Posts filed under 'Overworked and underpaid'
When I was just starting out as a freelancer, I landed a supplemental $10/hour part-time gig (a small fortune in the early nineties) working as an admin assistant for this entrepreneur who put on business conferences. While my boss was very flexible, kind, and fair, his social graces left something to be desired. So much so that the other business people renting office space in the building regularly asked me how I could stand working for the guy.
Basically, my boss was a gastroenterological freak show, plagued with the worst case of flatulence and acid reflux ever to assault my senses. Think Ignatius in A Confederacy of Dunces and you’ll start to get the picture.
I get that people have digestive issues; I just don’t get why, in a work setting, my boss never once tried leave the room to expel a little gas, let alone offer up the occasional “excuse me,” or — hey, here’s a concept — permit me to open the door or window of our 200-square-foot office so as not to asphyxiate on the stench of his rotting bowels.
According to the other business owners in the building, I stuck it out longer than any of my boss’ previous assistants. But after a couple months, despite the sweet pay and the mostly pleasant demeanor of my intestinally challenged boss, nausea won out. Plus, it was so damned awkward to be working alongside someone tooting up a storm but offering up zero acknowledgement of the very pungent elephant in the room.
Still, on the 1 to 10 Scale of Dysfunction, I’d probably give this boss a 3 or 4, maaaaaaybe a 5. Because he was a good boss. He was just raised in a barn, which isn’t the worst bossly offense in the world. I’d venture to say that blogging about how you’re going to make your company profitable ASAP, come hell or high water, even though your entire staff knows that’s code for “layoffs imminent,” is a worse offense. Call me old school, but I’m a fan of face-to-face delivery when it comes to bad news, or news that bad news is potentially on the way.*
All this is one big fat segue into what I really wanted to talk about: This week’s No Shit Award, which goes to a recent study proclaiming that bad bosses are about as common as people with horrific manners.
Behold these morale-boosting stats:
- 39 percent of workers said their supervisor failed to keep promises
- 37 percent said their supervisor failed to give credit when due
- 31 percent said their supervisor gave them the “silent treatment” in the past year
- 27 percent said their supervisor made negative comments about them to other employees or managers
- 24 percent said their supervisor invaded their privacy
- 23 percent said their supervisor blamed others to cover up mistakes or to minimize embarrassment
Any of this sound familiar? Then you know what should be at the top of your list of new year’s resolutions. Oh, and if you care to de-lurk a moment and share your tale of Worst Boss Known to Humankind, I’m sure you will make a lot of people chuckle with appreciation or at least nod in recognition, this bossfree babe included.
*Update: The Jobster layoffs I was so cryptically referring to have arrived.
January 2nd, 2007
According to a December study, 75 percent of U.S. employees are looking for a new job. Their top reasons for bailing? Money and career advancement — and in that order. Not surprisingly, the majority of employees looking to trade up are lackeys (rather than managers).
This number may sound high, but it doesn’t shock me. In the past year I must have printed up a dozen of these disgruntled-employee polls, most of which stated that at least half of all workers were looking to jump ship at any given time.
Depending on what day you ask me, I might count myself among these ranks, and I’m a goddamned freelancer. It’s been said before, but that, my friends, is why they call it “work” as opposed to, say, “slacking,” “shagging,” or “knocking back a few cold ones on some impossibly gorgeous tropical island with [insert fantasy rockstar boyfriend here] at your side.”
How about you? Happy where you are? Miserable beyond belief? Like your coworkers but hate your boss? Love your gig but wish you could afford running water and electricity? Hate your gig but love the financial security it affords you?
Feel free to dish openly. I won’t tell your boss.
December 27th, 2006
So I read the “Smashing the Clock” cover story in BusinessWeek this a.m., you know, the one I was raving about the other day. And it was everything I hoped it would be.
I’ll break it down for you: This was Best Buy, the company featured in the article, before its worker-friendly policies:
Workers arriving after 8 a.m. on sub-zero mornings stashed their parkas in their cars to foil detection as late arrivals. Early escapees crept down back stairwells. Cube-side, the living was equally uneasy. One manager required his MBAs to sign out for lunch, including listing their restaurant locations and ETAs. Another insisted his team track its work — every 15 minutes. As at many companies, the last one to turn out the lights won.
