Elana Centor's blog

The Politics and Etiquette Of Using The Office Bathroom

2009-11-03T13:51:13-06:00

If ever a television show focused on bathroom behavior in the workplace, it was the finally-on-DVD Ally McBeal whose unisex bathroom served as both a pivotal plot device and symbol for the sexually charged nature of the law firm's work environment.

In the early days of the show, the unisex bathroom received a great deal of analysis. Pity that blogging was not active in those days because we would have a treasure trove of commentary on the significance, reality, and the improbability of a unisex bathroom being installed in an office near you.

Even without having to deal with the unisex version, the office bathroom is one place many women try to avoid. Some at all costs. According to the Social Anxiety To Social Confidence Blog shy bladder syndrome afflicts as many men as women. It's just that more men tend to seek out help to resolve the issue.

While that may be true, at least from outward appearances, more men in the workplace have fewer bathroom issues then women. As I wrote for a piece in my newspaper column and then on my blog in 2004,

Nowhere are the differences between men and women more evident in the workplace than in their attitudes toward taking a "bio- break." A male worker will fold a newspaper under his armpit, announce to anyone within earshot that he's going down the hall, and then strut down the walkway like a matador going into the ring to conquer the bull. Twenty minutes later, he will re-emerge, victorious.
You'll never see a woman with a folded newspaper under her arm. In fact, as far as most women are concerned, they'd just as soon you think that they never need to take a bio-break - of any kind.

Women, and I'm deliberately stereotyping here, are not that comfortable sharing the noises and smells of bodily functions with co-workers, peers, direct reports, clients and senior managers. Most of us grew up with the concept that going to the bathroom is a private affair, that's why you close the door.

Our conflict with using the bathroom facilities at work go behind our need for privacy. It has a lot to do with image control. When someone has a fear of public speaking, they are often advised to imagine people in the audience naked. There are few more naked moments in a person's life than when your body is eliminating wastes. It's noisy. It can be smelly, and that smell can make everyone in the room gag. Knowing your boss/co-worker/peer has shared your bodily smells is an image makeover many women prefer to avoid.

Early in my career as a manager I made a huge bathroom faux pas with a direct report that bothers me to this day. I followed her into the bathroom to continue a conversation. I don't know what we were talking about but I was just returning to the office from the bathroom myself when I saw Judy heading my way. We started talking and I assumed that she was just going to the bathroom to pee so I said, "I'll come with you."

I noticed her hesitation but I was too eager to continue the conversation to consider what the hesitation might be. We had both been in the bathroom at the same time previously and my guess is we had had conversations while we had a peeing duet. It never occurred to me that Judy might need to use the office bathroom for anything other than peeing.

Judy didn't need to just pee. She had diarrhea and she needed her privacy. She just didn't know how to tell me to stay out of the bathroom. Thirty some years later I can think of lots of things she should have said like, "my stomach is upset and I need to poop in private."

So there we were, she in the stall with the sounds and smells of explosive diarrhea, and me standing by the mirror thinking how in the world am I going to make this up to her?

It was an absurd situation. Neither of us knew how to extricate ourselves. Instead of apologizing for invading her privacy, I just acted as if nothing odd was going on and I continued the conversation.

When she came out to wash her hands, neither of us acknowledged that it was weird having a business conversation while she was dealing with diarrhea. While I was embarrassed for putting her in that situation, I would have been mortified if I were the person with explosive diarrhea and she, the boss/client/co-worker/direct report.

Recently, CNN and Careerbuilders.com ran a piece on the topic of office bathroom etiquette from both a woman's and man's point of view. My behavior would be ruled, verboten.

He says: Bathroom chitchat should be kept to a minimum, and I don't think much more than a "Hey" should be exchanged in most situations. A true party foul, however, occurs when you try to network, make a business transaction or introduce yourself in the restroom. The last thing I want to do near the sinks is take your business card or shake your hand.
She says: This must be a guy thing, because I have yet to hear about a business opportunity other than happy hour mentioned in the bathroom. But, I second the motion to save your "Nice to meet you's" for after you exit the bathroom door.

In her post, "The Princess and The Pee," Holly Burns offers up her own list of office bathroom etiquette dos and don'ts. Bathroom conversations makes her top don't list as well.

4. On Hanging Out In The Bathroom With Your Pals, Just Sitting On The Counter And Shooting The Breeze

Really? This is the best place you could find to have that important tete a tete? Was it the atmospheric glow of the light on the hand dryer that sold you, or the dulcet tones of other people peeing awkwardly over your chatter? Honestly, there's not even free wifi in here!

Experts say that people who have "issues" with using the bathroom facilities at work suffer from a condition called "paruresis" aka shy bladder syndrome. The first study on the problem was conducted in 1954 with a group of college students. The results of that study indicated that 14.4% of the population said that had experienced shy bladder at some point in their lives.

In a piece called, "You go, Girl," LFar blogs how being pee shy affects her at work.

So here is what I hate: when I go to the bathroom at work and somebody is l fixing their makeup or adjusting their hair in front of the mirror. So we exchange pleasantries for a second and then I enter a stall. Silence (make up checking is a low-noise activity). So then I sit there for like 3 minutes both willing my bladder to release or for the other person to quick slacking and return to the earning their salary. It's so awkward. Because then I start imaging what they must be thinking. "Why is she just sitting on the can without peeing?". WHY, INDEED.

In talking about this condition with other women, they shared some of their bathroom strategies. These have included: making sure there is an empty stall between themselves and other bathroom users, choosing a bathroom on a different office floor where they are "unknowns," and limiting the amount of fluids they have during the day so they can avoid the bathroom altogether.

Another strategy is to check out the shoes of people already in a stall to make sure their boss or direct reports are not in the bathroom.

The shoe technique was an actual conversation I had with a bladder shy executive.

"What do you do if you're already in the stall, and you see a pair of shoes that you recognize?"
"I stop what I'm doing and wait for them to leave,"explained Kathy.

I didn't have the heart to tell Kathy that after she has kids, the ability to stop the action in midstream will be a bit more challenging.

Then there is the passive-aggressive co-worker who uses someone's bladder shyness against them. As this one executive told me,

"When I see the shoes of someone I don't like, and they become very quiet when I walk in the bathroom, I deliberately take my time. I comb my hair, put on make-up - anything to make them suffer."

Somehow I think this shoe strategy is a female-centric behavior. Just as I think spending significant time in the bathroom at work is a male-centric behavior. According to my friend John, men don't see the bathroom as a place to go in and out of quickly because it's the one place where they can have some alone-time.

As he told me, "When I am in the bathroom at work no one is going to remind me that I have a budget due or a deadline pending. It's my time to be alone."

Good thing John doesn't work at an office like Ally McBeal's with its unisex bathroom. The bathroom was the one place you could be sure you'd never be alone. From the Ally McBeal DVD, the unisex bathroom.

Elana blogs about business culture at FunnyBusiness

Will Halloween Sales Be A Trick Or Treat For Retailers?

2009-10-28T11:34:25-05:00

On Saturday afternoon at a stop light in Bellingham, Washington, our car was parallel to a teenager standing on a sidewalk outside of a mall with a handmade sign he was constantly jiggling to encourage people to stop in and buy their halloween costumes. I had actually been watching the teenager for several minutes as the traffic crawled by the shopping mall.

When we stopped right next to him I asked him if the sign was working. Taking out his iPod earphones, he said that he didn't know. I also asked if it was hard work to stand out there and make a sign dance all day. His response, "Not so hard. It's better than being inside the store."

If retail experts are correct, that store needs our dancing teenager and a whole lot more to get people to come into their stores this year and purchase halloween stuff. The sales forecast is downright ghoulish.

The National Retail Federation is projecting that money spent on costumes, candy, decorations and greeting cards for the Oct. 31 holiday will fall more than 15 percent from last year.

That would bring sales to about $4.75 billion. Urban legend has it that Halloween sales are second to Christmas. Not so, says Snopes.com, it's in sixth place, according to 2006 sales data.

Even if Halloween doesn't hold the second spot in retail sales-- that would be Mother's Day with $13.6 Billion in sales in 2006-- the significance of Halloween sales has more to do with its proximity to the holiday selling season. Retailers fear that if this year's Halloween sales are scary, it will mean a ghostly holiday sales season.

"For sure, (Halloween spending) will be a signal of what we are to expect throughout the fourth quarter, which is incredibly important to retailers," said Betsy Holloway, associate marketing professor at Samford University's Brock School of Business. Many retailers generate half of their annual revenue in the fourth quarter, and some make up to 80 percent, she said, so the next three months "can make or break a retailer."

While the National Retail Federation is warning of scary Halloween sales, the research firm IBIS World says Halloween is going to be a treat for retailers.

The National Confectioners Association is also predicting that candy sales will be a treat, increasing about 1.8% over last year. To reach that number, manufacturers and retailers are offering tremendous sales on candy. If you haven't purchased your Halloween treats there are great sales and even bigger discounts if you are willing to print out some online coupons.

