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.
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.
Having an evil boss doesn’t just hurt morale and your will to live – it’s also bad for the economy. A new study from USC’s School of Business finds that bad bosses cost the US economy about $300 billion a year. That is a lot of money. Where does it come from?
- Lawsuits – wrongful termination, harassment, creating a hostile work environment… you name it.
- Lost productivity – people bitching about their bosses, hiding from them, crying in the bathroom, etc., instead of working
- Retention/hirings and firings – employees are more likely to leave jobs with unpleasant working environments (note: the Evil Empire went through about ten assistants a year. That is a lot of time devoted to reading resumes, arranging interviews, making offers, training new people, and the like.)
- Morale – not just unhappy employees, but if clients, vendors, or customers get wind of how unhappy a place is for workers, they are 80 percent less likely to continue their business there
In other words, you now have a really strong case for getting your boss fired. Good luck!
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.
When you get laid off, it’s really tempting to lie around on the couch, watch Law and Order reruns, and feel sorry for yourself. I think it’s fine to do that for a little while, but at some point you’re going to have to get off the recliner. Whether you’re looking for a job right away or have decided to enjoy some funemployment for awhile, there are a couple of things you should consider doing in order to a) keep yourself active and alert, and b) have some stuff to talk about when interviewers ask you about that gap on your resume.
- Volunteer. I know it sounds crazy to encourage you to work for free while you’re struggling to find a new paying gig, but volunteering even a couple of hours a week – whether at an animal shelter, a nature preserve, or a soup kitchen – will give you something to think about every time you start wallowing in self-pity. Plus, it’s a good way to meet new people and possibly consider a different career path.
- Consider temping or doing an internship in another field. If you’ve always secretly dreamed about pursuing that career in the music industry but never had the guts to do it, now’s your chance. You might learn that it’s not the gig for you but have some fun in the meantime, or you might figure out a way to leverage the skills you already have into your new dream job.
- Bond with other unemployed people. The last thing you need to do is sit around the house all day being depressed. If you have other unemployed friends, try to meet up once or twice a week. You can serve as each others’ support systems during new job searches or just catch cheap afternoon matinees or scour the town for a good happy hour.
Continue reading ‘how to stay active while unemployed’
Almost every college has a career center, although whether the center is any good totally depends on the place you go. Mine was mediocre – they mostly just had books of sample resumes and cover letters that you could copy and an online database of internships in the area. When it came time to actually find and keep a job, I was on my own.
One recent graduate, New Yorker Trina Thompson, is suing her alma mater, Monroe College in the Bronx, claiming that they didn’t do enough to help her find employment when she finished school. Thompson graduated with a degree in information systems with a 2.7 GPA this April and has not been able to find a job since then. She’s suing the school for $70,000, the amount she spent on tuition.
I, for one, find Thompson’s lawsuit pretty absurd. For one thing, she’s been looking for a job for less than four months. It took me about eight to land my first full-time gig, and that was in a way better economic situation than the one we’re in now. Almost no one walks into a job the day that they graduate from college, and that’s why they should save money and plan ahead for the time they’re going to be unemployed. It amazes me that Thompson thinks she deserves to get her tuition back after such a short period of time. Even if her college career center totally sucked ass and wasn’t helpful at all, what exactly has she been doing? How many interviews has she been on? I sent out several hundred resumes before even landing my first interview – it takes patience and a lot of hard work, not giving up after a couple of months and demanding your money back. I bet her ulterior motive is to get her name in the news and hope someone offers her a job after the barrage of publicity. Ugh.
If you asked me which assistants I thought got paid the most, I’d guess it was an assistant to the person who got paid the most, like a CEO or a big movie star. Thus I’d also conclude that an assistant to a monk, a person who does not earn – or spend much time thinking about – much money, didn’t have a lot of cash on hand. However, one monk’s assistant, Raymond Yeung of Singapore, decided he wanted to buck tradition. The assistant to Buddhist monk Ming Yi ran up credit card debt and even took out a loan to finance his extravagant lifestyle. He accepted a loan from Ren Ci, a hospital that Ming Yi founded, even though he was not able to pay it back. He – and his boss – are currently on trial.
