of movement, even for pregnant heifers like me. Need to chat with a colleague? I trot down the hall. Want to interview a source in Florida? I hop on a plane. Why, just this morning, I dropped off my kid at school, went to the gym, picked up a couple of books for my father, came home, made tea, and huffed up to my third-floor home office. Even with the widening frontal load, I can and do move around a lot in the course of my work day.
The books I bought for my father are Dave Barry's Money Secrets (Like: Why Is There a Giant Eyeball on the Dollar?) and a collection of bathroom jokes (scatological, yes, but also for reading in the water closet). He's laid up in the hospital and I thought he might want some diversion. His leg seized up after his recent trip to visit us, and he hasn't walked since. He's worried it means he won't get back to the office any time soon. I'm worried he won't get back, ever.
We take a lot for granted in our ability to work, don't we? It's so easy to let the little things annoy us, like that flock of high-school students blocking the entire intersection of 46th and Broadway as if everybody else in the world has only one agenda item today and that is to line up for TKTS tickets. Me, I harumph, and then I weave my way through their puffy-coated and texting mass, which I can do, even with my protruding belly. My pop, well, he'd have to wait till they all dispersed back to Milwaukee.
I don't often think of the ability to work as a blessing. But I should.
January 22, 2008 2:01
Identity and the minority woman voter
I feel I have a lot in common with Barack Obama. He's half white and half other, like me. In fact, his half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, interviewed here in the New York Times Magazine, is my own racial mix: half white and half Asian. He's the closest to me in age among all the candidates. He and I both spent a lot of time in Asia and Hawaii growing up. I identify with him in many ways.
I feel I have a lot in common with Hillary Clinton. She's a working mom and always was; I'm a working mom and always will be. She's raised a lovely, grounded young woman, and I am striving valiantly toward that goal. Her husband, like mine, plays a wind instrument, although mine with somewhat greater proficiency. She and I both tend toward elephant ankles, though I'm hoping mine will subside after the pregnancy. I identify with her in many ways.
Herein lies a problem the media tells me I've been grappling with: in a presidential race now fraught with racial and gender politics, with whom does a minority woman identify?
Oprah's involvement in Obama's campaign could draw our votes his way, huffed CNN.com. Foxnews.com swears "Clinton Faces Tough Scrutiny Among Women Voters."
There's little data as of yet. Among the teeny tiny sample of minority women living in New Hampshire, the Zogby poll found
minority women say they feel more compelled to support Hillary Clinton because she is a woman candidate than they are to vote for Barack Obama because he is a minority candidate.
But we all know pollsters in N.H. turned out to be about as accurate as Jayson Blair.
With my state's primary closing in, I find the issue of identity is not foremost on my mind. The sniping about who meant what about Martin Luther King Jr. or fairy tales or whatever is a steaming pile of distraction. I want it to go away. I want to focus instead on what each of them will do if and when they reach the White House. Who will do what in Iraq? Who will mandate national health care? Who will help right the economy? Who will pass laws that best aid the working middle class—not just advocate them but get them passed?
As a minority woman, I'm pretty damn proud to see a roster of folks who look more like me vying for the ultimate boss's job. But I won't vote based on race or gender, just like I wouldn't take a job just because my boss would be a woman or a minority. I want to work for the guy or gal who'll be the best captain of my ship. Whether or not he or she looks like me.
January 22, 2008 11:00
Study finds caffeine, alcohol good for fetus
So that wasn't the headline. No. It was
Basically, Being Pregnant Completely Sucks
That wasn't it, either, but it might as well have been. The latest hoohah this weekend, this from CNN.com:
A new study has found that pregnant women who consumed more than 200 milligrams of caffeine a day, equivalent to about two cups of coffee, had twice the risk of miscarriage as the women who consumed no caffeine at all. The findings are published in Monday's Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
The thing is, it's not clear. This from the Wall Street Journal's Melinda Beck:
Yet a study from Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in the journal Epidemiology this month, found that drinking more moderate amounts of caffeine didn't increase a woman's risk of miscarrying.
But the damage has been done. We American women of childbearing age are already so neurotic that any hint of potential harm to the unborn child sends us into uncontrolled spasms of worry. For years to come, women will recite the weekend's headlines with wide-eyed certainty. Coffee will be etched in stone on the enormous tableau of Things We Must Not Do While Carrying.
It's too late for me. I chugged three cups of tea and two cups of decaf per day all throughout my first trimester. The little bugger stuck, and is now certain to be born with a full-on caffeine habit. I would have kept up my alcohol consumption too, but that brings up another factor adding to the 21st century pregnancy paranoia: men. My husband is a freak about my health, and he guilted me into putting away the wine glass for the duration. To be fair, he's abstaining too. But still.
I ought not be flip. Miscarriage is no joke, of course. In fact, this pregnancy has been a lot more anxious than our first, mainly due to the prevalence of problems among our close friends, many of whom are in their mid to late 30s. According to the WSJ,
Roughly one million pregnancies in the U.S. end in miscarriage every year, according to the National Center on Health Statistics. Most miscarriages occur in the first trimester, and some 60% are thought to be due to a random genetic error in the egg or the sperm or the first crucial cell divisions. No amount of prenatal care or dietary precautions will make a difference in these cases.
With good reason, conception and pregnancy have become a serious business among my set...so serious that sometimes I think we get away from the sheer wonder and joy of bringing a new person into the world.
So on behalf of all anxiety-wracked, alcohol-abstaining, now caffeine-deprived pregnant women out there, I'm issuing fair warning to you scientists revving up for your next big announcement. If you go after my chocolate, I'm coming after you.
