12 posts tagged “work”

I'm reading this article by Nell Scovell.

One frequent excuse you hear from late-night-TV executives is that “women just don’t apply for these jobs.” And they certainly don’t in the same numbers as men. But that’s partly because the shows often rely on current (white male) writers to recommend their funny (white male) friends to be future (white male) writers. Targeted outreach to talented bloggers, improv performers, and stand-ups would help widen the field of applicants.

I've never worked in TV writing nor comedy.  So why am I nodding in cynical agreement?

Ah!  It needs some mild rewriting:

One frequent excuse you hear from technology company executives is that “women just don’t apply for these jobs.” And they certainly don’t in the same numbers as men. But that’s partly because the projects often rely on current (white male) programmers to recommend their funny (white male) friends to be future (white male) programmers. Targeted outreach to talented bloggers, tech conference attendees, and niche discussion groups would help widen the field of applicants.

The soft rustle of the pine needles, the precooked rice, the hours of driving (5), the altitude (about a mile), the bottles of Hefeweizen (1) -- all conspire to relax me and Bink to the happy state of being able to fall asleep at dusk.  I can barely write this, my system too lulled.  We're wedged into a small 1930's cabin with a 1940's gas stove and 1950's linoleum, next to a highway which was surely less busy in those underpopulated times.  In one neighboring cabin, a middle-aged couple murmuring over paperbacks and red wine; in the other, an uncountable group who arrived in an Escalade they can't seem to disarm from its horn-beeping state of security.  They've also brough four Chihuahuas.  So far, though, nobody has thought to blast a radio.  Even the Chihuahuas seem charmed into quiet by the setting.

When this cabin was built and equipped, many Americans enjoyed these kinds of vacations.  They'd stay in them for weeks at a time, removed even from the telephone-- and American society did not fall to ruin.  And maybe even more Americans prospered than do now.  Why have we lost our insistence on the right to real vacations?

Examine the typical job offer in the U.S.  It promises "two weeks' " paid vacation, which really means an even more miserly ten working days.  Take that offer, and then try to take that vacation.  Try to detach from work for all those fourteen days you are not in the office: avoid e-mail, phone calls, the whole lot.  Can you?

When I was a kid my family took a three-week-long camping trip in the Pacific  Northwest.  We were  incommunicado most of the time in those pre-cellphone  days.  My dad's medical practice seemed undamaged by the absence:  certainly he continued in his career for three decades more.  Nobody questioned his dedication to his work or his patients, and the world did not end because for nearly a month Dr. Archer couldn't tend to somebody's cold symptoms. 

But it's been unthinkable for me to take this kind of vacation as an adult.  Whether I'm an employee or a contractor, the expectation is that I will place myself in communication with my source of income every single day of my life.  When I detach, the implication is that I "lack passion" (actual critique of my taking a month of unpaid leave one year).  Meanwhile, many of us get more anxious to show our boundless "passion" with ever more absurd displays of workaholism:  one of the most memorable of these  for me was a breathless phone call from my boss at a publishing company.  She interrupted her late summer backpacking trip in the Rocky Mountains to call about...the paper lamination on the line of calendars we were scheduled to market in December.

Even the Chihuahuas in the next cabin here, none of whom has a brain any bigger than a pistachio, know there's value to setting aside their usual work of yipping and wearing gaudy t-shirts.  Even they know there's scarcely anything so damned important back at the job that they need to keep tethered to it during their so-called leisure hours. Why can't we show ourselves at least their equals in good sense?

October 24 is Take Back Your Time Day

I have a new job, my first in a while.  I'm hesitant to say much about this-- to me-- novel situation, as if I'll jinx the whole setup, and wake up tomorrow with a dreadfully familiar sensation of nowhere to go.  So, about the job-- eh.  But lemme tell you about the commute.

No wheels involved.  None.  Am I working from home?  No, at least at present.  I'm working in a nondescript corporate office building, all very Dilbert-esque in its population of suits and ponytails, its standard inventory of cubicles, fluorescent lights, and beige melamine.  I doubt that there's a dog or foosball table anywhere in the whole tower: there are just some places dot-com culture can't penetrate.  Mornings,  I ride the elevator up with twelve other silent robots, like the delivery of the Morlock-like workers in Metropolis.  Evenings, the reverse.

And then I walk home.

My New Commute

I haven't had a walking commute for about fifteen years.  I'd forgotten how pleasant it can be, even if the place you're going to or returning from isn't your ideal of how to spend eight or so hours of your precious, finite time on Earth.  For one thing, a walking commute always take the same amount of time.   I'm not at the mercy of any of the Bay Area's dysfunctional transit agencies; I'm not on any of our clogged roadways.  This predictability seems to have removed about ninety percent of the stress I used to feel when commuting to other jobs.  And, unlike on my bike commutes, I'm not being yelled at by idiot motorists contesting my right to exist.  I'm just-- walking.

