Coffee heat rising

Workplace issues

Huff-ata-puffa…

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Ten after 7:00 p.m. Trot up the hall and ratchet down the AC thermostat. Hotter than the hubs in here!

Actually, it’s prob’ly not that hot. I think it’s a little humid. Sticky and dark outside. Artificially cooled yet still plenty warm inside.

Ruby the Corgi has taken up residence at the foot of the bed. The human has perched on the bed, too…hoping against hope that the air conditioner will cool the bedroom into the sleep-able range. Both critters are huffing and puffing in an uncomfortable atmosphere.

At this point — this absurdly early point! — what the human would like most is to go to sleep. That ain’t likely to happen anytime soon, though. And so we loaf.

LOL! The best sound in the world resonates from the neighbors’ backyard just now: little kids playing and laughing. What COULD be better?

They have two tiny ones whose lovely voices fill the evening air. If they could just stay little for the rest of my life, eh?

I do love this neighborhood. Can’t imagine anyone wanting to live in Sun City, where the silence of the mausoleum holds forth. But…I guess that doesn’t fit everyone, eh?

My father hated the sound of kids playing. That was for a surprisingly rational reason: he worked the swing shift and so had to sleep during the day and go to work on the docks all night. So what he wanted most in the afternoons was…silence. Freakin’ dead silence! And he would get amazingly crabby if any of the neighbors’ brats were playing outside in their yards while he was trying to sleep.

He did love Sun City, though. As did my mother. When fighter jets weren’t charging around out of Luke Air Force Base, yea verily the sound of the mausoleum did hold forth. It was so quiet out there as to be positively creepy.

And as for my mother? She wasn’t any fonder of the symphony of kids’ play than he was. In fact, I don’t think she cared much for children at all. I often wondered why they had me — why, in particular, she had me, since she didn’t seem to enjoy children around her. But she was nuts about her own child, so I made out all right. I guess.

Actually, I think her grandmother — my great-grandmother — urged her to have a kid. Hence, I materialized one day back in 1945. VE day: the last day of World War II. Hence the name: “Victoria.”

Meanwhile, as we scribble…I reckon my excellent son has about finished off his endless and grinding and lonely day’s work — his employer discovered they could dispense with office rent by making their employees work out of their own homes! — and by now must be getting up from his desk to putter around the house.

Hmmm…. I do believe that if I had to do a full day’s office work, I would not like to do it from home. Altogether too grinding!

When I worked for the Great Desert University — mostly teaching, plus a little editorial — I did work from home most of the time. But the university provided me with an office and all its accouterments, so it was easy to break the monotony by traipsing out to campus and spending a few hours on the job there. But that doesn’t seem to be the case for M’hijito: he works from home. Period.

That, I prob’ly would hate. But then…let’s face it: I hate work. 😀

Work Life: Movin’ On

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A middle-aged man of my acquaintance — early middle age, but still: no kid — recently lost his job. Canned for no great fault of his, but you may be sure the ex-employer will try to foist blame on him by way of minimizing post-employment payments.

{sigh} I think what would I do if I were in his work boots? 

Well: obviously, my goal would be to move on in the most efficient and effective way: a) to get into a new job ASAP, and  b) to land a salary that would be as much as I was earning in the former salt mine — and preferably more.

Whew! We don’t ask much, eh? /eyeroll/

First thing to do, IMHO, would be to give myself a couple weeks of vacation time, simply to decompress. And during that time, think about what I’d really like to do and how to pull it off. Continue in the same line of work? Change careers? Go back to school for a degree that might open new doors? Apply for a job as a dog-catcher? Or…what?

This would be the time to look carefully at what’s out there: what kinds of jobs are available in your area, what openings exist, and what qualifications do you need. Also it may be a good time to consider whether you want to get a new degree or course of vocational training that would aim you in a new direction.

Next would be to network…network…network. Let all your friends know you’re in the market for a new job. But also join trade and professional groups (if you’re not already in at least a couple of them), show up at their meetings, and let those folks know you’re looking for fresh work, too.

Neither of these strategies, of course, guarantees that you’ll get any new opportunities…but sitting on your hands certainly will guarantee that.

Another avenue might be to go back to school: get into a graduate program or sign up for a new vocational training course. Several obvious advantages here, above and beyond keeping yourself busy: strong potential for networking opportunities, easy way to spiff up the résumé, and something constructive to keep your mind off your troubles.

