Clash in the Work Place
Forbes has an article on the newest clash of generational working styles. More traditional bosses and managers still prefer a lot of face-to-face contact for creating and solidifying deals, and are mystified by the “Gen Y” tendency to sit in a cubicle and communicate by SMS.
An excerpt:
“The recent crop of grads, those born in the early 1980s, aka Generation Y, has marched boldly into the workforce over the past four years. They’ve brought with them a set of technological tools that makes fax machines, voice mail and spreadsheet software look positively quaint. They’ve grown up with scanning, text messaging and Googling, and they’re not about to stop once they’ve hit the working world.
Nor should they. Those skills are big assets when it comes to multi-tasking and productivity. But they’re also a nightmare for many of their bosses, those over 35 who understand that while technology is a useful tool, it doesn’t replace in-person interaction as a primary means of doing business. Today’s bosses can’t understand why their young recruits, for all their brains and technical acumen, hardly ever come over and actually talk to them.
“I hear from clients that [young professionals’] first instinct is to IM rather than walk over to their boss’ office. That can be OK for a quick question, but when you’re planning something, you need to talk face-to-face,” says Steven Rothberg, founder of Collegerecruiter.com, who places recent graduates into corporate jobs.
The tech disparity between 20-somethings and 40-somethings is far greater today than it was 20 years ago, when today’s 40-somethings were the young turks. Over 17 percent of today’s workforce is between the ages of 25 and 34, while another 28 percent is made up of employees 55 and over, Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers show.
That breakdown is not much different than in many past years. But what is different is the speed of technological progress since the mid-1990s, from the Internet and e-mail to cell phones and instant messaging. A recent survey by outplacement firm Lee Hecht Harrison shows that 60 percent of U.S. corporations acknowledge having workplace tensions among generations.”
Testosterone Factor
A transsexual is being interviewed on National Public Radio, born with female organs but male genes, he/she is being transformed in body back to male, While undergoing all the treatments, he/she was given a massive dose of testosterone. The interviewer asks if he/she noticed any difference before/after testosterone.
The guest laughed. S/he said an emphatic “Yes!” and went on to say that before testosterone, she was always attracted to women and would think like “let’s sit down and get to know each other over a cup of coffee or go to a movie or something” and after testosterone is was like s/he couldn’t stop thinking about sex, sex, sex and when s/he would see a woman, any woman, the first thought would be graphically sexual. S/he says she sees women totally differently now. (ROFL)
“We Don’t Judge You By Our Standards”
It’s never a good thing when a sentence starts with “we don’t judge you by our standards.” You know that whatever comes next isn’t going to be good.
It was our favorite time during Arabic studies. We were sitting around in the majlis room, sprawled against the cushions. We had finished all the lessons of the day, practiced new verbs, done all the dialogues to death, and we had a few minutes left before classes ended. Our teachers were really special women, and during these last minutes it was always question time, when we could ask them anything, anything, and they would answer, even if sometimes to laugh and tell us it was none of our business. We had so many questions!
“When we go downtown, ” I had started, “we have a good time. We laugh and we talk and chat among ourselves as we shop. But when we see local women shopping, we see you in groups, but you aren’t laughing or chatting. Is there some prohibition against it?”
There was a long silence. I really liked this teacher, and she really liked me. I knew, as the silence dragged on, she was seeking for a way to be kind. Finally, she spoke.
“You know, we understand you have other ways, not our ways. We don’t judge you by our standards. . .” and she gave a little sigh.
“In our culture, for a woman to laugh out loud in public . . .it would be taken as lack of self control. People could criticize. It could keep a young woman from making a good marriage.”
You could hear the collective gasp. Although it was said with great kindness, it was a serious blow.