CNBC has a report on the unusual trend of Halloween specialty retailers actually increasing their number of stores. According to CNBC the specialty stores, known for the wide variety of Halloween merchandise, have set up shop in retail spaces that used to be home to stores like Circuit City and Linen 'N Things. The rent is cheap.

While that diverse inventory is what gives Halloween stores an edge over retailers such as Target

[TGT 48.45 -0.43 (-0.88%) ]

or Wal-Mart

[WMT 49.87 0.03 (+0.06%) ]

, experts say it's also what makes them vulnerable.

It's counterintuitive for retailers to boost inventory levels during an economic environment that has forced so many to drastically cut back their supply. It's especially risky for specialty shops, given the increasing number of shoppers who are flocking to discount stores, said Abigail Marks, retail economist at CB Richard Ellis.

These specialty retailers are reporting that so far sales are on par with last year. However, to "prod consumers along," the stores are offering huge discounts on costumes and using human billboards like my dancing teeanager in Bellingham, Washington to let consumers know there are great bargains to be had.

What happens if these specialty retailers got it wrong and the National Retail Federation got it right? They say no worries, even if the stores have a lot of unsold merchandise, Halloween costumes, masks and accessories are the type of products that can be re-introduced in 2010.

Elana blogs about business culture at FunnyBusiness.

Part II: Even Without Free Trial Offers The Scams For Acai Berry Continue

2009-10-27T10:33:44-05:00

With the free trial offers for acai berry now under attack by the attorney generals of several states not to mention a huge lawsuit by Oprah and Dr. Oz, you might think that all those online promotions for acai berry supplements would now be on the up and up. One would think.

If you spend any time window shopping online what you quickly discover is that many of these companies are taking advantage of the bad publicity to position themselves as the acai berry providers that don't do deceptive trial offers.

The top ad uses a web address that is piggybacking on the very reputable website WebMD. However, the site, WebMDSpecialist, was just another acai berry sales site and evidently, a fly-by-night site. A few days after this ad appeared, a follow-up search on Google got an "Oops! This link appears to be broken." A follow-up on Whois.com found that website had just launched on October 1, 2009 and that information of the owner of the domain is protected. The registrant of that domain owns over 80 more domains.

The Mona Vie ad is linked to a site recruiting affiliate marketeers. The majority of companies selling acai berry use an affiliate marketing strategy that's where all those Amy, Carrie, Jeannie, Pam, Nicole and Kelly blogs come from.

The third ad is the most insidious because it presents itself as the anti-scam acai berry site. The ad links you to aProvenProduct.com which sells a private label acai berry product. It appears very reputable. It is accredited by the Better Business Bureau and it proudly displays an anti spam icon.

aProvenProduct.com is owned by JJ Smith Marketing and that company does have an "A" rating by the Better Business Bureau. But that's just half of the story.

JJ "Joe" Smith operates a JJ Smith Marketing, LLC which promotes itself as an engineered marketing company. He also says on his website that, "We're completely booked through 2009, however I can be convinced to bump really interesting projects to the top of the list."

In 2007, Julie's Journal, a paid review blog, promoted one of "Joe" Smith's affiliate marketing opportunities:WealthInfoGuy.com. Workathometruth.com has some major concerns about wealthlinfoguy. Like the acai berry ads, the WealthInfoGuy offers a seven day free trial before charging $97.00 one time activation fee and then a monthly fee of $39 and change.

So at aProvenProducts, Mr. Smith warns consumers against trial offers but at his other company, he uses trial offers. Who knows what he does at his other domains? According to domaintools.com he owns 315 of them.

A check at RipOff Report garnered one complaint against WealthInfoGuy. That complaint listed a second company, Tafiti Consulting. which is owned by National Resources Marketing which has over 250 domains. What is the connection? Not sure. But, interestingly, Tafiti Consulting is located in Kearny, Mo. Until recently, WealthInfoGuy was headquartered,so to speak, in Gladstone, Mo.- a distance of about 20 miles.

The problem of course is that average consumer isn't going to spend three hours searching out the connections and links to all these companies to find out whether or not they are legitimate.

Despite all the scams, consumers want to believe in a miracle product that will help them lose weight quickly. Having Britney Spears appear on Jay Leno and attribute her significant weight loss to acai berry will only fuel the desire of people to order what Britney is having.

If they go looking for acai berry online, they will have lots of companies that are eager to take their money. The question is, can you trust any of them?

Elana blogs about business culture at FunnyBusiness.com

Free Trial Offers Are Such A Great Concept. Too Bad They're Often A Scam

2009-10-23T13:14:13-05:00

When you type in the phrase, "I wouldn't say I owe my life to Oprah...", you will come face to face with one of the many acai berry affiliate marketing blogs from Jeanna, Jen, Amy or Carrie. Their stories are basically the same. They are married to a wonderful guy, they have young children and they had struggled with their weight for a long time. Now, thanks to the breakthrough weight loss powers of acai berry supplements (or sometimes hoodia supplements) and colon cleanse products they lost weight fast and feel sexier than ever. What a surprise--many live in either St. Paul or Minneapolis. Chances are, if you were to visit their websites, they'd live in a town near you

Back in December, when The F-word.org. Food. Fat. Feminism wrote about the Invasion of the acai berry diet scams, She did a Google Search for "I wouldn’t say I owe my life to Oprah, but I would say that if I hadn’t been watching when Dr. Oz came on to talk about a new superfood called Acai berry, I’d probably still be fat." She came up with 392 results.

Google evidently is trying to do its own version of a colon cleanse of these sites. If you search for that entire sentence you will still get over 300 results. Type in the shorter, " I wouldn't say I owe my life to Oprah..." and you'll only get just j1 result.

Google may be trying to cleanse them but they are still out there enticing women to take advantage of their free trial offer. From The F-word.org:

It appears as if the company’s “free trial” offer carries a hefty price — if consumers don’t call and cancel within 15 days, they are billed the “super low price of $78.84″ for a 30-days supply. And when consumers do try to call to cancel during the limited phone hours offered by the company, they must endure 4-hour hold times or they find that the phone lines mysteriously disconnect.

The thing about that 15 day free trial - the 15 days begins as soon as you place your order, and it's usually over by the time the mail delivers your sample product. So, even before you've had an opportunity to try it, your credit card will be billed for your 30- day supply which, by the way, you agreed to when you accepted the free trial offer.

Wafflesatnoon.com (It's Time To Wake Up) did some great sleuthing for her post, The Fake Diet Girl, and created what she refers to as a photo album of the women and their aliases.This screen capture is just a peek. The Carrie I found via Google is part of the photo album.

The Center for Science In The Public Interest has a comprehensive report on the acai berry scam and also unveils the true identity of our girl Carrie. Turns out she lives in Germany. Her name is Julia and according to the German photographer who made the original photos of her available on Istockphoto.com, the pill companies manipulated some of the "after" images to give the impression of weight loss. Julia's stolen identity has been used on at least 75 web sites.

The free trial offers are not limited to weight loss, one of the most prolific centers on Google Profusion, alternately known as Profit Profusion and Twitter Profusion that promises to teach people how to use CPA marketing and make a killing with Google Adwords;according to www.reportonlinescams.com the Profusion scams are the biggest ripoff they have uncovered. Around 500,000 people may have been scammed with promises of starting their own business and making a killing. Like the acai berry scam,the Profit Profusion scammers advertises on Facebook, MySpace and search engines.

Travel Light uncovered this scam by clicking on an ad on Facebook for a mystery shopper. She has a list of six reasons why she believes buyers should beware.

5. They only pay in checks. Why is there no Paypal option? Most of my legit online jobs uses Paypal to transfer payments. 6. Google has nothing to do with it. 7. Lastly, read what those who got suckered in say about their experiences.

MSNBC.com recently reported on these scams and recommends you do some due diligence before signin up for a free trial. One of their suggestions is to check with the Better Business Bureau. Another is to simply type in the name of the company selling the product and see if there have been any consumer complaints. It's a time consuming process.

I started with Nicole's Diet Story which linked me to Elite Acai Blast.

Once I knew the name of the company was Preciousmind Trading, I just did a Google search and discovered they are owned by FWM Labs. MSNBC.com says the BBB estimates it has received 5,000 complaints against FWM Labs.

In August, Oprah and Dr. Oz filed a lawsuit against 50 some companies for copyright and trademark infringement. As Jay Weintraub wrote in his blog, "With the firepower and media power behind the big "O"s, you would think people would clean up their act. You would think."

More on what these con artists are still doing in Part II: Who Needs A Free Trial Offer To Scam Consumers?

Elana blogs about business culture at FunnyBusiness

What The Latest Don't Ask Don't Tell Statistics Say About Careers In the Military For Women

2009-10-15T12:00:01-05:00

For a brief news cycle last week, the focus of the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) policy was not on whether the Obama administration would repeal the policy, but on the fact that women are more likely to be kicked out of the military under the policy. An article, by Lisa Leff of the Associated Press, explored both new statistics released by the government and possible reasons why the inequality exists.

The story prompted many blog post and tweets, but most emphasized the numbers and not the underlying conditions that created them. American culture loves statistics and the latest on Don't Ask, Don't Tell, don't disappoint. From the article:

Women accounted for 15 percent of all active-duty and reserve members of the military but more than one-third of the 619 people discharged last year because of their sexual orientation. The disparity was particularly striking in the Air Force, where women represented 20 percent of all personnel but 61 percent of those expelled. That is a significant jump from the previous year and marks the first time women in any branch of the military constituted a majority of those dismissed under “don’t ask, don’t tell,” researchers said.

Besides a few well-placed tsks, there really wasn't much discussion on what the statistics mean. The one place where a small discussion is occuring is at Feministing.com. From Marc:

I think the simple explanation for this is that, while homophobia is high in the military, men can hide their homosexuality by "male-bonding" (objectification of women) more easily. Women, on the other hand, often have their personal and sex lives scrutinized more, not because of policy, but simply as common, unofficial practice as part of this "male bonding."

From Phoquess:

I used to think that being a female meant that I would be LESS likely to have DADT used against me... this is something of a wakeup call. I remember having to sign paperwork stating that I would never tell anyone I was gay or bisexual or act that way (though I'm currently only in ROTC and I don't think they have the resources to stalk people and find out.) I always wondered where Integrity First (Air Force so-called core values) came in, and what a GLB servicemember was supposed to say if asked about their orientation.

The lack of traction on this story doesn't surprise Anuradha K. Bhagwati, Executive Director of Service Women's Action Network (SWAN). "The media is spinning it wrong,” she shared during a phone interview. “They tend to oversimplify and sensationalize stories. It's not just about lesbians: Women are uniquely affected by this policy."

According to Bhagwati, the statistics about women and DADT are symbolic of the general discrimination and sexual harassment that all women with careers in the military have to endure on a regular, if not daily basis. Bhagwati says that the real story is not the DADT statistics but the level of sexism that exists in the military. "If this is just presented as a gay issue then the sexism within military will not be dealt with in a meaningful way."Bhagwati says even when DADT is repealed, there still will be discrimination in the military.

One of the women who was kicked out of the marines because of DADT was Julianne "Jules" Sohn, who was featured in the Associated Press story. Before her discharge, Sohn was promoted to captain while serving in Iraq. Now, Sohn is a vocal advocate for the repeal of DADT. Sohn now works as a Public Information Officer for the LAPD and serves as the media director for SWAN.

Like Bhagwati, Sohn shared her thoughts about the media's coverage of the DADT statistics in a phone interview. Sohn says before she enlisted she thought DADT was a great policy. As a student at UCLA, Sohn wrote a 20-page research paper on the policy. She says she understood it on an academic basis. "I saw it creating a space for gays to serve." Sohn says, " Before I entered the military I thought it would protect me." Sohn now says she was idealistic and didn't think it would be hard to follow DADT.

However, the reality of the deception she had to live hit Sohn during basic training in Quanico. "Away from training my fellow lieutenants could talk about their boyfriends and girlfriends. I couldn't say anything. Can you imagine going through one work week and never mention your loved ones?" Sohn lived this double life for eight years even living an hour away from her base so she could have a private life.

Sohn believes the women's groups aren't mobilizing over this issue because most civilians simply don't relate to the military. "Unless you have a friend or family in the military people tend to turn the page because they don't see how things that happen in the military impact them."

Both Bhagwati and Sohn say the statistics from DADT reflect the amount of lesbian baiting that all women in the military experience. They say all it takes to begin a DADT investigation is a rumor about being a lesbian and that rumor can start if a woman rebuffs a man's advances, if she doesn't wear makeup, doesn't discuss a boyfriend, or simply looks butch.

They say DADT fuels other types of discrimination and they point to another statistic that hasn't received a great deal of media attention: 45% of those discharged under DADT are people of color.

The DOD discharge data - which included the Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy - revealed that out of 619 total DADT discharges in FY08 from these services, 279 (or just over 45%) were non-white. The Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, however, reported at the beginning of FY08 that 71% of the active duty force was white.

Bhagwati believes there needs to be civilian oversight of the military's Equal Opportunity(EO) policy. She says her organization is looking at ways the military's EO policy can be broadened to include gender identity and sexual orientation. "People have free reign in the military to harass anyone who is different with complete lack of attention(from the media). It's a system that has no outside oversight so there is no incentive for commanders to fix the problem."

As to President Obama's promise to repeal DADT, Sohn says, "He's said that before. The hard part is doing it."

Elana blogs about business culture at FunnyBusiness

Minnesota Launches eWorkPace Funded By Transportation Dollars To Encourage More Telecommuting

2009-10-09T17:29:02-05:00

Telecommuting is one of those issues that falls under the umbrella of Work-Life Balance/Integration/Fit. It is usually promoted as a flexibility issue --as a way to help families whose work-life schedule needs flexibility to deal with real-life issues like children and elderly parents.

Telecommuting advocates also say that telecommuting increases employee productivity and retention. Yet, the majority of American businesses are not fans of telecommuting. "Just 3% of employers nationally allow some teleworking," says Susan Seitel, president of WFC Resources.

Seitel shared that statistic during a presentation at a When Work Works event on September 29, 2009, to recognize Minnesota companies which earned a Alfred P. Sloan award for workplace flexibility. Over 70% of the Minnesota companies that applied for the award offer telecommuting.

All companies that earned a spot on Working Mothers 2009 list of the 100 Best Companies To Work For offer telecommuting.

A full 100 percent of them offer telecommuting and flextime schedules, 98 percent offer job-sharing, and 94 percent offer compressed workweeks. These companies are also committed to helping working parents with their child-care needs: 86 percent provide backup care, and 62 percent provide sick-child care. But perhaps even more important is the family-friendly culture they all continually strive to create.

Which brings us to a new program designed to promote telecommuting in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. It's called eWorkPlace. Instead of focusing the traditional benefit of flexibility, this program takes a more circuitous route to get companies to support telecommuting: cars. Specifically, the benefit to the community of having fewer cars on the road each day.

With funding from both the federal government and the Minnesota Department of Transportation, eWorkPlace is encouraging businesses to allow employees to telecommute at least once a week to relieve gridlock on Twin Cities highways, save commuting time, and reduce the amount of road repair needed each year.

* If 2,700 Minnesotans teleworked one day per week, that would potentially remove over 1,000 rush hour trips per day on Twin City freeways.
The Environmental Protection Agency says if just 10 percent of the nation's workforce telecommuted just one day a week, Americans would conserve more than 1.2 gallons of fuel per week.

About 9% of workers in Minnesota telecommute. Whether the current percentage of Minnesotan telecommuters is higher or lower than the national average is anyone's guess. Adeel Laari, Program Director of eWorkPlace says, "there are no scientifically valid studies on telecommuting." He adds, "If eWorkPlace is successful another 2,700 Twin Cities residents will work from home at least 1 day a week."

In doing research for eWorkPlace, Laari says the majority of employees want to telecommute and according to their research nearly 80% of jobs could be conducted with a telecommuting component. "The problem, says Laari, "are the employers. They are afraid."

What are they afraid of? You name it: control, employees not putting in a full day's work, disruption of the "team," and of course basic jealousy that some people get to work at home while others don't.

That conversation happened to a good friend of mine just this week. She is starting a new job and has to do a lot of phone calling for the next week. She shares a cubby with several other people and asked if she could work at home to make the calls privately. Her employer's response was, "How would everyone else feel if you got to do this at home and they didn't?"

Of course, the right response would have been, "Why can't they make the calls at home?"

eWorkPlace asks employers to just try it for a three month trial. For agreeing to test the concept eWorkPlace provides free consulting, IT support, and managers and employees have access to free online courses on how to have a successful working relationship when a member of the team is telecommuting.

Writing on her blog about Work-Life Trends, Seitel says employers need to be convinced that employees will be more productive if they have the option to telecommute one or two days a week.

"It means trusting employees to do what they say they will, but it also necessitates training managers to set goals with their staff, being clear about what success will look like and how they'll measure it, and knowing how results will be verified. Once managers become adept at doing this their load actually becomes lighter and employees are more satisfied, fulfilled, and able to handle their responsibilities at home as well as at work."

The University of Minnesota will be tracking participants in eWorkPlace to find out how much gas is saved, how much time is saved and whether or not the employees and employers believe productivity increases when people can telecommute at least once a week.

Will an easier commute to work really motivate companies that have been reluctant to offer telecommuting? It does seem a bit of a reach. As Susan Seitel said, "A funny thing happened on the way to the launch of eWorkPlace - a recession." Even without companies committing to the program, Twin Cities highways have fewer cars on them because fewer people have jobs to drive to. The reality is eWorkPlace has it work cut out for itself.

Elana blogs about business culture at FunnyBusiness

Should David Letterman Have Signed a "Love Contract?"

2009-10-05T16:39:05-05:00

Once the shock of the David Letterman - Robert 'Joe' Halderman blackmail attempt began to wear off --sometime around Friday evening-- the conversation turned to sexual harassment. From commenters on blog posts to cable news shows, people wanted to know if Letterman and CBS could find themselves at the end of a sexual harassment lawsuit because of Letterman's on-air confession that, "Yes I have. I have had sex with women who work on this show."

"Not enough information is available," says Lisa Stratton, associate clinical professor, and director of the University of Minnesota Law School's Workers' Rights Clinic. "If the woman welcomed the relationship, it would not be illegal."

That legal judgment probably comes as a surprise to many who are under the wrong assumption that when a person in power engages in a sexual relationship with a subordinate it automatically falls into the category of sexual harassment.

It does not. In order for a situation to qualify as a sexual harassment case, the relationship has to be "unwelcome."

If the Letterman sex scandal does anything, it reignites a conversation about corporate policies around fraternization- a conversation that seems to have gone silent over the past few years.

"Ten years ago it did seem companies were quite concerned about paramour preference and there was a lot of talk about how smart it would be for companies to have anti-fraternization policies," says Jill Gaulding, an associate of Stratton's, and a visiting associate professor at the University of Minnesota Law School. "In recent years I haven't personally come across any company enforcing that policy. Perhaps it's just gone out of style." Gaulding, ever the attorney, emphasized this was a personal, subjective impression.

In the fall of 2005, I was asked to write the cover story for the February 2006 edition of Women's Business Minnesota. The topic was office romance. Unfortunately, just a week or so after I handed in the story, the magazine folded. I published Smooching On The Clock, the would-be cover story, on my blog on February 14, 2006.

“Lou dates Mary” was episode 167-- the next-to-last episode of the long-running Mary Tyler Moore program ( 1970-1977). In the episode, Mary has yet another disastrous date, and shares with her friend Georgette that she wonders if she’ll ever find Mr. Right. Georgette then points out that Mary has known Mr. Right all along. With some encouragement Mary asks Mr. Grant (her boss) for a date. The year was 1977, and while Mary and Lou didn’t get beyond a very innocent kiss before realizing that dating each other was not such a good idea, the writers of the show didn’t have to deal with the potential ramifications that could arise when employees begin a romance because it was the presexual harassment era. In 1977, when that episode first aired, it would still be another nine years before the U.S. Supreme Court actually recognized the concept of sexual harassment. And, it wouldn’t be until 1998 ─ nearly twenty years after Mary and Lou exchanged that awkward kiss ─ that the Supreme Court ruled businesses could be held liable if sexual harassment occurred in their workplace. With that ruling, businesses may have become more concerned about the potential risk of office romances, but the ruling has neither created a flurry of new policies about office romances and it certainly hasn’t discouraged them. In fact, the opposite is true—office romances are on the rise, and corporations are dragging their feet when it comes to dictating policy and procedure on dating.

On average, about 50% of all office romances fail. It's in those failed relationships where corporations become vulnerable to sexual harassment lawsuits. To protect corporations from that possibility, the Love Contract was created.

"Think of it in terms of a prenup," said Good Morning America workplace contributor Tory Johnson. "In this particular case, you're saying to the employer, 'We'll prevent you from being held responsible for employment issues in the event of a failed personal relationship.' The employer should not have that burden."

While there are companies that use love contracts, it is certainly not the norm. As part of my research for that Office Romance article I interviewed Teresa Thompson, an employment attorney with the Minneapolis law firm Parsinen Kaplan Rosberg & Gotlieb P.A.

Thompson believes the lack of dating policies is a problem. “Only about 25% of companies have policies regarding fraternization between employees. Others may have an unspoken policy about dating people that you are not directly supervising, but most do not. "While that may surprise many, Thompson says the lack of policies is rooted in a tradition where historically businesses have wanted to stay out of people’s private lives.

Stratton and Gaulding agree saying that we don't want a legal system that makes it illegal to fall in love at work.

What about all those other women in the office who didn't have an affair with Letterman? Do they have any legal recourse in the event that he showed "paramour preference"to his lovers? The experts say probably not. While paramour preference may be distasteful for those who have to work around it, our legal system says it's not unlawful.

Because preferring a paramour discriminates against all non-paramours of both sexes (it is discrimination because of an existing romantic relationship, not discrimination because of the sex of the paramour or even the sex of the complaining employee), such romances are not covered by Title VII.

In the coverage of the David Letterman case, CNN reported they had contacted CBS about their sexual harassment policies. According to the CNN report, CBS indicated it did have a policy about sexual harassment and that David Letterman did not violate it. Stratton and Gaulding say it's actually not a great idea for companies to have anti-fraternization policies because then they have to figure out how they are going to enforce that policy. That's not easy. Imagine a blackmail attempt on a station manager in Boise or Richmond for having sex with employees. It wouldn't be surprising to hear the station manager was fired for that conduct. Now, if CBS had an anti-fraternization policy they would be obligated to treat all employees the same way for the same misconduct. Without the fraternization policy, each situation can be handled on an individual basis.

Here are what others are saying about Letterman and the potential of a sexual harassment lawsuit:

The Divorce Saloon: The Letterman sexgate files will not lead to sexual harassment charges or divorcee

NJN Network: Did Letterman's celebrity just make workplace sexual harassment a joke?

Althouse: Is it really so terrible that David Letterman has a bachelor pad in the building where he tapes his show?

Elana blogs about business culture atFunnyBusiness

Penelope Trunk Says Miscarriage Tweet All Part of Having Asperger's Syndrome

2009-10-03T10:42:32-05:00

On September 21, 2009, Penelope Trunk, a divorced mother of two, aka The Brazen Careerist, was sitting in a board meeting when she realized she was having a miscarriage. Penelope decided to tweet the workplace event.

To hear Penelope explain it, she had no idea that people would take offense at her personal feelings about the miscarriage. That may sound unbelievable until you realize that Penelope has Asperger's Disorder, something she decided to share with her readers this week.

People often tell me that I should write career advice for people with Asperger Syndrome. This is because I am surrounded by people who have Asperger’s, and I have it myself. Please, do not tell me I don’t have it. First of all, it looks very different in men and women, and most of you have experience with men. Second, I’m way more weird in person than I am on the blog. And surely you thought it was the other way around.
So, anyway, the reason I’m good at giving career advice is because I had to learn things systematically, which helps me break it down for everyone else.

Gail Hawkins is recognized as an international authority on helping "Aspies" enter the workforce. She founded the Hawkins Institute in Toronto, Canada in 1995, just one year after Asperger's Disorder became a "standardized diagnosis."

With funding from the Canadian government, people who are diagnosed with Asperger's can participate in the Institute's three-year program that provides job counseling and placement. Hawkins says there is no similar service in the states.

Hawkins has never met Penelope Trunk and until today, had never read her blog. However, in preparation for our interview, Hawkins said she read several entries and found it "very Asperger." In particular, Hawkins said Trunk's problem with food is very typical with women with Asperger's.

Given a choice, I eat a Power Bar for every meal and snack, (two= a meal, one= a snack,) and I hate if the store is out of both peanut butter and vanilla. I don’t like variety, even in Power Bars.

Hawkins understands why many might be surprised that someone as successful as Penelope Trunk has Asperger's. "Asperger's is a spectrum disorder. Some people on the spectrum are closer to autistic behavior and others are high functioning," she explained. "It is not uncommon for someone with Asperger's to be a good writer with a sarcastic, dry sense of humor."

What is it like to work with someone who has Asperger's? Hawkins says it's important to remember that people with Asperger's have individual personalities but they are hardwired in such a way that they miss social cues. "They operate in black and white. It's either all this way or that way. Yes or No. There's no room for maybes."

Hawkins also says there are two extremes of Asperger's in the workplace. There's the person who misses all the information that typically floats through the ether in the workplace. As a result, unless someone tells them information directly, they miss all the stuff that is obvious to everyone else. Then there's the other type of person with Asperger's who inserts themselves in every conversation in the workplace, never understanding when they have said enough.

"You'll rarely find someone with Asperger's in management, unless they are managing a team of computer types, because managing requires judgment in decision making and most people with Asperger's don't have that ability." Hawkins says most physicians who have Asperger's are surgeons or in research, and she says other careers where someone with Asperger's is likely to succeed include: actuaries, accountants, artists and musicians."

As a writer/columnist/blogger, it is Trunk's ability to ignore social cues that makes her such an engaging writer. She says things that many of us think but would never dare to say. Our social filters won't allow us to go there. Without those filters, Trunk's writing has a freedom that many of us lack.

