Everywhere you go, there’s a story on TV or in a newspaper or online about how people are cutting back on luxuries during the difficult economy. More workers are bringing lunches to work instead of going out, carpooling or using public transit to save money on gas, and cutting back on entertainment like concerts and vacations. Now, a study from Rodale (which, coincidentally, publishes Men’s Health magazine) claims that health and wellness related expenses like gym memberships are among the last things to go when someone is trimming their budget. Reasons offered include:
Working out helps relieve the stress of increased work demands, bad job interviews, and the like
People want to get the most use they can out of their monthly dues
Gyms are offering new programs like meditation and yoga classes or, for one gym, a “power nap” session
It’s a great way to meet people when you can’t afford to go to bars
If you’re in better shape you can improve your health and possibly cut down on health care costs
If you’ve been laid off, you may find yourself with a lot of time on your hands
Has the recession made you a gym rat, or was your health club membership the first thing to go out the window?
Have you ever thought “hey, my new job is taking a while to get used to, but I’m sure in a few weeks I’ll feel completely settled?” Well, one British workplace survey claims that the age at which people finally feel comfortable with their jobs is 37.
A study by financial services firm Standard Life, undertaken by YouGov, showed that people have had to spend 30,000 hours in work before they feel totally comfortable with their skills.
John Lawson from Standard Life said: “Whereas a ‘job for life’ is now a thing of the past, fulfilment and job satisfaction are expected. So having worked over 30,000 hours before feeling confident and until age 50 to feel fulfilled, it stands to reason that people will choose to continue to do a job that they enjoy and are good at.”
I’m not sure whether to find this news depressing or not. Lawson makes a good point that people are more likely to move around between jobs and professions now and thus need longer to build up a sense of security, but what concerns me is the use of the word “fulfilled.” Perhaps I’m an exception, but I feel pretty fulfilled by what I do. Of course not everyone gets to do work they find spiritually and emotionally meaningful, but I certainly hope that workers do what they can to make their work personally significant to them. I’d rather feel fulfilled than have job security, but maybe that’s an unfair thing to say, since not everybody gets to choose.
Still, I’ve got quite awhile before 37 comes up, so we’ll see what happens til then.
John Krasinski is best known for playing the Jim on The Office, but it turns out he has a pretty impressive resume. In addition to majoring in playwriting at Brown University, he studied acting at various places including The Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon and The Actor’s Center in New York City. Not only does the guy have technique, he also put in time doing less-than-glamorous work before finding TV stardom. He spent some time working as a script intern on Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
Not only is this guy yummy, he is willing to work hard. If I wasn’t already planning to go check out his bearded hipster hotness in the movie Away We Go, learning this information would have totally pushed me over the edge.
One thing that’s always bugged me about reality TV is how people are able to leave their jobs for a month or six weeks or however long the show takes to tape. Sure, maybe some of them have lots of accumulated unused vacation time or are self-employed or something, but that is part of the reason reality TV is so chock full of aspiring actors or unemployed people.
Well, last night, some of my “how do you get your job to let you do this?” questions were finally answered on – of all places – The Bachelorette. Ed, one of the guys left in the running to win Canadian singleton Jillian’s (pictured at right) heart and a viewer favorite, got an angry call from his boss while taping the show in Whistler, British Columbia. The boss told Ed that he either had to come back immediately or be fired. Thus the perfect storyline for the show: love or money?
As a writer myself, I am a sucker for a good “writer works for long time in obscurity and finally hits the big time” story a la J.K. Rowling. The newest addition to this class is Charlaine Harris, who wrote the “Sookie Stackhouse” series of books that were turned into HBO’s red-hot vampire series True Blood (which stars the lovely Anna Paquin as Sookie). In time for the second season premiere, the New York Times has a profile of Harris. In the obligatory “how she’s changed now that she’s famous!” section of the profile, the Times lists some of Harris’ new status symbols, which include a personal assistant (Harris’ longtime best friend).
While I get the Times’ point, which is that becoming famous and successful and busy often means that a person needs to hire an assistant to make sure all the work gets done, I don’t like the implication that an assistant is just another fancy object like a car or a hot tub. Statements like these lead to faceless assistant entourages (where they don’t have jobs other than standing around and making the celebrity feel/look important) or assistants working for people who don’t bother to remember their names and discard them as quickly as a day-old newspaper. It’s the same problem when glossy magazines write “trend” pieces about celebrity babies, treating the kids like accessories or pets with cute outfits rather than people.
So can we please stop listing an assistant as an outward sign of wealth and status? It’d go a long way toward helping change the way assistants are viewed in our culture – we’re people, not props.
It is with extreme sadness that we need to inform the community of Alice Cooper fans of the passing of Brian “Renfield” Nelson, Alice’s long-time archivist and personal assistant. It was a sudden, completely unexpected, and untimely passing. We would appreciate it if you would keep him in your thoughts, appreciate his many contributions to Alice’s life and career over the years, and respect Brian’s privacy and the privacy of Alice and his extended family (at home and on tour) at this time.
Alice is currently on tour in Russia, because the show must go on, which is as Brian would have wanted it.
