American Airlines fires AA.com designer for reaching out to customer 1.) Graphic designer and blogger has bad experience with AA.com, 2.) Designer mocks up AA.com page design and blogs about it, 3.) AA.com UX designer emails blogger with info about challenges the AA.com web team faces, 4.) Blogger posts UX designer's response (anonymously), 5.) American Airlines figures out who UX designer is and fires him/her for talking. [more inside]
posted by tippiedog on Nov 17, 2009 - 158 comments

A 51 year old father of two has just become the 24th suicide in 18 months at France Telecom, also known as Orange. Apparently, it had something to do with conditions at work, but France Telecom's CFO is punting a different theory.
posted by Elizabeth the Thirteenth on Sep 29, 2009 - 86 comments

Susan is currently looking for work. But in this case, instead of asking someone to hire her, Susan is looking to hire a boss. If you're a boss interested in this opportunity, you can apply here.
posted by ShawnStruck on Jun 4, 2009 - 194 comments

A public television program about finding jobs. This isn't the expected roundtable of flabby retraining advice from consultants pimping their own firms. It's 30-second elevator pitches and happy landings. Read a news article about it. (via The Mediavore.)
posted by Mo Nickels on Apr 15, 2009 - 3 comments

Disability and Employment in Argentina: The Right to Be Exploited?
posted by aniola on Apr 11, 2009 - 7 comments

Henry's Turkey Service is a Texas-based company that for 34 years has employed dozens of mentally disabled men to work in an Iowa turkey processing plant. The state fire marshall shut down the mens residence over the weekend due to "deplorable" conditions. Now the investigation continues into civil rights and other violations. [more inside]
posted by justlisa on Feb 8, 2009 - 24 comments

LayoffDaily.com -- thoroughly cataloging each day's depressing layoff news, from the very small companies to the very large, and updated several times a day. (But there's also a small section of the site devoted to news of companies and government org's that are hiring.)
posted by Asparagirl on Feb 2, 2009 - 42 comments

The Best Job in the World. Would you like to be paid AUD$150,0000 to live for free in a three-bedroom villa on an island in the Great Barrier Reef for six months, simply in exchange for blogging about your experience? Yeah, so would I. Submit your application before February 22nd, and see if you make it through the other millions of people who are sure to apply. And no--it's not a joke.
posted by schroedinger on Jan 12, 2009 - 70 comments

Wondering which Obama administration job is right for you? The Plum Book (2008 Edition) is a US government publication that lists some 8000 jobs (including salary ranges) in the executive branch that will become available upon the inauguration of President-Elect Obama. (Individual chapters are .pdf files.) [more inside]
posted by BitterOldPunk on Nov 14, 2008 - 34 comments

Glassdoor: an inside look at companies from those who know them best.
posted by allkindsoftime on Jun 16, 2008 - 25 comments

A Resume Experiment. In which career blog JibberJobber responds to a request for resume help by assembling a team of hiring managers and professional resume writers to review the document: Part 1 : Introduction | Part 2: First Impressions/Reactions | Part 3: Formatting the Resume | Part 4: Content is King | Part 5: Wrap Up
posted by lalex on Feb 25, 2008 - 37 comments

The Shoe Shine Boys (1,2,3,4,5), and Girls (1,2,3) [more inside]
posted by hadjiboy on Feb 21, 2008 - 3 comments

Oh, I say old chap--do you mind not going all "immigrant" on me, and spitting all over the place? Thank you very much. (how Britain proposes to solve the problem of integrating its migrant population)
posted by hadjiboy on Feb 6, 2008 - 109 comments

Worst employees of 2007 Among the winners: a business that manufactures pot-laced candy shut down by the DEA, an airline employee who groped a sleeping passenger next to him, an ambulance driver charged with DUI, Manufacturing and distribution of counterfeit DVDs, Immigration employees committing green card scams, USPS letter carrier stealing cash from gift cards, a man strangling his boss at a cocktail party and a Catholic priest arrested for indecent exposure for naked jogging at the high school track.
posted by psmealey on Dec 12, 2007 - 46 comments

The earliest recorded noncompete case was brought in England in 1414. Since then their power and utility has depended on which line you were signing. While some have shown they impede mobility of "superstar" talent could it also be they prevent entire geographic areas from maximizing their potential?
posted by zap rowsdower on Dec 6, 2007 - 7 comments

Second Life is a great place for a virtual job fair, right? Well, maybe not. (That recruiter's lucky all s/he got handed was a beer...) Even the cops are getting in on the action.. Time magazine probably thinks it's a bad idea, though maybe they wouldn't have 5 years ago.
posted by dersins on Aug 22, 2007 - 23 comments

