Posts filed under 'Balance'
In honor of Valentine’s Day, I bring you this interview I did with Judy McGuire (Seattle Weekly Dategirl columnist) on love in the workplace for nine-to-fivers, freelancers, and temps alike. Judy’s hot-of-the-presses book, How Not to Date, which features more women and men behaving badly than a Jerry Springer show, had me guffawing out loud. Whether you’re looking for the perfect antidote to this incredibly meaningless holiday, need a few tips on how not to behave around potential paramours, or are happily shacked up but could use a good laugh, I highly recommend it. And if you’re in New York or like getting your giggles by web radio, check out Judy’s east coast events and weekly broadcast.
Q. I can see how screwing your boss, your underlings, or anyone else on your immediate team could come back to bite you in the pants. But what if you hold lust in your heart for someone you don’t interact with on a daily basis, like Darcy in Accounting or Dirk in Marketing? Should you go for it? Any tips as to how?
A. I had a long-term relationship with someone I started off sharing an office with, so I don’t really go in for that whole “don’t poop where you eat” way of thinking. Sure, it might get uncomfortable if things don’t work out, but if you look at the bright side, the resulting drama could entertain your coworkers for months.
Sadly office party season has ended so you can’t do the tried and true drunken lurch under the mistletoe, but there’s always happy hour. Invite your intended out, ostensibly for a group happy hour, but “forget” to ask anyone else. This works best if you can catch him or her while they’re on their way out the door (thus assuring no pesky tagalongs).
Q. Any departments you should never, ever, ever touch, not even with your Mother’s vajayjay? (I’m thinking HR might be a no-no.)
A. Mining the Human Resource department for tail is definitely a bad idea, but I think fooling around with anyone in the IT department is far worse. Those techie types can hack into your email, which is a no-win for any dater. In the beginning, he can read all the mushy crap you’re telling your girlfriends about him — thus costing you any pretense of game — and then after you break up… well, that can be even worse.
Q. What if you’re a temp or contractor who’s going to be out of there in three months? Do the same rules of office chastity apply?
A. But being a temp is like being bisexual — it simply widens your dating pool. Who cares if you’re banging the boss if you’re onto the next job in two weeks? What is it my Nike sneaks are always telling me — “Just do it!”
Q. Many a nine-to-fiver meets their romantic match not at work, but through it — a coworker fixes you up, or your eyes lock across the color copier with that sweet young bike messenger. We work-from-home types miss out on all these potential cubicle hookups. Any suggestions as to how we, too, can exploit our jobs to get laid?
A. Even if we’re lucky enough to work at home in our PJs, most of us still have to either talk or email with other humans. I’ve found that married people are almost always anxious to fix a sister up. They’ll try to fool you into thinking that they feel sorry for your sad single self, but really, your uncomplicated, uncommitted sex life is utterly fascinating to them, so let them have at it. The only problem being is that they’re going to want details. “Wait, you didn’t meet him until ten! At night?!? Did he kiss you? Did you guys, you know, do it?!?!”
That can get kind of annoying, but if you’re the indiscrete type anyway, it’s a small price to pay. Plus, spilling dirty details will inevitably spice up your tragically married friend’s sex life, so you’re really just repaying the favor.
Q. You’re a freelancer who’s lucked into an invite to her star client’s annual holiday party. Do you teetotal, or is it okay to have a glass of wine or three and hit the dance floor?
A. Um, you’re asking a woman named McGuire whether or not you should drink? I’m afraid I don’t understand the question.
Want more McGuire? See her live in NY next week. Listen to her on the radio every Friday. Read her hilarious blog. And by all means, get her book!
February 6th, 2008
I was just reading this story in the Wall Street Journal on author Marci Alboher’s “slash” career concept (what some call “portfolio careers”). You know, successful, well-paid Fortune 500 CPA who scales back her hours by 40 percent a week so she can start an after-school arts program for disadvantaged kids or perhaps launch her own clothing line. The article is an inspiring read for anyone who’s thinking of scaling back on the day job to pursue an anti 9-to-5 gig on the side.
But I chuckled when I read this line:
Despite the benefits of workplace flexibility and increased job satisfaction, pursing a portfolio career can have drawbacks, including stalled earning power and trouble maintaining company-sponsored health insurance.
That’s like saying, You could go into non-profit work/the arts/teaching if you really wanted to, but you’d give up all that money that you could have made had you stayed in the corporate gig you found unrewarding.*
That’s why they call ‘em tradeoffs, WSJ! Get your life and happiness back, or get $20,000, $30,000, or however much more a year in benefits and/or pay.
