15 awful mistakes made by designers in the music and apparel industries - such as not charging enough, ignoring typography, and unprofessional behaviour.
posted on Jul 25, 2008 - View this thread

On Day Care, Google Makes a Rare Fumble You’re probably guessing that because it involves “do no evil” Google, Fortune magazine’s “Best Company to Work For” the past two years, this is a heart-warming tale of a good company reversing a dumb decision. If only.
posted on Jul 5, 2008 - View this thread

A website that updates on every 'Supermodels' current work (via joseph likes)
posted on Jul 2, 2008 - View this thread

"If I make enough money now, I can quit and do what I really love later." "If I just think hard enough, I'll finally figure out what I want to do with my life." "I know people in this career path lose their souls, but I'll be different." "What if I try a new career, and it turns out I don't like it?" Po Bronson tackles some of the thoughts that keep people from pursuing a career they would really love. The article (one-page version) is based on his New York Times bestseller, What Should I Do With My Life? The writing is several years old, but the question seems to spring eternal.
posted on Jun 26, 2008 - View this thread

Boss Bitching is a user driven social content website that allows anonymous postings of stories about bosses.
posted on Jun 9, 2008 - View this thread

Kiki and Bubu! Austrian art collective monochrom presents the adventures of two sock puppets. Part One: Kiki and Bubu and The Shift. "Bubu wants to know why his dad is busy all the time. And Kiki explains him why... because of the neoliberal shift." Part Two: Kiki and Bubu and The Privilege. "Bubu ran into a bunch of liberals and they gave him a book. They said if he doesn't read it, they're going to beat him up. But Bubu can't read! And so Kiki helps..." [Via BB]
posted on Jun 7, 2008 - View this thread

Read at Work. How to read at work without being busted, and not in a "guide to" kind of way...
posted on May 28, 2008 - View this thread

I recently posed the following statement to my fellow, walled-off employees:
"True or False: Cubicles reduce office sociability by 100%"
I received no answer.

posted on Apr 24, 2008 - View this thread

What's one of the best ways to break into UK radio? Hospital Radio of course! There are over 408 radio stations in the UK that originate from hospitals. Fully staffed and loaded with volunteers, they are a lifeline to patients and produce modern, original programming. Who got their start on hospital radio? Hundreds of legends in the UK radio industry! Including Chris Moyles, Scott Mills, Jacqui Oatley, and Heena Tailor.
posted on Apr 9, 2008 - View this thread

In an artificial world, only extremists live naturally. Or: You weren't meant to have a boss. On the other hand, maybe you are.
posted on Mar 21, 2008 - View this thread

You stay classy, San Diego. A television reporter and an anchorman engage in an embarrassing on-air pissing contest in the middle of a newscast.
posted on Mar 12, 2008 - View this thread

Doing More With Less: In Defense of Creative Loafing I’ve been on unemployment three times in the past six years. Each time was better than the last, and each time I stayed on until the last cent was exhausted. I didn’t even try to get a job; it was a paid vacation. This is somewhat unusual from what I can tell. There’s a deep vein of antipathy in this country toward collecting checks from the government, especially in precincts that tend to skew rightward. Politicians imply that it’s un-American for an individual to milk the government, all while jacking up corporate welfare for their campaign contributors. And your uncle who cheered at the end of Easy Rider? He insists that if he had to obliterate 40 years of his life punching a clock, why should you goddamn hippies have it any better?
posted on Mar 11, 2008 - View this thread

The Shoe Shine Boys (1,2,3,4,5), and Girls (1,2,3)
posted on Feb 21, 2008 - View this thread

Prominent blogger Derek Powazek, who left his JPG project under prickly conditions, started a new project called Pixish. Pixish allows users to create open calls for submissions from designers, photographers and other artists who then offer up their work for comparison. Voting on the work reveals a winner, who then receives a prize outlined in the initial post. Following a post by Adam Howell that claims Pixish is nothing more than a 2.0 portal for spec work, a debate has emerged online as to whether Powazek's latest foray is a formula for ill-will amongst the design community.
posted on Feb 12, 2008 - View this thread

Though recent research indicates we learn to lie at a young age, and lie more often as we grow older, apparently we aren't so great at coming up with excuses for missing work. One site, designed to help with this problem, offers "proof" that you needed time off. Phoney Excuses claims that over a quarter of a million people have visited their site. The site warns its forms are intended "for entertainment purposes only." (Warning: NSFW-- last link is obnoxiously loud).
posted on Feb 12, 2008 - View this thread

In Praise of Idleness, Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work, and The Five Day Work Week. via
posted on Dec 14, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Dec 12, 2007 - View this thread

The 'Winners' of the Wired News Saddest-Cubicle Contest The winner -- if you can call it winning -- of the Wired News saddest-cubicles contest is David Gunnells, an IT guy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His desk is penned in by heavily used filing cabinets in a windowless conference room, near a poorly ventilated bathroom and a microwave. Here are some of the runners-up
posted on Nov 13, 2007 - View this thread

