January 8, 2008 9:00

I need a new beat

In 2006, TIME's new editor, Rick Stengel, called me into his office. "What do you want to do here?" he asked.

"I want to keep writing," I said. Financial considerations may someday force me into an editing job, I told him, but for now I want to manage like I want scabies.

"What do you want to write about?" he asked.

"The workplace," I answered, without hesitation. I had given this some thought for some time. Writing and reporting on work would let me straddle my two broad areas of interest and experience, which were business and human interest topics. I'd get to write about ordinary people and the thing they do the most, next to sleeping. I'd get to suss out trends, check out interesting jobs, and for the most part avoid long, boring lunches with hoity-toity CEOs and other boldface names.

Doesn't sound so bad, right? In fact, I adore my beat. It's just that I'm rarely on it. Type my name in the search box on Time.com and scroll through my recent stories. I wrote about rich couples having giant families; how I'm totally stressed out trying to be environmentally conscious; the changing face of fatherhood; and a new breed of expatriates.

They were all great assignments, and I was pretty proud of the results. Many of them touched on or even centered on my chosen topic, but the editors chose not to call them workplace articles.

As 2008 begins, I'm giving some thought to where I want my writing career to go. It seems clear to me that we're in an age when journalists are becoming brands. If I had a sub sit in for me for a month in this here space, would you keep reading? (All right, don't all cheer at once.) And if I were to shape myself as a brand, what do I want the brand associated with?

Here's the thing. Jim Poniewozik covers TV. Lev Grossman writes about video games. Joel Stein's beat is food. To do their jobs, Jim watches Heroes; Lev plays Halo; Joel eats horse.

And me? I write about...work. To do my job, I...work. You see where I'm going here? What's wrong with me that I would pick—out of all the beats in the world to cover—work?

So help me. I need a new beat for 2008, friends. I have some ideas, and I'm going to run them by you soon. But I need yours. Tell me what you think I should cover—what you'd like to read more about online and in the magazine, and would allow me to spend my workdays in five-star spas. In comments, onegaishimasu.

January 7, 2008 3:41

The downside of telecommuting: gossip vacuum

I've been in the office a lot in 2008—yes, the whole week of it—because I'm closing a couple stories. It's kind of nice to be back, actually. Don't get me wrong; I'm still a rabid advocate of results-oriented, flexible work. I still think a mobile workforce is the way of the near future.

But I also know for certain that by being physically absent from the office, one misses out on some very, very important workplace information. I daresay this information is so vital that it argues for a more regular presence at work. By information, of course, I mean gossip.

Here's what I missed, and why it matters:

1. The law guy left. In October. The high-profile hire who wrote about legal matters left the magazine months ago. I was wondering (obviously not hard enough) why I wasn't seeing his bylines anymore. This is important info because I need to know who and what is in and out at my workplace. And also because I need a TV, and the one in his old office is probably claimed by now.

2. Despite our official hiring freeze, we are apparently hiring like mad. There are at least three new people on staff that I've never actually met. (And that's not even counting TIME.com, our 'shrooming web side.) Now, in my defense, many of my office-bound colleagues haven't met these new kids, either; there was never to my knowledge a memo announcing their hiring, or a meet-and-greet "pour" (the liquored staff gatherings TIME was famous for once upon a fiscally healthier time). It's obviously important for me to know who my colleagues are, where they sit and if they have any good snacks.

3. A colleague got married. Make that three. Research shows that workers are more productive when they're happy, and that they're happy when they're friendly with coworkers. I don't need to be best buds with my colleagues, but I should at least know about their major life changes, for cripe's sake.

4. Another got pregnant. Make that three. Ditto above.

5. Another took one high-profile promotion instead of the one I thought he'd already taken. Over the past year and a half, many of the colleagues who shared my title have leapfrogged to the nosebleed regions of the masthead. It's important to know about the advancement of my colleagues to better feed my self pity. Seriously, I figure only good things can happen when people I know and like get ahead. Now I can ask them for favors.

6. I really have to clean out my snack drawer. Okay, that's not gossip. But it may be soon. In my resolute attempt to eat or toss my snacks, I opened a Bumblebee Sensations Seasoned Tuna Medley with Crackers. Listen, you people at Bumblebee: if you market a snack as appropriate for office-snacking, at least mention it'll make my office smell like cat food.

Work-at-homers: what whoppers did you miss being out of the office?

January 7, 2008 10:44

I got sassed in the FT!

