Here we have an interesting mixture of jobs: a private investigator, a photographer and a film critic. What’s notable about this section is that despite however much you might think a photographer and a film critic may have to say, it’s the PI who spends around ten pages talking about his job, not the critic or…
A few days ago I had the frustrating experience of having one of my favorite managers (and also one of my favorite people) actually act like, you know, an actual manager. This meant that they would constantly put pressure on me to do things, even if I was clearly disinterested or barely feigning interest. This…
A lot of the times when I look at what I’m doing for work, much of it is is laid bare in simple rules. Hierarchical chains of command often impress upon its lower members some values and applications of those values that would be easily presentable to AI. The phrase, “a monkey could do this!”…
I read an article about how workplaces can be a toxic environment to be (shocking!). Some of the article correctly talks about narcissistic and self-aggrandizing managers who demean their employees. But the study it refers back to also relies on categorizing a type of toxic worker as (in part) someone who thinks rules can be…
Whose Line Is It Anyway? is perhaps one of my favorite TV shows of all time. Despite the fact that I only started watching it later on, have not seen all of the episodes and wouldn’t be able to name most of the main cast by name. It’s a show about improvisation where the host…
I make sacrifices for this site and I just want to be up front about that. For instance, sometimes I watch a bunch of boring British people talk about the state of work in the most droll sense for over an hour. But really, my attention span only lasted the first 45 minutes and that…
One of the “best” things at my job is that it’s clear that by and large the managers there don’t want to be managers. One reason for that may have to do with the splintering of different managers. There’s shift leads, assistant managers and then the store manager. The shift lead that I usually work…
Nick’s Notes: If you haven’t read William’s critiques yet, make sure you do that first! I’ll separate my response into two parts as William does with his critiques. The first part will revolve chiefly around “aspiration culture” as William calls it and automation. The second part will center around the meaning of work, suffering and character building…
A while back CNN Money had an article about the supposed “death” of the 40-hour work week. Now, the Gallup Poll they mention I’ve already talked about. And most of us here already know that the 40 hours work week is, generally speaking, not actually a thing for a lot of people. There are all…
There’s some data here about what sort of organizations millennials might prefer. It involves more sharing of information, less hierarchy and less of the usual rat-race. I haven’t dug into the data but if so, it seems promising. It’ll at least make some of the worst parts of capitalist less harmful and thus perhaps inspire…