Sometimes life really does imitate art…well, not that “Entourage” is art, but you get the idea. Just as his character Lloyd is mocked on the show by being called “The Gaysian,” his portrayer Rex Lee also gets shit from crew members while on set. Lee admitted to TMZ that he’s sometimes a target of jokes about his race and sexuality at work, and that it bothers him.
After the story broke, “Entourage” creator Rob Ellin responded that he was “horrified” to hear of Lee’s on-set harassment. He said that when the show resumes filming he’ll be giving everyone a lecture (sensitivity training class, perhaps?) and insisted that “[Harassment] is not something condoned or acceptable.”
I’m glad to hear that Ellin is laying down the law (even going so far as to say he’ll fire people who make homophobic comments), but did it really have to take this long? How many years has Lee been on the show? Is this a recent problem or something he’s just speaking out about now? Either way, I’m glad that Ellin seems to want to do the right thing.
I’m all aboard Team “Befriend Your Coworkers,” but I mean that you should go to lunch together or maybe plan a happy hour. One Atlanta employee, though, went far above and beyond – she gave her coworker a kidney.
Donor Ceri McCarron and recipient Betty Egwenike worked together as archivists at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library & Museum for more than two decades, but while they were chatty and friendly at work, neither knew much – if anything – about the other’s personal life. Egwenike had been diagnosed with a kidney disease several years ago and had been forced to go on dialysis and wait for a transplant. McCarron discovered by coincidence that she and her coworker shared the same blood type.
The disease produces cysts in the kidneys and eventually causes the organs to deteriorate and stop functioning. By the time she was diagnosed, Egwenike said 55 percent of her kidney function was gone. “I was surprised she was actually going to do it. I was skeptical because you can change your mind at any time. I kind of stayed in the background because I didn’t want to be harassing her. I didn’t ask, it was out of her heart.”
Continue reading ‘employee gives kidney to coworker’
“The people I chose to run my new store in London are nice. I cannot work with b*****s, I can’t, I can’t. Maybe I am too sensitive, I get blocked. There are some people who don’t give a damn. With me, I find that if there is no energy flowing or no connection, I can’t think. Talent is amazing — I love it, appreciate it. I respect talent a lot. But if you ask me, ‘Talent and b***h, or less talent and good?’ I’ll go with less talent.”
- Lanvin fashion designer Alber Elbaz, via New York magazine
As much as this website is about calling out bosses who suck, it’s only fair to turn the focus back on ourselves sometimes. I know that by the end of my nightmare assistant job, I was not a fun person to work with. I’d mentally checked out of the job and could not have cared less about hitting any deadline except my last workday. While I disagree with some of them (you are TOTALLY allowed to complain about having too much work to do, and you are also not required to agree with every single thing your company says/does or be accused of disloyalty, for example), a couple of them are spot-on. Here are a couple of red flags that might indicate you’re not the awesomest person to work with:
- Everyone in the office knows about your personal life. Don’t get me wrong – I advocate all the time for being friends with your coworkers when you can. It’s one thing to tell your best work friend all about your recent breakup, but it’s another to overshare to everyone in the office if you don’t know them that well.
Continue reading ‘do you suck as a coworker?’
How many times do I have to tell people not to bone their coworkers?
Sometimes it means you get fired and publicly embarrassed. Sometimes it means office politics are thrown out of whack and, when you stop boning, things at the office get mega-awkward. And sometimes, things like this happen: a pair of coworkers, Salvatore and Angelina, couldn’t contain their passion for each other at the clothing store where they worked in Bergamo, Italy. Consumed by lust, they got it on in the bathroom, only to get stuck when Angelina developed a leg cramp. They were eventually found and rescued – by Angelina’s husband, who (shockingly!) was pretty pissed about the whole situation.
Both Salvatore and Angelina were dumped by their respective spouses, and Salvatore got fired. Angie, however, got to keep her job after it was determined she’d finished her shift before they started doing the nasty. Got to love the Italians.
Anyway, the moral of this story? Don’t bone your coworkers. And if you really can’t resist, at least wait until you get home.
It seems like getting promoted would be awesome for you – you’d earn more money, get a better parking space, and be able to boss people around. However, a recent study at England’s Warwick University claims the opposite. After interviewing 1,000 workers who had been promoted into management roles, researchers determined that a promotion caused one’s mental health to decline.