People have been choosing quality of life over guaranteed cash for decades. And besides, if you’re working 80 hours a week at your corporate job (as one of the subjects of this article was), are you really making that $100K salary? I would argue that your salary shrinks to $50K, since once upon a less-overworked time, salaries were based on a 40-hour workweek.
I’ve interviewed a lot of people in the last two years who feel beholden to a 9-to-5 career they hate because it affords them health insurance. For those with kids, the choice is easy; they suck it up because they don’t want to worry about how they’ll pay for a pediatrician visit. I can certainly appreciate that.
But what about those with no humanoid dependents? Is a few thousand bucks a year (how much individual healthcare costs) really worth staying for? I’m not convinced.
Thanks to a milestone birthday and a new insurance law in Washington state, my health plan recently went up by 33 percent. To shave some money off the premium, I raised my deductible am now shopping around for a new plan, though from what I’ve learned so far, unless I want catastrophic insurance only, this is probably the best deal I’ll get. Still, it’s not enough to send me back to the cube working for an industry that doesn’t thrill me. And if I were to work on staff for an industry that does thrill me — say, social service or the media, as many of my 9-to-5 friends do — unless I landed a government gig, I probably wouldn’t fare much better in the insurance department. I would probably have a partially subsidized plan that costs me a little bit more out of pocket each year.
So what about you? Is the health insurance worth staying in a job you’ve grown to resent — yes or no? As always, inquiring minds want to know.
*Before you write in to say that you love your corporate gig and you’re deeply offended by this post, or that your boss doesn’t work you 80 hours a week at your corporate gig, let me be clear: I’m not saying all corporate gigs are unrewarding, OK? I’m well aware that many people like their jobs.
February 5th, 2008
*sniff*
January 23rd, 2008
Besides working from home, my best commute to work was for the last staff job I had, back in the early nineties. I lived in Hoboken, New Jersey, two blocks from the PATH train into Manhattan. I’d take the train one stop to 33rd Street and then walk a couple blocks to my publishing job. Easy peasy, though not entirely roomy during rush hour.
Today the Seattle Times ran an article about two guys who live on Bainbridge Island (near Seattle) who commute across the Puget Sound by water bike. As in, across the water. By pedaling, not paddling. One guy shaved his 80-mile roundtrip ride to work to just 12 miles, one of which he does on his water bike.
I’ve kayaked in a bunch of lakes and the sound around here, most notably in the San Juan Islands, and all I can say is, good on them! Sounds like a dream commute to me. No traffic snarls, exhaust fumes, or parking fees. Just exercise, fresh air, and seal pups for company.
OK, so now that we’ve established that I’m a tree humper, what about you? What was your best commute? Your worst? Your weirdest?
January 22nd, 2008
As a single person whose house is always a wreck, I was totally excited for the recent New York Times article called “Wedded to Work, and in Dire Need of a Wife.” (No longer free on the Times’ site, but available via many a library database.) I related 100 percent to the opening line:
Now that women have solidly earned their place in the work force, many find themselves still yearning for something men often have: wives.
Ditto for this elaboration:
With two-income families now the norm, and both men and women working a record-breaking number of hours, the question has become how to accomplish what used to be a wife’s job, even as old-fashioned standards of household management and entertaining have been relaxed. Many men are sharing the work of chores and child care with their wives, and some do it all as single parents, but women still generally shoulder a greater burden of household business (or fretting over how to do what is not getting done).
According to 2006 survey data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, one in five men engages in some kind of housework on an average day, while more than half of women do.
But then the article went on to mix in the usual sad stats about how men, especially married men, fare better at work in terms of salary and promotions, and how moms get the colossal shaft in the workplace. Yes, all sick and wrong, but not exactly a news flash. And the bits about well-to-do-ish women whining about how men don’t care about a dirty house and even if a couple can afford a housekeeper, the wife is still the one who has to lift a finger to make the call to Merry Maids…? It just rang hollow for me. I mean, BFD. Cry me a river. I haven’t done a deep cleaning of my humble abode since the Reagan administration, so when my sister and bro-in-law came to visit for a week this summer I bit the bullet and called a housekeeper. Tracking down the referral from a friend and hiring a domestic fairy godmother was a luxury I felt fortunate to indulge in, not a chore.
By the time I got to the end of the Times article, which was whinging about how men with wives can throw better BBQs for their colleagues and co-workers (presumably because they have an indentured servant — aka Wife — at home) I was laughing. How hard is it to throw a freaking BBQ? In my world, the invite says, “Just so you know, I haven’t cleaned in 19 months. I bought some beer and wine and chips at Trader Joe’s. Please bring something to grill.”
