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The Definition of Bad Taste

One of the worst feelings is when you do someone a favor — like getting them a paying gig — and they then betray you by complaining on their blog about the very work you got them.

That sort of behavior is: The Definition of Bad Taste.

If you don’t like the job or appreciate the favor, that’s fine, but keep it to yourself. 

No one wants to read about ungrateful complaining on a public blog. 

Whine to your friends and bad-mouth — if you must — those who do you favors… out of earshot and eyeshot!

A former beloved professor of mine in graduate school was found of saying this about that sort of betrayer:  “I will do nothing to hurt you; but I will also do nothing to help you.”

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Til Sick Days Do Us Part

This week I have been dealing with my mortality. Is being in good health an inalienable right or not?
I found it pressing to learn in America many people are not allowed paid Sick Days even if they are full time employees. If you get sick on the job, you go to the job and you do the job.

The reality, for a surprising percentage of the U.S. population, is more like the 19th century. Nearly half of all full-time private sector workers in the U.S. get no paid sick days. None. If one of those workers woke up with excruciating pains in his or her chest and had to be rushed to a hospital — well, no pay for that day.

For many of these workers, the cost of an illness could be the loss of their job.
The situation is ridiculous for those in the lowest quarter of U.S. wage earners. Nearly 80 percent of those workers — the very ones who can least afford to lose a day’s pay — get no paid sick days at all.

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The Tar Pit Recommendation

Writing a letter of recommendation is usually an ordinary experience, but there are times when writing such a letter can become a tar pit of emotion and psychic distress. You feel suspended in amber as you search for the right phrase to recommend a person who deserves no recognition. Are you required — by moral pitch or professional bitumen — to write a letter of recommendation even if that person did not live up to your expectation or the requirements of the task?

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Boob Jobs

Am I the only one who doesn’t get the Boob Job Craze? I’m not talking about breast cancer reconstruction or fixing a birth deformity. Those breast implant surgeries are wonderful and necessary and healing.

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My First & Last Day on the Job

by Malaika Booker-Wright

My first job was an assistant after-school program director. I made seven dollars an hour. My second job was a habitation specialist. I made nine dollars an hour. My third job was a telemarketing supervisor. I made eleven dollars and seventy-five cents an hour. Therefore, to take a job as a cashier at Pathmark, earning five dollars an hour, was “slumming it.”
It was my first official day working on the register. I had always dressed to impress and felt that working at Pathmark would not change that. I wore off-white goucho pants and lace body suit, a beige and off-white vest, and some beige pumps. My hair was pulled up in a French Roll in the back with a few “Shirley Temple” curls hanging in the front. My fingernails were French manicured with beige stars at the tips. I looked good.

Continue reading → My First & Last Day on the Job