Just keep yourself busy

Texting blues.

Cuốn tiểu thuyết vừa hài...

The Time top ten list looks cool...in Vietnamese:

Một tiểu thuyết về đời sống nhân viên văn phòng lấy bối cảnh của một công ty vô danh đang trên đà thất bại. Personal Days khắc hoạ sự căng thẳng ngày càng tăng trong văn hoá công ty, mọi người sống ngày càng khép kín và nhạy cảm với từng trường hợp sa thải đến mức không còn chịu đựng nỗi lẫn nhau. Cuốn tiểu thuyết vừa hài hước vừa đầy chất hiện thực trong giai đoạn suy thoái kinh tế hiện nay.

EAP!

The Times on employee assistance programs:

The ComPsych Corporation, an E.A.P. provider, observes similar conditions. Calls are up 30 to 40 percent over last year, spurred by unease about job prospects, it said. “There is a sense of panic that we have not seen in our 24 years in business,” said Richard Chaifetz, the chief executive. “We’ve had an increase in calls on anything from feelings of depression or stress to refinancing mortgages, handling adolescents and dealing with bankruptcy.”

Having a ball

Best manager ever?

Go!

Novelist Alexander Chee on Personal Days: "Just go get it."

"It has the rhythm of a real office...The book is compact, its ideas are huge."
—Ass Backwords' "2008 Reading Roundup"

File under: What the?!, part 2

"some lady at my job just gave me a two page letter on how she thinks i would be a great Mormon..." —Malty

"Fear Factor in the Workplace"

EP chimes in at a new Times online section, Room for Debate, next to a psychologist, labor lawyer, psych professor, business professor, and HR consultant.

What is a layoff narrative? It’s a story about your work life that you construct before you get the ax, as one of the characters in my novel explains.

“The idea,” Pru says, “is that you look back on your period of employment, highlight all the abuses suffered, tally the lessons gained, and use these negatives and positives to mentally withstand what you anticipate will be a series of events culminating in expulsion. You look to termination as rebirth, liberation, an expansion of horizons…. Once you start constructing the layoff narrative, it’s only a matter of time.” In other words, to think it’s going to happen means it’s going to happen.

Photo: Peter DaSilva/NYT