Besides, unless the women the Times interviewed have shacked up with total deadbeats, 100 bucks says their partners contribute big fat chunks of non-cleaning chores to the household (as many highly functioning modern men are wont to do), whether it’s fixing broken door hinges or making bake sale cupcakes or picking up the kids from soccer practice or haggling with plumbers and electricians. It would be interesting to do a study that breaks down the various chores each partner in a domestic arrangement actually does on a weekly basis, from bill paying to home repair to kid management to cooking to negotiating property lines with the neighbors (or dealing with landlords or condo boards) and so on. It would also be interesting to include same-sex couples in this study. I bet the findings would be all over the dang map.
August 27th, 2007
I’m writing a series of articles affectionately dubbed “Take This Job and Love It” for the salary site PayScale.com. The first one’s on how to find and negotiate a flexible day job. Here’s an excerpt:
You can’t open the business section these days without seeing a story on companies that let employees work when and where they want. It’s good for morale, great for the bottom line, and with any luck, the wave of the future. All well and good for the country’s millions of flextime and telecommuting workers. But what if you, too, want to be there when your kids get home from school or would love Fridays off to pursue your side business? How do you find the flex-friendly companies, and while we’re at it, how do you convince your current employer to cut you a piece of the flexibility pie?
Targeting flex-friendly employers
It doesn’t matter how open-minded your employer is — your job can’t be done off company premises or outside “normal” business hours, you don’t stand a chance of nabbing a piece of the flexibility pie. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume a little flexibility wouldn’t compromise your getting the job done. So how do you spot a flex-friendly employer?
Read the headlines. Obviously, if a company you have your eye on makes the Working Mother Top 100 annual list, it’s cause to celebrate. Ditto for companies that prominently feature press releases and media coverage singing the praises of their work/life balance programs. “Employers who have something to brag about usually do,” says Pat Katepoo of WorkOptions.com, who’s been consulting hopeful flex workers for 14 years. But don’t stop at corporate propaganda. Pay attention to the local headlines and see what dirt a Google search turns up, too.
Get references. Use your personal network, professional memberships, and social networking sites such as LinkedIn to track down current employees of your target companies and see what information you can glean. Katepoo also suggests contacting your local chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and asking what companies in your neck of the woods offer flex packages — and how their employees rate them.
Check the company culture. Once you’re on site for a job interview, play detective. Unless you get a job offer, avoid asking the hiring manager about company hours and the possibility of flex work. Instead, see how many cars remain in the company parking lot after 6 p.m. and how many of your potential co-workers have pictures of their kids on their desks. After the interview, ask to talk to some of your potential colleagues. Sniff out who has a flexible arrangement and how it’s going for them.
You can read the entire article here.
August 25th, 2007
If you’re a frequent reader of this blog, you’ve probably noticed a couple of 10-day breaks in posting this spring/summer. For me, when work and personal life heat up, blogging is usually the first thing to go — and not always before sleep and exercise. I’d like to modify my blogging habits to make it easier for me to avoid these long breaks in posting (because, really, what good is a blog without reliably continuous posts?). So here’s what you’ll likely start to see from now on:
- Shorter posts
- Less pointless photos, unless of course there’s some nifty anti 9-to-5er, product, or logo to show
- Evening rather than morning posts (for those of you who pay attention to when posts go live)
All this will make it easier for me to keep up the continuous posts, without sacrificing content — and without sacrificing freelance deadlines and offline creative writing time (which, for me, needs to happen in the morning). When I think about some of my favorite blogs, I don’t feel as though I’m missing out if they lack a plethora of photos or long rambly missives or first-thing-in-the-morning posts, so I’m taking my cues from them. And while blogging is a blast and I wish I could do it all week long, it doesn’t pay the bills and it still doesn’t compare (in my book) to having an editor select your article, essay, or book for publication. As a stick-in-the-mud old-school writer/journalist, I’m pretty sure I’ll never give up my beloved newspaper, magazine, webzine, and book publication lust.
If any seasoned bloggers have other suggestions for more quick, efficient blogging, I’m all ears. I’ve already thought about guest bloggers (hasn’t worked out so far but I haven’t completely shut the door on this one), interns (mulling it over), and expert Q&As (watch for this later in the year). Since I didn’t grow up with a Blackberry affixed to my arm, incorporating blogging into my life hasn’t been as smooth as I suspect it is for my twentysomething counterparts. It’s like I’m still trying to figure out when the best hours for me to go to the gym are — that would be, if I actually liked to work out in a gym.
August 25th, 2007
I’m guessing many of you saw this MSNBC article on how women and men who delay breeding (a) because they want to focus on career, etc. first, and (b) because they see fertility technologies as a sort of impregnation fallback, may find themselves getting bitten in the womb when they decide they’re ready for parenthood.
