News is updated whenever we find information that informs us or tickles us. And, more importantly, that it informs or tickles you.

This page was last updated 12/30/04

How Americans Rank at Spotting a Liar
By Jennifer Warner
WebMD Medical News Reviewed By Brunilda Nazario, MD
on Friday, April 02, 2004
April 2, 2004 -- Americans may think they're experts at the art of deception, but it's really all a lie.
New research shows Americans rank near the middle of the pack worldwide when it comes to spotting a liar, but Turks and Armenians fare much better.
The 75-nation study shows Americans think they can spot a liar less than half the time, but Turks and Armenians can detect a lie up to 70% of the time.
Researchers say differences in international deception practices can make it harder for people of different cultures to get away with lying, or at least think they can.
The results of the study were presented recently at a Congressional hearing on international deception.
Detecting Lies
Worldwide, people surveyed for the study said they could detect a lie about 53% of the time.
"Eye contact, or lack of it, was mentioned more than any other cue as an indicator that a person is lying," says researcher Charles F. Bond, a professor of psychology at Texas Christian University, in a news release.
"This belief is most likely inaccurate," says Bond. "At least in western research, eye contact has only a weak relationship to deception."
Interestingly, Bond says about 15% of respondents said they believe people telling a lie actually make more eye contact than someone who's telling the truth. The percentage was higher in Muslim countries (nearly 30%) and lower in nations where Roman Catholic Christianity was dominant (11%).
Other telltale signs of deception mentioned included shifting posture, incoherence (speaking with a lot of "uhs" and "ahs") and nervousness.
Cultural Differences in Lying
Researchers also found cultural difference in how often people believe they're being lied to. People in Taiwan and Portugal believe they hear about four fibs a week, and Americans think they hear twice as many a week.
Those numbers were much higher in poor and Muslim countries. Pakistanis and Algerians said they are being lied to between 12 and 16 times a week. The worldwide average was nine tall tales per week.
But the study found religion had a strong effect on how good a liar people think they are. Muslims rated themselves the worst at lying and think they got away with it only 47% of the time, while Protestants think they get away with fibbing about 55% of the time.
SOURCES: Bond, C. "International Deception," presented at congressional briefing "Detecting Deception: Research to Secure the Homeland," Washington, D.C., March 19, 2004. News release, Dick Jones Communications.

Just to lighten up your job search, we found this on the 'net:

A collection of "off the wall" cover letters  mailed by a struggling comedian
in search of another unfulfilling day job.

