Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A dentist, a hotel clerk, a bar pianist an elevator starter and a janitor (also ex-salesman) walk into a chapter of Working. What, never heard that classic joke? Neither have I. Dr. Stephen Bartlett (Dentist) First we start with the dentist who got a late start (28…
If I haven’t mentioned it before, I’ve got a co-worker I rather dislike. They’re whiny, unhelpful, bad at slacking (no not that one), rude and generally an unpleasant person to be around. They take longer breaks than they say and have been switching shifts with people who should be leaving earlier. One of those times…
There’s a concept in the Less Wrong community when it comes to issues of bias and politics and it relates to how politics numbs or even erodes our sense of sanity when trying to discuss things “reasonably” (whatever that means). And although I sympathize with what LW type folks are saying and am clearly using…
The recent movie Boss Baby (starring Alec Baldwin) has on its cover (for the DVD), “Cookies are for closers.” This was a line I knew I had heard somewhere else, but I couldn’t remember where. I had never really heard of Glengarry Glen Ross (henceforth GGR for sake of ease) as a play, let alone…
A friend of mine who I have mentioned before, Cathy Reisenwitz, sent me this link a while back about thoughts on emotional labor and how it can be ethical. I’ve talked about emotional labor a few times on this site and specifically how it plays out at work but this article takes a more general…
A fan on Twitter linked me this article about the hardships of being unemployed and looking for a job. As someone who #knowsthosefeels, a lot of the points struck true for me. I’m not so much into Marxism or that part of the left but the personal stuff was really depressing but in a very…
There are many ways in the workplace that we are contorted and twisted to be the “best” worker imaginable. Best, from the bosses standpoint of course. And from that standpoint we shall be on time, no matter if there are snow storms or not, the customer is always right (even if they’re making rude comments)…
In late August, Barry Schwartz a professor of psychology wrote an article for the New York times called Rethinking Work. Anything that’s going to get us challenge our contemporary notions of work is going to interest me. But sadly Schwartz’s article isn’t so much challenging things like the Puritan work ethic, the obsession with fast-living,…
For the past few years I’ve been in and out of a few different jobs. They were all part-time and I hated pretty much all of them. They never gave me much joy besides some of the cool people I was lucky enough to meet. Of course there were also assholes and asshole management and…
So keep in mind it’s mostly just me writing these articles. I can’t really stay up to date on current events and by the time I can they’re usually long gone. With that explained it may make a bit more sense why I’m only now making some comments on the Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn…