Archive for October, 2006
This is what I just told my next door neighbor, a very sweet woman who’s also at home during the day, keeping house and cooking up a storm. She just called to see if I’m OK because she “hasn’t seen me or Buddy [my four-legged office manager] outside in a few days.”
Granted it was raining cats and office managers yesterday, and then I had my writing group meeting in the evening. But the real reason she hasn’t seen me is that I have five short articles due to a client between now and Monday and I’ve been glued to my monitor.
This far from the first time my neighbor and I have had this conversation. And it’s nice to know that I have the freelancer’s equivalent of a guardian angel next door. Not only will she call 911 if I do wind up in a twitching heap on the floor (no doubt from a deadline overdose), she reminds me every so often that I need to step away from the desk.
October 19th, 2006
In honor of National Business Women’s Week (the third week of October, as in October 16 through 20), I offer up these fascinating stats from recent reports by the U.S. Small Business Administration and the Center for Women’s Business Research:
- In 2005, small businesses accounted for a whopping 99.7 percent of all the nation’s “employer businesses” (you know, businesses with paid staff).
- Said small businesses employed 57.4 million Americans — in other words, a staggering 50.6 percent of non-farm workers in the private sector.
- Women owners of larger businesses are just as likely as their male counterparts to have a long-term strategy for selling, handing down, or closing their business.
- While female and male business owners are equally motivated to sell their empires, women are much more likely to take into account how the sale will impact their employees.
- Women business owners are nearly twice as likely as male business owners to plan to pass their business on to a daughter or daughters (37% vs. 19%).
You, too, can do your part to support businesswomen and small business owners everywhere. Rather than buy from Starbucks or rent from Blockbuster this week, check out that indie coffee stand down the street that you’ve never tried and/or your local mom-and-pop video rental shop. Encourage your company to assemble a crackerjack team of independent contractors (aka freelancers), rather than hiring the usual behemoth creative agencies (unless of course, those agencies farm their work out to freelancers and treat them with love). And so on and so forth.
October 19th, 2006
Contrary to popular belief, working moms (and dads) spend more time with their kids than their 1960s counterparts, according to a New York Times report this week. How do they do it? By letting the house go and letting dad pick up some of the slack.
I quote:
The researchers found, to their surprise, that married and single parents spent more time teaching, playing with and caring for their children than parents did 40 years ago.
For married mothers, the time spent on child care activities increased to an average of 12.9 hours a week in 2000, from 10.6 hours in 1965. For married fathers, the time spent on child care more than doubled, to 6.5 hours a week, from 2.6 hours. Single mothers reported spending 11.8 hours a week on child care, up from 7.5 hours in 1965.
“As the hours of paid work went up for mothers, their hours of housework declined,” said Bianchi. “It was almost a one-for-one trade.”
Fathers have picked up some of the slack. Married fathers are spending more time on housework: an average of 9.7 hours a week in 2000, up from 4.4 hours in 1965. That increase was more than offset by the decline in time devoted to housework by married mothers: 19.4 hours a week in 2000, down from 34.5 hours in 1965.
Right on! And take that, Religious Right! Thanks to Broadsheet for tipping me off to this report.
October 19th, 2006
Earlier this week, The Korea Times reported that 1,400 women in Korea have filed a lawsuit against their employers, “arguing that they should be paid for the days they are allowed to take off during menstruation.” The article goes on to say, “In June 2004 the labor law was revised to allow firms not to pay women taking this special leave.” In other words, the labor law previously called for companies to pay women for this — ahem — special leave. What’s more, this is not the first suit of its kind in Korea and analysts are predicting more to come.
This is mind-blowing on so many levels. We’re happy if we even get more than two paid weeks off a year in this country, let alone maternity and paternity leave. I can hear the men grumbling as they read this, scheming about how they’d adopt monthly sympathy cramps or rally for football-viewing days off. I’m with Salon’s Broadsheet blog, which proposes equal days off for both sexes (assuming, in our little fantasy world, it suddenly becomes de rigeur in the good ole U. S. of A. to claim time off for one’s monthly bleed).
I’m all for equal benefits in the workplace. For starters, it’s fabulous to see more companies embracing the twenty-first century and granting the same benefits to their gay employees as their straight ones (in other words, the same health coverage and family leave). But as a single who doesn’t plan on procreating, it’s always ruffled my feathers that I could not put, say, my mom or my sister on my health plan, or that they couldn’t put me on theirs. I guess I could shack up, wait for the common-law marriage thing to kick in, and then claim my piece of the “more benefits for those headed down the picket-fence path” pie. But I don’t think I should have to make a lifestyle change I wasn’t prepared or planning to make just to get as much money as the woman working in the next cube.
