Dear Mother from the iProject Atlas

Spotted on Strombo's blog.

This young man saved up and paid off his mother's mortgage.



I love this video since I regularly spend time with young adults and I get tired of hearing people from my generation or older who comment on the selfishness and sense of entitlement of young adults. This is absolutely wrong: they are just people, younger, but no better or worse than their elders.

Two Monkeys were Paid Unequally: Excerpt from Frans de Waal's TED Talk

This video has been making the rounds on social media this past week, so if you have already seen it, you can skip it--though it made me laugh every time.

 

This also explains why some companies try to keep their salary data completely secret. I am sure the monkey's reaction would have been different if she/he had no idea she/he was being cheated out of a lovely grape.

Toughest Job, Interview

The Onion: CIA Facebook Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs

CIA's 'Facebook' Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs

The Origin of Job Interviews

Where do you see yourself in 50 moons?

I want to be an academic librarian

"To become an academic librarian you will have to wait for someone to die"
"I am very patient."

The Hipster Librarian from the Lipstick Librarian

Huh.

I think I need more coffee.

Library Voices

I don't think there is a librarian amongst them, but they are a great band out of Regina and, well, it's Friday and it has been a week. Enjoy!

Step Off the Map and Float



Drinking Games



You can also listen to more from Library Voices, with much better quality, on CBC Radio 3.

Last year, they also had their gear stolen in Vancouver and they made an appeal on youtube to get it back. Watch what they reveal at the end about their band name:

I want to be a librarian

And now, don't you want to be one, too?

Little Gordon

Warning: if you are on a public or work computer get ready for the little blond boy with the potty mouth.

If you have seen Hell's Kitchen or Kitchen Nightmares, you will get the joke in these videos from a job board in the UK, Caterer.com. The videos have been a huge boost for the job board.



Little Nancy Pearl, maybe?

Spied on ERE.net.

Try not to think about work on the weekends

Andrew G.R. who writes for Jobacle has a post on US News and World Report about how our weekends are not for work.

Now the tendency when you are fresh in your job is to always identify yourself with your job title--sort of as if it had become your new last name. We like to show that we have realized our educational dream--heck, that we have a job is awesome. We are also proud of our work--usually--and rightly so. Librarians do lots of cool stuff and I won't write the epic of our awesomeness, especially when preaching to the choir. But Andrew is right about one thing:

Take some time off from your job.

Some of us are breaking our student habits where weekends meant work. We did our paid labor on weekends, and we weren't used to time off. We were used to finding a minute to not work at our two (or more) jobs, as students and workers. Very few students have days off and you hear them guiltily confessing, I took the night off. Good news, you aren't a student anymore. Unless you were smart enough to start scheduling your breaks, it takes time to break the habit of always running to the next assignment or to arrive on time for a shift at [paid] work.

A "weekend" is a luxury for many of us--we don't get two days off in a row. New librarians are usually given the weekend shift and know that they have arrived when they get their first Saturday off without begging for it. But we can find a period of time, longer than one day, to forget about our work, not develop ourselves and just watch TV, go to the gym or dancing, and not use our profession as our last name. This can give us some perspective and a mental break.

Heck, I'm blogging about libraries and work: I'm a work junkie. But I take days off from it when I can't find anything to write about, or when I need a rest period.

But being a librarian does creep into my leisure activities. I read a controversial book, which I picked up because of the buzz, not a true attraction to the book, and think, hmmm, someone will challenge this book for exactly this passage. I might even take notes, as opposed to just enjoying the book. It's homework, not pleasure. I think the author might agree that they wrote it to inform and please, not for me to feel it was my duty to read their book. (Unless it was William Bennett.) This means excluding books that include in their prefaces or dedications, the phrase for your edification.

Or I take my work home with me over the weekend to catch up--although I know my weekend is already packed with family stuff, or leisure activities. I bring the stuff along to read or write about while I'm waiting for my friends to show up at Starbucks--or feel guilty that I didn't read it on the train there and back. Carrying it with me doesn't mean I dealt with it, it just means that I packed it along.

How much work are you packing and not dealing with?

You should think about what it means that you can't get your work done during work hours: a) you need more time to get your work done, so you need to talk with your supervisor, b) you need to cut back on all of the extra projects that you have taken on in addition to your work, or c) get off Twitter, Mr. Mayer.

So, take a break. You need one.

JibJab says Happy Graduation

Hey Paul Krugman

Yes, there are some Paul Krugman fangirls in my office, swapping podcasts and his books, wanting to friend him on Facebook. So this just made my Friday.

