Working as a Parent Aide is a mixture of supervising visits between parents and children and providing families with needed supportive services. I have quickly learned that each family and their circumstances and challenges are different. This also means that even when I think I know how a family visit may go, I need to also expect the unexpected.
Sometimes the goals of a visit are fairly straightforward. I work with one couple and their two children, Nahla, age 3, and Miley, age 1. (All names have been changed.) The girls are fun, funny and outgoing, but they were not getting enough opportunities to interact with other kids their age. I found a community playgroup to take them to. Mary, the mom, knew that this was a great idea, but was very anxious about the unknowns of a playgroup. She bombarded me with many questions: How many kids would be there, was she supposed to talk with other parents, how would Nahla and Miley do?
Trackbacks (0)
In my column at the DG last Saturday, I wrote about my conflicted feelings about work.
My basic issue is that I want work to be meaningful, but not take up too much time or energy, because other things, such as friends and family, are really more valuable.
Over at The Atlantic, Brian Fung ponders the question of whether our jobs are killing us, writing, "Work can give us a sense of purpose and direction. But can it also harm our health?"
Naturally, I wanted to read further, because my gut instinct is yes - when you work too much, it can cause problems. What Fung finds is that, yes, working can be bad for our health - but unemployment is worse.
Click here to learn more.
In my weekly column over at the DG, I ponder the meaning of work - something I think about quite a bit.
Here's an excerpt:
"Last week I spoke to a group of third-, fourth- and fifth-graders about what it’s like to be a reporter.
They were enrolled in an afterschool program that encourages kids to stay in school, and had clearly prepared for my visit. They asked a lot of questions, all fairly basic: What sorts of skills are required to do your job? Why did you want to become a reporter? Did you go to college?
Every time they asked a question, I found myself squinting at them, wondering whether newspapers would still exist when they became working adults. I tried to remember to mention the Internet and the fact that you can write news for websites, too. Whether they understood anything I said remains a mystery to me.
My favorite query came from a girl in the back row.
'How many hours a week do you work?' the girl asked.
'I work 40 hours a week,' I explained. 'There’s nothing unusual about that. If you have a full-time job, that’s generally what you work.'
This was news to the kids, who basically fell out of their desk chairs with astonishment.
'Forty hours?' they exclaimed. 'That’s a lot!'
I felt a little bad about breaking this news to the kids."
Click here to read the whole thing.
Adventures in Work
In my continued search for gainful employment, I now have another new part-time job!
None of my three part-time jobs are alike, but this one finds me back in the nonprofit sector. As a Parent Aide, I will be
supervising visits between parents and children and provide families with supportive services that can range from nutrition and meal planning to teaching them about positive discipline.
My orientation started out as most do. I sat down with my supervisor and received a binder of information. At first we reviewed the standard stuff like timesheets, paperwork and boundaries. Then we turned the page to “Safety Guidelines at a Glance.” These were mostly common-sense tips, such as “Choose parking that will not block you in and in the direction you want to go when leaving the home.” Then we arrived at, “Avoid bodily secretions,” which is not typically something you think of when you think of a day at work.
My favorite tip was, “Ask ahead of time if there are any animals in the house that you should be aware of.” This prompted a story about a Parent Aide arriving at a first visit to discover that the family had a traveling animal show that lived in the house, and that this included housing a tortoise in the bathroom and tarantulas and snakes in the dining room.
We constantly hear about the problems of underemployment and unemployment.
However, over at Jacobin Peter Frase argues that overemployment is also a problem.
Frase writes:
"The lowest estimates of overemployment come from the U.S. Government’s Current Population Survey, which asks people if they 'given the choice, (would) opt for more income and more hours, less income and fewer hours or the same income and hours?', and gives an overemployment rate of around 7 percent, even during recessions. Golden, in the paper linked above, surveyed eight other studies and found a range of estimates of the overemployment rate, from as low as 14 percent to a high of around 70 percent. None of those surveys asked for a specific hours target, while some of them specified that a reduction in hours would be linked to a reduction in income.
The assumption that reductions in hours should be linked to reductions in pay is in some sense a political one. It’s not common now, but demands like 'thirty hours work for forty hours pay' have a long history in the labor movement. Asking for a cut in hours with no cut in pay is, in the end, just another way of asking for a raise."