washingtonpost.com
Hiring Across D.C. Region Is Uneven
Local Firms Adding Jobs, But Slowly
By Neil Irwin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 25, 2004; Page A06
Tucked away in a Columbia office building, in a room that a year ago sat empty, Saji Akhtar last week fed one stack after another of health insurance forms into a refrigerator-size machine, which thumped and whirred and spat out doctors' scribbles in digital form. Lately, he's been so busy he sometimes has to skip lunch and work into the night scanning the documents.
But his employer, Dakota Imaging Inc., isn't planning to give him much more help anytime soon.
"Business could increase by 100 percent and we'd still not need a whole lot more people," said Ron Diegelman, chief financial officer of Dakota, which has cut a third of its staff over the past three years.
Dakota is part of the central paradox of the economy. Although the nation is producing more goods and services, corporations are making more money and stocks are soaring, companies are not creating many jobs.
The job market is better in the Washington area than in most of the country. The region has an unemployment rate of 3.1 percent, barely half that of the United States as a whole, although it remains high in some parts, especially the District. The Washington area has fared better because it has fewer businesses in the troubled manufacturing industry than most places and federal government spending has led contractors to add thousands of positions.
Still, the region is adding jobs at an annual rate of only 1 percent, compared with an average of 2.6 percent over the past two decades. And recent job growth has been uneven throughout the region. In the 12 months ended in November, the District added 5,000 jobs, suburban Maryland gained 2,500 jobs and Northern Virginia, with its huge concentration of government contractors, picked up 22,000 jobs.
Many companies are being buffeted by broad forces that have made them conservative in their hiring decisions, even as the economy improves. Dakota, for example, expects sales to increase 50 percent this year but plans to add only a dozen employees to its 100-person workforce, a move that would still leave it a smaller company than it was four years ago.
Firms say that, after going through recent layoffs, they are waiting as long as possible to expand their payrolls.
"We call it a just-in-time approach to hiring," said Sean Huurman, global recruiting director of BearingPoint Inc., a McLean-based consulting firm.
Throughout the Washington region, executives cite three reasons for the restricted hiring. Technology and other advances have made workers more productive. Companies that expanded too quickly during the boom are not going to hire until they get rid of their excess capacity. And, when they do expand, many firms have used more consultants or temporary workers than before.
"Hiring new people makes me very nervous right now," said Michelle Boggs, chief executive of McKinley Marketing Partners Inc., a 10-person firm in Alexandria that finds temporary marketing executives for large companies.
So far, she has been able to do more with less because of improved productivity. At its peak in 2000, McKinley Marketing had 14 employees and $13 million in revenue. Those figures dropped to eight employees and sales of $6.5 million.
Business is again on the rise, but even if sales get back to where they were three years ago, Boggs said, the firm will need only 12 people to do the work once performed by 14.
To understand why, look at Katie Wells's desk. She manages the recruiting of marketing executives for the firm, and two years ago her desk would have been covered with paper forms, and her days would have been spent collating information about potential hires. Now, most of that work is done by a computer, cutting in half the time she spends shuffling papers and leaving her more time to evaluate candidates.
Productivity often improves at the beginning of a recovery. The question is how long will it be before corporations hit their productivity limits and begin to hire. Economists are predicting that government data to be released next week will show that in 2003 Americans produced about 4 percent more goods and services for each hour worked than they did the year before.
In Arlington, the issue for Henninger Media Services Inc. is excess capacity. Henninger entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July 2002. It cut its staff from 235 to 82, closed half its 50 edit suites and rented out a quarter of the space in its headquarters. It emerged from bankruptcy in April.
Henninger's problems came about not because people were watching fewer cable nature documentaries or political candidates were producing fewer campaign commercials -- two of its major businesses. Indeed, chief executive Robert L. Henninger figures that total demand for both services has risen over the past two years.
The problem in the video-editing business was too much supply of the kind of expensive and sophisticated equipment used to edit videos. Lauren Meschter last week sat in a dark room at Henninger headquarters removing the greenish tint from video of a herd of buffalo rumbling across the South Dakota plain. The number of such rooms in the region has expanded tenfold in the past decade, Henninger estimates, which he said is a major reason for the company's bankruptcy reorganization.
