You’ve probably heard of the glass ceiling – a concept where women in the workforce can only rise to a certain level, no matter what they do or how well they do it – but the glass cliff is a new one. The glass cliff is when a woman does get the coveted position, but she’s set up to fail so a man can then step back in. Slate’s Double X blog, which deals with women’s issues, believes that CBS news anchor Katie Couric is an example of the glass cliff – she made history as the first female prime time network news anchor, but her ratings were low and she’s reportedly leaving the job this summer. Do you agree or disagree with this phenomenon? Do you think Katie Couric is simply leaving a job she wasn’t that good at, or did CBS set her up for failure?
Archive for the 'Buzzwords' Category
When you’re an assistant, toiling away in the trenches of your company, it’s easy to forget that there’s a hierarchy within the assistant class. Despite the fact that most assistants are entry-level employees who pick up coffee and schedule meetings, some assistants are more equal than others. Meet the assisterati, a group of New York publishing industry assistants who have degrees from tony universities and organize occasional meetups with “an assistant’s salary worth of wine and cheese.” The New York Observer’s Kat Stoeffel profiles these assistants – complete with a quote from yours truly.
Anyone who has read this site – or the book – knows how much I like to swear. But when you’re in a situation where swearing wouldn’t be kosher (i.e. the office), you have to adopt “work mouth.” Urban Dictionary defines work mouth as:
A form of self-censorship practiced at work to avoid offensive or cuss words. Typically includes cuss-replacements you learned from your grandma. Potentially embarrassing if accidentally used outside of work at parties or in the company of your drunk friends.
May also be used in the company of grandparents, teachers, preachers, and others who disapprove of cussing.
I remember reading once that the guys in Blur used “blinking” in place of cuss words when they were doing interviews or talking to their parents, and I have started using it. “Give me the blinking money, you blink!” really has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?
When I think of Valentine’s Day I’ll tell you what I don’t think of: work. But in Japan, it’s becoming increasingly common for young women to buy “giri choco,” or “obligation chocolate,” for their (usually male) bosses and coworkers on Valentine’s Day. It’s more common for women to buy chocolate for their officemates than for their boyfriends or husbands, according to a new study, and the fact that Valentine’s was on a weekday this year only upped sales figures more.
If it feels weird to buy candy for your boss on a day about love (I’m guessing Japanese regulations about what constitutes workplace harassment are not as stringent as the ones here), you can purchase “sewa choco” (chocolate given to a man you respect) or “tomo choco” (chocolate given to female friends) instead. Lest it sound like women are buying a bunch of candy for ungrateful people, there’s a Japanese holiday called White Day exactly one month after Valentine’s where men buy sweets for women.
At my first assistant job, my boss used to do this thing that drove me crazy. He’d start with “Can you do me a favor..?” and then tell me to do something. It wasn’t a favor, something that I was doing out of the kindness of my heart because we were such good friends. I didn’t answer his phone as a favor; I answered it because it was my job. Well, the word “voluntold” is kind of like that. A combination of “volunteered” and “told,” this is a word that applies whenever an employee is given the false choice to do something. For example, you’d be happy to work Thanksgiving for the overtime pay, but you’re told that you have to take a personal day regardless. Or maybe you are ordered to switch shifts with a coworker, even though it isn’t advantageous for your schedule, because the coworker has kids and you don’t. Congratulations, you just got voluntold.
In Shakespeare’s time, there was a person employed by the theater who had one job and one job only: to be the guy who started clapping. Now, we might recognize the one person in the movie who starts the slow clap, and the claque was his predecessor. Once the claque started clapping, everyone would know that the play was over and start clapping along with him.
In many offices, there’s a corporate culture that keeps people from taking breaks or going out to lunch. Sometimes, it’s in the company guidelines and enforced by higher-ups. In many offices, though, those policies are self-enforced. People convince themselves that they need to eat at their desks and work for long hours, even though there’s no one telling them they have to. That sensibility pervades a culture, and employees wind up policing each other. This was the case at one company where I worked – even though there was no rule about lunches or breaks, nobody ever left their desks, and they would give you really dirty looks if you dared to duck out for fifteen minutes in the middle of the day. This strange behavior had nothing to do with actual workload, but it had everything to do with needing to “look busy” and seem like the hardest worker.