So, to all of you who think the twitter was outrageous, think about this:
Most miscarriages happen at work. Twenty-five percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Seventy-five percent of women who are of child-bearing age are working. Most miscarriages run their course over weeks. Even if you are someone who wanted the baby and are devastated by the loss, you’re not going to sit in bed for weeks. You are going to pick up your life and get back to it, which includes going back to work.
This means that there are thousands of miscarriages in progress, at work, on any given day. That we don’t acknowledge this is absurd. That it is such a common occurrence and no one thinks it’s okay to talk about is terrible for women.

For more on working with people with Asperger's:
My Asperger's Child: Dealing with Asperger Employees:What Employers Need To Know
Aspie Teacher:WhyYou Need A Mentor At Work
Zikkir: Working with Asperger's

Elana writes about business culture at FunnyBusiness

What I Didn't Learn From The Financial Times' List Of The Top 50 Women In World Business

2009-10-01T16:06:18-05:00

In writing about this first ever list that looks at the top women in business throughout the world, The Financial Times asks the question, "Would we be better off if more women were in charge?" Good question. Unfortunately, the article doesn't provide any real answers. Sure, there's a quote from Helen Alexander, the first female president of the CBI, the largest business lobby in the UK, who says diversity is needed to prevent "groupthink" by white male boards." Old news. There are the requisite statistics demonstrating what little headway women have made in reaching the executive suite despite, as the article points out, that there is "substantial evidence that better gender balance has a positive impact on performance."

Just 3 per cent of Fortune 500 chief executives are women. Across Europe, only 10 per cent of board directors of the largest companies are female (quotas have made Norway the exception, with more than 40 per cent) and the numbers are even lower in Asia.

What you won't find is any analysis about these women and the organizations they lead. While the profiles are interesting, they give very little insight into what makes these women different. Why did these women, at these businesses, rise to the top? I want to know what these women have in common, if anything. From reading the profiles, some are self-made while some went into their family business. Very little is written about their personal lives. Just five of the top 25 profiles hint at their life away from work. The #1 ranked woman executive, Indra Nooyi, chairman and chief executive of PepsiCo, refers to time spent with her family. She says,

“At the weekends, I’m cooking at home in the kitchen,” she says. “I’m doing everything that normal people do.”

Anne Lauvergeon, who heads the French electric company, Areva, says,

Despite sometimes wishing for a clone of herself to help cope with the workload, Lauvergeon still finds time to get her six-year-old child ready for school: “I started my morning with my son at 8am,” she says.

Annika Falkengren who heads the Swedish company, SEB, shared her view of what it takes to be successful in business in Sweden in a 2006 interview with FT.

“In Sweden, to be a truly successful woman you should have a good job, look after your children – of which you should have three – make good food, go to the spa, see your female friends and take care of your husband.

In this article, Falkengren says she made sacrifices for her career. In particular, she waited to have children until she was in her 40's. Patricia Ann Woertz, who heads Archer Daniels Midland gives a shout out to her husband, a logistics consultant, for making it possible for her to put so much energy into her career. The profile simply says the couple have three children. Then there is Brenda Barnes who heads up Sara Lee. Barnes was president of Pepsico North America when she took a seven-year leave from her career to raise her three children. Today, Sara Lee offers "returnships," a concept inspired by Barnes' time at home. Returnships are paid internships at Sara Lee for people looking to return to work after being out of the workforce for a significant period of time. Does the fact that the list only hints at the personal lives of five of the top 25 mean that the other women don't have families? Of course not. The only reason that family information is relevant to women executives is if it signals that the majority of women in leadership don't have families. That's significant. What I want to know is what these women have in common. What are their leadership styles? Are they really approaching business differently than their male counterparts and is that difference helping the bottom line? Recently CE Morra Aarons-Mele wrote two blog posts, one at The Huffington Post and one at BlogHer, in response to Marcus Buckingham's column about new research regarding women and happiness that indicates today's women are not as happy as women were 40 years ago and that as women get older, they get sadder. What about women who achieve extraordinary success in their careers? Are they happier than the rest of us? In his column about women and happiness Buckingham looks at all the advances women have made in education, business and politics. He wonders what a woman in 1969 would think if she knew that,

October will be the first month in which women outnumber men in the workforce, that women would be holding more management and supervisory positions than men, by a margin of 37 percent to 31 percent, that in like-for-like work women and men with the same amount of work experience would be earning the same, and that women's pay would actually be increasing faster than men's?
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marcus-buckingham/whats-happening-to-womens_b_289511.html

If someone had painted that picture for me in 1969 I would not have been surprised at all that women were enjoying success in the workplace. At the time I was a freshman at the University of Missouri and I assumed that equal job opportunities would be a reality by the time I got my degree. In many ways, I'm still shocked that it didn't happen that way. Which brings me back to that list of the Top 50 Women in World Business. I need context. What I didn't learn from the list of women who head up businesses around the world is if they have initiated more work-life balance programs in their businesses. What I didn't learn from the Financial Times Top 50 is if these women are supportive of other women. What I didn't learn from the Financial Times article is what is being done to make sure it doesn't take another 40 years before the gender gap in the executive suite disappears. Image Credit: Financial Times Elana blogs about business culture at FunnyBusiness

Wishing Twitter Away Not A Good Strategy For The Recruiting Industry

2009-09-25T23:12:39-05:00

When an industry feels threatened by new technology it's not uncommon to start seeing a communication campaign to remind consumers of their real value. You saw it with gas stations when self-serve pumps were first introduced. The service stations touted the benefits of their personal service and the importance of having a human being check the oil, clean the windshield and pump the gas in inclement weather. Self service won, except in New Jersey where you can't pump your own gasoline.

You saw it with the newspaper industry when their circulation started dropping because readers were going online for news. Not only did newspapers remind readers of the patriotic role newspapers play in sustaining a democratic republic through an informed citizenry, they also reminded people that newspapers, unlike computers, are portable. Unfortunately for newspapers, that argument lasted as long as it took for people to use smart phones to access online news.

Now, you are seeing industries that are finding themselves at risk because social media is doing the job they used to do. Job Recruiting is one of those industries. One group that is trying to get their message out is the Association for Graduate Recruiters (AGR). In an article in PersonnelToday.com the association says Facebook and Twitter are not the place for graduate recruitment.

Carl Gilleard, AGR chief executive, told Personnel Today: "Employers should use social networking sites to communicate, to raise awareness, and to get messages across but they shouldn't use them as a selection or pre-selection tool, especially out of the blue with no prior contact with the graduate. There's a line to be drawn; you have to listen and understand the market you are trying to engage with."

The spokesman for the AGR is not the only one who is trying to put a positive spin on the advantages of hiring a professional recruiter instead of relying on social media. From Applied Abstractions,

Headhunters are the proverbial networkers - they derive their value from knowing not just many people, but the right people.

CanadaBoom Edmonton tells readers that using a recruiter can evaluate your resume, provide tips to improve your job hunting methods, and provide additional feedback that can improve your chances of finding the right job, or any job.

Headhunters will be able to tell you which job offers fit your qualification. They might also be ready to find you job or career opportunities that aren’t your usual career options.

Steadfast Finances offers 10 key reasons why its a smart decision to use a headhunter including the fact that recruiters don't cost job applicants, they don't take a lot of time, and they can help job applicants get a higher salary.

For many, the recruiting industry's message is being drown out by headlines and stories of people who are finding their jobs on Twitter. Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal ran a story headlined, "A New Job Just A Tweet Away." CNN ran "Hired! I got my job through Twitter" and The New York Times ran a story on its shifting careers blog called, "How Twitter Can Help at Work."

Then there are the blog posts that paint a very dismal picture of the recruiting industry. With headlines like Tech Crunch's, "How free social media beat the recruitment consultants to death," the Irish newspaper, The Post's, "Twittering threat to job agencies" and Fistful of Talent's, "Are Recruiters like Dodo Birds?...Soon to Be Extinct?"- it's easy to get the sense that recruiters are indeed a dying breed.

It doesn't help the deathbed perception that almost daily someone is writing about a new tool to make it easier to use Twitter in your job search. (Anti)Social Development provides links to job search designed for Twitter and a listing of job postings and resources to follow on Twitter. @onlinersume recently provided a list of the Top 50 People on Twitter for Job Seekers and ljaar has a post with 10 Excellent Tools For Twitter Job Search.

Meanwhile, The Association of Graduate Recruiters decided to build its case against social media by surveying recent graduates. According to their survey, 70% of the 1400 graduates participating in the survey did not want businesses to use social media sites to recruit new employees.

Without seeing the exact questions it's hard to understand why graduates would be so adamant about excluding these sites from their job search.

Bob Athwal, head of graduate recruitment at energy firm RWE npower, agreed that social networking sites should only be used by employers once a candidate had been hired.

He said: " has a part to play in the recruitment process but not in the attraction and selection process. [Social networking] is more about the 'on-boarding' once a job offer has been made and the graduate wants to communicate with the company via Facebook and Twitter to talk to current employees and get company updates."