Then…just keep on keepin’ on!

If you’re wanting to get hired by a new employer, start applying for jobs and keep on applying.

If you think you might like to start your own business, join a couple of networking and business groups. Show up: make friends, tell them what you can do for them, follow any leads they give you.

If you want to change careers, figure out what you think you want to do next, learn how to establish your qualifications for it, and dive in!

As you might have guessed, none of the options will be easy. But all of them are better than sitting on your hands. So…  Forward! Head on down that lonesome road…

Gender Pay Gaps: A$k and ye shall re¢eive?

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Goood morning! Comes a particularly stupid  article from the Chicago Daily Herald:  jobs with the highest gender gaps. Videography, it develops, is right up there at the top. Surprise! Pay in media companies tends to be 6.6% lower for women. Start low and get lower?

Hilariously, some expert on the topic remarks, “Establishing fair pay is going to be one of the big challenges tech and media companies are going to face.”

Where’s the “challenge” here? How hard is it to simply pay the same rate to everyone who holds a given job with a given seniority? And that does NOT mean lowering men’s pay so as to get away with paying everyone a lower rate.

This article suggests that women make a point of learning what their colleagues earn and then asking pointedly for raises to reach that rate.

At a large university I got a higher rate than my male counterpart who came on at the same rate I did, by repeatedly asking for raises. After about eight years, I was earning exactly $2 a year more than he did.

But  yes. In some industries nagging the boss for a raise works. SDXB discovered, at the time reporters tried to unionize Phoenix Newspapers, Inc., that he was highest earner among his colleagues, including guys who had been there for many more years than he had. That, he said, was because once or twice a year he went in to the boss and asked for a raise. And he was good at his job…he was a multi-award-winning investigative reporter.

The phenomenon I mention above, in which raises across the board are lowered to what employers imagine women are worth,  is called “the pinking of the newsroom” in our parts. When The Arizona Republic started hiring women, salaries across the board dropped. They paid women less, and they used that as an excuse to pay men less. Overall, pay dropped drastically.

One could argue that’s just a function of de-unionization, off-shoring of jobs, and repression of the US middle class, all of which indeed are real phenomena. But IMHO it’s not a coincidence that dropping pay across the board occurred at about the time women gained access to jobs that used to pay a living wage. Pay for a workforce doesn’t come up. It goes down whenever possible. When women are paid less, eventually men are paid less, too.

The State of Your Health: Is It Your Employer’s Business?

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Today at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon, we heard a panel discussion on employee wellness programs, presented by folks who have a vested interest therein: mostly directors of such projects.

It was interesting, particularly as an effort to persuade corporate leadership that employees’ health bears, in ways obvious and subtle, on the bottom line. And the discussion pushed one of my buttons.

Among the strategies the panel presented is a program in which workers are coaxed, by way of a $15/month bonus added to the paycheck, into submitting to tests to determine whether they’ve been smoking tobacco. There are similar thrusts in these programs having to do with diabetes prevention and control, obesity control, and the like. But this one exemplifies most perfectly, to my mind, what is wrong with such Big Mommy schemes. Videlicet:

What you choose to do about your health maintenance is none of your employer’s business.

Your health care is between you and your doctor, not between you and your doctor and your department manager and HR.

While I personally do not smoke, chew, or snort tobacco — and no offense, dear nicotine-loving friends, but I fear people who do are a little stupid — the stuff is a legal product available freely all over the country. There’s no law against smoking tobacco. And your employer has absolutely no business telling you that you can’t engage in a lawful activity on your own time, outside of the plant.

And your employer has even less business (we’re in the negative numbers now!) demanding that you submit to a test to confirm your word that you do not smoke. It’s an unwarranted and unacceptable intrusion into your private life.

Whence this anxiety to insert a whole new level of nosiness into our private lives?

The almighty dollar, that’s whence. The hype generated around the so-called “obesity epidemic,” which was recognized as hooey when it first arose and which some inquiring minds still question, represents a vast money-making opportunity. As in billions and trillions of dollars. The very folks who, over today’s lunch, regaled us with the glories of in-house “wellness” programs themselves stand to profit. Whether they work as wage slaves for companies that institute the programs or whether they own businesses contracting to companies to run such programs, they’ll profit.