In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don't Feel Rich [NYTimes Link] Mr. Kremen estimated his net worth at $10 million. That puts him firmly in the top half of 1 percent among Americans, according to wealth data from the Federal Reserve, but barely in the top echelons in affluent towns like Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Atherton. So he logs 60- to 80-hour workweeks because, he said, he does not think he has nearly enough money to ease up.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero on Aug 5, 2007 - 142 comments

"Wasting time gets a bad rap", says Lisa Belkin in today's NYTimes, who argues that time often considered "unproductive" or "wasted" in today's workaholic culture is actually time well spent- "Over the years I have come to see that the hours away from the writing are the time when the real work gets done." Readers seem to agree.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero on Jun 1, 2007 - 25 comments

A Nashville-area blogger wrote about her experience at an employment agency called JL Kirk & Associates, formerly Bernard Haldane. An associate at the employment agency responded to the blog post. The blogger reposted the employment agent's comment as its own post, also including a rebuttal. Yesterday the blogger received a certified letter from an attorney representing the agency (text of letter) stating that the blogger must remove the posts by 4/13 or risk a lawsuit for "tortuous interference" (sic). They also threatened to "contact (her) Internet Service Provider, Comcast, to have (her) internet access shut down." The story of JL Kirk & Associates and their threats of a lawsuit against a blogger has now been picked up by Fark and Instapundit. This is undoubtedly not the outcome JL Kirk & Associates was hoping for.
posted by brittney on Apr 12, 2007 - 44 comments

Fired for serving her country - while reports about reservists losing their jobs upon returning home are nothing new, the story of one reservist and her fight against her previous employer has caught the attention of the national media (see "Coming Up" teaser), in addition to the local news (video link). Meet Lt. Col. Debra Muhl, a nurse and hospital administrator currently suing Sutter Health, her former employer, which less than three years ago promoted her military service as an asset to the organization (7MB pdf link - see page 5).
posted by dbolll on Jan 24, 2007 - 11 comments

A Mall Divided (youtube) - a musical tale of commerce, employment and electrical distribution for our times.
posted by Artw on Dec 18, 2006 - 9 comments

Jobster is a 'web 2.0' answer to the perplexing puzzle of searching for employment or employees online. It allows you to tag yourself by skills, rank those skills and interact with other folks around the globe about where they work. Their search feature culls listings from every major job listing site on the net into one place as per your interests. It is a very clever design and offers some very intriguing features that, though they feel a bit 'beta-like', are already worth the visit if you are, like me, looking for work. I already like it a whole lot more than the many alternatives.
posted by BrodieShadeTree on Nov 26, 2006 - 39 comments

The Harvard University Worklife Wizard , created by an international team of journalists, economists, and statisticians, is Barbara Ehrenreich's wet dream. It's also a fantastic resource that has flown pretty much under everyone's radar. The Worklife Survey drives the constantly-revised, constantly-refined Salary Comparison Tool, which is always hungry for more data about employment from around the world. And when they say they want data from everyone, they mean it-- there's even a VIP Salary Checker that pits the wages of the Yankees against those of the Red Sox. (Plus if you take the survey, you can apparently earn a chance to win a trip to South Africa). Personally, I love the Workplace Horror Stories (and there's a competition there too). I can't look at a nail clipper the same way now.
posted by yellowcandy on Nov 20, 2006 - 26 comments

Much of the “jobs of the future” rhetoric surrounding the eagerness to end shop class and get every warm body into college, thence into a cubicle, implicitly assumes that we are heading to a “post-industrial” economy in which everyone will deal only in abstractions. Yet trafficking in abstractions is not the same as thinking...
posted by Kwantsar on Sep 7, 2006 - 54 comments

I was a slave in Puglia. A long first-person exposé, in English, about immigrant slave labor in Italy, from Fabrizio Gatti writing in the Italian newspaper L'Espresso. "I can hire you. Tomorrow," he promises. "Do you have a girl friend?" "A girlfriend?" "You have to bring me a woman. For the boss. If you bring him one, he'll put you to work right away. Any girl will do." He points to a twenty year-old woman and her companion, working on the conveyor belt of a huge tractor that is being used to gather tomatoes. "Those two are Romanians, just like you. She slept with the boss." "But I'm alone." "No work for you then." Photo galleries. Italian version (includes additional sidebars not found in the English version, including local and government reaction to the exposé and more photo galleries under the sidebar "Reportage Fotografico.")
posted by Mo Nickels on Sep 4, 2006 - 16 comments