The likelihood of that scenario really happening is about as likely as the NFL succeeding in its efforts to prohibit fans from tweeting play by play during games.

Social media is creating a fundamental shift in how business gets done. Trying to dictate how people should use it makes the AGR seem foolish and hopelessly out of step. They would be better served in spending some time developing strategies on how they are going to survive in a social media world.

Elana blogs about business culture at FunnyBusiness

Demaree Family vs. Wal-Mart. Is The Lawsuit Justified?

2009-09-22T09:47:31-05:00

The Demaree family is suing Wal-Mart for failing to tell Anthony "A.J" Demaree about their "unsuitable print policy." In a separate complaint, they are also suing Arizona, the Arizona Attorney General and the City of Peoria.

The Demarees are the Arizona family who took 144 photos to be developed at a Wal-Mart but instead of getting their pictures back, their children were taken away from them for a month on suspicion of kiddie porn.

After Walmart turned the photos over to police, the Demarees were not allowed to see their children for two weeks. They did not regain physical custody for a month while the state investigated, according to their lawyer, Richard Treon.[...]

Treon said the images in question were part of a group of 144 photographs taken mostly the family's vacation in San Diego. He said there were seven to eight bath- and playtimephotos of the girls that showed a "portion or outline or genitalia."
AZCentral.com

At the time, their daughters were ages 5, 4, and 1½. The lawsuit against Arizona, Peoria and the state Attorney General's Office claims employees from each entity defamed the Demarees by telling friends, family members and co-workers that they had "sexually abused" their children by taking pornographic pictures of them.

The lawsuit against Wal-Mart charges the company is at fault for not disclosing their "unsuitable print policy" which allows Wal-Mart to turn any photos over to law enforcement.

Once news of the Demaree's case hit the media, the majority of televison news anchors and radio talk show hosts I listened to were incredulous that Wal-Mart reported the pictures in the first place, and that the authorities then took a month to investigate the case. Commenters on the blogs I read about the situation had a similar reaction, but while they completely support the family's lawsuit against Arizona officials, there was a more divided reaction to the lawsuit against Wal-Mart.

From a post by The Agitator,

don’t think Wal-Mart should be getting sued. Wal-Mart didn’t arrest them, take their kids from them, or put them through hell trying to put
their family back together. Big Chief

I have to agree that there’s little case against Wal-Mart. The store employees who called police are no different than someone who calls the police because they see someone openly carrying a gun, in a state where that’s perfectly legal. KB Craig

From a post by FreeRangeKids,

While I think the whole thing is incredibly ridiculous and sad, the failing wasn’t really on the part of the WalMart employee, but rather CPS, the DA, the AG, and whatever other government officials were involved. Photo processors, like teachers, are mandated reporters, and if there’s even a hint that something is child abuse, it’s supposed to be reported. Yes, the WalMart employee should have used better discretion because, DUH–kids in a tub!!, but it wasn’t WalMart who prosecuted here, it was the DA. The WalMart employee was only doing his/her job. Kari

I’m going to disagree with Kari on the WalMart processor merely making a mistake. I agree that authorities should have known better, I think it’s also imperitive mandatory reporters are properly trained. Walmart has an obligation to make sure they are. The mandatory reporting is for children engaged in sexual activity, not just any nude child in a tub. toyfoto

While employees at photo labs are mandated reporters in some states, in Arizona, they are not. From the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.

At the heart of the issue is Wal-Mart's policy on "unsuitable printing." The Demarees are claiming that Wal-Mart did not adequately publicize this policy. In fact, if you search "unsuitable printing policy" on Walmart.com, you're not going to find anything.

However, you'll find what you are looking for in the Conditions of Use in Terms of Use which lists all the things you agree not to do when you are a customer of Wal-Mart's photo department. The "unsuitable print policy" is number 8.

What does this incident say about the culture at Wal-Mart? In one scenario it says that Wal-Mart employees are empowered to evaluate these photos on their own and call in the police if they suspect kiddie porn. In another scenario it says that the training given to Wal-Mart employees about what is and isn't kiddie porn may need to be revisited.

It's hard to imagine that a $8 an hour employee didn't check in with his or her manager before placing that call to the police. In most organizations that I've worked with, not only would the department manager be contacted, but that manager would contact every manager up the chain of command to make sure there were no surprises when the police came to the store.

If that chain of command was followed, it means three or four Wal-Mart employees believed that the Demarre's bathtub pictures qualified for Wal-Mart's standards of obscene pornography.

And therein lies the problem. Wal-Mart is a company that gets sued a lot. Just do a Google search on Wal-Mart lawsuits and you'll see their lawyers are keeping very busy.

Whether this is a legitimate or frivolous lawsuit will be up to the courts. Regardless, the entire incident did start because a Wal-Mart employee looked at three little girls in a bathtub and saw something that the vast majority of Americans wouldn't see. Giving Wal-Mart my most generous interpretation of the situation, the employee and/or additional members of the team were simply following company policy in order to prevent any lawsuits.

It seems to me that corporations that have the obligation to report suspicion of kiddie porn based on photographs need to have trained personnel make that decision. It shouldn't be in the hands of an $8 an hour photo tech and local management. Too much is at risk.

Instead, large companies should implement an expert team of people trained in determining what constitutes "obscene or pornographic imagery." With this kind of review panel, big corporations’ obscenity guidelines would be consistent and standardized throughout the corporation. And a group of overzealous employees would never be able to make a mistake that will scar a family for a lifetime.

For whatever reason, bathtub photography is part of American culture. In the back of my closet, in a box containing 60 years of non digital photos, are several photographs of me and my brother in the bathtub from the 1950's. There are also several of my son and my daughter together in the tub. There were lots of bubbles involved, but given that the Wal-Mart tech had a problem with three young girls in a tub, it's hard to imagine the reaction the technician would have to the brother/sister bathtub scene.

How this became a quintessential part of our visual history is anyone's guess. I do know it's probably as predictable to see the bathtub shot in a baby album as it is to see a picture of a child's first birthday, their first day at school, and their smile after their first baby tooth falls out.

Children in the bathtub is a popular category on Flickr. Enjoy the slide-show but beware: There is nudity and genitalia.

Elana writes about business culture at FunnyBusiness.

Part II: Is The Food Industry The New Tobacco Industry?

2009-09-19T09:25:02-05:00

In the movie Julie & Julia, there's a scene that was played in all the previews where Julia and her husband are in a restaurant and Julia says she might take up hat making while they live in Paris. At that point her husband says, "But Julia, what do you really like to do?" And, of course, Julia says, in only the way Julia could say, "EAT!"

I really like to eat too. Over the years I've known people who see food as solely a source of fuel, but they are few and far between, and not a lot of fun to go to dinner with. I also believe, despite the obesity epidemic, most people want to eat healthfully. In other words, people buy in to the idea that you are what you eat, and if you eat unhealthy foods, you'll be unhealthy.

The challenge is what does eating healthfully mean? If you follow conventional wisdom you would eat a low fat, high carb diet. That is the diet that the majority of nutrition professionals say is the healthy way to eat. However, Americans trying to follow those guidelines have found themselves getting fatter, and fatter, and fatter, with more and more people being diagnosed with diabetes.

Then there are those that say carbohydrates are the real cause of the obesity problem and if you just cut out carbs you can stop counting calories and maintain a healthy weight. Opponents will tell you those who follow a low carb diet are eating their way straight to a heart attack.

To listen to the two sides debate, you would think that each side was trying to kill the American population.

Like many 58-year-old women I battle my weight. Like many, I have toyed with low-carb diets, Weight Watchers, calorie counting and the majority of the time I have tried to follow the recommendations of the food pyramid. Like many, when my efforts to lose weight invariably failed, I comforted myself with the fact that I did eat a healthy diet, and if that meant carrying an extra 30 pounds, so be it.

Two years ago I happened to catch Author Gary Taubes on Larry King Live. He was promoting his book Good Calories, Bad Calories. In many ways the book was a follow-up to a piece he had written for The New York Times Magazine in 2002 called What If It's All Been A Big Fat Lie? Taubes says, "The reaction to the article was dramatic."

Because of the powerful reaction to the magazine article in 2002, Taubes says he believed the public would have a similar reaction to the publication of his book. They did not. According to Taubes, the problem with his 500-page book is that it "basically says everything that you've been told about nutrition is wrong and here is journalist who is going to tell you what is right." Taubes is the first to say the book is definitely not beach reading.

Even so, he was very surprised and disappointed about the lack of reaction to this book. While he did have that Larry King Live appearance, the book was not taken seriously by the professional community. It was not reviewed in any of the
major medical publications and most major news outlets also skipped reviewing the book.

"I thought there would be a debate," he said. The debate he expected was between the forces who support the idea of low fat /high carb eating, and those who say eating a low carb/higher fat diet is the healthy way to eat.

