A pet peeve of mine, for a long time, has been the corporate office “pitch in for a gift” routine. If you aren’t a corporate employee, what happens is that there’s usually one perky busybody in every department who decides to buy a flower basket when co-workers gets sick, or a teddy bear when they [...] Read more »
12 steps to a cleaner and more productive workspace
If you work in an office, chances are good that you work on a desk that is covered in a mess. Twenty-five years ago when most people still used their desks for writing, papers were a big problem. With the arrival of the desktop computer, most people added a monitor, a keyboard, a mouse and [...] Read more »
don’t be milton
Does this describe your dream job? Boring work, a long commute to an uninteresting box building located in a bland office park, pay that’s not competitive, poor benefits, long hours and uncomfortable, privacy-obliterating cubicles. Sounds awful, doesn’t it? Piling on further, though, let’s throw in a few broken promises for promotions and raises. Top it [...] Read more »
is it better to be busy or have nothing to do?
Being busy or taking it easy at work. It’s a tough choice sometimes. I know that many people think it would be easier to sit in one place all day and do nothing. But it’s not. Another question is whether it would be better to be busy in short spurts, or better to be busy [...] Read more »
making overseas experience count
(A reposting of what is – in my opinion, at least – an interesting post from 2007, including the original comments) A reader asked me an interesting question a while back: “I lived for 2 years in northern Peru as a missionary. Although this wasn’t with a corporation, I still gained tremendous experience and now speak [...] Read more »
how to take time off from work
I remember about two years ago when a fellow consultant expressed amazement that I was planning to take a Thursday off – after having taken Monday off. He couldn’t understand how I was able to afford to take two days off in an average week – let alone two weeks before I planned on going [...] Read more »
should I get an accounting degree?
This question came up on a forum I visit, and I thought my answer was detailed enough to turn into a post. Should you get an accounting degree? I know once you’re within a field it seems obvious that everyone should understand the various specialties and their pros and cons, but if you’re outside a [...] Read more »
I don’t want to leave this job in a coffin
This post was inspired by a great post over at Money Smart Life called Life’s Too Short for a Crappy Job; I left a comment there, but I felt like I should repost and expand what I talked about there. I’ve been a victim of the keep-your-job-at-any-cost mentality. This is what happened to me. I [...] Read more »
it might not be the job…
… it might be YOU. If you’re like me, you probably complain about your job at least once in a while. It’s too boring. You aren’t paid well enough. You don’t get enough experience, or enough exposure to the Grand High Poobahs of the company. You don’t have enough staff. You get no respect. Your job [...] Read more »
interview question: what were your job responsibilities?
This is a guest post from Ron Haynes, editor of The Wisdom Journal and author of a new eBook, The Inner View of Your Interview, exposing the motivations behind today’s top 100 job interview questions. Ron has been interviewing people for various positions for over two decades and uses his new eBook to give job [...] Read more »
working for a salary – a bad deal?
Chances are you’ll never be rich as an employee. If you work for an employer, chances are that you get paid a fixed amount and it is increased every year. Chances are also good that you are being paid in money, which is subject to inflation. The result is probably that your real wages are [...] Read more »
working for free, and links
As usual I’m a bit behind in posting a link roundup – for some reason the roundup, which I originally meant to post on Fridays, has slowly drifted to Sundays or Mondays, or in this lamentable case, Tuesdays. At this point, it’s almost next week’s roundup with posts from the previous week. It’s ridiculous, I [...] Read more »