January 22, 2008 9:44
What not to wear (on a job interview)
The other day, I had a job interview. Oh, keep your hose on; it was for a possible side gig doing guest lectures or some such at a journalism school in the area.
Speaking of hose, I can't remember when I last wore a pair. Do they still exist? I hear women raving about something called Spanx, but those seem to involve elastic and shallow breathing. I think I threw out my last pair of nylons in the late 1990s. Is that TMI? I can't tell these days. I seem also to have misplaced my sense of appropriate conversation in polite company.
Anyway, as you all know, I'm preggers. My wardrobe of decent business attire is dwindling as my waistline expands. I wound up choosing an all-black ensemble—black tights, black boots, tenty black dress—under a pretty gray cardigan that kind of covers my girth. It's illegal for interviewers to ask if a candidate is pregnant, but I'd decided that if she did, I wouldn't lie. She didn't. I don't blame her; who wants to experience this?
It occurred to me in the two minutes I spent mulling what to wear (this has a Play-Doh crust; this is covered with dog hair...etc.) that it's been so long since I interviewed for a job that I had absolutely no clue what was considered appropriate anymore. Turns out a lot of current interviewees have no clue, either. But it's not as though we can all breathe easy because the rules have relaxed. It matters more than ever, according to an entertaining article about this on Wall Street Journal Online titled "Tassels, Pantsuits and Other Interview Fashion Faux-Pas" by Christina Binkley.
Whether it's skirts vs. pants, dark suits vs. light, or cuff links vs. none -- and don't even mention shoe tassels -- many hiring managers have firm opinions on what their ideal candidate will wear, down to the color of his socks.
In an earlier article titled "Aspire to Become a CEO? You Have to Dress the Part," Binkley reported,
Women sometimes don't realize how often a tight shirt or a low neckline comes across as seductive. People who meet them are likely to assume the sexual innuendo is intentional. It's harder for men to goof, but they do -- for instance, by being sloppy with untucked or wrinkled shirts or wearing beeping sports watches to staid business events. Sagging socks, dangling earrings and obvious designer logos all send messages that register with the people on the other side of the table.
Ouch. What's more, the rules may not have relaxed for some, but they've shifted for others.
To complicate matters, things aren't as cut-and-dried as they were in the days of strict blue-collar and white-collar work uniforms. Following the old dress-for-success rules, with ties and starched white shirts, would create suspicion and awkwardness at Google's dressed-down headquarters today. Executive job seekers have to study more than the balance sheet these days -- they have to suss out a company's fashion ethos. Candidates may want to call the hiring manager's assistant or ask a recruiter about the appropriate look before they show up for the interview.
What are you wearing to job interviews these days? Better yet: you managers and HR wenches, what do you consider interview inappropriate?
January 21, 2008 3:41
Should only blacks take the MLK holiday?
The answer, of course, is no. But that's what seems to happen at some companies.
Here at Time Inc., we take our Martin Luther King Jr. Day seriously. Even though we're a weekly magazine that closes on Wednesdays, we at TIME Magazine got the day off. The better to respect the great man who was TIME's Man of the Year back in 1964 (and yes, it was Man back then, not Person).
The only man of the year with a national holiday. / TIME
It's been so long since I've worked at a smaller company that I'd completely forgotten that MLK Day is not mandatory. In fact, only a third of companies observed the day last year, according to Business First of Louisville:
About 33 percent of employers will give their workers a paid holiday on Jan. 15 in observance of Martin Luther King Day, according to a survey by The Bureau of National Affairs Inc., a publisher of news and information for business and government workers.
And that's an improvement. Back when MLK Day became a national holiday, in 1986, only 11% of employers offered workers a paid day off.
Here's the loophole. It's a national holiday, which is to say it's not required. Big companies like the one I work for can afford to observe it (and mine, staffed as it is by loudmouthed journalists, probably wants to avoid the headache of the media rumpus we'd cause if it were not). But smaller, privately held employers feel the eight hours of missed work by employees would cause irreparable financial damage.
Or so I thought. Again from Business First:
Large organizations -- those with 1,000 or more employees -- are only slightly more likely to give workers paid time off on Martin Luther King Day than smaller employers (33 percent versus 32 percent, respectively).
I began looking into this because I heard today about a weird business practice: of employers allowing only their African-American employees the day off, paid, and requiring everyone else to work. That's the case at one small, private company in the home furnishings industry where someone I know works. She'd love to observe the holiday, too, but with only one week's vacation per year she feels she needs to save up her days.
This forum on Answers.Yahoo.com says that workers can in fact insist on taking the day off, but only as a vacation or sick day. That's probably the case at this company above. And many companies, particularly in the manufacturing industry, allot workers a certain number of floating holidays that they can expend on this day.
Which brings me to another issue. Many schools observe the holiday. My little one's preschool does. So whether I had the day off or not, I had no childcare for my three-year-old. I'm certain there are other parents at her school who had to scramble madly for coverage.
I find it all pretty lopsided. Here we give this man lip service, extolling his historic deeds in campaign stump speeches and on radio marathons. Our schools and federal institutions honor him by shutting down for a day. Yet our private industry buzzes along as if it's just another Monday.
It would be one thing if the U.S. were like Japan, with the whole country closing up shop seemingly every other week with a day to be nice to old people or a day to polish ancestral tombstones or some such. But here in America, there are only 10 national holidays. Ten! And the thing that irks me is that we observe most of the others (which are, in calendar order, New Year's Day; Washington's birthday; Memorial Day; Independence Day; Labor Day; Columbus Day; Veterans Day; Thanksgiving Day and Christmas).
That some employers think only blacks ought to take the MLK holiday is patently ridiculous. Tell me what the deal is at your place of work.