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.
The movie Made in Dagenham is about women pushing to get equal pay for equal work in 1960s Britain. – Picktainment
You know who else wants equal pay for equal work? Batgirl. – Comics Alliance
Napping at work is good for you. Someone tell my boss that the next time I get busted nodding off in a meeting. – Yahoo
To cut costs, many companies are making holiday parties employee-only, not allowing significant others to attend. But does this increase the likelihood of drunken coworker hookups? – CNBC
Can you get sued for unfriending one of your coworkers on Facebook? I don’t know, but this is why I warn you against accepting their requests in the first place. – Geekosystem
Two words: “underearners anonymous.” Where I’m from, they just call this “everybody.” – Bundle
After the huge success of The Hangover, screenwriters Jon Lucas and Scott Moore could pretty much do whatever they wanted. And they’ve chosen to make their next movie about the workplace. The still-untitled project will center around that office staple: the drunken company Christmas party. If they’re looking for ideas, we might suggest starting with some of these holiday party themed horror stories:
Either way, I’ll definitely see this movie whenever it comes out, especially since there will probably be a couple of assistant characters on display. Who’s joining me?
Goldman Sachs, one of the only financial giants to remain standing, has decided to take the conservative approach and cancel their annual holiday party. The move is hardly shocking, as many companies in a variety of industries have also cancelled their parties, either because of financial reasons or because it would look tacky to have one when the economy is doing so badly. However, Goldman is going one step further in its party-banning, telling employees that they can’t throw their own parties for coworkers at their homes:
The firm has canceled its annual holiday party, just as it did last year. It also instructed the smaller business units that they should not organize their own smaller parties, which had been a long tradition at the firm. The parties are banned even if no firm money goes to pay for them.
But Goldman employees were surprised to hear that even parties within private homes fall under the ban. The firm apparently believes that it would be inappropriate for its employees to be seen partying while the economy is still so shaky and unemployment is so high.
Man, companies trying to keep you from having fun even when you’re not on their time? Next they’ll try to tell you what the dress code should be when you’re lying in bed on a Saturday morning watching TV. Or they’ll issue appropriate protocol for how to behave on your next date.
The office manager at my company loves to do corny decorations for holidays. This year she did a whole Halloween thing with orange streamers and cutouts of ghosts and stuff. In the break room, there were a whole bunch of paper tombstones on the wall. My friend and I got a sharpie and wrote names of people who got laid off this year on all the tombstones. When my boss saw it, he was REALLY MAD. We all had to go to this big meeting where he and the office manager yelled at us and told us how us writing names of laidoff people on the tombstones was bad for morale. Funny, I thought actually laying people off was the part that was bad for morale.
- Submitted by Aaron, New York City
It’s Labor Day. For most of us, Labor Day means a long weekend off from work, the end of summer, and a moratorium on wearing white shoes. However, as assistants we should remember the real meaning of Labor Day – a holiday to celebrate the worker. Here are some links you should check out if you want to learn more:
- Wikipedia, of course – learn about how Labor Day differs from International Workers’ Day and more
- If you’re unemployed, why should you care about this holiday? The Associated Press weighs in.
- Are you a history buff? Check out this great series of Labor Day-related videos from the History Channel.
- It’s not truly a worker’s holiday unless you get free stuff. Chick-fil-a is giving away free sandwiches to people who show up today in sports-themed gear (click here for details).
- Should you really want a challenge, take this Labor Day quiz – and don’t cheat by scrolling down.
The Hollywood Reporter has announced that director Garry Marshall is putting together a big-name cast for his new film Valentine’s Day. The movie, which kind of sounds like an American version of Love, Actually, features multiple interlocking love stories that take place in and around Los Angeles on, of course, V-Day. Already cast or close to being cast are Shirley MacLaine, Jessica Biel, Julia Roberts, Ashton Kutcher, Jennifer Garner, and Bradley Cooper. The cast also includes Anne Hathaway, whose character/storyline has been described thusly:
Hathaway is an assistant working at the biggest talent agency in town and dating a mailroom assistant.
Oh, good, we all know how many happy endings there are for assistants who work at big-deal Hollywood talent agencies.
April 28th is Equal Pay Day. I’m not sure exactly whether the day is supposed to be about “celebrating” the fact that men and women are allegedly being paid equally or about bemoaning the fact that men still make more than women for doing the same jobs. I’m going with the latter, obviously. Marie Claire has some sobering stats that we should keep in mind today:
- For every dollar a man makes, a woman makes 78 cents. That number has climbed 1 cent since 2006.
- Fresh-out-of-college women make $15,498 less per year than the boys; over a 35-year career, they’ll make $210,000 less.
- A 25-year-old female PR specialist makes the same as her male colleagues; 20 years later, she’ll make about $35,000 less.
- She-EOs make $303,000 less than their male counterparts.
- Male primary-care physicians make 22 percent more than lady docs.
- Male IT workers make 11.9 percent more than geekettes.
- According to the American Association of University Women, at the current rate, we’ll reach pay equity in 2040.
Woo, what a fun holiday! Time for some Jager bombs in the break room!
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?’