It's so easy, and unfortunately rare.  When did you last walk to work?

I attended the first day of TransitCampBayArea, but couldn't attend the second, though this would've been the perfect moment for me to present my thoughts on why people don't use transit.  

The other speakers had wonderful, data-supported presentations about this very question, yet there was less mention of prejudice against transit users. Yes, prejudice-- seems a strong word, doesn't it?  But try getting around a U.S. city on the bus, and you'll discover just how low-class your form of transport renders you. 

Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity

The folks at TransitCamp would've been a sympathetic audience.  As we introduced ourselves at the beginning, I mentioned that I'd let my driver's license expire in 1989, and have never owned a car.  I received applause, even from the people representing the car share services.  This was not a roomful of stereotypical anarchist crusties, however, but a pretty diverse crowd of transit planners and tech-inclined transit enthusiasts.  The day proceeded with the yang of gee-whiz Web app mashups being countered by the yin of the sobering fact that many transit users have little or no experience using the Web.  It was a thrilling, uncommon experience to meet so many people who thought there was nothing wrong with my

mode of getting around.

Sometimes I persuade these types that I'm as normal as anyone on four wheels, and I'll be invited to an interview in what, from a transit user's perspective, is the worst land use in human history: the office park.  There I must remember that I'm highly motivated! excited! totally enthused! about meeting the people at a company which surrounds itself with a moat of parking, apparently to protect against the contagion of the bus stopping four times daily half a mile away.

Some people are thoroughly, even comically, ungracious when they hear that I don't drive.  At a women's group the other night one person huffed and snorted when I offhandedly mentioned that I don't get to the South Bay from Oakland very much because it takes so long on transit.  My tone had been mild-- a mere statement of facts-- but hers was of unbalanced outrage.  It was as if I had confessed to not paying taxes or some other civic lapse.  It's a lot like how some people respond to hearing you say you're a vegetarian:  they whip out furious, pre-emptive diatribes, trying to end the conversation right then and there.  But it doesn't really end: it leaves me thinking, "What are they afraid of?"

In today's New York Times, the story of the "Goth Bonnie and Clyde," and news of a life philosophy I can't find too objectionable:

On the other hand, Ms. Boyd, employed most recently as a seamstress and a stripper, was fonder of spending money than of working, said her former husband, Mike Stuckey, who has had custody of their 5-year-old son since their divorce.

“Her dream job was not working,” Mr. Stuckey said.

I spent two and a half hours trying to get home from work yesterday.  I thought I was catching the same old bus, but the planners at AC Transit decided to play an early April Fool's prank on me.  That almost-tolerable forty-five minute ride I used to have to get to BART? An hour fifteen last night, thanks to the new, convoluted bus route.

This morning's commute to the office was uneventful.  It took the usual two hours.

I am crinkly-eyed and weary.  I leave home around sunrise and get home after dark.  A lot of things in my life aren't getting done, thanks to my absence or bone-tiredness.  But this will soon change.

I've resigned.

Nobody at work seemed very surprised; they've lived in the Bay Area long enough to know how thoroughly soul-robbing getting one's self around this region can be.  Whole lunchtimes could be spent with each of us sharing our favorite ways to game the system, whether by bus, bike, BART, or Bug.

Me, I'm tired of negotiating the schedules of rival transit agencies, tired of accommodating a moving-vehicle sequence more delicately timed than the chase scene in Bullitt.   And... I'm just tired.

BART-CalTrain transfer point

Three weeks into my new job, the one with the two-hour commute each way.  It's midwinter, so I leave and return home in pitch darkness, which is a mercy in its way, considering how filthy the apartment is now that I'm too preoccupied to clean it (as is, ahem, its other resident).  Today, the solstice,  I'm starting to understand the excitement pagan Europeans felt at this time of year:  the sun will return, pushing aside darkness only a minute or two more each day.  The sun is coming back, bringing a minute or two more of illumination that isn't from a Godawful 1000-watt fluorescent light bulb like the ones above my cringing head in my work cubicle.

Tomorrow night I'll be in the Mojave desert.  The stars will shine crisply in the cold, dry air:  I never minded the dark of night when I lived in the country, and could see the stars and moon.  I will be able to watch the sunrise at leisure, rather than in a state of suspension from a commuter train platform.  The light will intensify, the hillsides will gather detail,  and I'll be able to just watch it all, unperturbed by station announcements or train whistles: watch it all, as long as it lasts-- a minute or two earlier than it was this morning.

Mojave Panorama

Yet another job interview, with a totally different company. I feel like one of those "secret shoppers," assessing a dizzying gamut of startups, agencies, firms, megacorporations, LLCs and LLPs.
Going for caffeine today-- it's an all-day interview.

Killing time again