One of the biggest reasons Working as a book…um…works is because it’s so deliberately ordered by Terkel. Take this chapter for example. We went from a boss who was a pretty conventional and happy boss, to a slightly less conventional boss but one who still tried ruling and another who was tired of being a…
On the way back from Sorry to Bother You (directed and written by The Coup’s Boots Riley) a couple of my friends were discussing what made the film work. We all agreed that it was a movie we’d never seen before and unlike Black Panther (a terrific movie in its own right) it wasn’t just…
The second half of Aggretsuko gives us a deeper look at the characters that we’ve already gotten a decent picture of. Retsuko continues to be a shy red panda woman who constantly lets people walk all over her, take advantage of her and use her as a source of labor (mostly manual but emotional as…
After reading this article on the New York Times about The Brutal Life of Sanitation Workers and watching Top 10 Most Disgusting Jobs, it got me thinking about why workers who have such gross jobs get such little respect. Whether in their pay, the amount of social recognition and maybe even pride they take in…
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…
Today I went through an article on Cracked all about job interviews and how awful they are, I wondered what a similar article might look like if it focused on the next part: Actually having the job. Here’s my version. 5. Your resume didn’t really matter in the end It’s a nice initial feeling when…
A while ago I read a very interesting article entitled, Discretion still matters - don’t ruin your career by sharing too much and today upon re-reading it I also checked out an article that it links to about vulnerability in the workplace. As someone who is fairly authentic in terms of my personality (snarky, sarcastic,…
I. I’ve commented on Elizabeth S. Anderson’s views before with a mix of praise and criticism. This time around I’m more on her side than against it, but that’s because the hosts of Free Thoughts (a libertarian podcast) have some fairly banal positions when it comes to issues current working conditions. In that vein, some…
There’s a semi-recent theory in psychology called Terror Management Theory and it concerns how we all try to live with the fact that we’re going to die. It says that in trying to deal with this we build churches, create nationalities to celebrate, busy ourselves with projects (like writing) and enter other worlds through books…
Last week we started from the bottom and now we’re…here? This continuation of The Demon Lover (referring to those who work with cars) is more focused on the middle and upper echelon of the Ford factory we saw in the last part. Whereas Phil Stallings the spot-welder wanted to be a utility worker, this time…