If we’re all being bribed — or ordered — to take tobacco tests, what will be next?

Alcohol use is one hell of a lot more detrimental to productivity than puffing tobacco on your own time. It really would make more sense to test people, regularly, to determine how many cocktails or glasses of wine they had with dinner the night before.

Sugar: Exceptionally bad for you. Will we all be required to take blood glucose tests on Monday before we sit down to work?

Salt: Worse yet! You don’t even have to be fat for salt to drive up your blood pressure. How’s about we add a blood sodium level while we’re drawing blood for those glucose tests? No more hot dogs and potato chips at those Sunday afternoon football games for you, pal!

Folks. We have got to get a grip on this kind or exploitation. And somehow, someday Americans really need to come back to a basic fact of pre-Facebook, pre-Google, pre-Big Brother life: what’s your business is your business. And no one has any right to demand to poke their corporate nose into it.

“Follow Your Bliss”…REALLY?

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Have you read this exceptionally fine post at I Pick Up Pennies? If not, you absolutely should. It’s the most articulate rant I’ve seen yet on an idiotic idea that permeates the American middle class. As Abby encapsulates it: “I’m sick unto death of hearing, ‘Do what you love, and the money will follow.'”

Amen, sister!

The truth of the matter is, there’s a reason we call our jobs “work.” We’re not supposed to think of them as defining our lives. Work is what you do to put food on the table and a roof over your head. Fun, fulfillment, and all that good stuff is what you do outside of work. Nowhere is it written that you have to “follow your bliss” to make a living.

Well. Nowhere credible, anyway.

While there certainly are jobs that are fun and fulfilling for people with a cast of  mind that fits said work, there aren’t enough such jobs to go around. Even those of us who have the skills to become, say, a forest ranger, a handsomely paid travel writer for the New York Times, a rock guitarist, a mightily marketed dog trainer, or an artisanal bread baker are unlikely to find that kind of work, because lots of other folks, most of them with more talent, better training, and more experience than ours, want those jobs, too.

Abby managed to survive a life-threatening illness that very nearly spirited her away and that left her with some long-term disabilities, which she has described at her blog. Now that she can return to the workplace, she has a decidedly pragmatic view of work:

Now, each time I get a paycheck, I’m flooded with an emotion that I can only describe as equal parts pride and greed. Well, 60/40 tops.

Maybe the ability to work — or, more realistically, the paycheck — should be a passion in and of itself. Whether due to unemployment or physical limitations, there are a lot of folks who wouldn’t care what they did, just that they could do it.

I, on the other hand, have been amazingly lucky in the health department and uncommonly privileged in other ways. These circumstances have made it possible for me, over the years, indeed to “follow my bliss.” Several “dream” jobs have come my way, and every time I’ve settled in to a desk at a workplace where some people would kill to be, I’ve thought, “Gee! I could do this forever! I’m going to hang onto this job for as long as I live.”

Uh huh.

I’ve been a freelance writer. I’ve been a magazine editor for the largest regional in the United States. I’ve been a full-time faculty member at a large research university, teaching writing and editing to upper-division and graduate students. I founded and directed a nonfiction writing program at that university. For the same vast learning factory, I founded and directed a scholarly publishing office that was unique in the land, possibly in the world. Today I’m a contract editor and I teach an online course in magazine writing, from home. All in all, these were (and are) pretty fun jobs.

But lemme tellya something: the money does not follow.

When you get a raise after ten years at your job and then you learn that a cashier at Costco earns as much as you do but she doesn’t have to take work home with her, she doesn’t put in hours of unpaid overtime with no comp time, she isn’t expected to spend her weekends and vacation time working for no pay…well. It does something to your “bliss.”

At one point I learned Costco was paying its forklift operators more than I was earning.

For this I got a Ph.D.? For this I cranked out a string of books through major publishers and more articles than you or I can count? For this I ended up with Social Security benefits that are a fraction of SDXB’s, who never finished a bachelor’s degree?

Okay, okay. No, money isn’t everything. But it sure as hell beats whatever’s in second place. When you realize you have significant talents, finely honed skills, and can do a job that benefits the society at large and that you’re earning less than a janitor for the City of Phoenix earns, you realize that your “bliss” is simply not valued. And the “bliss” part of the job slips away — imperceptibly at first, but over time the slippage becomes noticeable.