The great 1931 French film "A Nous La Liberte" imagines a world where we don't have to work at all.
I'm not sure that's desirable.
But I'd be perfectly happy to work a little bit less.
I have been on the job hunt much longer than I thought I would be.
This sad fact was driven home by a couple of recent incidents. First, I spoke with my mom on New Year’s Day. She talked about all the possibilities that a new year represents, and cited a surprising fact about the economy - that it's getting better. Given that my mother can be so negative, her good cheer surprised me, but it was also depressing, because talking about the economy, when you're unemployed, can often be depressing. The phone call wrapped up fairly quickly after I was presented with that fun fact.
Two days later I had a meeting with my Employment Services Representative, Marla. Marla’s job is with Employment Security and she is tasked with periodically checking in on me and my work search progress. Meeting with her is one of my requirements to receive unemployment benefits. She helped me with my resume and provided some local job search suggestions. This was our third meeting and she started it off by letting me know that she had just been downsized and
would be finishing up in two weeks time.
We all need a little diversion in the office.
Something simple, fast and that requires some thought, but not too much.
About three months ago, two newsroom co-workers and I hit on a game that keeps them mockingly competitive while I pretend to be an impartial referee.
We call it The Game, and it's a quiz of celebrity ages that I draw up as I'm compiling our newspaper's gossip column once a week. I present my co-workers with a list of celebs in the news, usually between three and seven of them, and they guess each person's age.
It's fun, but also fairly serious. As soon as I say, "I'm ready for the game when you are," both of them stop what they're doing and look up from their computers. One takes out a sheet of paper to keep score for herself. This co-worker doesn't
have a TV or high-speed Internet at home and is unabashedly out of touch with popular culture. For example, I named Tracy Morgan and mentioned he was in the TV show "30 Rock."
"'30 Rock?' she said. "I've heard of '3rd Rock,' but not '30 Rock.'"
So I'll call her Underdog.
I don’t participate in Black Friday.
Our family usually heads out to a movie that day and avoids the holiday retail experience. A few years ago, my sister and I did go to the mall in search of an advertised great deal on Uggs. Being new to the Black Friday experience, we waited until late afternoon and soon found out that the great deal had been sold out. And I still don’t own any Uggs. Luckily.
When I was hired for my part-time position at a Generic Women’s Apparel Outlet, I was told that I would be required to work Black Friday. I almost didn’t take the job because that’s the day my husband and I leave one family’s Thanksgiving celebration and head to the other’s. I was, however, looking for a job and figured that breaking up the holiday weekend for one day wouldn’t be too bad.
A week before Thanksgiving I asked the assistant manager why the Thanksgiving week shifts hadn’t been posted. She said the schedule had been worked out, but had to be approved and finalized. She showed me the schedule and I was only on for Black Friday. I was very relieved. Then I returned to work on Saturday and saw the official schedule had been posted. With a sigh I saw that I was working my scheduled Black Friday shift, but a 4-hour Saturday shift had been added. I quickly found the manager and told her I couldn’t work that day as I would be out of the state. She looked at me with surprise and said that it had been a requirement when I was hired. Apparently, when I was informed about working Black Friday, the manager had actually meant Black Friday Weekend.
I have a lot of feelings about getting downsized, but the biggest is probably a mixture of disappointment and embarrassment. The embarrassment stems largely from navigating New Hampshire’s Department of Employment Security. The thrust of this state agency is to assist job seekers with their job search and provide unemployment compensation. There are offices located throughout the state, as well as a main office that processes claims and all the associated paperwork.
The steps to applying for unemployment are super straightforward, and yet! You complete an online account that begins by asking questions about your work history, why you are unemployed (for me, the highlight was not having to mark that I was fired due to workplace attire, workplace drunkenness, etc.) and pay history.
After I completed this, I waited to learn if I would be deemed eligible. Instead, my Unemployment Correspondence Inbox received two e-mails. The “Notice of Eligibility Issue” was simply another online survey about my so-called severance pay, which consisted of my remaining vacation time being paid out. That one was easy. Once you’ve completed it, you can’t reopen it to alter any responses. Trying to be conscientious, I even asked a department staffer whether that meant it was completed, and was reassured that it did. Two weeks later, the same “Notice of Eligibility Issue” appeared in my inbox. I completed it again and, feeling frustrated, called the main office to make sure it had been received. This time, it had.