Henninger estimates there are about 1,000 professional-caliber video-editing booths in the Washington area now, 10 times as many as a decade ago. The large supply drove down the price for an hour of high-quality video post-production work from $450 to $350.
This situation mirrors that of the U.S. economy as a whole. Much of the economic slump has been the process of cutting excess capacity. Companies won't do much hiring until demand and capacity are again in equilibrium.
That equilibrium may be getting closer. According to the Federal Reserve, industrial companies nationwide were using 75.8 percent of their capacity in December, up from 74.9 percent a year earlier. For the service companies that dominate the Washington area's economy, there aren't such all-inclusive numbers. One indicator, however, is the area's office vacancy rate, which has dropped in the past year to 12 from 12.8 percent, according to CoStar Group Inc.
In the area video production business, things also seem to be turning around. During the boom, a used Digital Betacam mastering machine would sell for $32,000 or so, Henninger said. When his company was reorganizing last year, it could get only $24,000 for the machines because of the oversupply of professional video equipment. But in an auction by a competitor this month, the machines sold for $27,000.
Henninger said he expects to hire five to eight additional people this year, but he quickly added, "After going through what we have, we're not going to rush into anything."
The availability of talented temporary workers has also allowed companies such as Flavorx Inc. of Bethesda to avoid making a lot of hires. With popular flavors such as grape (for kids) and Angus beef (for dogs), it has almost doubled the number of pharmacies that use its medical flavoring products in the last year, from 8,000 to 15,000.
Despite the new business, when a new computer system was needed, Flavorx retained an outside contractor to install and manage the new server rather than hire an employee, as it would have in the past, said chief executive Kenneth L. Kramm.
The independent contractor, Malcolm Jones, said his previous employer, a software company, moved away. So while looking for a permanent job, he spent five weeks at Flavorx running wires, installing software and making sure the e-mail worked. But the improving economy is helping Jones. He recently was offered a permanent job by a contractor for the World Bank and started work two weeks ago.
There have been a few bright spots in Washington's job market. The number of jobs tied to the booming housing market -- real estate brokers, construction workers and the like -- is rising. So are retail jobs. But the one sector adding jobs in large numbers is government contracting. In 2002, the government and its contractors added 38,100 jobs in the region, according to Alexandria research firm Delta Associates, and many analysts believe the number will be higher for 2003.
The bad news for job seekers is that the positions tend to be in relatively narrow fields.
WamNet Government Services Inc. in Herndon does big high-tech projects for the government. It is now setting up computer intranets on Navy and Marine bases around the world. The company started last year with 221 employees and finished it with 650. Most of those jobs, however, require high-level skills, such as those of network engineers.
Contractors increasingly are fighting it out with one another for those kinds of workers, especially those with security clearances. Wages for mid-level project managers with five to 10 years of experience and a security clearance are now as high as $130,000 a year, said Robert D. Merkl, president of SecureIT, a Rockville firm that helps match such workers with potential employers. That's close to what they could have made at well-funded dot-coms during the Internet boom of the late 1990s.
WamNet plans to hire 50 people in the Washington area this year and is offering its employees a $3,000 bounty for finding people for hard-to-fill positions.
But away from Washington's government-related economy, there are still few of those four-figure recruiting bonuses, and hiring is more cautious. According to industry surveys and interviews with dozens of executives, more companies seem to be taking the approach of I3 Solutions Inc. in Sterling. The company develops custom software to help companies do things such as juggle work orders or bill clients more reliably.
In a period of weeks in late 2000 and early 2001, customers canceled jobs and stopped paying their bills. In 2000, I3 had $6.5 million in sales and about 75 employees. Last year, it had $1.5 million in revenue and a workforce of 25.
Chief executive Scot Johnson predicts that sales will increase to $1.8 million in 2004. He hired one more engineer in late December. Based on what his clients are telling him, he expects to add a couple more in the coming months.
"I'm only going to expand if my clients drag me there," Johnson said.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company