Now before you get your panties in a twist, let me say that the focus of the article was not on pitting mothers against non-moms, or employed moms against stay-at-home moms (thank god). Nor was it on commanding all able-bodied women to squeeze out a litter as soon as humanly possible. The focus of the article was on how many would-be parents who put off breeding till their late thirties and beyond find that, even if they can afford the costly fertilization hacks, the odds are often stacked against them.
As someone in her late thirties, I’ve given the baby thing a lot of thought lately. I have friends my age who are trying to conceive, and it has not been anything close to a cakewalk for them. I have a guy in my life that I feel deeply committed to, and I feel like we need to get square on where we stand on the conception thing, given that the window of biological opportunity is rapidly slamming shut. And in case you’re wondering, my mom-o-meter is currently on pause, which is pretty much where it’s been for as long as I can remember.
Given the above, I initially came away from the MSNBC article thinking, “Hmmm… so… if by the time I’m 40 I’ll only have a 5 percent chance of getting knocked up, I wonder if I can stop using birth control…” To which my far more practical, mathematical boyfriend replied, “That’s still a 1 in 20 chance of getting pregnant.”
After I stopped gazing at my bumpless navel (and purchased another case of condoms), I started to think how sad it was that career and motherhood have become so either-or for so many women in this society. How many women would have a kid sooner if more companies would make it easier for them to do so without career or financial penalty? And by “easier,” I of course mean offering flex and part-time schedules, as well as the same wages and advancement opportunities as their non-mom counterparts. I’ll try to dig up some stats on the number of women who say they postponed motherhood because they didn’t want to sacrifice career. In the meantime, I’d love to hear what you think on all this.
June 17th, 2007
In honor of Dad’s Day, I thought I’d pass these along:
HR Magazine: Flexible work schedules are the workplace benefit fathers appreciate most (53 percent), followed by telecommuting (34 percent), on-site child care (12 percent), and paid paternity leave (10 percent).
FOX News: More dads say they struggle with work-life balance than moms, found a survey conducted by Harris Interactive for Adecco USA, a career-services consultancy. Curiously, a majority of men also said they would not take paternity leave if their company offered it.
BusinessWeek: In a report by the National Conference of State Legislatures, employers cite child-care issues as causing more problems than any other family-related issue in the workplace, with increases in absenteeism and tardiness reported in nine out of ten companies. And 80 percent of the companies surveyed said that work days were cut short because of child-care problems. (Moral of the story: Give us flex work or give us death!)
New York Times: When it comes to U.S. CEOs, men still predominate. (Duh.) Even in the nonprofit sector, women make up just 29.6 percent of chiefs. But that looks like progress when set against the number of head honchos of semiconductor companies (3.1 percent) and aerospace firms (4.5 percent).
Downtown Women’s Club (press release): More than half of working women do not think that they are affected by the gender wage gap. (Newsflash: They’re dead wrong.)
PRWeb (press release): Nearly one-third of all married women in the United States now make more than their husbands, according to the Census Bureau.
The Economist: By 2020, more than half of the UK’s millionaires may be female.
June 16th, 2007
The impending wave of retiring baby boomers — which could spell U.S. workforce shortages — might force companies to offer increasingly flexible work arrangements to stay-at-home moms looking to return to work, according to a new article from PayScale.
Exciting excerpt:
“Employers will have no choice but to be more flexible. They will be offering opportunities for creative scheduling and … opportunities to work at home. There will be a whole restructuring of the way work gets done,” said Roberta Chinsky Matuson, principal of Human Resource Solutions in Northampton, Mass. “That will help moms who want to reenter the work force, but stay at home and work.”
I of course think flexibility is a must, and we’ll take it any way we can get it, asap. But I can’t help but think of all those Rosies flooding the factories during WWII, needed in the workforce only because so many men were in battle. Too bad it might take a major workforce shortage for more companies to offer employment policies that accommodate the fact that people have lives outside the office.
May 25th, 2007
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In honor of Valentine’s Day, I bring you this interview I did with Judy McGuire (Seattle Weekly Dategirl columnist) on love in the workplace for nine-to-fivers, freelancers, and temps alike. Judy’s hot-of-the-presses book, How Not to Date, which features more women and men behaving badly than a Jerry Springer show, had me guffawing out loud. Whether you’re looking for the perfect antidote to this incredibly meaningless holiday, need a few tips on how not to behave around potential paramours, or are happily shacked up but could use a good laugh, I highly recommend it. And if you’re in New York or like getting your giggles by web radio, check out Judy’s east coast events and weekly broadcast.
Q. I can see how screwing your boss, your underlings, or anyone else on your immediate team could come back to bite you in the pants. But what if you hold lust in your heart for someone you don’t interact with on a daily basis, like Darcy in Accounting or Dirk in Marketing? Should you go for it? Any tips as to how? 