When you are first learning a new language, and a new culture, it can be intimidating, but mostly, if it is well taught, it is fun, exciting, and stimulating to be mastering a new skill. The women at this language center went to a lot of trouble to insure that we were entertained while we were learning. They taught us Ramadan customs, they prepared an Iftar supper for us, they brought in all their jewelry and produced a bride. They henna’d our hands, and poured us tiny cups of qa’wa and chai with milk and spices. They took us on field trips. They treated us like sisters, or daughters. They were so kind, and babied us along as we struggled with the new language.
I give this teacher a lot of credit. She could have finessed the question, but she didn’t. She considered her answer, she knew it could offend us. And she chose to answer us honestly, trusting we would deal with it.
I had a physical reaction. I wanted so badly to “get” Arabic, to understand all the customs . . . but to give up laughter? I went through all the stages of grief, staying longest with denial and anger. I thought of all the times I headed for the souks in a gaggle of laughing women, and I felt ignorant, and ashamed, and also angry. It was a real struggle for me, a blow to my pride, an embarrassment. I felt sick to my stomach, and stayed depressed for a couple weeks. I didn’t want to change. I didn’t want to have to give up laughter.
And then one day, somehow, it stopped mattering so much. Time did its work. Life went on. The teacher kept teaching, we kept learning. I no longer go downtown in groups of more than three, and we keep our voices down. We’re still our loud, noisy selves most of the time, among ourselves, but in public – we don’t want to be thought of as women who lack self-control.
Tash Ma Tash takes on Muttawa?
I love NPR. Today, in a Ramadan special, they discussed the 16th season of the Saudi Arabia soap Tash ma Tash. I remember it got a lot of attention a couple years ago. NPR says that this year, they are taking on the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Supression of Vice. There is a village where the morals police have determined that women should not be riding their donkeys on the same trails the men are, or that perhaps they should be fully enclosed in some kind of bubble, or maybe a special underground tunnel should be built solely for the use of women to keep them from view of the men.
Is anyone following this? National Public Radio also said that this year the topic was too hot for the official Saudi channel to handle, so it is being shown on MBC. I am not there – can you tell me how it is working?
Cousin Time
We met up at the nearby Barnes and Noble; he got stuck at the office and called to say he would be late. Leaving me to wander in a Barnes and Noble is like leaving an alcoholic alone in a room with an open bottle of Jim Bean . . . I had a bagfull of books by the time he got there.
As we were discussing the problems of dealing with aging parents, I told him about the bank manager I met with earlier who had looked me in the eye and said “it’s an epidemic. People are living longer, but while not demented enough to be declared incompetant, they are making bad decisions.” My Dad, while wheelchair bound, has a phone and a computer, and could, if he chooses, do a lot of damage to himself and my mom.
My cousin and I have always been on track, from the time we were very young. He and I scored one point apart on our SATs, we researched the same family issues, we have kids the same age – and he was the first one I called when we had a concern about a family matter.
He leaned across the table and grinned. “The problem with dealing with paranoid people is that it forces the loved ones to do exactly what the paranoid is accusing them of doing!” We both laughed. He is exactly right – we have to go behind and see what checks are being written, we have to listen at doors to hear who he is talking to and what he is saying, and the very worst – we have to talk about him behind his back.
If you looked at my father, if you talked with him for a short time, you would think him very smart, and even charming. And he is all that.
If you are with him a little longer, however, he will start talking about dreams he has been having – vivid, very wierd dreams, very scary dreams. Because he doesn’t hear very well, he might accuse you of saying something you didn’t say, and get very angry with you. He is not quite tracking. He gets angry. If he weren’t so weak, he might be violent.
My cousin and I have other family members who have lived long enough to enter into dementia. It haunts us to think we might end up the same way.
Indian Workers
In most Western newspapers, this would be a huge story. Here, they don’t even name the company who has created this problem! (?)
Here is what the Dubai Press said:
Indian workers refuse to release colleague’s body
Saturday, 14 October , 2006, 13:27
Dubai: Rebellious workers are refusing to release the body of an Indian, who died in a squalid camp housing 1,300 labourers held captive by an influential contracting company in Kuwait.