Half of IT managers admit to hating their users... a lot. - But it's ok, because the users hate IT too. No, they really hate IT. Perhaps IT isn't meeting customer demands. And it isn't like either side's attitudes have changed much over time (July 2001).
In the long term, it simply may never work out between IT and the users. After all, IT support is just like any other customer service job. And we all know customers suck enough for people to start web pages about it... again and again.
posted by smallerdemon on Aug 28, 2006 - 60 comments

Bush's "pepperoni" defence of outsourcing. "India's middle class is buying air-conditioners, kitchen appliances and washing machines, and a lot of them from American companies like GE and Whirlpool and Westinghouse. And that means their job base is growing here in the United States. Younger Indians are acquiring a taste for pizzas from Domino's, Pizza Hut..."
posted by insomnia_lj on Feb 23, 2006 - 90 comments

Big Brother Nixes Happy Hour National Labor Relations Board Green Lights Ban on Off-Duty Fraternizing Among Co-Workers It is a regular pastime for co-workers to chat during a coffee break, at a union hall, or over a beer about workplace issues, good grilling recipes, and celebrity gossip. Yet a recent ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) allows employers to ban off-duty fraternizing among co-workers, severely weakening the rights of free association and speech, and violating basic standards of privacy for America's workers.
posted by jackspace on Jul 29, 2005 - 50 comments

Wal-Mart Institutes "availability requirement" Imagine your boss (a guy named 'Knuckles') comes to you and tells you you need to be available to work anytime between 7:00am and 11:00pm, 7 days a week. Oh, and if you can't be available, you'll be fired. This should be expected in a slave labour camp, but couldn't exist in the pride of Corporate America, could it? Updated during preview: Whoops, perhaps the bad press caused a flip-flop.
posted by gwenzel on Jun 20, 2005 - 79 comments

Indeed.com is what a job search aggregator was meant to be. I stumbled across it and have found it immensely helpful. It indexes every job site that I’m aware of, corporate employment pages, newspapers and craigslist then makes the jobs searchable based on keyword(s) and (optionally) location. Searches can be made into RSS feeds, e-mail alerts, etc. Current beta only work for jobs in U.S.
posted by jperkins on Dec 30, 2004 - 24 comments

Ugh... As if working in an office isn't enough. This is one toy I will NOT be buying for my kid. I get the irony, but man, how depressing would it be to see this under the xmas tree?
posted by mountainmambo on Dec 16, 2004 - 44 comments

Our nation so richly endowed with natural resources and with a capable and industrial population, should be able to devise ways and means of insuring to all our able-bodied working men and women a fair day's pay for a fair day's work . - Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1937

Chapter 1 [PDF] of Ending Poverty as We Know It - Guaranteeing a Right to a Job at a Living Wage. Here is a Q&A with William Quigley, its author.
posted by y2karl on Dec 2, 2004 - 29 comments

Disgruntled spouse 'outs' Electronic Arts' harsh employment practices, and by implication disses the whole American 'work 'em 'till they drop' ethos. Is this the start of a quiet revolution or is the American Way too entrenched to be stopped?
posted by Duug on Nov 11, 2004 - 65 comments

Get sexually harassed, get fired. Fox News is pushing to fire Andrea Mackris. The firing will not be "in retaliation for her accusations about the show's host." Now that's Fair and Balanced! How is this even legal?
posted by skallas on Oct 16, 2004 - 111 comments

Bully OnLine: 'the world's largest resource on workplace bullying and related issues'.

Includes profiles ("Look, dad, it's a sociopath"). Describes why it's hard to stand up to bullying behaviour, how to do it, and why others won't help you.

There's also kickbully.com [previously discussed here], which offers basic ground-rules for dealing with bullies, and suggestions for dealing with specific situations (including one-liners you might want to try). But watch out, because the bastards are vengeful.
posted by iffley on Oct 13, 2004 - 5 comments

Dick Cheney claims that disappointing jobs numbers are undercounting ebay power sellers. The man is on a tear!
posted by luser on Sep 10, 2004 - 47 comments

Outsource Your Own Job! -- "Says a programmer on Slashdot.org who outsourced his job: "About a year ago I hired a developer in India to do my job. I pay him $12,000 out of the $67,000 I get. He's happy to have the work. I'm happy that I have to work only 90 minutes a day just supervising the code. My employer thinks I'm telecommuting. Now I'm considering getting a second job and doing the same thing." " via BBspot.
posted by Space Coyote on Aug 23, 2004 - 23 comments

Many of you will lose your overtime benefits today. Welcome to Monday morning!
posted by RavinDave on Aug 23, 2004 - 65 comments

Tax Man Bush says tax cuts stimulate the economy. Unfortunately, he's fallen more than 2.2 million jobs short of the projection made by his own economists.
posted by Postroad on Jul 28, 2004 - 6 comments

