Since we’re on the cusp of Labor Day weekend, maybe you’d like to spend part of it thinking about your job. 

No?

But, but. . . . .we can’t get away from work.  It takes up most/all/a good deal of our time!  So why not be happy there?  To this end, via Florinda, here’s a handy article from Life Learning Today, “25 Tips to Become More Productive and Happy at Work.”

It’s a long list.  If you sum it up, it’s what your mother always told you: 

You are as happy as you make up your mind to be.

But, snarkiness aside, there’s some worthwhile stuff here.  So your assignment, should you decide to accept it, is to read the list now, and then read it again on Monday night.  The next morning you will be ready to hit the ground running.

Meanwhile, have a great weekend!  Working Girl plans to celebrate Labor Day by not laboring until Tuesday.  She suggests you do the same.  (Except for the reading & thinking part.) 

Intriguing article on Tuesday in the good old Wall St. Journal: “Advice for Women on Developing a Leadership Style.”

The angle is that it’s difficult for women to learn how to manage others because we don’t have role models and we want to be seen as ”nice.”

True.  Of course, being the boss doesn’t come naturally to men either.  In Working Girl’s observation, for a long time U.S. industry relied on leadership skills taught to men who served in WWII.  When this generation started to die out, so did a good management style.

So the first piece of advice WG would offer a young woman thrown into a position of responsibility is not to assume that if she were a man it would all be easier.  It would just be different.

The second piece of advice:  Keep in mind that your subordinates are just as afraid of you as you are of them.  In fact, your minions aren’t thinking of you at all.  They’re thinking of themselves and their job security.

Number three:  It doesn’t matter if people think you are “nice.”  What matters is that they feel they can rely on you to be a sane, consistent, fair, responsible manager.    

Four:  Feel free to put on a mask.  Even though you may in fact be a quivering gelatinous ball of anxiety, force yourself to look confident.  You can do it!  Pretend you are an actor playing a role.  Eventually the role will become real.  The goal?  Project an aura of quiet strength. 

People love quiet strength.  It makes them feel secure and happy and relaxed.  Fake it until you make it.

Summer is almost over.  Here in Seattle some of the maple trees are already turning crimson.

And although the whole no-one-takes-vacations-anymore lament should be officially dead, this one from CBS Sunday Morning News* is funny.  That Nancy Giles is a hoot.

It came at an appropriate time because Working Girl for once took a long weekend OFF (thanks to houseguests from New Jersey) and it reminded her what a rut she gets in when she falls into the habit of working seven days a week.  We did some fun things–visited the new sculpture garden, drove out to Snoqualmie Falls.  Refreshing.

So Working Girl, for one, is going to try getting her bong-chika-bong-bong back.  How about you?

*thanks to Monsieur Alphonse D’Auto for this link.

Working Girl used to be a bank teller and always got really annoyed when customers would exclaim with envy, ”Don’t you just love working around all that money?”

Well, no.  It wasn’t Working Girl’s money.  And when money is not yours to spend, it’s just dirty pieces of paper.

But it’s true that people tend to feel ownership of the objects they work with.  Maybe that’s what the customers meant.

Which is the point behind a NYT piece from yesterday entitled, “I Lost My Laptop in Outer Space, and Other Tales of Office Theft.”  Author Lisa Belkin opens with a confession that once, long long ago, she snitched a role of toilet paper from the restroom of the company she worked for.

Big deal, you say.  That’s the best she can do? 

Anyway, it put Working Girl in mind of her own toilet-paper capers from long long ago.  But she did not take the office TP because she was too busy and important to go to the store.  No, she embezzled because she chronically had, as they say, too much month left at the end of her money. 

One of the points of the article is the lack of guilt most people feel over stealing pens, paper clips, reams of paper, laptops, and even furniture from their employers. 

So now is the time to state that Working Girl never felt guilty about stealing toilet paper.  She probably should have.  But she suspected that, had she asked the boss if she could take a few rolls, he likely would have said yes.  But could you ask a question like this?  Working Girl could not.

That’s our trip down memory lane for today.  Odd that a toilet paper memory, and a money memory, would bubble up at the same time.  Hmmm.  Food for thought.

Have a good weekend.

So everyone knows that women earn less money than men.  But no one seems to know why.  Theories abound:

• Women are crappy negotiators.
• Women start out their careers earning less and this discrepancy follows them throughout their lives.
• Women work the kinds of jobs that pay poorly.
• Women take off to have babies and then never make up for lost time.
• Women choose to put family responsibilities over the 80-hour work weeks needed for high-paying jobs.
• Women are less ambitious than men.

Of all these, the poor-negotiator problem is the one that’s probably easiest to solve.  Wanna see some fun and helpful role-playing?  Sashay on over to the Whitney and Wyatt Show!  This week’s two-part episode is called “Why Women Underearn.”  

(Full disclosure:  Whitney is a friend of Working Girl.  FOWG?)

Melissa Grossman of Hatchlings writes with this question:

I really enjoyed listening to the radio show that featured your Women Embracing Change group.  I’ve long wanted to be a part of a small cluster of women such as this who are linked to a common purpose and who together fill some need related to that purpose.