How depressing is your job? The Office of Applied Studies, a division of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, released a report ranking various occupations in order of the number of depressive episodes experienced by workers. "Personal Care & Service" occupations (defined by the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics here) top the list. One wonders if these are the occupations contributing to the growth of the so-called "service economy," and if so, are we heading for a deepening national malaise?
posted on Oct 13, 2007 - View this thread

"Each day brings new, stressful situations we must deal with in our business lives and our personal lives [sic]" - and let us not forget the bullying. That said, you may either breathe diaphragmatically, enter a deathmatch with your monitor (only applicable for "Computer Rage"), fantasize about starting the countdown on the the edifice/entity of your choice, or simply do yourself in (but for heavens sake, do the job correctly).
posted on Jul 25, 2007 - View this thread

The Vegetarian Lunchbox seems like a good resource. Hadn't heard of a strawberry and cucumber sandwich before.
posted on Jun 30, 2007 - View this thread

"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 on Jun 1, 2007 - View this thread

Orion Magazine hosts a two-part essay on the environmentalism movement's attempts to fit within free market capitalism, and the problems therein. Part one, The Idols of Environmentalism, focuses on the cross purposes of capitalism and environmentalism, and the apparent impossibility of the two working together. In part two, The Ecology of Work, the focus is on the human impact of the work and consumption culture.
posted on Apr 29, 2007 - View this thread

Paleo-Future: A look into the future that never was. More recent predictions include the future according to AT&T, Apple's Knowledge Navigator and Bill Gates on the Future of Police Work.
posted on Apr 28, 2007 - View this thread

It's perhaps in the nature of humanity — or at the very least, modern-day culture — to marvel at, and share news about, our more hateful aspects. It's nice to know that there are moments out there that you can accidentally stumble across that prove to you that mankind has perhaps some innate goodness in it, as well. (Sorry for the unicorn fluffiness; we now return you to your regularly scheduled Metafilter programming, already in progress.)
posted on Apr 13, 2007 - View this thread

It's Not Just Standing Up: Patterns of Daily Stand-up Meetings. A look at an alternative to the daily sit-down team meeting.
posted on Apr 12, 2007 - View this thread

Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, domo...domo
Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, domo...domo
Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, domo...domo
posted on Mar 2, 2007 - View this thread

Road Closed for Tribal Council: Vunivutu Villagers Latest Beneficiaries of the Survivor Boomtown Effect
The hit "reality" TV show, Survivor, premieres tonight on CBS in the United States. Over the past year, a sleepy village on Vanua Levu, the second largest island of Fiji has been hosting the production crew—and reaping the benefits. 150 villagers have been employed by the crew to work about 10 hours a day, seven days a week, for USD 5.00 per hour (and double time on Sundays and holidays). For some it was their first experience in any form of paid employment. This article from the Fiji Post, reposted by a Vanua Levu blogger, gives some behind the scene details. Meanwhile the island's new eco-resort village is putting finishing touches on their community hall. Globe-trotting gap year students and reality TV junkies, look north. Vanua Levu is for lovers. [Survivor Maps, Vorovoro, the eco-resort with a difference, Vorovoro's new bure (community hall), Google's hires satellite image of the area]
posted on Feb 8, 2007 - View this thread

Sometimes You Have to Work on Christmas - a Harvey Danger song for all those who keep the wheels turning. (YouTube alert)
posted on Dec 24, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Nov 20, 2006 - View this thread

Surviving office work: 2006. Surviving office work: 1853. The more things change......
posted on Oct 20, 2006 - View this thread

Have an annoying coworker? This just might be a solution...
posted on Sep 16, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Aug 28, 2006 - View this thread

Little Citadels. "Dine, shop, live, work, and be entertained in a unique and alluring environment," says the Time Warner Center website - all without ever stepping outside your gleaming Manhattan skyscraper. San Jose's Santana Row, which at first glance seemed no more than a Beverly Center you can live in, is now being compared favorably to urban European living. And MGM-Mirage's new, mysterious and costly ($7 billion!) Project CityCenter brings the trend to Las Vegas - with gambling, of course. They're not Arcosantis - and they don't, as yet, require an Oath of Fealty - but by all accounts they're thriving. What do they have in common? Wealthy tenants, megacorporate sponsors, and a shared desire to integrate efficient, conspicuous consumption into every aspect of civic life. Paolo Soleri may have been right after all - maybe he just forgot to account for the effects of capitalism.
posted on Aug 28, 2006 - View this thread

Pope Benedict XVI makes his usual Sunday address during Italy's National August Holiday and about two-thirds in points out that "excessive activity" can lead to "hardness of heart", specifically recommending taking time out for prayer. It becomes the highlight of the speech, gets picked up all over, by Reuters and AP, and suddenly he's the Patron Saint of Slackers. Huh? Maybe that's why it's called The Protestant Work Ethic. Meanwhile, Americans are 'giving up' on vacations (voluntarily?) and in parts of Turkey a Muslim Protestant Work Ethic is emerging. And whatever happened to the Hacker Ethic?
posted on Aug 20, 2006 - View this thread