What would former monk’s assistant Leonard Cohen have to say about this, I wonder?
Published on
July 27, 2009 in
Manifestos.
Tags: american idol, gender in the workplace, kara dioguardi, Manifestos, microinequities, money, paula abdul, reality TV, simon cowell, TV.
When last season of American Idol added fourth judge Kara DioGuardi, many speculated that Kara’s addition was a potential test to see if she could replace Paula Abdul in case Paula decided to leave the show (because a woman can only replace another woman, obviously). Now, Paula’s embroiled in difficult contract negotiations that leave her status on the show uncertain. Her manager has complained to the press that Paula is being lowballed – she makes far less than fellow judge Simon Cowell and host Ryan Seacrest, and she’s holding out for more money.
As an avid Idol fan, I could go two ways with this. One is that Ryan and Simon both provide more value to the show than she does – Simon’s also a producer and helped create the show, and while it seems like hosting a reality show is easy, compare Ryan with a lesser TV host and you’ll see how talented he is at moving the show along and smoothing transitions. Ryan’s the only host, but Paula is one of three – or four – judges. Besides, her commentary is often rambling or irrelevant – do we really care that you like someone’s personality or outfit when they can’t freaking sing? Part of me thinks she should be grateful to Idol for resurrecting her career and making her a pop culture icon. After all, would she have had her reality show, jewelry line, endorsement deals, or other side gigs if she hadn’t made her Idol-fueled comeback? I doubt it.
On the other hand, there’s the Randy Jackson factor.
Continue reading ‘paula abdul and workplace inequality’
If you’re a diehard Devil Wears Prada aficionado and you thought that assistant life couldn’t possibly get worse at Conde Nast, think again. A spy tells Gawker.com that the publishing behemoth has come up with some ‘creative’ ways to try and keep the assistants hard at work:
So now we have incentives to be good assistants because there is an assistant of the month prize of $500. I’m going to be the model assistant, lol. A couple of those and mama can buy herself a chanel bag or some loubs!
That’s great for the lucky assistant who gets recognized that month, but when everyone is making close to a poverty-level wage it really doesn’t help. How many assistants do they have at Conde, anyway?
While the assistants are toiling away in hopes of winning a bonus, it seems like the interns have finally had enough. A sign was posted in the breakrooms informing Conde employees they will have to wash their own dishes instead of the interns doing it for them. The whole note is here, glorious, and totally worth reading, but here’s my favorite part: “I know, I know: you went to Vassar, you have a rich husband, you’ve never washed a dish in your life.” I want to hire whoever penned that note to run this blog for me when I go on vacation. Call me, intern!
Jessica Ward was laid off from her job in the Seattle area last December. Like many of us who have been laid off recently, she was initially angry and hurt. But within a few months she came to realize that getting laid off was one of the best things ever to happen to her. Being unemployed gave her the motivation to start a business she’d been thinking about but never acted on, spend some quality time with her kids, and rethink her notion of what a successful career was. Jessica then wrote an open letter to her former boss, which appeared in BusinessWeek, thanking him for laying her off. Among other things, she writes:
We thought this layoff would be a crushing financial blow and opted to hand-make all of our Christmas gifts. They were a huge hit with our family and friends and we spent several wonderful days together as a family creating them. We didn’t at all miss the experience of circling the mall for hours looking for a parking spot. The kids didn’t sit on Santa’s lap at Macy’s but we did run into him at a neighborhood ice hockey game and snapped a photo. I’ll mail you one.
We wrote out our household budget for the first time ever, and we stuck to it. I wrote a business plan to start my business, and my husband encouraged me to restart the freelance writing career that I’d put on hold six years ago when I got married. Now I work only part-time for myself and I write part time. I never commute. My wonderful kids are thriving. And as for that student loan payment I wasn’t sure I could make in December? I paid the balance of the loan off in full in February, three years ahead of schedule.
Continue reading ‘when layoffs are good for you’