Bino Stephen died on Friday in the desert camp where men hailing from India, the Philippines and Egypt are being held.
No government action has been forthcoming despite media reports on the appalling living conditions in the camp.
”We want to find a solution to our dreadful situation by having our living conditions improved or have us repatriated back home,” said Mohammed, one of the workers.
Four other inmates have been ill since last week because of suspected malaria and the water supply is unfit for human consumption.
An official of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour told the Kuwait Times that the death of one person in the camp could not be termed ‘disaster’.
He said if there is a complaint, it has to be registered, and the complainant should come personally to do so in order to take action.
When asked whether the ministry would send an inspector to the camp to check the conditions there, the official said he cannot take the risk in case the inspector falls sick or gets infected.
Here is what the Kuwait Times says:
Ray of hope for workers
By Nawara Fattahova
KUWAIT: The condition of a group of workers who protested against unfair living conditions in their camp has improved after Kuwait Times published reports about their plight over the weekend. The workers received promise from their employer that they will be shifted from the camp by the beginning of November after one of the workers died early this week. Also four sick workers were taken by ambulance to get medical treatment.
The workers were recently shifted to a camp in the desert and they refused to stay there and went on strike. They were then imprisoned at the camp, and later a worker died and four others fell sick. The workers sought help, and it was difficult. Then one of the workers got advice to call the emergency number 777. “After calling the emergency, they sent an ambulance, which took the four sick workers to the hospital,” said Mohammed, one of the workers at the camp.
“After we got the promise to be shifted from this place, and saving the sick workers, we decided to go back to work. Although we don’t trust the employer, we hope he will fulfil his promise and let us live in a normal place,” he added.
The Kuwait Times will be following this case, and will inform the readers whether the workers left the camp or are still living in the hard and terrible conditions.
John Milton and Freedom of the Press
John Milton wrote the Areopagitica in 1644, in protest of a law passed in England which required all books and pamphlets to be OK’ed by a group of censors before being published. He believed that if England allowed licensing of books – who could be printed and who could not – it would be an attempt at controlling what the people were thinking. Milton is not easy reading, but I still get a thrill reading his defense of freedom of the press.
This comment on Milton is from the St. Lawrence Institute:
“While knowledge of this context is important to an understanding of the nature of Milton’s passion in writing this pamphlet, it is not essential to a modern appreciation of its contents. Milton’s words are just as powerful today in their call for freedom of thought as they were in his own. The issue he is addressing is still with us: the debate between legitimate societal control and freedom – whether of printing, speech, or thought – is on-going, and will continue to be of central importance in our media-dependent culture.”
This is John Milton’s most often quoted paragraph:
“And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is to say of knowing good by evil. As therefore the state of man now is; what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian. I can not praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.”
If you are looking for a challenge, you can read the whole Areopagitica here:
From the Sacred to the Profane
You won’t find this in the Kuwait Times – a book review in yesterday’s paper by Kimberly Marlowe Harnett on a book called Indecent: How I Make it and Fake it as a Girl for Hire by Sarah Katherine Lewis, a sex worker (the cleaned up job title for those who offer sex for hire). This reviewer got my attention. She wrote this:
“When Lewis’ customers are not utterly repulsive, they are profoundly pathetic, paying serious money to women who loathe them and who perform canned routines with an eye on the clock.”
The book’s author says conventional jobs pay less.
Opposite World
I need to write this post while I am freshly back home, because it wears off, you forget the sharpness of the differences . . .
You have to think about how you will manage your bags when you get here, because there will be no willing men with carts to do it for you.
Getting on the highway . . . people are so polite. People drive exactly at the speed limit, or maybe up to 4 miles over. If you put on your turn signal, they slow down and allow you to enter their lane. No one weaves back and forth, no one gets on your tail and insists you get out of their way. Traffic flows smoothly, predictably. People are wearing seat belts; their babies are in baby seats and their children are buckled in the back seat. It’s five lanes, and it’s all very tame. Our testosterone drivers in Kuwait would find it very very dull. I didn’t see a single accident, or single wrecked car all the way home, about twenty miles.