When you’re working every weekend, most evenings, and every holiday for nothing, the bliss starts to show some tarnish.

When you’re paid nine months of the year but are expected to spend your summers in meetings, teacher training,  and course prep — free of pay of course — “bliss” gets tired.

When a former student of yours who’s doing public relations declines to apply for the job you had at the regional magazine (which circulates in every country in the world!) because it pays nowhere near enough — nothing like what she earns in her 9-to-5, paid-overtime job — the blissful bubble in which you dwell gets a hole in it.

Would I care to be a janitor at the City of Phoenix? No. Would I like to be a Costco cashier? Maybe — maybe not. Do I want to be a forklift operator? Mmmm…I think I could do that job. Would I like to work in the PR department of a huge utility producing its light-weight in-house newsletter, tweeting messages from Management over the company’s intranet, and serving on the outfit’s Dilbertish cheerleading team, nine to five, no weekend work, no evening work, full benefits, a defined pension plan and Social Security? Damn right I would.

Just imagine having a life outside of work!

When you “follow your bliss” (heaven help us 🙄 ), what happens is that work merges with life. And when that happens, there is no life outside of work. All of your life is your work.

And that is why, IMHO, it’s not only foolish to go around trumpeting that people should make their living at something that makes them “passionate,” it’s probably dangerous. When you identify yourself with your work, you have no escape from work. And ultimately, you feel you have no worth outside of work.

Seriously. I had an editor who talked about having been out of work for three months after being laid off a job. The words he used in describing that period in his life were “I felt like I wasn’t worth anything.” This was a guy who wasn’t a worker with a fungible job. He was an editor.

That was his identity. No identity, no personhood. No personhood, no value.

From the vantage point of two careers started, built, and (mostly) wrapped up, I’d say the healthy approach is to think of work as separate from self. Work is something you do to support yourself and your children. If you enjoy it, bully for you. If you don’t, try to find a new trade or a new employer.

Either way, build a life outside of work, and seek your “bliss” there.

Another Shafting for Adjuncts, Comin’ Our Way

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We’re told, through a listserv published for community college district adjuncts, that the policy for adjunct faculty is to be rabidly enforced. We are NOT TO BE TEACHING more than three sections a semester.

Interestingly, that appears to include summer sessions. That is, your summer session time is counted in to your academic-year teaching hours, somehow, through the magic of accounting sleight-of-hand. You get a few extra hours beyond 20 per week per semester, but that would allow you to take on only one course in the summer. If you teach any more than that (this summer, I have two), you will be forced into the state pension plan, in which there is no chance you will ever become vested (you have to work for the State of Arizona or Maricopa County for 10 years to become vested!).

Your “contribution” to the state pension plan is 11.13%. In other words, if you dare to take on one course too many, if you perform any substitute teaching, or if you serve on any committees, you get an 11.3% pay cut. Thus your unpenalizable salary is kept rigidly low, and you are smartly punished if you make a mistake.

Now… Each time a contract ends—which happens at the end of each term—you are considered “terminated” from state service. Therefore, you can fill out forms and jump through hoops and demand that the “contribution” be refunded to you.

Thus it’s not exactly a pay cut.

It’s less of a pay cut if you’re over 57½, because once you’ve reached the age at which you’re permitted to take drawdowns from tax-deferred savings, you may take out the money without a penalty from the feds.

If you’re too young to take out money from a tax-deferred plan, then the only way to hang on to what you’ve earned is to roll it over into an IRA.

Well, of course…you wouldn’t be working for $2,400 a semester if you didn’t need the cash flow, and need it in a big way. So what this amounts to is a nice little shafting and another tool to keep adjuncts down.

Since I can get the money back at the end of each semester, it won’t much matter to me. As long as my chair can get away with it, I’ll take on two summer courses and just let the SOBs confiscate 11.13% of my pay; then take it back when I’m “terminated” at the end of each semester. For me, it will just mean another helping of bureaucratic hassle.

It still will provide enough to pay my share of the mortgage on the downtown house, plus a few extra dollars to help make ends meet. I sure could do without having to fill out more forms and argue with more bureaucrats, though. Gawd, how I hate that!