Are you infuriated by the fact that rich bankers get Washington bailouts and six-figure bonuses while you’re still scraping by? You are far from alone. Tim Hunkin, an English man who runs an arcade in Southwold, Suffolk realized there was a market for people who wanted to take out their frustration on capitalist pigs - so he created “Whack a Banker,” a game based on the popular “Whack a Mole,” where little heads of men in business suits pop out of holes, and you beat the hell out of them with a mallet. Hunkin, who charges a mere 40 pence per turn, is already raking in the cash.
”It’s proving very popular. I keep having to replace worn-out mallets.”
”And, of course, the bankers never really lose. If you win the game a banker’s voice says: ‘You win. We retire. Thank you very much to the taxpayer for paying our pensions’.”
I have got to schedule a trip out there.
There are tons of ways to calm down/feel less stressed at work - taking a break to chat with a coworker friend, listening to music, organizing a company yoga class - but poetry isn’t one I normally think of. A new website called Fiscal Haiku encourages readers to submit haikus about the economy and the current financial climate. Here are a couple of my favorites:
Food court smells so good
But my wallet is empty
It sucks to be broke
Pour water through seives
Wanting and spending money
Yet life can’t be bought
a college degree
can’t afford health insurance
unpaid internship
This is fun! I might have to work on some STA-related ones.
In my many office experiences, I’ve done everything from group yoga classes to company-wide ropes courses, all in the name of “bonding” or “boosting morale.” As lame as both those things were, they were the company’s idea and not something mandated by the government. Now, though, there is a new law in Japan regulating how much people can weigh and how big their waists can be. Additionally, companies are expected to keep their employees slim - and fire the ones who don’t make the cut.
Under Japan’s health care coverage, companies administer check-ups to employees once a year. Those who fail to meet the waistline requirement must undergo counseling. If companies do not reduce the number of overweight employees by 10 percent by 2012 and 25 percent by 2015, they could be required to pay more money into a health care program for the elderly. An estimated 56 million Japanese will have their waists measured this year.
Perhaps more astounding, even before Japanese lawmakers set the waistline limits last year, the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) amended its recommended guidelines for the Japanese. The new IDF standard is 90 centimeters (35.4 inches) for men and 80 centimeters (31.5 inches) for women. But the Japanese government has yet to modify its limits.
If they tried to pull this shit in America, I feel like people would riot. My obsession with sour straws should be no one’s issue but mine.
Thanks to that exact form of science known as “monitoring people on Facebook,” we now have conclusive proof that people hate Mondays. Those of us with jobs know this already, but for some reason people seem to believe things whenever there’s a study to back it up. The FB team charted status updates on particular days to see when people were most happy and most sad. Happiest day of the year is apparently Thanksgiving - I give credit to the tryptophan.
Altogether, the study is attempting to calculate the United States Gross National Happiness.
In other news, people are happier on Fridays and weekends than on Mondays. Try not to look shocked.
Have you ever uttered - or heard someone else utter - the phrase “I don’t have time to get sick”? Well, for people who don’t have the time or desire to be sick, a Japanese clothing company called Haruyama Trading has developed a suit that they claim can help ward off H1N1 (aka the swine flu).
It is coated with titanium dioxide, a chemical commonly used in toothpaste and cosmetics and that breaks down when reacting with light, supposedly killing the virus upon contact.
Shinto Hirata, vice director of merchandising at Haruyama, says the suit is proven to kill 40 percent of the latest flu virus in about three hours and will retain its protective capability even after being washed several times.
I guess this is the next thing you’ll have to expense for your boss. It costs $590, which is a lot of fancy lunches.
Have you ever thought “man, I had a long day at the office, all I want to do is go home, eat ice cream, and veg out in front of the TV”? Well, you’re far from alone. Some Canadian scientists have apparently proven that the more stressed you are during the day, the less likely you are to exercise later. I can’t believe people get research money for this - I’d happily just take the money and observe my friends for a week. Anyhow, here’s the science:
Kathleen Martin Ginis, an associate professor of kinesiology – the science of movement – who led the study, said we all have a limited amount of willpower which is whittled away by stress.