At the grocery stores, there are places for inviduals to put their grocery carts back – and they really do. There are also enough parking places. The cashiers also put the groceries in a bag for you, but there is no one who carries them out to your car.
The streets are immaculate – not because we have hoards of people to pick them up, but because people here have a horror of littering – and huge fines that discourage the rare few who would toss a kleenex out a window.
Service providers are more helpful, and less servile. There is a sense of interchangeable rolls – the guy behind the counter at Starbucks might also be a full time IT student at the local university, just piling up a few barista bucks to pay his way through school. (There is always a tip jar in every Starbucks – Have you ever noticed there are no tip jars at the Starbucks in Kuwait?) The gal behind the counter at the grocery store might live just up the street from you. The guy at the Half Price book store has kids at the same school where your child goes to school. It’s different when all the workers are part of the same community.
The health care worker living with my parents to take care of my father is treated like family. He’s from Ghana. I watch him watch us as we gather. I imagine some of it is very familiar to him – the way women communicate when family gathers, laughter, tears, family business, making plans and arrangements. And I imagine some of it is very . . . foreign. I would love to read HIS blog!
There are seasons here. You need to have socks with you to keep your feet warm, and closed-toed shoes. There are trees that were green two months ago, and are now a flaming red, or orange, or yellow. I need a sweater outside, over a shirt. It’s cool, but not yet really cold.
Part of the transportation system here is ferry boats. People take them to get to work. My home town is, like Kuwait City, on the beach, but the water is not jade green, but a deeper, colder blue.
We Make a Difference: Incremental Change
Here is what the experts have told us:
Germany and France can never live in peace with one another.
Northern and Southern Ireland can never live in peace.
Germany reunite? Unthinkable. They are too far apart.
Black and white will never be able to live together in South Africa.
The Serbians and the Moslem Croatians will never find a way to live in peace.
The European Union will never work.
The Soviet Union is impregnable.
Kuwaiti women will never get the vote.
There will never be peace in Lebanon.
These were not lies. The experts who told us these things were wise people, making their best guesses. When experts say things, we tend to believe them.
And here is what I saw – before the fall of the Soviet Union, things didn’t work. Toilet paper was rationed. There were no lightbulbs in the lamps. There were no hangers on hotel closets. In the market was only cabbage, sausage and tuna fish. The people were told that the West was failing, and that the supermarkets and stores were fakes, “Potemkin” villages, special effects to fool good Communists in a desperate attempt to make them think Democracy was working. But in every hotel room, when you checked in, the TV was already on – the chambermaids watched CNN, and then went home and told their families what was REALLY going on in the world.
And word of mouth, the truth spread.
There are some wonderful things happening in the world, technologies that could be used for good or for evil.
Cameras. Video cameras. Cell phones. Cell phones with cameras and videos. Google Earth. The Internet. It’s hard to cover up the truth when people can freely share information.
With these tools, we can hold ourselves, our leaders and our society accountable. Keep your cameras handy. Blog. Share your thoughts, your suspicions. Hold your leaders accountable for their actions. Read the news, and read the blogs from other countries. Refuse to believe there is no hope in appearantly hopeless situations, no matter what the “experts” tell us.
Here is what some experts are telling us today:
There is an imminent clash of cultures between East and West.
The Palestinians will never live in peace with the Israelis.
We can’t do anything about global warming / There is no global warming
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
There are small things we can do, right now, to make incremental changes. Pick up a piece of litter. Buckle your seat belt, and buckle up your children. Give an enemy the benefit of the doubt. Smile at your neighbor, and greet them. Stop and help that poor man broken down by the side of the road. Feed a stray cat. Donate clothing to the poor. Do one small thing, every day. Hold ourselves accountable in small ways, and the overall effect tilts the balance in larger ways.
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