Taubes traces our obesity epidemic to 1977 when a bipartisan, non-legislative committee headed by Senator George McGovern, published, " Dietary Goals For The United States." It represented a significant change in the types of food Americans thought of as healthy. Prior to the McGovern report, The food pyramid consisted of the four basic food groups: milk, meat, fruits and vegetables, and grains.

Americans began adopting this new approach to eating. The food industry responded by creating low fat foods. That's where things got dicey because when the food industry had to take out the fat from their products they had to replace it with something else. The something they replaced it with was sugar.

For the previous decade the Sugar Industry had been marketing itself as a way to control your appetite. This ad appeared in Good Housekeeping in 1968.

The American Heart Association recently issued new recommendations for sugar consumption. Taubes says the recommendations are "both a weak compromise and a better late than never statement." For Taubes, the real sugar culprit is carbs because they all become glucose(sugar) during digestion.

"The research suggests that sugar has deleterious metabolic effects that go far beyond empty calories.[...]When the AHA says women should only have 6 tsp of sugar a day, they do mean added sugar -- the sucrose and HFCS -- that's in sodas, sweets, fruit juices, yogurts, etc. The AHA still considers high carbohydrate diets healthy diets because they're low in fat and saturated fat, so there's no inroads there at all."

Now there is research that says sugar could be addictive. If it becomes accepted thought that sugar is addictive, you can just imagine the lawsuits. It would be naive to think that the Food Industry hasn't been conducting its own studies to demonstrate that sugar is not addictive.

The counterpunches have already begun. A British professor, who was one of the proponents arguing that nicotine was not addictive, came out challenging the validity of researchers at Princeton who say sugar has addictive qualities.

If consumers buy into the concept that sugar is addictive, it will also mean major changes in the grocery store. Right now around 80% of products on the grocery shelf are processed foods containing high levels of carbohydrates and/or sugar.

One person who doesn't blame the food industry is Gary Taubes. "It's a common thing to blame fast food or blame processed food. However, the scientists got it wrong; the research community got it wrong, and the food industry just capitalized on it. As soon as we said remove the fat, the food industry created low fat food, and included carbohydrates to create the right mouth feel that fat used to provide."

Taubes believes if consumers want low sugar/low carb foods, the food industry will be happy to create those foods.

It's been seven weeks since I decided to drastically reduce my carb intake and significantly increase my fat intake. It is making a difference. I do feel more energetic, and that stubborn weight that just would not budge is finally moving in the right direction.

Although I did read the entire Taubes book, I would love to have someone who understands the science a lot better than me share their reaction. Taubes said one of his goals for writing the book was to have an impact on the conversation. We can do that. We need to do that. Because if Taubes is right, and the scientists are wrong, we could eat our way out of obesity and a lot of diseases.

Elana writes about business culture at FunnyBusiness.

Is The Food Industry Following In The Steps Of The Tobacco Industry?

2009-09-15T21:10:38-05:00

While the American Heart Association's new guidelines for sugar consumption did not get the same level of media attention as Surgeon General Luther L. Terry's 1964 landmark report on the health hazards of smoking cigarettes, the sugar guidelines have the potential of doing to the food industry what Surgeon General's report did to the tobacco industry.

Dietitian Julie Upton says the dietitian community was shocked that the American Heart Association "stood up to the food industry earlier this month and essentially made eating and drinking a lot of items in the supermarket off-limits."

The new sugar guidelines basically limits the amount of "added" sugar a woman should have daily to 25 grams of sugar. That's equivalent to 6 tsp which equals about 100 calories. Currently the average American eats and drinks a whopping 22 tsp of sugar a day. And people wonder why there is an obesity epidemic!

Added sugar not only includes the white table sugar you might spoon
into a cup of coffee or a bowl of cereal, but also sugar added to food
and drinks before you even purchase them. Added sugar is commonly found
in soft drinks, candy, cakes, and cookies (though it lurks in many
types of food, including some yogurts and even granola.
Health News. com

How does that translate int the foods we eat? If someone is serious about following these guidelines, it will mean a dramatic change in food choices.
If you start your morning with a bowl of Instant Kashi Oatmeal whose slogan is "More For Your Heart", you'll use up 15 of your 25 allotted grams.
If you prefer a fat-free Yoplait yogurt, you'll burn through 14 of your 25 grams.

Even drinking your vegetables in a bottle of V8 Juice will use of 50% of your allotted sugar allowance.

Forget about most snacks. Don't even think of eating the entire bag of Welch's Yogurt & Fruit Snacks. It has 38 grams of sugar.

With 18 grams of sugar,a snack pack of Vanilla SnackWells uses almost all of your daily allotment.

Thinking about quenching your thirst with a 12 oz bottle of Coke? Just like the Welch's Yogurt & Fruit snack, Coca Cola has 39 grams of sugar--over 50% more sugar than the American Heart Association's guideline for daily sugar consumption.

The fact is if the American Heart Association is serious about these recommendations, it will mean a dramatic change in the American diet.You can't eat the majority of processed food on the grocery shelf and be in compliance with these sugar guidelines. It's impossible because the food in the grocery store is laced with sugar.

In what can only be perceived as a defensive measure, the food industry is launching a new labeling program called Smart Choices that claims to be "designed to help shoppers easily identify smarter food and beverage choices.”

But the program ran into some problems last week when the big green check was seen on a box of Fruit Loops. Katherine Glover of BNET writes,

More than forty percent of the calories in Froot Loops come from
sugar, but apparently the program approved the cereal to let parents
know that Froot Loops is a healthier option than, say, donuts.
And the sugar will motivate kids to eat the cereal, which contains
fiber and other nutrients, according to one Smart Choices board member.

Of course, Froot Loops is not the only dubious “Smart Choice” in the
program, nor is Kellogg the only company involved. There’s also Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Breyer’s fat-free chocolate fudge brownie ice cream (Unilever), and Betty Crocker Fruit Roll-Ups (General Mills). PepsiCo and ConAgra participate in Smart Choices as well.

The New York Times reports the Food and Drug Administration is very concerned about this food label program and sent a letter to the program's manager saying it planned to monitor the effect the program has on consumer's choices.

The letter said the agencies would be concerned if the Smart Choices label “had the effect of encouraging consumers to choose highly processed foods and refined grains instead of fruits, vegetables and whole grains.”The government is interested in improving nutrition labeling on packages in part because of the nation’s obesity epidemic, which experts say is tied to a diet heavy in processed foods loaded with calories, fats and sugar.

When the report on the dangers of cigarette smoking was released in 1964, there wasn't as much noise as there is today, and that report got people's attention. For the first two months after the report was released, cigarette sales temporarily declined before going back up to pre-report levels.

According to Big Tobacco: A history of its decline,the percentage of smokers has dropped from 42% to 20%.

During those forty plus years, the public health community has worked hard to educate Americans about the health risks of smoking.

The American Heart Association's decision to declare war against sugar is not a trivial pronouncement. It is saying to American consumers and the food industry that it's time to change the majority of products on the grocery shelf.

This is a big shift in nutritional thinking.

More on that in Part II of "Is The Food Industry The New Tobacco Industry."

You can also read about CE Catherine Morgan's attempt to conquer her sugar addiction.

Elana blogs about business culture at FunnyBusiness.

Diane Sawyer's Dream Job. What It Really Says About The State Of Network News

2009-09-03T12:05:58-05:00

Avuncular she is not. Not so sure that she is "materteral" either. And even if she were, no one is going to say it because materteral is not as much fun to say as avuncular--the beloved adjective used for the past several decades to describe the relationship between television news junkies and the anchors who deliver the news.

The announcement yesterday that Diane Sawyer is finally getting her dream job should be seen more as "one giant step for a woman" and not " a giant step for womankind."

It is well known that Sawyer really really wanted this job. As the headline for Bonnie Goldstein's post in Politics Daily says: Diane Sawyer Finally Gets Top Anchor Job. US Post Today

writes,

Her night-side ascension to ‘World News’ after the announcement of Charles Gibson’s retirement was a long time in coming.

Reporting from New York – Diane Sawyer had twice been passed over for
the job of anchoring ABC’s evening news broadcast, first after the
death of Peter Jennings, and then following the abrupt end of the Bob
Woodruff-Elizabeth Vargas pairing that led the network to put the
avuncular Charles Gibson in the anchor chair.

At one time, being the managing/editor anchor of a network news program was the most prestigious news job in broadcasting. At one time, being the managing editor of a city newspaper was a great job. Today, not so much.

In the past 15 years, viewership of network nightly news programs has dropped precipitiously...a trend that no one sees abating. In other words, Sawyer's dream job is about a broadcast news titantic.

This is not to say it isn't a prestigious job. It's just a very risky one. Who wants to have their name associated with a product that continues to lose marketshare?

It gets worse. The demographics of the Nightly News show are very skewed.