What the @$##$%^. So I get a poke from my buddy in PR, Daniel Kile, that my blog gots me a mention in the Financial Times. The FT! Now, blogger friends, believe me when I say WiP cherishes every nod from the likes of RiceDaddies and LaDawn and Poop and Boogies. But the FT! The Wall Street Journal of Europe! The business bible of world leaders! Come on!

And not just anywhere in the FT. Lucy Kellaway, my fave columnist, dropped my name in a piece about New Year resolutions. I like her because she's sassy and funny and a splash of working-broad color in an otherwise fairly grey (okay, it's salmon pink) paper. She might be my favorite workplace writer after Lisa Belkin of The New York Times.

And then I read it.

It's titled, "A New Year’s resolution that will last," and starts out entertainingly (classic Kellaway!):

I may not be getting better at much else, but I am getting better at making New Year’s resolutions. Mine for 2008 is the best I’ve ever made. It’s positive, it’s ambitious, it’s inspiring but it also has a highish chance of success. It is to be competent.

Funny! And one I totally get. I too strive to be competent, or at least fake it fairly well. Past resolutions, she continues, usually ended in something less than success:

In the old days I used to make the classic mistake of resolving to stop doing things that I knew were bad. Drinking, shouting at the children, playing Freecell.

These resolutions failed within hours. If you do bad things knowing they are bad, there must be something pretty powerful compelling you to do so. In my case, there is the pleasing sensation of alcohol, the annoyingness of children and the imperative to improve one’s Freecell average score. So simply to state one dark day in midwinter (a time when bad habits are needed to keep morale up) that you are quitting is to set yourself up for certain, instant and ignominious failure.

She considers her options for 2008:

So for 2008 I have resolved to give myself the third degree before making any resolutions. On New Year’s Eve I spotted in the newsagent my own picture on the masthead of the Financial Times nestling against a picture of Nigella Lawson, my former university acquaintance, on the front of the Guardian. Suddenly I knew what I wanted: to be less frumpy in 2008. Over Christmas I read a book on glamour for ageing women so knew how to do it and was quite excited at the prospect. But then I asked: can I really be bothered, day in and day out, to make so much effort with brushes and blow driers to achieve an uncertain end result?

OMG, I so get that! I too have a passing interest in looking presentable at the office. But what I lack is commitment. You know those girls you see tottering to work in pointy-toed heels and careful makeup? That's commitment. I just can't commit to fashion with enough dedication to give up my dowdy but warm coat and my six-year-old Kenneth Cole sh*tkickers. I care about looking good at work. I just don't care enough. These days, I can't even be bothered with lipstick. And you know it's all downhill from here.

So back to Kellaway's column. She finally decides on six resolutions, and here's where I come in. She's referring to a post from a few days ago about resolutions I'd made for 2008. It's mentioned in her resolution #3:

Produce work I’m proud of. This is the resolution of Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, who writes a blog for Time magazine. It sounds OK, but if you look closer it makes no sense. If you weren’t producing work you were proud of before, there were probably reasons for that. Perhaps you were too sloppy. Why should that suddenly change?

What the @#$fl%$%? Here's what I read: a) I make no sense; b) there are probably good reasons I struggle to produce work I'm proud of, in that I probably stink at what I do; c) I'm sloppy; d) I can't change.

What the @#!$%%$?

I shot off an e-mail to Kellaway. I don't know her, but her e-mail's right on the FT web site. I was all, like, Hey, man, I suck at a lot of things, but I'm not sloppy. That's the thing that stuck in my craw; calling a reporter sloppy is like calling a lion tamer a coward. Of course I slip up sometimes. But if I were characterized continuously as sloppy, I don't think I'd have a job.

She responded right away with a sweet and funny note saying I'd got it all wrong; she didn't mean to imply that I was sloppy. Rather, she'd meant that sloppiness in general might impede one's production of good work, and if so that might be a hard quality to change.

Huh. I don't know; I didn't read it that way. What do you think? But regardless, I think maybe I need to add a resolution. In 2008, I will try to be less touchy about what others say or write to and about me. Go ahead; insult my ugly shoes. I'll just smile. And take your name down for serious butt-kicking in 2009.

January 4, 2008 9:21

Talking politics at work

Our morning meetings are dominated by politics. Today's led off with a rousing post-mortem of the surprising results in Iowa last night. We talked about Time.com's speedy and smart coverage, Joe Klein's take on Obama's victory, and Joel Stein's video analysis of one voting center at an Iowa elementary school (it has to do with cookies and a made-up candidate named Joe Cox).

Politics and discussions of politics pretty much rule my workplace. You can't spend an hour here without hearing Klein hold forth on Hillary or a photo editor remark on Mitt Romney's hair. But I work at a news magazine driven by political coverage, particularly in an election season. And no one feels obligated to vote for Obama just because our boss put him on the cover. (Though he did look fetching, didn't he?)

