Tag Archives: work policies

Fraternizing at work

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Fraternization is described in Wikipedia as “‘turning people into brothers‘- conducting social relations with people who are actually unrelated and/or of a different class (especially those with whom one works) as though they were siblings, family members, personal friends or lovers.”

In and of itself, fraternizing is a good thing. However, bad things can and do happen. Let’s explore -

After my divorce, I met this great guy who happened to have moved from North Carolina to Florida. He and I became “involved” and I was looking to start a fresh life out of the small town in Alabama in which I had lived most my life, so I took a job in the city in which he moved, packed my shit, and moved in with him. It all seemed fine, at the time.

I began my new job working in what appeared to be a great company, with great people and was off to a great start in building my new life, with this great guy. However, when he moved to Florida, he didn’t have a job but was in the process of looking for work. He found a temporary position in sales (you know, when you’re in sales you can pretty much find something). That position didn’t pan out though, and then one day it happened – probably around the dinner table.

“Do you think you could get me on where you work?”….. And to my demise, I agreed to go to the office manager and talk with her about hiring him for an inside sales position. The next thing I knew, we were commuting together, going to lunch together and then things got worse.

Due to the nature of my position (Executive Assistant to the President) I spoke with vendors on a daily basis (mostly men). Mr. X would walk into my office at different times of the day and ask, “Who was that you were talking to?”…. And of course this would make for a longggggggg drive home while playing twenty-questions. It was the WORST!

Somehow we had both managed to befriend the office manager and she was now all-up-in-our-business and quickly became our counselor (Sorry, I just threw up in my mouth from thinking about this). The next thing I knew, she  and her boyfriend were double-dating with me and Mr. X.

This all turned out for the worst – as you can imagine. I finally decided that it was time to break up with Mr. X and Ms. Office Manager and I left the company and moved back to Alabama. So much for my new-found life.

My advice? Making friends at work to a point can be beneficial. Taking it outside and enjoying rounds of tequilla shots with working pals, well – that can be good too. But working with significant others in a place other than your own business, can turn into a frickin’ nightmare.

I’m all for having friends at work and creating a support of healthy emotional support in the workplace but we must set boundaries.  And a word of advice – keep your love life business in the confines of your dwelling (home).

More on this subject at a later date! In the meantime, enjoy this piece on Office Taboo.

Working your %$# off with no hope of vacation

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As we all trudge back to work after a brief glimpse of freedom beyond our offices, our thoughts may turn to what it would feel like to have a few more days off from the grind. The end of May used to mark the unofficial start of vacation season, a time when people took road trips, went camping, roamed amusement parks, traveled and explored their world. Today, vacations are little more than a memory for many of us, a theoretical concept that exists only on paper.

Maybe we all got lucky and at least had July 4th off to hang with the fam but some 25 percent of Americans and 31 percent of low-wage earners get no vacation at all anymore, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research. This is because, unlike 138 other countries around the world, we’re not entitled to a vacation longer than the current news cycle. We happen to live in a country that  has no minimum paid leave law to make vacations statutorily legit.

Back in the 1930s, the Committee on Vacations with Pay was tasked by the Labor Department to look into the problem of the lack of a vacation law in the U.S. when 30 other nations had one. The group recommended to Labor Secretary Frances Perkins that a law be enacted, but nothing happened.

Today, most of Europe has four and five weeks off by law (plus a week to two weeks more by agreement with their employers), as do Australians and Brazilians, among many others.

It Just Makes SENSE $$$

Performance increases after a vacation, with reaction times going up 40 percent. Vacations cure burnout, the last stage of chronic stress and something very difficult to shake. Burned-out employees are a major liability to effective performance. They may be at the office physically (the old “ass in the seat” expression), but output is next to nothing when cognitive, physical and emotional resources have been depleted.

Vacations regather crashed resources and restore productive capacity but it takes two weeks for the recuperative process to occur. Only 14 percent of Americans take more than one week of vacation at a time these days, according to a Harris poll.

Expedia’s just-released annual survey shows that only 38 percent of Americans use all their vacation days. Job insecurity is a big part of it, the belief that if you take that holiday, your layoff number might come up. It’s called defensive overworking, and it’s futile. I have discussed this with friends who have worked at companies for 25 years and was told that they hardly ever use their vacation time, and then they got pink-slipped, too.

In my opinion, there would be a lot less unused vacation days if it were legally protected.

The arguments on the other side mostly boil down to a belief that the world will come to an end for U.S. productivity if we somehow enjoyed legal title to a vacation. It’s just the opposite. Performance increases with recharging and refueling, all the studies show.

American management is way behind the science on where productivity and innovation come from, using obsolete, factory metrics and motivational tools. It’s not the amount of hours on the job, but the quality of those hours that results in productive endeavor in the knowledge economy, where it’s not about how much of a pounding you can take but how fresh your brain is.

Time off to recharge and renew is the engine of productivity and innovation. Enlightened companies understand this, firms such as SAS Institute in Cary, N.C., which offers three weeks off to all employees during the first year on the job and has seen its sales increase by double digits for years to $2 billion a year.

Engaged recreation is one of the world’s best stress buffers, no doubt why an annual vacation cuts the risk of heart attack in men by 30 percent and by 50 percent in women who take more than one vacation a year. Think about the impact of those reduced heart events on health care costs. Research shows that as work time increases and leisure time decreases, negative emotions and health problems increase and life satisfaction plummets.

In our guts we know all this — and that there’s something that doesn’t add up about being the “no vacation nation.” How is it that the rest of the world can pull off vacations for its citizens and the can-do nation can’t? They have more courageous lawmakers, for one.

The Paid Vacation Act of 2009 didn’t find the support it needed and never made it onto the floor of Congress. Lawmakers say now is not the right time – It will kill jobs. They’ve got it all back-ass-ward - it actually enhances them.