And this is Best Buy now, having implemented a program they call ROWE, or results-only work environment (i.e., we don’t care whether you show your face, as long as you get your work done):
…workers pulling into the company’s amenity-packed headquarters at 2 p.m. aren’t considered late. Nor are those pulling out at 2 p.m. seen as leaving early. There are no schedules. No mandatory meetings. No impression-management hustles. Work is no longer a place where you go, but something you do. It’s O.K. to take conference calls while you hunt, collaborate from your lakeside cabin, or log on after dinner so you can spend the afternoon with your kid.
There’s an interesting conversation about flex time, face time, and meeting overload going on at Electrolicious today. Ariel tells the scary tale of an ex-employer that rewarded hours in the chair over results. To that, I will add my own (secondhand) anecdote:
One woman I interviewed for the book had a coworker suddenly die, not on the job, but still, devastating, right? She worked at one of these “work till you drop” organizations that rewards face-time hours rather than productivity. Evidently the deceased coworker had neglected to tell anyone at the company — not even his boss — that he was terminally ill. And evidently, since he worked remotely (at least there was that perk), no one knew.
Instead of enjoying his last days as a man of leisure, the poor guy toiled right until the day he died. When management caught wind of the tragic news, they sent out a companywide email praising their dearly departed team member for his company loyalty and impeccable work ethic (not even terminal illness could deter him!). Not exactly inspiring words for his coworkers, who besides dealing with the personal loss, found themselves scrambling to piece together their deceased coworker’s projects on deadline and wondering what kind of fucked up company they were working for.
And that, children, concludes today’s work/life balance story hour.
December 7th, 2006
I found this little nugget in Monday’s Seattle Times, in an article called “Gender Gap Narrows as Men’s Pay Erodes”:
…a noteworthy trend in the 21st-century economy: Women are closing in on men when it comes to wages, but not for the reasons anticipated — or hoped for — when gender pay equity became a rallying cry in the 1970s.
Data show that the pay gap has been narrowing not because women have made great strides, labor experts say, but because men’s wages are eroding.
Since I’m on deadline, I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about how languishing wages are a drag for all workers and probably not what my mom had in mind in the seventies when she joined NOW and marched for the ERA. But don’t let me put words in your mouth or anything…
December 6th, 2006
I just paid my P.O. box a visit and was thrilled to find BusinessWeek featuring this story on the cover:
Smashing the clock: No schedules. No mandatory meetings. Inside Best Buy’s radical reshaping of the workplace
I haven’t read the article yet, but I’m tickled just seeing a major business media outlet taking flex work and the meeting timesuck this seriously. Plus, check out these sidebars:
Rock on, Best Buy! And you go, BusinessWeek. I’m off to devour all three pieces. If I hate the articles, you’ll be the first to know tomorrow. Would love to hear what some of you think, too (nudge, nudge).
December 3rd, 2006
To milk last week’s holiday with ignoble origins a tad longer, following are a few recent news items that made me stand on my desk and cheer (that is, on top of the cancellation of the O.J. media blitz):
The Wall Street Journal released its “50 Women to Watch” list for 2006. Interesting Broadsheet notes here on philanthropist extraordinaire Melinda Gates making the top slot.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran a kickass series this month called “The Glass Ceiling: Where a Rise to the Top Stops.” I especially liked the piece on the “Women at the Top” class offered in the University of Washington’s MBA program, which tackles such corporate-ladder issues as dealing with authority (is that a newspaper euphemism for dealing with harassment in the workplace?), balancing family with career, and facing the consequences of leaving the workforce temporarily to raise kids. (Why do we need yet another newspaper series like this? Because as Elana Centor points out on Blogher, the recent appointment of Kerrii Anderson to permanent CEO of Wendy’s brings the total number of women running Fortune 1000 companies to a whopping 2.1 percent. Uh, yay?)
And finally, USA Today has been running a six-week “Young and in Debt” series, which I’m sure most of us can relate to. Check out the live chat today — Monday, November 27 — at noon EST. (Thanks to Boston Gal’s Open Wallet for alerting me to this series.)
November 27th, 2006
In case you missed 20/20 on ABC last Friday, Elizabeth Vargas — sadly, one of the decade’s shortest-lived evening newscasters — did a story called “Can Working Mothers Have It All”?
While the segment didn’t add anything new to the conversation, acknowledgment from the mainstream media never hurts. And maybe someone watching in, say, Duluth, didn’t know that America is one of four countries of 168 studied that doesn’t have a national paid maternity leave plan. (The other three countries? Lesotho, Swaziland, and Papua New Guinea.)