My last day at work was bittersweet.
I had been downsized in mid-August, and hid out at my company's satellite office until the end of September, which seemed preferable to awkward conversations in the office. In addition, my desk had already been given away to my supervisor, Edith. She had moved into my seat about three weeks before I was told that my position would not be included in next year's budget.
All of this might indicate that I did not exactly "get along" with my supervisor. Part of my morning commute included brainstorming topics to discuss with her during the course of the day. Otherwise, we would have no interactions at all, except for her daily outflow of grammatically incorrect and creatively spelled emails. Eventually I gave up on my brainstorming effort, as I concluded that no communication was better than a conversation with Edith. She showed no interest in what I was doing or planning. I usually "play well with others," so this was very frustrating for me. In the winter, my husband and I instituted a five minute house rule, in which I could only vent about work for five minutes before moving on to something more positive and less maddening.
I have my friend, Sarah, to thank for my parting gift for Edith. Having endured my many work complaints, Sarah's immediate response when I told her that I had been downsized was "Revenge!" Knowing Sarah very well, this made me a little nervous, as I started to imagine what fiendish plan she might concoct. A week later she presented her solution: the Annoy-a-tron, available at ThinkGeek.com. This is a small device that produces an annoying beep every two to eight minutes. The noises are such that in an office, or really anywhere, they sound like an intermittent fax beep or text message alert. The Annoy-a-tron's genius, though, is that it just keeps beeping, thanks to a long battery life. And that it's easy to hide, thanks to a little magnet. Overall, the device seemed like such a subtle, thoughtful way to part company.
WARNING: Some Salty Language Below
I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling like the office vending machine is both a salvation and a curse. I mean, here we are stuck in an office, not exactly wanting to be here, and if we're hungry and don't have time or energy to leave, we have to eat this gross, over-processed stuff that 100 years ago wouldn't even have counted as food.
Still, it's helped me get through many a day and night without having a blood sugar crash and the resulting emotional meltdown.
One thing that does cause a meltdown, however, is when my item fails to drop after I've inserted the money. I feel a building rage that is a combination of disappointment that my hunger might not be satisfied, and anger that I have resorted to eating this crap to begin with.
I know others feel this too, and when I assault a vending machine I always remember news stories about people being squished to death after tilting a machine to get their food item. It's probably one of the only situations where losing a dollar (or less) will spur people to do reckless, life-threatening things.
To calm myself down after a vending incident at work, I wrote these haikus:
For some reason, this doesn't surprise me at all.
The Wall Street Journal ran this piece looking at the post-vacation blues - the depression that sets in once summer is over. I often experience mild to moderate depression when the summer is over, because it marks an end to my exciting summer adventures, and so I felt like I could understand what the author was talking about.
Here's an excerpt:
"There are few studies or statistics on the end-of-summer malaise, but therapists, career coaches—even marriage counselors—report an increase in people seeking help in early fall. 'Change is always hard and this is a time when both nature and our lives are changing,' says Betsy Stone, a psychologist in Stamford, Conn.
A big component is what some researchers dub Post Vacation Syndrome (PVS), characterized by a combination of irritability, anxiety, lack of motivation, difficulty concentrating, and a feeling of emptiness that lasts up to a few weeks after returning to work. Some people get a mild version every Sunday night after getting the weekend off. Surveys suggest that 35% to 75% of workers in Spain, where many businesses close for the month of August, suffer from PVS."
Generally, it's a good idea to be skeptical of news articles that describe a trend that can't be quantified, but I'll make an exception in this case. Also, I'm happy to know that there's an official name for my year autumnal malady, PVS. My favorite observation in the article might be this sentence: "Several studies have found that vacations do lift peoples' spirits, but the effects don't last long." Right, because you have to go back to work.
Meanwhile, Mother Jones posted some handy charts from the magazine's July/August issue that show how much productivity is up compared to wages (translation: there are few jobs, but the people who have them are doing more work for less gain), which countries don't requre paid maternity leave and paid annual leave (hint: the U.S. is one of them) and comparing how much time women spend doing chores around the house than men (um, women do more chores).