washingtonpost.com/ editorial, Tuesday, January 27,2004
The Jobless Recovery Page A16

AS THEY AWAIT the results of the New Hampshire primary, Democrats should take a lesson from the nation's central bankers. Out on the campaign trail, the candidates (with the honorable exception of Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut) have been blaming the "jobless recovery" on President Bush, the trade system and the new phenomenon of "offshoring" service jobs to India. In rather less arresting tones, meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has been trying to explain why this blame is exaggerated. As Chairman Alan Greenspan said yesterday, the United States has lost jobs to foreigners before, yet it has always created others. The Fed committee that sets interest rates meets today and tomorrow, and will demonstrate one of the reasons why the new protectionism is misguided.
This is not the first jobless recovery. In 1991-92 the economy grew steadily, but job growth was almost nil. The reason for such recoveries, as a study by the New York Fed argues, is that the structure of the economy is changing faster than previously. In the 1970s and '80s, unemployment was roughly 50 percent "cyclical": Recessions drove firms to lay off workers and recoveries drove them to hire workers back into the same jobs. Now, by contrast, the "structural" component of unemployment accounts for most job losses: Technological and organizational shifts are driving firms to close jobs down permanently, and laid-off workers are having to look for entirely new work. That takes time. Firms have to create jobs they never had before, which takes longer than re-creating old ones. As a result, the new structural nature of unemployment means that job creation lags in the early stages of a recovery.
Mr. Bush should not be blamed for this, though his irresponsible fiscal policy harms business confidence and therefore job creation. But the bigger question is whether jobless recoveries are a bad thing. They are, after all, the flip side of good news. There is less cyclical unemployment these days, so recessions are milder; fewer jobs are being created now because fewer jobs were destroyed during the downturn. Moreover, a jobless recovery means, by definition, that each worker is producing more. Higher productivity, in turn, is the best promise possible of higher wages and employment in the future. Just look at the past decade: The jobless recovery of 1991-92 ushered in the longest economic expansion of the postwar period, which drove unemployment down to previously unheard-of levels, and fueled improvements in poverty, crime and other social indicators.
It's true that the shift of service jobs to countries such as India, like other trade-related dislocation, adds to the temporary pain of structural unemployment. But, as Mr. Greenspan says, new jobs will be created. If a U.S. firm shifts employment abroad, the savings flow back to the United States in the form of lower prices for consumers and higher dividends for shareholders; the consumers and shareholders will direct their new spending power at things that create employment. Meanwhile, the fall in prices will allow the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates lower, boosting the job-creation engine. At its meeting today and tomorrow, the Fed is almost certain to keep short-term interest rates at a rock-bottom 1 percent because forces such as "offshoring" are keeping inflation in check despite a rebounding economy. Offshoring, like trade, creates winners and losers, which is why open trade should be accompanied by social safety nets. But the winners will outnumber the losers, because the adjustment creates new efficiencies. Each worker can produce more, meaning that he or she can be paid more. Do the Democrats really mean to oppose that?

© 2004 The Washington Post Company
 

OFFICE WISDOM

1. Eagles may soar high, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
2. Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
3. There may be no 'I' in team, but there's a 'ME' if you look hard enough.
4. Process and Procedure are the last hiding place of people without the wit and wisdom to do their job properly.
5. Remember that age and treachery will always triumph over youth and ability.
6. Never do today that which will become someone else’s responsibility tomorrow.
7. Every time you open your mouth you have this wonderful ability to continually confirm what I think.
8. Show me a good loser and I'll show you a LOSER!
9. Put the key of despair into the lock of apathy. Turn the knob of mediocrity slowly and open the gates of despondency - welcome to a day in the average office.
10. It's the team that matters. Where would The Beatles be without Ringo? If John got Yoko to play drums the history of music would be completely different.
11. What does a squirrel do in the summer? It buries nuts. Why? Cos then in winter time he's got something to eat and he won't die. So, collecting nuts in the summer is worthwhile work. Every task you do at work think, would a squirrel do that? Think squirrels. Think nuts.
12. When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
13. Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue.
14. If your boss is getting you down, look at him through the prongs of a fork and imagine him in jail.
15. If you can keep your head when all around you have lost theirs, then you probably haven't understood the seriousness of the situation.
16. You don't have to be mad to work here! In fact we ask you to complete a medical questionnaire to ensure that you are not.
17. If you treat the people around you with love and respect, they will never guess that you're trying to get them sacked.
18. If at first you don't succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.
19. You have to be 100% behind someone, before you can stab them in the back.
20. If work was so good, the rich would have kept more of it for themselves.
21. Those of you who think you know everything are annoying to those of us who do.
22. There's no 'I' in 'team'. But then there's no 'I' in 'useless smug colleague', either. And there's four in 'platitude-quoting idiot'. Go figure.
23. Know your limitations and be content with them. Too much ambition results in promotion to a job you can't do.
24. Make good use of your cylindrical filing unit, the one you mainly keep under your desk.
25. Quitters never win, winners never quit. But those who never win and never quit are idiots.
26. If you're gonna be late, then be late and not just 2 minutes - make it an hour and enjoy your breakfast.
27. Remember the 3 golden rules: 1. It was like that when I got here. 2. I didn't do it. 3. (To your Boss) I like your style.
28. The office is like an army, and I'm the field general. You're my footsoldiers and customer quality is the WAR!!!
29. Set out to leave the first vapour trail in the blue-sky scenario.
30. Statistics are like a lamp-post to a drunken man - more for leaning on than illumination.
31. A problem shared is a problem halved, so is your problem really yours or just half of someone else’s?
32. Is your work done? Are all pigs fed, watered and ready to fly?....
33. You don't have to be mad to work here, but you do have to be on time, well presented, a team player, customer service focused and sober!!
34. I thought I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it was just some b*stard with a torch, bringing me more work.
35. Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of resumes in the bin without reading them.