Experts said being given extra responsibility could lead to more stress, anxiety and depression.
They said the problems could be exacerbated by workers who were promoted having less time to access health services.
GP visits fell by 20% to less than two a year after promotion, the study found.
But what about that major ego boost that comes from getting promoted?
Lead researcher Chris Boyce said: “Getting promoted at work is not as great as people think.
“Our research finds that the mental health of managers typically deteriorates after a job promotion and in a way that goes beyond merely a short-term change.
“People given senior positions need to be given the proper support and training to handle the extra responsibility.”
I feel weirdly vindicated by this article. Maybe they should hire me to do a study about whether being unemployed, conversely, makes people happier? I’d venture to say yes.
When planning a workplace prank, it is helpful sometimes to let a few of your other coworkers in on the joke. Your joke might require a few other people in order to work better, plus it’s always good to have someone to act as a lookout. And when you fail to let the appropriate people know what’s coming up? Well, here’s a cautionary tale:
Hands scraped and bloody from climbing two barbed-wire fences and out of breath from a half-mile sprint, James Clithero called 9-1-1 about 5 p.m. Thursday from a stranger’s home in Southeast Portland.
He was reporting that his boss had just gunned down a co-worker.
“I was in there working today and my boss came downstairs and started firing a gun at one of the employees,” he told the dispatcher.
So this guy risked his life in order to report that his boss shot a coworker…what a hero, right?
Continue reading ‘when an office prank isn’t funny’
In all the hubbub around Admin Professionals Day, I totally forgot that yesterday was Take Our Daughters to Work Day. Originally planned as a day to introduce girls to the workforce and educate them about career options, some now argue that feminism in the workplace has advanced enough that girls don’t have to be taken into offices to see positive female role models – they’re on TV, at home, and everywhere else.
Brazen Careerist founder Penelope Trunk has a post on her personal blog about how she thinks the day should be be abolished, dismissed as no longer necessary.
This holiday now strikes me as one similar to Secretaries Day, which is a relic from the days when there were no computers and secretaries had thankless jobs and the men who were having sex with them on the side always forgot to thank her in the spotlight for the typing, so there is an official reminder day to buy her a card. That made sense. Twenty years ago.
She makes the valid argument that for many people, there’s no line between work and home anyway, and it seems uneccessary at best and annoying at worst to bring kids into a professional workplace.
Continue reading ’should we take our kids to work?’
I love a good workplace novel, and I’m happy to report that I found a great one recently: E, by Matt Beaumont. It follows in the proud tradition of epistolary novels – but instead of letters, this one’s entirely in email. More specifically, the novel tells the story of a crazy, eclectic, and sometimes coked-up London ad agency trying to win their biggest client ever. I was worried that the email concept would be a gimmick, but it totally worked because Beaumont does a great job using minimal language to effectively capture different personalities for all the characters in the office. Almost all the office cliches are there – the frenemies, the executive who goes through assistants like Kleenex, the coworker hookup, the assistant who is so blindly loyal to her boss you wonder if she’s in love with him, and the like. Plus, I really love British slang. Anyway, the book is absolutely worth a read – I was reading it on the plane, and was actually disappointed when the plane landed. If that’s not an endorsement, I don’t know what is.
Have you ever watched an episode of The Office and wondered what it might be like to actually have to work with Dwight Schrute? I mean, the guy’s hilarious on TV, but would he amuse the hell out of you in person, or make you want to kill him?
A researcher at Brigham Young University, Dr. Katie Liljenquist, had that same question. She did a study about “socially distinct newcomers” and their effect on offices. She believes that “Dwights” can make cause offices to become more cohesive and work better as a team while they deal with the weirdness or intractibility of their new coworker.
Insecure and conflict-averse employees who are comfortable in their groups often bristle when a newcomer arrives.
That’s because their social cohesiveness is threatened, says Prof. Liljenquist… If one person agrees with the outsider, the group is spurred to brush aside that discomfort and sharpen its focus on the task at hand. Members will open up to new ideas, have a few productive, yet civil boardroom tussles, and voilà: A higher-quality team session will ensue.
Not sure I buy it, but an interesting theory nonetheless.