Since almost no one under 60-years-old watches the news in the early evening which makes the programs unattractive to advertisers, the news about the ABC Evening News does not mean much.

Only 1.93 million people ages 25 to 54 watched the ABC Evening News on the average day the week of August 17. Total viewership was more than seven million, so a lot of senior citizens tuned in.
24/7 Wall St

Of course, Sawyer knows all this and she still wanted the job. As jobs go its got to be a ton of fun. Lots of travel. People return your phone calls and you get to talk with the world's most interesting people. What broadcaster wouldn't want to do that?

But Sawyer's insistence that she become an anchor can also be seen as incredibly selfish and disloyal to her employer of many many years. By taking this job, she could be costing ABC millions of dollars in lost revenues. She is GMA's franchise. And it's a money maker.

No one is certain what financial hit the show will take when she is no longer on it. What most people are certain about is that her move to the news anchor desk will not stop the hemmorraging on the evening news.

Depending how cynical you are, Sawyer's eagerness to take this job could be just what the networks need to "reorg their news programming." In a piece for the New York Times, Bill Carter and Brian Stelter explore the image shift that Sawyer's arrival to the anchor desk really means.

It is quote by an anonymous television executive near the bottom of the article that really got my attention. He is referring to the inevitable competition that people want between Sawyer and CBS anchor Katie Couric.

“We’ll find out whether people don’t want to watch a woman anchor the
news or whether they just didn’t want to watch Katie,” said one veteran
television news industry executive, asking for anonymity to speak
candidly about the competition. Ms. Couric’s CBS broadcast is
consistently in third place.

Hmmm..One could interpret this as the perfect setup. Turn the anchor desks over to women and people stop watching. Of course, people have stopped watching long before Katie took over but it feels like a convenient and easy out for the boys.

Here's a prediction. Viewership will continue to decline for all three networks. But since two of the networks are anchored by female, there will be those that say women just don't have the gravitas to do the job. But more importantly, the failure of the nightly news programs will be indelibly linked to women anchors,and that it will make it easier for the networks to pull the plug on the nightly news program when they are headed up by the girls.

You have to believe in the board rooms of ABC, CBS and NBC, there is a strategic team trying to figure out what their news operation should look like in a world where their product is not attractive to a huge segment of the population. If they are not going through this strategic exercise, shame on them.

How much longer can this dying show continue? AT what point will the networks say we have to reinvent ourselves.

The importance of a job is reflected in how many people want that job. Earlier this summer the SVP of programming at CNBC was asked about Erin Burnett's career goals. AT the time of the interview, Burnett had just signed a three year deal with CNBC which includes some crossover stuff at NBC. This is what he had to say.

Asked about whether Ms. Burnett could become an evening news anchor,
Mr. Wald, formerly an executive producer of "NBC Nightly News," brushed
aside the question. "I'm not sure that's something people aspire to
anymore," he said, matter-of-factly.

Elana writes about business culture at FunnyBusiness

Abercrombie & Fitch's Big Misstep: Narcissism

2009-08-27T12:23:07-05:00

In the 90's and for much of the first decade of this millenium, Abercrombie & Fitch was the brand to beat. The clothing was pricey and the sales figures were strong.Abercrombie & Fitch wasn't selling clothing but an experience...an aspirational experience targeted to teenagers who hoped being decked out in Abercrombie clothes would help them realize their high school dreams. The teenagers couldn't get enough.

Overlay those aspirations with a Freudian twist and you get all the elements of narcissism: vanity, conceit, egotism and elitism.

For Abercrombie, the strategy worked for a lot of years. But being narcissists, the company and the brand were blinded by their own vision of themselves and didn't accept that a generation's aspirations evolve -- maybe not dramatically. but enough to reject past loves.

Looking back at the past year, it's easy to see where Abercrombie Fitch goofed up. Not only did it refuse to consider that its adoring fans might one day get bored with their relationship,it wasn't listening to them. Had they listened, they would have heard that these teenagers still aspired to be cool but they wanted to aspire to that on a budget. As important, it wasn't just about the money, the relationship had become boring. The same old, same old clothing wasn't holding their passion quite the way it used to. Oh, and did I mention Abercrombie didn't hear that their adoring fans needed to be on a budget?

Being the narcissists that they are, Abercrombie & Fitch went where no other retailer dared to go last year: they refused to lower prices; they refused to put merchandise on sale, they didn't change the style of their merchandise.

It seems so obvious now. But when Abercrombie & Fitch was trying to decide how to navigate the recession they were thinking not so much about short -term sales but of their aspirational brand. They made their decisions to protect their brand. That's exactly the advice brand specialists would tell them to do.

However, the way they executed their protectionist policy resulted in a misstep of such huge proportion that Abercrombie & Fitch is being dubbed by Time Magazine as the World's Worst Recession Brand.

Okay, in fairness, Time Magazine didn't actually call Abercrombie & Fitch the world's worst recession brand...they just asked the question: Abercrombie & Fitch:World's Worst Recession Brand?--allowing us, the readers, to conclude that yes, indeed, Abercrombie is the worst recession brand in the world. ( If you are a Keith Olbermann fan you can how put the sound track of Olbermann warbling his worst person in the wo-o-o-o-r-ld segment)

Being a narcissistic brand, Abercrombie couldn't imagine how it could possibly change. They just kept on believing that once the economy settled down, their adoring fans would come running back, like lovers asking for forgiveness after a fling. So Abercrombie didn't come up with a creative way to lower prices and still protect the aspirational nature of the brand.

Experts will tell you that Abercrombie & Fitch was right in being concerned that if they lowered their prices it would hurt their brand. Historically, once the price is lowered, consumers don't react kindly to having price increases.
Abercrombie's misstep was that there are ways the lower prices without permanently damaging the price point.

The Time Magazine article explains how other aspirational brands like The Four Seasons Hotel Chain have managed to do it.

...the Four Seasons hotel chain, which still charges premium prices for
its rooms but started offering deals that let you buy a two-night stay
and get a third one free. The hotel, in effect, is lowering its prices.
But when things improve, it will be easier for consumers to accept the
end of the free-room deal than a sudden spike in prices.

Recently, Abercrombie decided to fight for its relationship with the teenage market. It is lowering its prices and introducing a more Gossip Girl inventory.However, The Big Fat Marketing Blog asks if its too late for Abercrombie?

Many Abercrombie shoppers have turned their attention to Aeropostale and American Eagle Outfitters, two of the companies sweeping up the broken bits left by Abercrombie’s bad decisions.

Even if kids still want to shop at its stores, parents are saying no. The glimmer of hope Abercrombie may have seen of late—rising stocks and consumer confidence—has all but disappeared as stocks have slumped again on worries that consumers are still clinging to their wallets.

Abercrombie’s recent financial report also suggested it has cut its marketing budget. Another bad move at a time when it should be letting its customers know it has finally come to its senses.

Abercrombie's narcissism isn't limited to pricing and inventory, it impacts how they treat employees, and on this issue, Abercrombie deservedly found itself on the losing end of an employee discrimination lawsuit
A London Tribunal ruled Abercrombie had to pay 22-year-old Riam Dean around $13,000 because the company discriminated against her. Dean has a prosthetic arm and was not allowed to work on the floor because her prosthesis violated the company's "Look Policy." For Megan Angelo, at Wallet Pop, this latest discrimination lawsuit was the last straw.

When Dean's case first came to light, I wrote a post for Walletpop suggesting that perhaps the young woman's complaint should mark the end of the road for A&F, a brand that has experienced more than its fair share of discrimination controversies -- and one that's now also battling a grave downturn in sales.

The proposal -- which I freely admit was a radical one -- was met with heated responses on both sides. I learned that very definitely many people are sick and tired of A&F's near-constant, winking prejudices, as well as its sometimes-shoddy product quality and its always too-cool-for-school salespeople.

And speaking of school, lots of people on the other side of the argument inferred that my assessment of A&F was inspired by my being either severely unpopular in high school, overweight, a minority, or a self-loathing Caucasian. What all of them agreed on was that my post utterly lacked objectivity.

While the future does not look bright for Abercrombie, it would be naive to say they can't make a comeback. They've done it before. Started in 1892, Abercrombie used to be a sporting goods firm. It fell on hard times and in 1988, Limited Brands, the folks that own Victoria Secrets, bought the company. However,it wasn't until 1992 when Mike Jeffries was brought in that the current Abercrombie image took hold. While Jeffries seems to indicate in interviews that "he gets it," the Time Magazine article suggests that actions speak louder than words.

At the New York City Abercrombie & Fitch store, whose neighbors include Prada and Gucci, a shirtless male model greets shoppers at the front and happily snaps pictures with the gawkers. Sales associates dance to hip-hop music in the aisles. There's not one "For Sale" sign in the whole four-story place. A pair of men's ripped jeans go for $90; women's jeans are $80; a hooded sweatshirt with the Abercrombie logo is $60.

Elana blogs about business culture at FunnyBusiness.