Hmmm, maybe people get depressed about going to work because it's exhausting and endless and the demands are ever-increasing. OK, now I'm making myself depressed again, so I think I'll end this post.
The Barbara Ehrenreich book "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America" is being re-released with a new afterword in honor of the tenth anniversary of its publication.
I read "Nickel and Dimed" five or six years ago, and although I didn't find it quite as revelatory as others, I thought it was a smart and often quite funny look at what it's like to toil away in a low-wage job. If anything, it made me appreciate some of the perks that come with working at a newspaper, such as being able to use the bathroom whenever I want and even treat myself to an ice cream sandwich from the vending machines downstairs.
What's interesting is that Ehrenreich's book was written before the recession, during an ostensible boom time, and her subjects had little hope for a better life. I made a similar discovery when I wrote about poverty at the DG. Minimum wage jobs, I learned, will not pay the rent. On top of that, they're hard work - much harder, for the most part, than sitting at a computer writing stuff. (My brief career as a convenience store employee also taught me that.)
This week TomDispatch.com posted the new afterword to "Nickel and Dimed," which looks at what Ehrenreich describes as the increasing criminalization of the poor.
Also of interest is political science professor Corey Robin's original review of "Nickel and Dimed." Here's an excerpt:
"Touring West Virginia during the 1960 presidential campaign, John Kennedy was accosted by a miner demanding to know whether he was indeed 'the son of one of our wealthiest men.' Kennedy admitted that he was. 'Is it true that you’ve never wanted for anything and had everything you wanted?' the miner pressed. 'I guess so.' 'Is it true you’ve never done a day’s work with your hands all your life?' Kennedy nodded. 'Well,' the miner drawled, 'let me tell you this. You haven’t missed a thing.'
Mindless drudgery or moral elevation? In the Western tradition, work has been both, and for good reason. On the one hand, work, whether physical or intellectual, can be fulfilling. Reversing the usual stereotype, Karl Marx criticized Adam Smith for lamenting the burdens of work and failing to grasp that 'the overcoming of . . . obstacles' was a basic component of human freedom. Work pressed men and women to develop their full capacities, a prerequisite for the realization of self. Less romantic types have celebrated work for the relief it provides from the misery of the human condition. Without work, Sherlock Holmes confesses to Watson, there is only tedium—and cocaine. 'My mind,' he says, 'rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants.'
But work can also be the misery of the human condition. It often requires demanding physical effort. It takes men and women away from more satisfying activity. It can be mind-numbing and oppressive. There is a reason, after all, that work is a biblical curse."
The purpose of work and the culture of the workplace are two things I think about often. I mean, does sitting in an office all day really improve anybody's quality of life? I don't think so. Now, at long last, someone - Mark Kingwell, a philosophy professor at the University of Toronto, is arguing that work is actually a self-regulating prison, and that we'd be a lot happier if we had more time for idling. Personally, I'd love to idle more.
Here's an excerpt from the essay, titled "The Language of Work":
"The most basic material conditions of work – office size and position, number of windows, attractiveness of assistant, cut of suit – are simultaneously the rewards and the ongoing indicators of status within this competition. Meanwhile, the competition sustains itself backward via credentialism: the accumulation of degrees and certificates from prestigious schools and universities that, though often substantively unrelated to the work at hand, indicate appropriate grooming. These back formations confirm the necessary feeling that a status outcome is earned, not merely conferred. The narrative of merit encourages the false idea that such status is married to intrinsic qualities of the individual. In reality, the status is a kind of collective delusion, not unlike the one that sustains money, another key narrative of the system.
The routine collection of credentials, promotions, and employee-of-the-month honors in exchange for company loyalty masks a deeper existential conundrum – which is precisely what it is meant to do. Consider: It is an axiom of status anxiety that the competition for position has no end – save, temporarily, when a scapegoat is found. The scapegoat reaffirms everyone's status, however uneven, because he is beneath all. Hence many work narratives are miniature blame-quests. We come together as a company to fix guilt on one of our number, who is then publicly shamed and expelled. Jones filed a report filled with errors! Smith placed an absurdly large order and the company is taking a bath! This makes us all feel better and enhances our sense of mission, even if it produces nothing other than its own spectacle."
Click here to read the entire post.
