As you readers may recall, earlier this month I had a tête-à-tête with mon amie Stephanie about how my life would be different if I were a nice white lady. I had considered doing an experiment to prove my point. But after today, no need. This morning I learned that one of my college classmates--same year, same School of Film and Television--is now three rungs higher than I am on the entertainment industry ladder. She left a company that won't even interview me, and moved to a new company where she got a promotion to a position that I should have been working in two years ago. The differences between myself and my classmate? I graduated with Honors, multiple academic and extracurricular awards, and a business minor, whereas she is tiny, white and (dyed) blonde.
You know where to send my (nonalcoholic) wine and roses, Stephanie.
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In other news that made me frown, this article greeted me this morning on the Yahoo! front page:
Ten New Etiquette Tips for the Workplace, by Penelope Trunk. Yes, that
Penelope Trunk. I agreed with Number 4, "Say no to video résumés." The rest of them were...ludicrous. I have excerpted the following for brevity and humor; for the complete article, you can click on the link above.
2. Don't ask for time off, just take it.
When you need to leave work for a few hours or a few days, you don't need to ask for permission -- you're an adult, after all...
3. Keep your headphones on at work.
If you use social media tools, you're probably good at connecting with people and navigating office politics -- good enough that spending all day at work with headphones on won't hinder you...
5. Invite your CEO to be a friend on Facebook.
...there's a good chance that your CEO is registered, and it's likely that she'll really want to hear from you about what to do on Facebook, since she surely has no clue.
9. Call people on the weekend for work.
...The people who grew up being super-connected don't differentiate between the workweek and the weekend, so they don't mind working over the weekend on bits and pieces leftover from the week...
...If your coworkers don't like being called on the weekend, they can tell you. But remind them that a flexible work schedule lets you put relationships first all the time, and a work schedule that cordons off five days a week for work and two days a week for a personal life means that the personal life takes a backseat every week of the year.
The best way to get a life is to stop being so rigid about the distinction between time for work and time for life.
For more unintentional humor, Ms. Trunk also wrote
Why We Should Be Grateful for Gen Y earlier this month. As usual, my jollies came from the comments (ellipses and misspellings theirs):
from hatesstupidarticles:
"Who is this lady? Does she write these articles because she has a hard time at work or does she really go around calling people gen x and gen y. News flash... 15 year olds call each other gen x.... I got a great idea, why dont people just go to work, do what they need to do, then go home and in return you get a paycheck.. I just summed up this ladies article in a few sentences. Can her yahoo...."
from Kharlo T:
"Obviously, this article must be a joke. Don't ask for time off, just take it...Invite you're CEO to be a friend on Facebook...Call people on the weekend to work. What was smoked before writing here? I would clearly not hire the author as a consultant to improve employee SAT. The organization would loose billions and loss productivity of just trying to figure out where all the employees have gone. Oh yeah, I must have missed out because I haven't included them on my Facebook. DUH!"
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Happier news. After the comments that I wrote on Friday at
this post about Mad Men at
the TIME magazine Tuned In blog never appeared, I thought that the Time Warner family had it in for me. Apparently it wasn't personal, and James Poniewozik does not have a vendetta against me and my kind; some bug on the website registered my comments as spam. Also, Mr. P then responded to what I had written about the show. This experience has taught me that it does pay to ask about what happened when you were wronged. A similar situation happened to me with
Dan and the Willamette Weekly. I got all paranoid then, too. But it turned out okay. Now I get to add a new site I like. Welcome, Tuned In!
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Next happy.
Things I Had to Try Really Hard Not to Say When I Found Myself Standing Next To Jenna Fischer at a Bookstore, by pamie on pamie.com.
1. "Oh, my gosh! You're Pam! And I'm Pam! I mean, I'm really Pam, and you're playing Pam, but your Pam is awesome and I'm not fictional."...
...3. "Hey! My name is Pam and I write on a TV show and you play Pam on a TV show...
I tried to explain this meta concept to my friend
Chrissy a few months ago. She either didn't get understand what I saying, or she wasn't that impressed by the realization that every other
TWoPer had already come to when
The Office premiered in 2005.
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More happy.
Man Band, man! by Irwin Handleman on From Studio Twelve A.
...I did not see the commercial for "Mission: Man Band" until last night, but boy am I glad I finally did. I could not be more excited about this show...
...It's Rich Cronin. Who is Rich Cronin? Let me give you a hint: "I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch, I'd take her if I had one wish". Or who could forget the classic couplet: "When you take a sip you buzz like a hornet, Billy Shakespeare wrote a bunch of sonnets!"
That's right, it's the lead "singer" of LFO. They were most likely the low point of the boy band movement. That song was just horrific. It's like "Transformers" is to me now, it makes you question the country you live in. As someone on youtube posted under the "Summer Girls" video, "this is why the world hates white people. I am so ashamed"...
Here's the Television Without Pity take on VH1's latest masterpiece:
Mancasting.
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That was my day. How was yours?