Miss Martin Ginis, from Canada’s McMaster University, explained: “Cognitive tasks, as well as emotional tasks, such as regulating your emotions, can deplete your self-regulatory capacity to exercise.”
The study, published in journal Psychology and Health, also concluded that willpower can be stretched by constantly challenging yourself to resist temptations such as eating a piece of chocolate cake, or forcing yourself to study an extra half-hour each night.
Miss Martin Ginis added: “There are strategies to help people rejuvenate after their self-regulation is depleted. Willpower is like a muscle: it needs to be challenged to build itself.”
In other news, you’re stressed out and lazy. There’s an extra spot on my couch if you want to join. Bring your own spoon.
According to a news story from Reuters (I know! A news story!), about a third of American workplaces have free coffee available for employees. However, about fifty percent of those coffee-drinking employees say the coffee’s ‘tolerable’ and ten percent say it’s flat-out terrible.
This would seem like a boon for Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, and other coffee retailers, right? Nope. Thanks to the bad economy, people are - gasp! - brewing coffee at home and bringing it to the office with them. Crazy, right? What will people think of next? Packing a lunch?
My boyfriend is a giant coffee snob and not only brews his own at home, he grinds and roasts it as well. He started bringing the coffee into work and brewing it there, only to find that it kept disappearing mysteriously. Turns out that his coworkers thought it was the new office blend and kept thanking the office manager for finally buying a better brand. Once everybody found out who was responsible for the improved coffee, he got offers from coworkers wanting to buy their own stashes.
The lesson? Either earn money off of your coworkers, or just drink the crappy stuff you get for free. As for me, this is a great time to be a tea drinker.
When I was an assistant, one of the tasks I hated the most was doing my boss’ expense reports. I didn’t hate them because of my shitty math skills - Excel handled the numbers for me - I hated them because I always had to figure out where the hell my boss’ receipts had come from. Sure, if he had a restaurant receipt I could just check his schedule for that day and guess which person he’d dined with, but a lot of times I ended up just having to invent fake information that would satisfy our nosy, demanding accounts person. Now, though, with the economy being what it is, people are embarrassed to run up huge tabs at restaurants. Thanks to expenseasteak.com, you can dine at the Midtown Manhattan restaurant Maloney & Porcelli and have everything taken care of online, without the embarrassment of whipping out a corporate card.
Once again, this proves that the internet can do anything.
I’m all for assistants banding together and helping each other get out of scrapes. So on one hand, the Seraphic Society, a secret fraternity-esque alliance of assistants to some of the most high-profile executives in the world, seems like a good idea. The members, all based in the New York City area, are able to call on each other with help regarding everything from referrals for private jet companies to tips on the proper way to introduce a diplomat. Beyond the usefulness, though, the Seraphim (”seraphim” are a class of angel, btw) operate in a weirdly cloak-and-dagger fashion: for example, each member is given a white leatherbound book containing the names and contact information of the other members.
Are the Seraphim a close-knit group of people with stressful jobs, or a bunch of people who make themselves feel important because they work for people who are important? I can’t decide. Also, there’s some gender stuff going on here - there are no men in the club (there was one before), but this probably has more to do with the continuing practice of male bosses/female assistants that pervades through corporate structure despite being hopelessly out of date than it does with the Seraphim’s own preferences.
The CNN article about the Seraphim does make some good points - they’ll seem obvious to us, but they’re good observations about the difficult nature of the assistant job. Multiply the typical assistant job (and salary) by ten, and you’ll get some idea what it’s like to work for a Fortune 500 company’s CEO:
Continue reading ’seraphic society or stockholm syndrome?’
Have you ever run low on work excuses? I mean, your grandmother can only die so many times before it starts to sound suspicious. That’s why someone thought up “The Office Kid,” a kit which helps you seem like you’re a parent. The kit includes a photo of a cute-looking kid (in the ethnicity of your choice), a child-produced drawing that you can hang up in your office, and a list of offspring-related excuses. It’s perfect if you suddenly decide to pull a Lindsay Lohan in “Labor Pains” and pretend to be pregnant to get sympathy - in this case, you’ll have years’ worth of excuses without even having to produce an actual child. Just remember to be consistent about what the little angel’s name is.
[Via STFU Parents]