According to a study reported by the BBC, a third of employees admit to having been hungover at work. Another one in ten admit to still being drunk at the office. The thing that’s awesome about this article (and what makes it clear that it has a UK perspective on drinking instead of a US one) is that they blame the office culture, not employees. Among the reasons cited for employee hangovers/drunkovers:
- Having to be at work too early in the morning and not getting enough sleep
- People drinking to cope with pressure/stress related to their jobs
- Not enough people having the option to work from home
I swear, the people quoted in this article are people after my own heart. Witness this quote from Prof. Cary Cooper: “This is not about social drinking. This is about the long-hours culture we have in this country. It’s the jobs where there is most stress – long hours, high expectations, short-term contracts and bad management – where you get the most excessive drinking.”
Someone addressing the changing needs of the workplace instead of blaming employees? Dr. Cooper, the next time you’re on this side of the Atlantic, beer is on me.
In case you hadn’t heard, the US economy isn’t doing so great these days. A lot of companies are trying to cut costs by combining positions. However, if you’re an assistant you know this is pretty common practice for people at the lower end of the totem pole. Just go through the classifieds: many assistant positions are actually “receptionist/assistant,” “office manager/assistant,” “administrative assistant/executive assistant,” and the like. Why is this so common, when a company is willing to shell out salaries for four separate Vice Presidents of Finance but not for one more (poorly-paid) admin person to ease the workload?
The truth is, the people who make these HR decisions often haven’t been assistants or don’t understand how much an assistant is responsible for. When I was a receptionist back in the day, the CEO of the company saved money on hiring temps by just forcing me to do all the work. In his brain, “receptionist” equaled “sits at a desk and looks pretty all day.” In my brain, “receptionist” equaled “deal with two loads of mail a day, answer and reroute all the calls, order food for all the executives separately, sign for that FedEx package while simultaneously calling back the repair guy about that leak in the bathroom,” and a whole lot more. The CEO assumed I had nothing else to do all day and therefore he was a management genius for coming up with the ‘brilliant’ idea of assigning temp work to me.
Do you have a combo job, or have you had one in the past? Tell us your overworked, overscheduled, and overstressed stories.
Gallup (the same people who do the Gallup poll) apparently gives out annual awards for great workplaces. And this year’s big winner is… Country Inns and Suites.
Since we hadn’t heard of them either, we did some searching around on their site. Here’s what we learned about them: their website is phenomenally boring. If you want to look into career opportunities, click here. Regardless, boring website or not, kudos on being crowned America’s Best Workplace.
Although the main cause of your depression at work is, well, work, not all offices are accommodating to the mental health needs of their employees. Reuters reports that male bosses are five times as likely as female bosses to discriminate against depressed workers. What they didn’t report is that bosses of either gender are five times as likely to ruin your day as your mom, your ex-boyfriend, and that jerk at the deli who messed up your breakfast order combined.
Read more here.
This may come as a shock to you, but your job is getting more demanding. I know, I know, as soon as you’re done peeling yourself off the floor, come back to the post and we’ll explain to you that a recent study proves that despite advances in technology, the average output expected of an excutive assistant has increased. Note:
Executives were asked, “During the past five years, how have the responsibilities for administrative assistants changed?” Their responses:
Increased significantly………….23%
Increased somewhat………………50%
No change………………………14%
Decreased somewhat………………11%
Decreased significantly…………..2%
Executives also were asked, “Does an administrative assistant have more or less of a career-growth track than five years ago?” Their responses:
More…………………………..57%
Same…………………………..25%
Less…………………………..17%
Don’t know………………………1%
Is this consistent with your own experiences, or do you think it’s total hogwash? Personally, we think they should have surveyed assistants, instead of their bosses, since we’re all aware that assistants are the ones doing all the heavy lifting every day. Full results and commentary are here.
As offices become more automated and rely more on email than phones (my former boss, a total PTP, used to ask me to send people telegrams. seriously), there’s one tradition going the way of the passenger pigeon: eavesdropping.