And don’t even get me started on how most companies designate the Christian holidays as their year-end days off. I’m a Heeb, OK? I don’t believe in Jesus (though I did think he was hot in The Last Temptation of Christ.) I have nothing to do on Christmas except tag along with a friend for the family ham dinner, which everyone knows always gives me hamps. I would rather work and subsist on the offerings of the company cafeteria — because god knows, nothing else is open on Dec. 24th and 25th, except 7-Eleven and a couple of greasy takeout places. And I would rather take my days off on Hanukkah, or the Jewish new year, or Passover, so I could actually go visit my mom (who lives a couple hours away) instead of saying, “Sorry, I have to work that day.”
Of course, I guess all this is moot since I’m currently freelancing from my home. But still. I’ve certainly experienced the family/Christian workplace bias before as a temp and wage slave. And I think it’s time to nationalize floating holidays and give the same benefits to singles as we give to those who choose to shack up/and or procreate. C’mon, people — wake up and smell the diversity!
October 13th, 2006
Three mainstream media articles on women’s work/life balance that made me cheer (had I not been suffering from my own work/life imbalance last week I would have posted them sooner):
Miami Herald columnist Cindy Krischer Goodman (no relation) and blogger examines how more workers are jumping on the temping bandwagon, not because they can’t find anyone else to pay them but because they want or need the flexibility to pursue other avenues of their life (elder care, child care, small businesses, creative endeavors). As Goodman writes, “More people see the appeal of staffing agencies, and they’re not just the unemployed trying make ends meet. The Bureau of Labor says the U.S. staffing industry will grow faster than any other industry over the next decade, adding nearly 1.6 million jobs.” (Published September 27, 2006; registration required)
Reuters recently reported that most businesses owned by women are home-based. Also of note: Forty-nine percent of U.S. businesses are run from the home, and 75 percent of U.S. businesses are one-person ventures with no employees (you know, independent writers, accountants, programmers, craftswomen, and other kitchen-table entrepreneurs). But I have to disagree with Robert Drago, professor of labor studies and women’s studies at Pennsylvania State University, who says in the article, “Home-based businesses tend to be uncertain sources of income…” I know and have interviewed many women whose home-based business earns them (and their family) a fine living. Drago also blathers on that “…working at home is difficult with small children and married women’s home-based work tends to be taken less seriously than their husbands’ jobs outside the home.” First of all, many women have told me that working outside the home when you have small children is equally if not more difficult than working inside it. It all depends on your kids’ age/temperament, your support system, and your personal preferences (or chaos threshold). Second, I spoke with many female business owners who work from home and pull in their family’s main or — gasp! — sole source of income, while their partner tends to the house and kids. And yes, Prof Drago, many of these women are in heterosexual relationships. (Published September 27, 2006)
And finally, ABC news covered how more companies are helping high-powered working moms who want to leave the fast track keep a toe in the corporate pool so (a) these megacorps don’t lose their superstar “talent,” and (b) these moms can pick up reasonably close to where they left off, after they’ve taken their (on average) 2.2-year leave to devote time to family. All well and good, but I’m left a bit cold by the last anedcote in the piece, where Anne Erni, chief diversity officer at Lehman Brothers, sings the praises of her company’s program and one satisfied mom who was happy to come back to a less-senior part-time role in the company. (”How often can you get someone with great maturity and judgment to step into a more junior role and be really happy with it?” Erni says.) It would be nice if (a) these options were even available to employees on the lower rungs of the corporate ladder, especially lower-income wage slaves, and (b) a woman could work part-time for her employer without having to take a demotion in title and pay. (Published October 2, 2006)
October 11th, 2006
Just had to share this tidbit from Zap2It.com:
CBS has enlisted Alan Thicke to host the network’s “American Idol meets The Office” reality show “The Singing Office.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, “The Singing Office” is based on a popular Dutch format. In each episode, producers choose two companies and force the employees to do vocal auditions. The five best singers from each office are sent to Hollywood for a quick round of styling and training. Then they sing in front of an audience. Then the audience votes. The most gifted office wins a cash prize.
Whee…
This almost makes me wish I was still temping so my short-time cohorts and I could talk about last night’s episode ’round the color copier. Almost.
October 10th, 2006
In her novel BreakupBabe, blogger and dater extraordinaire Rebecca Agiewich has her protagonist Rachel suit up in what she hilariously refers to as the “editing straitjacket” any time she has a killer deadline at her technical editing gig. Without the figurative straitjacket, Rachel would be hopelessly lost to an afternoon of emailing friends about her dating woes and incessantly checking her blog for new comments.
Even though I’m happy with the projects I’m working on, I can so, so relate to the editing straitjacket concept. It’s just too damn easy to get sidetracked from the task at hand when you work solo at home, free from the threat of some boss poking her head in to check up on “how that article’s coming.”