This is a two-part question:

1. What are your recommendations for those of us who would like to form similar groups?
2. How did your group design its alliance so that it retains the qualities that drew you together in the first place?

Thanks!

Dear Melissa,

Thanks for the kind words about Women Embracing Change.  It’s a new group but it has been fun and rewarding and an adventure so far. 

Here’s what Elaine Chan, our “leader”, had to say in answer to your question:

To begin with, at a minimum, you need to like each other!  Melissa, Karen, and I liked each other very much to begin with.  Then when Melissa and Karen asked that I meet with Sharon, I knew I would like Sharon too.  We began to talk about forming a Mastermind group.  Then when I met Dr. Jean, I knew I had to get her into the group because of the Health and Wealth concept I was developing.  We all brainstormed along that theme and–voilà!–a beautiful group called Women Embracing Change was born!  In terms of “designing the alliance,” we always keep in mind the benefits that the group effort brings to each individual.  No one should ever feel left out or excluded.  That goes for the work effort as well!

Melissa Wadsworth adds:

I would recommend talking through your goals with women who might like to form such a group.  What would your focus be?  What challenges/solutions or opportunities would you address?  What kind of information might you impart?  How do your various expertises fit together?  Do you have a pool of women you network with or any established mailing lists through which you could approach women for seminars?  Do you have experience putting on seminars?  If not, how would you get this information?  Do you want to make money or raise funds?  We formed an LLC, which is a commitment to the shared goals of the group.  Be sure to discuss how the group functions from a mission and money perspective.  Do members have an equal voice?  Is there a financial commitment in order to start the group?  Then if everyone agrees, you have a group.

There’s a start!  Keep us posted, Melissa!

Sheesh.  Mainstream media continues to flog the people-just-don’t-take-real-vacations-anymore angle. 

Last Wednesday the Wall St. Journal splashed page one of its “Personal Journal” with Vacation Deflation: Breaks Get Shorter.  On Sunday the Seattle Times ran a piece called The Incredible Shrinking Vacation.  Then yesterday the WSJ went at the same idea from another angle (A Vacationing Boss Should Take A Break). 

Bottom line:  We are taking shorter vacations, closer to home, and when we do venture off we can’t resist checking in via Blackberry.  Like numbers? Only 14% of employed U.S. adults plan to take a full two-week vacation this year.  35% will not take all the vacation days they have coming.

Wailing and lamentation throughout the land.  Woe is us.

But why not try looking at it this way:  Vacations are unnatural. 

Do other mammals take breaks?*  Don’t lions and tigers and bears work every single day?  Did cavemen cart themselves off to the beach for two weeks every summer?  How about our great-grandparents?  Chances are if they were farmers they enjoyed few, if any, holidays.  (Cows have to be milked twice a day and don’t do it themselves.)

So–taking the long view–vacations are a recent phenomenon.  Most humanoids throughout history worked seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.  Maybe we’re just reverting to the way things used to be.

Is this making anyone feel any better? 

*Except for housecats, of course, whose lives are one long spa weekend.

That’s a line from Then We Came To The End (Little, Brown 2007), Joshua Ferris’s first novel.

The workplace has long been a popular setting for books, movies, and television shows but work itself is rarely the actual subject.  Why not?  Work is as important as love in the importance it has on our lives and happiness (or woe). 

So it’s impressive that Ferris has tackled the idea of “work,” what it means to us, how it consumes our lives, its dangers, its joys, its (often) futility, and its power. 

Things he does exactly right:  He perfectly captures modern corporate office life.  He nails the village aspect of all workplaces–a disparate cast of quirky and incompatible personalities forced to spend all their time together.  Most important, his long chapter about Lynn Mason, the boss facing cancer, is riveting and sensitive and heartbreaking.

Lynn is the kind of working girl who’s a star in her career and a sad, lonely, needy forty-something woman everywhere else.  She even has cats.  But while her story serves as a cautionary tale, she is very real and you still like her, still care about her, and still understand her.  All Ferris’s characters eventually come to life but Lynn is the most affecting.

It’s “eventually come to life” because the novel is not easy to get into.  This is because, weirdly, Ferris writes from the point of view of “we.”  A whole novel written in the first person plural is initially annoying and ultimately distancing.  He may have meant it to have an inclusive effect but it did not work for Working Girl.  If you’re lucky, you learn to ignore this tic.  The very last line of the book sort of explains why he uses this device, but it’s still not worth it.* 

Even Ferris must on some level realize this because the fabulous Lynn chapter (”The Thing to Do and the Place to Be”) is not written in first person plural, but in third person from her point of view.  That’s gotta tell you something! 

But POV weirdnesses and temporal shifts (don’t ask) do not add up to a bad book.  Then We Came To The End is well worth reading.  It’s wicked funny, for one thing.  The prose is clean and compulsively readable.  Is it an ‘angry little book about work”?  No, it’s not angry.  It’s, in the end, hopeful.  It’s, in the end, about work as consolation.  Bravo.

*But, hey, you might like the “we”.  The NYT did. 