Apparently, over a third of employees feel otherwise. Check out this new poll from Vault.com:

In many offices, the boss has no qualms about making his or her political beliefs known. According to a survey by Vault.com, 35% of bosses openly share their political views with employees, and 9% of workers feel pressure to conform to the boss’ views. Regarding co-workers, 30% of respondents said that a co-worker has tried to influence their choice in an election.

Political talk is alive and well at the office, as 66% of survey respondents said that their co-workers candidly discuss politics, and 46% have witnessed an argument about politics between colleagues. Slightly more than half of all survey respondents (52%) said that they were open about their own political views at work.

All that talk affects workers. Read:

“My boss insisted that he had to know who I voted for in the election,” said one respondent. “Then he proceeded to tell me that if I didn't vote his way, I had no business working for the company.”

That's not healthy, says P.M. Forni, director of the Civility Initiative at The Johns Hopkins University, but it's really up to the employee to deal.

"There is only so much that an organization can do to minimize the negative impact that differences of opinion may have on everyday life at work," Forni says. "Over-regulation prescribed from the top can add to the very tension that it is meant to ease. In the end, it is up to the individual workers to find the wisdom and deploy the skills to remain professional at a time when 'we' versus 'they' thinking is more frequent."

What happens at your office? Do you feel pressured to vote blue or red? Does your boss drive to work in a car plastered with Huckabee stickers? Do you?

January 3, 2008 10:55

Tila Tequila: serial dating as career

I confess: my TV tastes run to trash. I'll watch any tacky reality show they throw up on network or basic cable. If I didn't live with a man who insists on a modicum of pop-cultural dignity, our Time Warner™ DVR would be jammed only with saved episodes of American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing With the Stars. I've cajoled him into watching the Masterpiece Theaters of reality shows—Project Runway, The Biggest Loser and America's Next Top Model—with me. And currently we're both way into Ninja Warrior, the brilliant Japanese obstacle-course contest on G4.

But even my snooty husband was horrified-fascinated by the car wreck that was Tila Tequila's dating show.

Don't pretend you don't know her. / Tilashotspot.com

Don't pretend you know not of whom I speak. She's the tiny little Vietnamese-American pole dancer who found fame by collecting more friends on MySpace than anyone in history and parlaying that network into a ho-hum single, then parlaying that fringey fame into a giant coup: her own dating show on MTV. The hook: turns out Tila is bisexual, and so her harem was cast with both men and women.

The series, if you didn't watch it, and I sincerely hope you unlike us have actual lives that would have prevented you from doing so, was just awful. So awful we caught almost every episode. There were fistfights among the lesbians, not-so-secret hook-ups between the hetero men and the bicurious women, horrible and nonsensical contests involving bull's penises and chocolate mud pits.

And then of course there was Tila, a weirdly charismatic creature despite her disproportionately large head and inability to read fluidly from cue cards. There was a part of me that admired her pluck for turning absolutely nothing into something resembling a career. One can do that in America. What's more, she seemed truly sincere in her quest for lasting romance, and we found ourselves rooting for her.

Like crack addicts trying desperately to kick a habit, we snuck a peek of the wrap-up show that featured her forlorn cast-offs casting doleful last looks at their lost love while Tila, now newly and oddly platinum blonde, cuddled with her chosen sweetie (some schmo from upstate New York—and, oh, yes, a dude). Close to recovery, we took what we thought would be one last peek at the New Year's Eve show she hosted on MTV.

...just in time to catch her announcing that the romance failed sometime between last week's wrap-up show and this week's year-end show. And that she would be the star of—ta-dah—a whole new season of yet another show in which she would sample bisexual dates to find true love!

My husband was so incensed he went online and found all manner of blogs that echoed our outrage. It was all just so—cynical! Of all the career paths she might have chosen, given, admittedly, her limited talents, this young woman chooses serial dating!

Heck, I'm going to learn by her example. Maybe I could take up a career in eating toast. Or in typing really fast while talking on the phone while eating toast. Or in plowing through the Sunday newspaper end to end while talking on the phone while eating toast. These are all skills I perform exceptionally well—with charisma, even. The difference, of course, is none of them make for great TV.

Anyway, we're over our Tequila hang-overs and we're not looking back. We're not watching the next season, and I will actively avoid any product she endorses (as if I'm the target market for leather corsets). Even I can stomach only so much. Besides, that new show on CMT sounds promising. You know, the one called My Big Redneck Wedding.