I've seen it happen where these types of managers have the nerve to hold this type of book up in front of a group of people and imply the problem is the workforce for not choosing to be happy about poor leadership. From an Amazon review of Fish!. I've been motivated with that twice. A friend of mine was encouraged to take The Flight of the Buffalo and another is going to a sponsored Dale Carnegie class. So, who's moved your cheese?
posted by pieoverdone on Jul 26, 2004 - 55 comments

Your Tax Dollars At Work! What better way to help the homeless find housing and employment than through a website? Surely the Internet is the solution to all society's problems.
posted by ilsa on Jul 21, 2004 - 8 comments

Canadian Tax Dollars at Work I am sure there are some hard drinking working Metafilterites out there that could be Canada's official wine co-ordinator. You would have to give wine away to senior politicians and hard stuff like that.
posted by Coop on Jul 20, 2004 - 9 comments

NASA Fired Will Carpenter for writing a short story. "Some kind of harrassment," they said, and since Texas is an at-will employment state, there's not much he can do about it. Is this story a valid means of self-expression or a harrassing glimpse into jilted anger? I've stumbled across more and more news stories about people being fired for writing, and students expelled for writing "dark poetry" in the classroom. How much do you have to keep secret from your classmates and co-workers?
posted by keef on May 20, 2004 - 28 comments

My Life as Ralph Nader's Flunkie Ralph Nader believes an independent candidacy should "generate more understandings and support for major new directions for our country." His website says these new directions include "repeal of laws that obstruct trade union organization by millions of workers mired in poverty by wages that cannot meet their minimum family livelihoods." The site prescribes "a living wage for tens of millions of workers making under $10 an hour." But the perennial leftist candidate, whose name will appear on the presidential ballot for the third consecutive time this November, has not played by the same rules he strives to make binding for corporations and private businesses.
posted by Postroad on Apr 27, 2004 - 19 comments

U.S. job growth strongest in 4 years in March. Non-farm payrolls climbed 308,000 in March, the Labor Department said, the biggest gain since April 2000. However, the unemployment rate actually ticked upward from 5.6%, the two-year low seen in January and February, to 5.7% in March. Note in passing that this took place during the Bush administration!
posted by msacheson on Apr 2, 2004 - 67 comments

Looking Offshore How one offshore worker sent tremor through medical system In an ongoing Chronicle series on the ramifications of shifting U.S. jobs and services overseas, this installment focuses on the threat to individual privacy when companies send sensitive financial and personal data offshore.
posted by Postroad on Mar 29, 2004 - 10 comments

The Outsourcing Bogeyman by economics professor Daniel Drezner describes the myths, facts and economics behind offshore outsourcing. There is also a critique and rebuttal on Drezner's blog. (via kuro5hin).
posted by TheophileEscargot on Mar 24, 2004 - 26 comments

Say goodbye to more jobs? This is an interesting research report from the Gartner Group on the future of banking, money and economic transition. One of the participants at a conference that Gartner cites is Bernard Leitaer, who is interviewed here. Leitaer is the author of the book The Future of Money. He argues " the malaise Japan has suffered since the early 1990s reflects an economic challenge the whole developed world has begun to face. Today, European and U.S. factories, too, suffer from overcapacity. The vaunted productivity growth spurred by the digital revolution has raised the economy’s stall speed. If the natural growth rate of the U.S. economy has risen to 4% annually, anything less than that rate will cause firms to trim capacity. A firm’s revenue growth often must come at the expense of competitors as well as its own profits because companies have trouble raising prices. In response, companies cut costs any way they can, usually by laying off employees and squeezing suppliers, which causes further layoffs. For developed countries, the safety valves that limited damage during contractions in manufacturing may not work. In past recessions, laid-off factory workers in the Great Lakes states, for example, could migrate to the growing Sun Belt to find new jobs. In the present transition, areas with job growth may lie overseas." The long heralded rise of the information economy, the death of distance and the rise of the global knowledge workers is paradigm shift that our goverment leader's seem ill equiped to handle.
posted by thedailygrowl on Mar 16, 2004 - 36 comments

Having difficulty with payroll? Even temp agencies can end up giving you too many or too few employees. Vend-A-Temp has the answer! Major credit cards accepted.
posted by pyramid termite on Mar 16, 2004 - 3 comments

Interviewing with an Intelligence Agency (or, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Fort Meade) is a really fascinating read of one fellows experience while attempting to pass a security clearance for employment with the National Security Agency. Ironically enough I have to wonder if perhaps you need to be just a little bit crazy to do it. But of course crazy in a NSA/DOD friendly way, as opposed to standing on a table clucking like a chicken...
posted by ehintz on Mar 15, 2004 - 12 comments