Clear Skies?
The Recession's Aftereffects Could Cap Gains
By John M. Berry
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 4, 2004; Page F01 "Growth is Hot, but Jobs and Inflation are Not."
The headline on the 2004 forecast from Macroeconomic Advisers last month summed up this year's outlook succinctly. In the St. Louis forecasting firm's view, and in that of the vast majority of other private and government economists, the belated recovery from the 2001 recession finally but firmly established itself in the second half of last year, and solid growth should continue throughout 2004.
But the peculiar nature of the recession -- centered as it was on the collapse of a business investment boom at the end of the 1990s -- is still likely to put a cap on this year's growth and limit the decline in the politically sensitive unemployment rate.
It's unclear whether by Election Day there will have been enough payroll jobs created for President Bush to escape being the first president since Herbert Hoover to see fewer payroll jobs at the end of a term than at the beginning. In November, there were 130.2 million such jobs, 2.3 million fewer than when Bush took office in January 2001, as Democratic presidential hopefuls repeatedly have pointed out.
In this national economic framework, individual households' experiences will vary widely, as they always do. But broadly speaking, here is the outlook for some of the trends that will affect them:
• Jobs -- Payrolls are expected to expand, though most employers will continue to keep a tight rein on new hires to keep costs under control. The national unemployment rate is not likely to fall sharply; even though hiring should tick up; as discouraged workers start searching for jobs again, they will resume being counted in the government statistics, swelling the official pool of the unemployed.
But remember that national averages are just that. A new Labor Department survey showed that in the final three months of 2002, more than 7 million payroll jobs disappeared at firms that either cut their rosters or went out of business. But almost the same number of jobs were created at expanding firms or companies that opened their doors for the first time during those months. In other words, there are far more job opportunities appearing all the time than the small month-to-month changes in payrolls imply.
• Wages -- With overall joblessness remaining relatively high, employers probably won't be handing out large pay increases. Average hourly earnings for production and non-supervisory workers on private payrolls rose only 2.3 percent in the 12 months ended in November. Most forecasters expect workers to do better this year, but with increases still limited to around 3 percent or slightly more. At the same time, the length of the average workweek is likely to increase, so that weekly pay will rise faster than hourly earnings.
• Prices -- Inflation is expected to remain so subdued that even those modest pay increases should leave workers with added buying power. The consumer price index increased 1.8 percent in the year ended in November, and many forecasts are calling for a rise of 1 to 1.5 percent this year. Essentially, the average price of goods, which rose a scant 0.2 percent in the year ended in November, is expected to fall this year. Some goods' prices will go up, but others will fall more. In that 12-month period, for example, new motor vehicle prices were down 2.1 percent and those for used cars fell a whopping 11.3 percent. Apparel prices were also down, 1.9 percent.
The cost of food, which rose 3.1 percent in that period, more than any other major component of the CPI except medical care and energy, is likely to increase less rapidly this year, forecasters say. The discovery of that Washington state cow infected with mad cow disease has already sent cattle prices tumbling, and the price of beef in grocery stores, which skyrocketed 22 percent in the year ended in November, should follow.
The cost of services will continue to rise, as on average they always do. However, the cost of services other than energy services rose a moderate 2.6 percent in the latest 12 months, distinctly less than in other recent years. On the other hand, the cost of natural gas piped to homes is rising sharply this winter.
• Interest rates -- With inflation low and perhaps falling, and the economy far from full employment, Federal Reserve officials have indicated they won't be raising their target for short-term interest rates for an extended period. That means that rates on credit card balances and personal loans are likely to rise little if at all.