Never wanna work/Always wanna play/Pleasure, pleasure every day. What happens when the jobs go away and don't return? Should we take the surpluses generated and pay people not to work? What happens to the assumption of scarcity when nanotechology allows us to generate potentially anything we want from grass clippings? Maybe Marx had it wrong all along. Maybe, instead of fetishizing work and the authoritarian mindset that it generates, we should have been reading Paul Lafargue instead. Just as a thought experiment, what would you do if your job category disappeared? How would you spend your time? Would you invest more time and energy in friendships and other relationships? Hobbies? If you were your employer, what technologies would you use to get rid of your position and save money?
posted on Jun 25, 2006 - View this thread

Are we getting lonelier?
posted on Jun 23, 2006 - View this thread

U.S. workers will leave an average 4 vacation days on the table this year, one more than last year, according to the 6th annual Vacation Deprivation Survey sponsored by Expedia. This despite the fact that at an average of 14 days total, we are already deprived, trailing Australia (17), Canada (19), Great Britain (24), Germany (27), and France (39) in holiday time. Why don't we get more time off? And why aren't we using the time we do get? [Full results (PDF))]
posted on Jun 5, 2006 - View this thread

Workplace health and safety dirty dozen (pdf) - profiles of companies that have demonstrated egregious disregard for worker safety. Today is Worker Memorial Day, commemorating workers who die on the job - an average of 16 per day. Workplace deaths are trending up, not down, which, according to an extensive report by the AFL-CIO, is the inevitable Toll of Neglect with this administration's rollback of worker protections. Confined Space offers a daily view of work safety issues in the U.S. for those who would like to learn more.
posted on Apr 28, 2006 - View this thread

Fired by New York's Mayor for playing a game of solitaire, former $29,000 a year clerk Edward Greenwood IX is sure to become the new parton saint of office politics. Whether one views Greenwood as a hapless Everyman or another poster boy for workplace diversions, the question still remains: what would Ricky Gervais do?
posted on Feb 11, 2006 - View this thread

The 100 Best Companies to Work For. The Top Ten starting with #1: Genentech, Wegmans, Valero Energy, Griffin Hospital, W.L. Gore, Container Store, Vision Service Plan, J.M. Smucker, REI, S.C. Johnson & Son. But The Complete List has some surprises. It puts Microsoft at #42 behind Starbucks at #29. (Starbucks pays $500 towards tuition to part-timers who work there for more than a year). By clicking on the company links on the List you get stats on employee salaries, turnover, minority hiring etc, learning for instance, that the most common job at Microsoft pays $107,000/year.
posted on Jan 18, 2006 - View this thread

I'm quitting my job so that I can go and be a pirate... Angel, a graphic designer from Orlando, is putting his life on hold to go to the Bahamas and play an 'Asian pirate' in the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie. At the moment, he's soliciting donations on his web site, but plans to run a blog on the experience of being a extra as soon as filming starts.
posted on Jan 13, 2006 - View this thread

Unions are much of the source of the E.U. vs. U.S. lifestyle difference.
posted on Dec 4, 2005 - View this thread

Sarah Polley, the little girl in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, finds out that another little Canadian girl is about to star in another Terry Gilliam film, and writes--and warns--about her experiences. Gilliam responds.
posted on Oct 2, 2005 - View this thread

Bloggers Need Not Apply A pseudonymous faculty member, writing at the Chronicle of Higher Ed. website, says that when faculty search committees do their jobs--that is, when they look for new hires--they may well find candidates who blog automatically suspect. This is true even if the blogger/applicant has never mentioned any details about his or her workplace or fellow employees, employer or students online. It doesn't mean the candidate won't! It doesn't matter if the committee just found the blog via Google either.
posted on Jul 8, 2005 - View this thread

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 on Jun 20, 2005 - View this thread

Learn the ketchup lesson CEOs... A London secretary turned the tables on a tightarse boss by humiliating him in front of his peers. Everyone has a laugh but is this guy just a scrooge or a workplace psychopath. It may seem like a big jump but a lack of empathy, narcissism, no grip on reality sounds like he's a little out of it to me. Why else would you send a demand like that to your secretary?
posted on Jun 20, 2005 - View this thread

10 most bizarre employment cases of 2004 - At least two of these cases were previously discussed on Mefi. (1), (2)
posted on Apr 30, 2005 - View this thread

I recalled a few of the Flickrazzi's who post the "how-to's" of their daily lives. For example, 7-how-7 works for a production company that produces blow-up dolls for the entertainment film and commercial industry (via BoingBoing today), underbunny works as a mortician, rickenbacker documents his life in fast food, and then there's a variety of active duty military folk who are documenting the mundane "over there", like ob1left, nevadog, At Ease, Doc Torres, enlisted cowboy, Nukeit1, JeffG, Luodanli, and the homsar. But if blogging at work can be bad, than I'm sure taking photos at work and sharing them with the interweb HAS to be worse.
posted on Apr 21, 2005 - View this thread

"I Ain't Lazy" (lyrics NSFW) featuring Skratch Bastid, John Smith & Pip Skid. A day-in-the-life indie hip-hop video directed by Jason Lapeyre featuring another top notch crew of PCRs.
posted on Apr 16, 2005 - View this thread