I wrote about work habits and procrastination busters a lot in — shameless plug alert — The Book. But since The Book won’t be out for a couple months, I’d like to share with you Anti-Procrastination tip #29, one which I had to employ repeatedly this past week, seeing that I was inundated with more work than I knew what to do with:
It’s called Writing for Ho Hos, or as one freelancer I interviewed for the book called it, The Delayed Gratification Game. See, I suffer from a baked goods addiction. Normally, when life’s humming along smoothly and I’m juggling my work and my personal life just fine, thank you very much, I get my pastry fix via the faux-healthy vegan cookie, donut, and brownie offerings at my neighborhood Whole Foods or PCC Natural Market. But once my workload reaches “Are you effing kidding me?!?!” thresholds, my standards plumet and I pay a visit or two or three to the Safeway snack aisle. In fact, I need my crap food to keep me going the way Popeye needs his E. coli-free spinach.
This past week the stress level racheted up so high, I devoured multiple bags, boxes, and styrofoam containers of pretzel rods, Ho Hos, and chow mein from the Safeway take-out counter. (To my credit, I did stop short of consuming fried pork rinds.) However, I reserved my carbo-loading sessions for my work breaks. In other words, no pretzels and processed baked goods and nasty Chinese food until I’d spent at least two to three hours in the writing straitjacket first. And since I wanted my crap snacks baaaaaaad, I worked my heinie off.
I was happy to learn I’m not the only freelancer who lives and dies by the “will work for junk food” credo. Emily, a fab pet photographer I’m collaborating with this month, says that if she has a mountain of dark room work ahead of her, she’ll indulge in a vat of ice cream and treat herself to a few spoonfuls after each stretch of work. My office manager, too, seems to eat more rawhide bones when we’re slammed around here, but I suspect he’d gleefully mow on them even during our slow weeks.
Alas, my reward system reached new lows late last week when I found myself ordering a breakfast sandwich in Subway (and realized I’d actually earned enough points on my Subway card to land me that sandwich free of charge). Not only did my breakfast sandwich feature a spongelike yellow rectangle that doubled as prefab cooked egg, it had no discernible taste, save for the burnt bun it came on. I would have preferred a tasty McMuffin, 3500 calories be damned.
Realizing that Oprah — Self-Proclaimed President of Emotional Eaters Anonymous — would have a field day with me, I vowed to find a healthier reward system for those tricky workweeks when I’m up to my eyeballs in deadlines. I’m testing out a new program now, called Devouring the YouTube Videos of Aging Rockstars in Their 1960s/1970s Heyday. Basically I work an hour or two or three, and then I dig up some juicy nugget from YouTube’s vast arsenal of folk/hippie/prog/glam/classic rockers. For instance, who knew Peter Gabriel once looked like this?
Now if I could just pry myself away from the computer…
October 8th, 2006
Just came across this Associated Press tidbit:
A worker at a new, Eugene-area bakery was pinned face down in a trough of dough, unable to breathe, and was hospitalized in critical condition.
Bryan Byrne somehow was pinned between a Plexiglas machine guard and the trough of dough, which was moving slowly down a conveyor line, said Kevin Weeks, spokesman for the Oregon Occupational Health and Safety Division.
And you thought your job was taking a toll on your health. Still, if I had to get critically injured at work, being suffocated by a gigantic mass of cookie dough would be right up there with my top picks. Hopefully it was chocolate chip.
October 7th, 2006
Sad that we live in a time where taking lunch at work could be considered bad form. But at least the Associated Press has some pointers about how to eat lunch somewhere other than your cubicle without looking like a slacker. Of course, they’re recommending you start small, as in, eating lunch outside the cube just one day a week.
I’ll add my own suggestion to the list: If you’re only able to escape the clutches of your cubicle one lunch hour a week, then devote those 60 (or 30, or 15) minutes to your pet project of choice. You know, penning your memoirs, helping your local Democrats get elected this November, or — here’s a concept — looking for a new job in a more relaxed workplace.
October 6th, 2006
A couple uplifting articles I just read:
Washington Post columnist Amy Joyce looks into just how closely that megacorp you work for is monitoring your calls, emails, web surfing, IMs, and even your tracks. In other words, if you think no one knows that you’re not really at your desk from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. like you’re supposed to be, or that no one’s noticed all those dirty emails you send your boyfriend from your Yahoo! account during office hours, you’re dead wrong. Although, Joyce does write, “This reporter could find only one company, in Ohio, that implanted chips in its employees’ arms.” Well, that’s a relief. (Published 10/1/06)
And if you think your bean-counting boss is a buzzkill, you’re in very good company. Slate columnist Daniel Gross serves up these Idiotic Examples of Corporate Cost-Cutting and More Idiotic Corporate Penny-Pinching Measures. Note to caffeine junkies: You may want to start bringing a thermos of coffee or an espresso maker to work. (Published 9/25/06 and 9/29/06)
October 1st, 2006
Next Posts
Previous Posts