Ah, eavesdropping. It’s a fine art, really. Think how many soap opera plots would disappear if Character A couldn’t overhear (and misinterpret) Character B on the phone with Character C. Eavesdropping is the simplest and most effective way to find out about office gossip. And the constant chatter of multiple people in multiple offices on multiple phone calls keeps the office from feeling like a tomb, which is what happens now that companies are giant mazes of people staring blankly at their computer screens and typing into oblivion.
The NY Times has a great article about the dying art of eavesdropping. Read it and then see if it inspires you to make a phone call or three today.
Keep your fingers crossed, disgruntled workers in the state of Florida. If several key leaders of your state get their way, a “bring-your-guns-to-work” bill will become law. The bill, which passed both houses of the state senate and is now en route to the governor, allows workers to keep guns in their cars for protection. This is only if the person carrying the gun has a permit, of course.
Critics say the measure usurps business owners’ rights to determine what happens on their property and puts workers and managers at risk from disgruntled employees.
Dozens of workplace shootings occur every year in the United States and studies have shown that job sites where guns are permitted are more likely to suffer workplace homicides than those where guns are prohibited.
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Heh.
The resurrected Radar magazine veers between self-conscious and subversive, but we never miss a chance to steal a copy from a coworker’s desk. The back page of their April issue featured a hundred things never to say in a job interview. We’ll skip to some of the good ones:
- “Is Jesus considered a personal reference?”
- “Allow me to answer that with a tambourine solo.”
- “My ideal supervisor would be a surrogate for the mommy who never had time for me.”
- “You’re not going to make me take one of those fucking anger management seminars, are you?”
- [Winking.] “Why, I have no idea how that ten dollar bill ended up on your desk.”
- “Each of my personalities will require its own compensation package.”
- “Let’s just cut to the chase: who and where is the office slut?”
- “It was either get back on the horse or blow my brains out, and this job seems like a decent compromise.”
- “If you Google me, just be warned that there’s a sexual predator who happens to share my name and Facebook page.”
And our favorite, because, well…we’re guilty of it:
- “I can’t wait to blog about this job.”
We were going to define the popular term “the office ghost,” but someone at Urban Dictionary did a better job than we could have. Behold:
(Noun): An employee who maintains a position at a company despite the fact that all of his job duties have been reassigned to other employees. This could be by the ghost’s own design or due to restructuring within the department.
Office Ghosts are particularly effective when they have a big title that comes with an assistant, and a boss in another location because no one is really sure what they do all day, but they still have the ability to step up and take credit once a project is completed.
Employee: I was looking for Michael. Have you seen him?
Assistant: I think he’s in his office but I’m not sure since he always has the door closed. Let me check.
Assistant: No, he’s not in there. He might be in a meeting.
Employee: He’s like the office ghost. I can never find him when I need to talk with him. What does he do all day?
Assistant: Honestly I have no idea. You tell me when you figure it out and we’ll both know.
Somehow we get the feeling that this person is speaking from very personal experience.
Thanks to STA reader Kristine for sending along this article from the Wall Street Journal.
According to the WSJ, the current generation of people entering the workforce (btw, that’s probably you) are the most overpraised generation in history. Raised by parents who constantly told them how beautiful, special, and perfect they were, they expect that same kind of constant positive reinforcement at the office. While most articles on this topic take a very self-righteous “kids these days” tone, author Jeffrey Zaslow takes a somewhat more nuanced look at the situation, even citing a recent study showing that “the average college student in 2006 was 30% more narcissistic than the average student in 1982.”
So how are workplaces handling this wave of new workers? If they’re anything like my former boss, they continue being giant douchebags and don’t give any praise, let alone constant praise, but let’s imagine some of you work at a company more like the ones in Zaslow’s article than the one where I unhappily toiled. Lands’ End Bank of America, for example, even hired a “celebrations assistant” whose job is to praise workers for doing something well by buying balloons, tossing confetti, or passing around a card for everybody to sign. That could either be a really fun job or the most obnoxious one in the world: I’m on the fence about it.
For more about the phenomenon of the narcissistic worker and how different age groups ask for praise at work, check out this article.