Plus, seeing clips of syndicated radio asshat Tom Leykis saying he doesn’t want his tax dollars helping working moms was a good reminder of who women are up against. I’m not a parent, nor do I ever intend to be one. But fair flextime policies are not only good for working mothers, they’re good for working dads, people caring for aging or ailing relatives, artists and writers with creative projects outside the workplace, weekend warriors with road trip or mountaineering habits, and so on. (Of course you may be hard-pressed to find a company that will give you several weeks of paid “novel-writing leave.” Damn.)
Other recent media coverage that should make working moms stand up and cheer:
The Christian Science Monitor’s Marilyn Gardner looks at the truth behind women opting out, complete with the subhead “Two reports show a weak labor market and inflexible work policies as the main reasons women are staying home” and nuggets like this:
“Most mothers do not opt out,” says Joan Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California, Hastings. “They are pushed out by workplace inflexibility, the lack of supports, and a workplace bias against mothers.” In one recent survey, 86 percent of women cited obstacles such as inflexible jobs as a key reason behind their decision to leave. (Published 10/30/06)
ABC News’ Betsy Stark did a depressing segment on tag-team parenting — couples working opposite shifts so they don’t have to pay for pricey childcare (or worry about seeing each other Monday through Friday). I was shocked to learn that about a third of dual-income families employ the eminently more affordable tag-team tactic when it comes to childcare. Of course, the less well-off you are… well, you know the drill. (Aired 10/31/06)
The New York Times ran a piece by M. P. Dunleavey in the Business section on how this country is lagging far, far behind its European counterparts in terms of giving new parents a break. I’m glad the Times is finally starting to move past the whole opt-out thing. (Published 11/4/06)
If any of the above makes your blood boil and/or you want to do something about corporate and government attitudes toward working parents, check out MomsRising.org. You’ll find a book, documentary, and burgeoning political movement to partake in.
November 14th, 2006
While we’re on the subject of career change and the possible financial or lifestyle trade-offs that can come with it, I thought I’d share this recent article from CareerJournal.com on when relocating for a new gig is and isn’t worth it.
I relocated when I was 30, but it wasn’t such a radical move — San Francisco to Seattle. I knew Seattle well, having a sister, a college buddy, and an ex-beau up here. So I had plenty of time (years, in fact) to check out le new surroundings before packing everything I couldn’t bear to sell into my Civic and making the 850-mile drive north for good.
I must confess, my move wasn’t solely for the job; it was for the simpler, more affordable lifestyle I’d surmised Seattle would allow me. So when the job ended after a year (it was an indefinite contract job, only somewhere along the way, the company instituted a three-month “break in service” policy that meant I had to leave the gig after twelve months), I wasn’t left thinking, Damn! I moved here just for the job and now I’m hosed. Also, I had my former freelance clients to fall back on for work when I was, for all intents and purposes, laid off. So getting the axe was hardly devastating.
What do you think? Have you ever jumped ship and started anew elsewhere for a job you couldn’t refuse at the time? How did it turn out? What would you do differently if you could hit rewind?
November 10th, 2006
Since I’m busy reviewing my final page proofs for the book today and yesterday’s post was so agenda-heavy, here’s a little light reading for you: a Mad Libs letter of resignation by humorist Rob Bloom from the online version of Monkeybicycle, a fun lit journal I read periodically.
In case you’re not currently looking to tell your boss where she or he can stick it, Rob has thoughtfully provided other prefab letters (also written in the helpful Mad Libs style) you can use to dump your high-school flame, drop out of school, or ditch your fiance.
(Also, please vote Tuesday. And please help convince others to do so if you have the time.)
November 3rd, 2006
Your company gives you $300 to pimp your cube any way you want. No permission slip required. What would you do? A Simpsons memorabilia museum? An Out of Africa theme? A soothing seascape?
Here’s what the folks at a Fort Worth ad agency came up with. If I worked at this place, I’d probably go for an EMP-inspired rock-memorabilia theme. Or maybe, in honor of Jersey’s same-sex marriage ruling, I’d go with a Garden State rocker theme. (For more Jersey Girl pride, see my homestate sister Judy McGuire.)
It’s worth noting that the cube dwellers given $300 to pimp their pods any way they pleased say they like coming to work more, which I guess makes their management pretty dang schmart.
October 29th, 2006
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