This is really, really dead-on.
[Via Flavorwire]
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?
Robert Collins, a Maryland man who works for the Department of Corrections, was told he had to give his supervisors his Facebook password as part of a re-certification process. While I’ve talked a lot on this site about being smart on social networking sites, giving your password to your boss is totally not OK under any circumstances. The Maryland ACLU has taken up Collins’ cause:
I’ve joined the team over at ForbesWoman’s Work In Progress blog. My first post just went up today. Here’s an excerpt:
A few weeks ago I walked into a clothing store and noticed a fellow customer neatly folding a T-shirt. I caught her eye and we smiled at each other. “So you worked in retail too?” I said. “How did you know?” she laughed.
If you’ve worked in a service industry, you know what it’s like to spend two hours clearing out dressing rooms at the end of the night, or how it feels when a customer sends their food back to the kitchen three times. And having been an employee usually makes you a better customer. After working in retail, I try to make the lives of other people who work in retail as easy as I can – which means that I don’t leave clothes in fitting rooms and that I hang stuff up where I found it. Friends of mine who have worked in food service are great tippers who are polite to wait staff. And I don’t think that this phenomenon only applies to service-industry jobs.
Read the rest at Work In Progress.
When I saw the headline “Confessions of a Personal Assistant” I pretty much knew I had to click through immediately. But instead of the juicy gossip and/or horror stories the headline hinted at, the article ended up being pretty toothless. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think every assistant story out there has to be negative. (I print quite a few positive ones myself.) But a juicy title with the word “Confessions” in it hinted at some kind of expose, and instead it’s a pretty typical story about a girl who started out as a celebrity assistant and used her connections to get a job in the entertainment industry. There are thousands of those stories out there, and hers didn’t offer any unique insights.
The post’s author, Nadine Truong, graduated from UCLA and, after doing the typical post-college job search, wound up interviewing for a celebrity assistant gig.
Yes, it was for a B-list celebrity, whose name I won’t mention, and no, said celebrity did not conduct his own interview. I was interviewed by his head personal assistant. This guy apparently had two assistants already, and was looking to find a replacement for the third position, a job which had come open after the previous employee had gotten fired (for reasons unknown to me).
Celebrities often have more than one assistant – anybody who saw The Devil Wears Prada could have told you that. And the job came open because the person who had the gig before got fired? That happens in plenty of industries. The one “confession” I’d most like to hear is who the B-list celebrity was, but since he a) sounds like a pretty decent guy and b) helped Truong get another job later on, I think we can cross a whole lot of people off the list.
Continue reading ‘‘Confessions of a Personal Assistant’ Is Pretty Low On Confessions’
Best celebrity sighting ever: [Former French Vogue editor in chief/rumored Anna Wintour nemesis] Carine Roitfeld walking down the street in Paris. She was wearing insanely high heels, walking like she had a hunchback, and was flanked by two Asian assistants who were both chattering in French a mile a minute. Even though her posture freaked me out, I still adore her!
- Submitted by Marie
Can a new outfit help you get promoted? I don’t know, but it’s a really good excuse to go shopping. – Shine
Though it’s early in the year, one boss in Sweden is determined to be 2011’s worst boss. He snapped pics of secretaries in G-strings and sent them out to the entire staff, encouraging them to guess which body belonged to which employee. – The Frisky
Work really can kill you: a Los Angeles county employee apparently died at her desk on a Friday and no one noticed the slumped-over body in her cubicle until the next day. – KTLA
Think bank offices must be as boring as actual banks? These pictures will make you think again. – Business Insider
How “ethnic” can you be in the workplace? Women talk about everything from sporting dreadlocks to showing up for meetngs in a sari, and how it affected them at the office. – Marie Claire
Remember the awesomely disgruntled JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater, who reached his boiling point at work and slid out of the plane on the inflatable ramp? This profile examines what made him crack and what’s coming up in the future. – New York Magazine
Today is President’s Day! If you’re American, that means you should have the day off. Here’s a primer if you need one. – Wikipedia
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.
Amber Portwood, who famously beat up her boyfriend on MTV’s Teen Mom and subsequently lost custody of her kid, is now dating a tattoo artist she met when he was interning at the tattoo parlor where she got inked. I didn’t really know that tattoo parlors needed interns – I’m going to guess that this was more of an apprenticeship, since the dude now works as a tattoo artist, rather than like a “answer the phone and factcheck all the tats” kind of internship. Also, he apparently was not responsible for the tattoo Amber got of her daughter Leah’s face (pictured, of course), so that’s something in the positive column for him.