Well, one day I decided not to stand for it anymore. I became the claque. For five straight days, I got up every day at 1:00 PM, left the office without saying a word, had lunch somewhere, and returned half an hour later. Then at 6:30 – the time we were told the day ended for us – I would leave. Even though almost everyone would be done with their work by the end of the day, there was this weird unwritten rule that everyone would just stay there, dicking around on Facebook or whatever, just because no one wanted to be the first to leave. Let’s just say I was more than happy to volunteer to be the first one to leave. Yeah, I probably got called a slacker behind my back, but magically every other coworker in the office would immediately start packing their bags as soon as I got on the elevator.
Sometimes an office needs a claque. Try being yours once in a while – it does a lot to change office culture, even on a tiny level.
Today’s USA Today has an article about women in the workplace. Among the positive news:
- Women now hold 49.83 percent of jobs in America.
- They are earning more jobs in the fast-growing sectors of the economy like health care and education.
Now, for the bad news!
- Women still earn 77 percent what men earn for the same jobs.
- On average, women still work fewer hours and are more likely to hold part-time positions that lack benefits.
- There are still people who believe that the man should be the breadwinner.
- The words “man-cession” and “he-cession” continue to exist.
Here’s another recession buzzword courtesy of RecessionWire, for the term “brokavore”:
Foodies who are low on cash aren’t just your ordinary brand of foodies: they’re “brokavores.” So says the brilliant new site Brokelyn, started by writer Faye Penn. A takeoff on “locavore,” someone who eats locally grown or produced food, a brokavore is “an obsessively cheap but highly discerning eater.”
ex. The brokavore sought out hot dog stands, pretzel vendors, shawarma trucks and taco joints for local delights.
I don’t care how much money I have, I will always eat food from the taco truck. Seriously, the one in my neighborhood is awesome.
Also, maybe the brokavores should check out Fancy Fast Food for ideas.
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be on the other side of a firing or layoff? One of the downsides to being a boss is having to let people go, especially when it’s not because they deserve it. Well, now The Washington Post introduces you to “The Five O’Clock Club” – an “outplacement” firm. What, you may ask, is outplacement? It’s a corporate buzzword for laying people off. And companies like The Five O’Clock Club (which I’ll call T5OCC) come in to help companies figure out which people to lay off and how.
While the point of this article is probably to help people – especially ones who lost their jobs recently and are pissed about it – sympathize with what it’s like to be the layer-offer, it doesn’t do much to humanize the characters. Having employees of T5OCC spout off lists of names and numbers – six here, 20 there – doesn’t make me feel sorry for them. If anything, it makes them look like vultures, who are surviving by feeding off of the dying. Take paragraphs like this, for example:
The Five O’Clock Club has nearly doubled in size during the past two years, and Hall has guided more than 200 companies and 1,500 laid-off workers through downsizings in the past six months. The Club, as it is sometimes called, charges each company about $2,000 per fired employee in exchange for providing layoff victims with a year of career coaching. The more businesses that suffer, the better for business at the Club. When Hall joined the company in 2007, she read in the employee handbook that “from time to time, employees will receive small bonuses when the company is doing exceptionally well.” Now those bonuses come almost every month.
Maybe I should reward these people for their business acumen, but all I feel like doing is being mad that they exist in the first place.
The first time I had to write a professional work email and sign my boss’ name to it instead of my own, I was totally flummoxed. There was this particular art to that “corporatespeak” voice, and I couldn’t quite get it right. For those of you in similar situations, here are a couple of useful tips:
- Talk in the royal “we.” It helps you to think about the company being one large voice/brain and reminds you not to be personal.
- Use initials for everyone, no matter what. Why say that Joe Green and Frank Myers are having lunch tomorrow when you can say that JG and FM are having lunch tomorrow? Using any kind of code or shorthand is a good way to make people feel like they’re ‘in the know,’ plus you sound more efficient.
- Use at least two cliches for each short email and more for longer emails. Good, common ones include “at the end of the day,” “all hands on deck,” “team player(s),” and “outside of the box.”
