Jacqui Tom (aka "The Office Newb") is a young professional working her way up the corporate ladder. A graduate of the University of Washington - Seattle, Jacqui launched her career with internships at AOL (America Online) and Amazon.com, Inc. Currently a web editor at an internet publisher, Jacqui has been moving steadily through the ranks to become the company's youngest supervisor.
Typing furiously from her cubicle, she shares lessons about life, business and everything in between.
Jacqui Tom's blog is The Office Newb.
While I think flexible workplaces are awesome places to work if you’re lucky enough (and could have been tailor-made for people like me–ambitious type-As), they might not be right for everyone, and shouldn’t be touted as the panacea for unhappy workers that the media makes them out to be.
While I don’t think anyone on either side of this issue is advocating that people perform their jobs like robots with no room for compassion or common sense, we have to weigh the public responsibility of the pharmacy position (to dispense medications as requested) against individual freedom (to exercise free will).
After several years of working at the company, a co-worker one day flat out refused to do half of her job duties—duties which were essential to the business. Management went out and hired a younger, cheaper replacement and a few months later let my co-worker go. Does anyone think that’s wrong?
Is asking your secretary to perform the act of fetching coffee, one of the modern office’s most mundane chores, an implied form of sexual harassment? “Yes” is according to Tamara Klopfenstein of Levittown, NY.
Most universities claim that they are training the leaders of tomorrow, but why is their vision of leadership so narrow? Aren’t parents who care for, educate, motivate and encourage considered leaders?
Why do we automatically de-value the choice to be a parent because fewer men than women opt to be an active one? Isn’t this a form of discrimination, the type that feminists have been fighting against since the beginning of the 20th century? We have given women choices, it’s time to stop condemning them for making them.
If you hated working in sales because you had to make 50 cold calls a day, would you really be that much happier if you got to make 50 cold calls a day in your bathrobe? If you disliked proofreading press releases, would sitting on a park bench make looking for commas that much more enjoyable? Maybe. Maybe not.
No one tells you how exactly your life is going to change once you graduate college and enter the “real world.” Graduation day is a flurry of family, friends and long speeches by strangers, all assuring you that the $10/$40/$120,000 you spent on school was well worth it. And you now have the $2 piece of paper to prove it.
I was sitting in a meeting today and the subject of service-level agreements came up. I’d heard about service-level agreements before. However, what interested me about this particular discussion of service-level agreements was that we were discussing defining and implementing service-level agreements between internal departments.
Maybe advancing technology will improve productivity in the workplace, but the assumption that Millennials are more productive, is just that, an assumption. It’s been my experience that roughly half of workers at any given company spend most of their day at the office not doing any real work…