“Ren,” as he was called, was both an assistant and a fan. It was through his fandom (he collected Alice memorabilia which included Alice’s original birth certificate) that he got the gig as Alice’s PA. He had been working as Alice’s assistant since the early ’80s.
A lot of STA is devoted to kvetching about assistant life, but it’s always worth pointing out when an assistant is truly happy at his or her job, as Ren always seemed to be. May he rest in peace.
Case in point – Tallulah Willis, youngest of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis’ three daughters, will spend the summer interning at high-fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar. That’s normal for a college student, right?
Well, it is. Tallulah, however, is fifteen. And her mom appeared on the cover of the magazine recently. Oh, and her stepdad occasionally pens columns for said magazine. Gosh, what a coincidence that lil’ Tallulah beat out all those older kids who study journalism in college to get the coveted internship.
But wait! It seems that fifteen year olds are too young to work for free. (Really, isn’t EVERYONE too young to work for free? I digress.) Lest anyone get in trouble with the law, a Harper’s Bazaar spokesperson told Page Six that “Tallulah is a guest of Harper’s Bazaar, shadowing our editors for a couple of weeks.” If you’re not familiar with PR-speak, allow me to translate: the editors are doing a favor for her celebrity relatives, and Miss Willis will certainly not have to stoop to actual intern tasks like fetching coffee or answering telephones. Perhaps she caught the intern bug after her dad did a gofer stint on Letterman?
What’s the over/under on when she’s going to do a “cute” Sean-Avery style photoshoot of her pretending to do filing?
I don’t know how it took me so long to discover this song, but I really love the Emiliana Torrini song “Unemployed in Summertime.” The idea of the song is pretty similar to the sentiment on this blog as of late – if you’re young and single (i.e. not supporting a spouse and/or kids), sometimes unemployment can end up being a blessing. I was let go in February and, while I have less money than I did before, I’ve used the last few months to learn a lot about myself and my career goals as well as to appreciate little things like taking a walk in the middle of the afternoon. Anyway, even if you’re employed, you’ll really like Emiliana and her lovely voice:
In an awesome study released just in time for the weekend, researchers in Sweden have proven a correlation between people who have good (or at least regular) sex are happier, more motivated employees. Those of you who aren’t currently getting any don’t need to worry – healthy emotional relationships with friends and family members also make you happier at the office.
I’m sure there are more in-depth scientific reasons for why these things connect, but it seems obvious to me – happy people are happier employees. If having healthy emotional relationships make you a better worker, it’s probably because a) you have people you can vent to about work who then remind you it’s not your fault, and b) you have other things that give your life value and meaning and don’t have to rely on your boss to compliment you. And as for the good sex thing, well, anyone who’s ever had The Glow can pretty much attest to its general life benefits.
What this study doesn’t explicitly say – but gets at – is that not only are happy people better workers, companies should keep that in mind when they’re building offices and planning schedules. It seems so fucking obvious to me that if you create a corporate culture that encourages caring about employees’ emotional health, it pays off for you in the long run. Then again, I once worked for a company that considered morale a buzzword instead of a workplace concern and where you practically had to ask permission to go pee, so perhaps I’m biased on this one.
I was the executive assistant to the CEO of an ad agency. Most of my job involved checking my boss’ voice mail, getting her skirts hemmed, watching her dog on Fridays when he came to work with her, and keeping her calendar, but occasionally I was asked to help with new business presentations. My primary new business role was to babysit the Chief Strategic Officer (aka, Princess Slacker) who was also my boss’ BFF. This woman had a lot of education, but very little real success in business. For some reason my boss thought she was a genius and wouldn’t do a new business pitch without her input.
Princess Slacker was rarely in the office. She “worked from home” or from the tennis court or from the nail salon or something most of the time. I guess her best strategic marketing insights came to her during the cuticle soak. When we had a new business prospect she would wait until the very last minute to write her portion of the presentation. Since she was completely computer-illiterate, she had to have help getting her part of the deck typed and formatted, which is where I came in.
One Friday before a big pitch scheduled for Monday morning she swooped down to my desk in her Ferragamo shoes at 4:45 p.m., ready to start working. She informed me that she would need my help over the weekend, and even though I had been dogging her all week to get something from her for the pitch, I of course agreed (what choice did I have?). We worked all day Saturday and all day Sunday. I even left a dinner party on Saturday night to go to her house to pick up more hand-written pearls of genius to add to the deck.
That Monday morning she called me and asked me to send flowers to her nanny for working over the weekend. We didn’t win the account.
Everywhere you go, there’s a story on TV or in a newspaper or online about how people are cutting back on luxuries during the difficult economy. More workers are bringing lunches to work instead of going out, carpooling or using public transit to save money on gas, and cutting back on entertainment like concerts and vacations. Now, a study from Rodale (which, coincidentally, publishes Men’s Health magazine) claims that health and wellness related expenses like gym memberships are among the last things to go when someone is trimming their budget. Reasons offered include:
One thing that’s always bugged me about reality TV is how people are able to leave their jobs for a month or six weeks or however long the show takes to tape. Sure, maybe some of them have lots of accumulated unused vacation time or are self-employed or something, but that is part of the reason reality TV is so chock full of aspiring actors or unemployed people.
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