You might get some decorating tips from our working girl this week!  She’s Sue, a fabulous and talented interior designer.

WG – You’re an interior designer.  Is that the same thing as an interior decorator?

Sue – There’s a big difference between decorators and designers!  Decorators deal mainly with what colors to put where and what fabrics to use.  Designers deal with spatial layout, balance, wall layout—I coordinate with electricians, plumbers, architects.  You need some education.  I have a five-year degree in interior design and a two-year associate degree.

WG – Wow.  That’s 7 years!

Sue – Yeah, in that was two years of architecture, two years of interiors, and two years of fine arts, painting and watercolor and sculpture and woodworking.  In my work you really have to understand the arts.

WG – That sounds super interesting and fun.  What kind of places do you design?

Sue – Mostly restaurants and retail.  I like to do commercial.  You can do some wild cutting-edge things.  In a home, you need to play it a little safer because it’s something people live with every day.  A public space can be a bit more over the top.

WG – It’s true that décor has a big effect on our emotional states.

Sue – When people step into one of my restaurants I want them to feel good about themselves from the moment they come through the door.  There’s that whole sense of sitting down and breaking bread, the ceremony of a meal.  I want people to feel comfortable and wonderful and welcome.

WG – I think the only thing most people know about restaurant décor is that old joke about how there is never enough lighting to be able to read the menu.

Sue – I sympathize with that!  You know, there are energy codes that dictate how much lighting we can use.  I can have one watt per square foot.  So in a 5,000 square foot restaurant that’s 5,000 watts.  You need good lighting in the kitchen, of course, and the entry and restrooms also have to be well lit.  So that 5,000 watts gets used up really fast!  You can’t have overall lighting, you have to concentrate on pathways.

WG – Most people look better in dim lighting anyway.

Sue – Ha.  I try to make sure that the lighting that hits people is flattering.  If it does come down from above I wash it with a sconce so we don’t get that baggy eyes effect.

WG – Horrors.  Have you ever done something wild that the client hated?

Sue – Yeah.

WG – Did you have to change it?

Sue – Yeah.  The big challenge is to get them to wait until it’s finished.  It’s like a symphony when the orchestra is tuning up and it doesn’t sound right but when they play the finished piece it sounds great.  I was working on a restaurant where I used a very bold gold on the walls.  It wasn’t finished—there was debris everywhere, the lighting wasn’t in, and when the client walked in he said, I don’t like the wall color.  I said, You’re kidding!

WG – What happened?

Sue – We eventually did go with the original color.  The client was happy!  

WG – Ha.  He saw the error of his ways!  I’m curious.  What does your own house look like??

Sue – It’s funny, I was sitting here this evening and looking around my house and saying, Oh my gosh, I have three door jambs in the living room and all the casings are different.  It’s a house in evolution.  It was built in 1935 and we’ve tried to revive its character and personality.  I keep the windows big and wide so we can enjoy the outdoors inside.  We like the creature comforts.

WG – Do you have a decorating tip for us?

Sue – When something isn’t quite right and I don’t know why, the thing I do is step back and look at it from a different angle.  I’ll close my eyes part way, make my vision fuzzy, and ask myself what am I seeing—clutter, balance, color.  Then I take the look in the opposite direction.  Less clutter, less balance, etc.  I always look for the anomaly in the norm. 

Kit writes in with this very good question:

What advice would you give to someone who wants to quit her job?  My two daughters have each been in this situation and it’s not easy.  What should you say?  When?  How much notice should you give?  What are some of the things to pay attention to beyond the obvious “don’t burn your bridges”?

Dear Kit,

Your daughters have already figured out an important truth about jobs:  No matter how much you love or hate your job, one thing is certain.  Sooner or later, you will leave it.  So when you do, do it right. 

Herewith, Working Girl’s Top Ten Tips For Quitting With Class:

1. Before you give notice, find out if your company has any guidelines (check the employee handbook).  Does it specify amount of notice?  Do you have benefits coming, such as pay for unused vacation time?
2. Resign in person.  Follow up with a formal resignation letter.
3. Give at least two weeks’ notice.  More for “bigger” jobs. 
4. They might say, “Why don’t you just take those two weeks off as paid vacation?” and walk you out the door so remove personal stuff from your office or work area before you give notice.
5. After you’ve given notice (and assuming you’re still on the job) continue to give an honest day’s labor for an honest day’s pay.  I.e., don’t slack off.  It’s tacky.  Before you leave, have all your projects done or up to date.
6. Thank people.  Say how much you enjoyed working with or for them.  If this isn’t true, thank them and say how much you learned.  (You learned you didn’t want to work with people like them!) 
7. Resist the urge to tell off your boss, no matter how much he/she deserves it.  It would make you feel better for only a minute and could come back to bite you in the butt.
8. Never use resignation as an empty threat. 
9. No matter how happy you are to be leaving a job, subdue your visible joy.
10. If your boss makes a counteroffer to get you to stay, think hard.  By giving notice you have let your employer know you want to leave.  Your relationship has changed forever.  And hey—the company may only be planning to keep you on until they’ve found someone more “loyal.”