I'll see your necktie and raise you a pair of control tops

No more pantyhose, no more neckties. I actually like Ben Stein--as a comedian, not as a conservative. (I'm like most liberals: we claimed Funny Hill.) Anyway, if you can give up neckties--which get caught in file drawers, shredders, anything with a vice, clamp, flap, shut, bam, boom-- and have more to do with sumptuary laws than egalitarianism can we cease fire on the panty hose?

I don't have any friends like that

Think about who's in your network.

Men, sizing matters

Again, a do's and don'ts of workplace fashion focused strongly on (young) women. Complete with slide show including cleavage. Ok, I agree that people could dress a little more professionally. (Not that I will, but you know about advice: love to give it, don't follow it.) But I hate how most of this advice is focused on women. Men, too, take liberties with the dress code: it just happens that their faux pas usually have to do with improper sizing while they are still within the dress code confines. How about these:

• The fuzzy-bear belly. Yes, men with muffin tops and popped buttons showing up for work. Or growing increasingly deshabille as the day goes on. These are the guys who aren't allowed to be skins on the court.
• Chafe-y underwear so they're always rearranging their clappers. Or that scissors move when they slouch down in the chair and think no one is watching. YUCK. Just buy some knickers that fit already.
• Tight clothing.You need a size thirty-six waist. You are not the same size you were in college, get over it.
• Overhanging gut that ate the belt. Steve McQueen is looking for you and he has a fire extinguisher.
• No waist man. Pants hiked up to the armpits and scary camel toe. If your nipples are that cold, put on a sweater.
• I don't want to see your ankles. Ever. Your legs have stopped growing, just measure and commit. (That Nicolas Sarkozy thing was an April Fool's Day joke.)
• Plumber's crack. Need I say more?

Clearly, if you actually listened to the adage, measure twice, cut once, we'd have some better dressed men and perfectly fitted baseboards. Beyond sizing, but purely fashion stricken

• Track pants. Jay Z wants you to get out of his closet.
• Ungroomed facial hair. Yes, you, the one that ate that soup for lunch. Or was it yesterday's lunch?
• Men wear flip-flops, too. A far greater crime: brown sandals with black socks. Or mismatched tube socks. So shut up about it.

Feel the love? Now you know why women hate fashion do's and don'ts.

Open mouth, insert foot

When I was initially looking for my first library job, my best friend helped me prep for interviews. She was the Interviewer and I was the Victim, sometimes Idiot with flashes of Savant. We worked our way through 101 Great Answers to the Toughest Interview Questions, and I would answer and she would tell me I was wrong.

Anyway, after about 20 minutes of this--possibly less, since she thinks I have the attention span of a gnat--I would get BORED. As in, I would take the questions in a new direction that she didn't expect. Like I would answer questions about supervisory skills by describing my God complex, or whine in response to questions about professional development with, oh, do I have to?? or how I thought the best customer service was delivered with a fire hose--and yakked appreciatively about fire men and calendars. You know, stuff like that.

Not the right answer, obviously, but I just couldn't take the ridiculous, fatuousness of the whole interview procedure anymore. Especially because it felt like I was failing.

I do not suggest that you talk about fire men or hoses in any sort of appreciative or deprecating tone during your interview. Especially if this is for a public library job. They might be in your union or your library late fees bought their fire truck. But the joke interview worked, because I was no longer tempted to say the outrageous. (Remember attention span mentioned above?) After we stopped laughing and got down to business, I started to pay more attention to the questions since my brain had had a break.

So, if you are in the endless round of interviews and need a break, please expand on the following in your own style:

1. What method do you use to set and attain your goals? I have one? Like a goal, I mean? Hire me. Goal realized.
   
2. As a librarian, do you think of yourself as more geek less nerd, or vice versa? And because this is actually a "fit" question, everybody on the panel will think that they are your vice versa, unless the boss tells them differently.
3. Our opinion on challenged books is turf 'em, who needs the hassle? Tell us how we could still post the Library Bill of Rights with a straight face. Talk about a problem solving question. Think they asked something similar at the ENRON interview?
   
4. Tell us the name of the last book you read. And this time, tell the truth. It wasn't Thousand Splendid Suns, or anything with a reader's guide. It was Incubus Dreams or some book with a butt cover, and you read for fluids.
5. Librarian: neither liberal nor rare. Discuss.

Great Office War

Wouldn't you work in this office--if you didn't have to clean up afterward? In the age of flash memory, practical use for a CD-ROM.



Spotted on Web Worker Daily.

Videos TGIF

I had a personal emergency yesterday, so I didn't have much time to think of a stellar post. Instead: video Friday. TGIF all.

The book trailer for Johnny Bunko, the book I reviewed yesterday.


Johnny Bunko trailer from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.

And a little workplace humor, online identity vs F2F (first seen on Jobacle). Beware profanity, so don't be checking this at a public terminal.