On the other hand, forecasters expect long-term rates, such as those on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes, to begin to creep up as economic conditions improve over the course of the year. That's important for families contemplating buying a home or refinancing an existing mortgage, because yields on 10-year notes have a major impact on 30-year fixed-rate home mortgages. But those yields, and therefore mortgage rates, are expected to rise less than a percentage point, and perhaps less than half a point.
Macroeconomic Advisers' predictions, among the most widely followed of all forecasts, call for an annual growth rate close to 5 percent in the first three months of this year, tapering gradually to a 4.3 percent rate in the fourth quarter. The 4.5 percent average for the four quarters of 2004 would be modestly better than 2003's estimated average of 4.2 percent, the firm said.
However, with most companies continuing to find ways to use labor more efficiently -- and therefore able to produce more goods and services without hiring many additional workers -- growth is not expected to be strong enough to put a big dent in the nation's jobless rate, which stood at 5.9 percent in November. Late this year joblessness will be down only to about 5.5 percent, according to the forecast.
On the other hand, given the slow decline in unemployment, modest increases in wages and salaries and continued hefty gains in productivity -- the amount of goods and services produced for each hour worked -- another year of growth should put little if any upward pressure on inflation.
Some other predictions, such as those from economists Ethan S. Harris and Joseph Abate at Lehman Brothers Inc. in New York, are not quite as optimistic as those from Macroeconomic Advisers.
"In a typical postwar recovery, [economic] growth averages about 6 percent in the first year, as four sectors shift from recession to recovery -- housing, autos, business equipment and inventories," said Harris, who is Lehman's chief U.S. economist. "In this cycle, however, both autos and housing have already had their run as super-easy financing accelerated the buying decisions. Hence, these sectors are likely to be a drag on growth in the year ahead, holding gross domestic product growth to about a 4 percent [annual rate] per quarter."
A 4 percent growth rate this year, rather than the 4.5 percent rate predicted by Macroeconomic Advisers, would further limit the fall in unemployment, and indeed, the Lehman Brothers forecast puts the jobless rate at a scarcely changed 5.8 percent late this year.
Although the recession ended a full two years ago, it took most of that two years for businesses to work their way through the excess equipment they had piled up. In one sector, commercial real estate, much of the excess is still there in the form of empty office and retail space.
During 2002 and 2003, consumer spending and a booming residential real estate market, the latter fueled by the lowest home mortgage interest rates in nearly four decades, kept the economy afloat. In fact, even during the recession itself neither consumer spending nor the housing market ever declined.
Consumer spending benefited substantially last year from another income tax cut proposed by Bush and passed by Congress in late spring. Many families with young children got advance "rebate" checks during the summer because of an increase in the child tax credit, and many taxpayers' take-home pay rose when income tax rate cuts, scheduled to take effect in later years, were advanced to July 1. Spending surged during the summer and helped boost growth in the third quarter to an 8.2 percent annual rate, the highest in almost 20 years.
But consumer spending growth has since slowed, and a number of forecasters expect it to rise more or less in line with the overall economic growth rate. On the other hand, business spending on equipment and software, as well as on inventories, are expected to give a solid boost to growth.
As business investment has picked up, manufacturing, the sector of the economy hit hardest by the recession, has begun to rebound. Factory output is rising again, and forecasters expect it to continue to as firms begin to rebuild their stocks of unsold goods, which, relative to sales, are at some of the lowest levels on record. However, the manufacturing rebound has not yet fully stabilized factory payrolls, which fell in November for the 40th consecutive month.
The Bush administration's own economic forecast for 2004 won't be released until the fiscal 2005 budget is presented, probably in early February. However, N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview that growth "in the 4 percent range seems reasonable." He noted that some private forecasters who had had relatively more pessimistic predictions for this year, such as those at Goldman Sachs, recently raised their growth figures.
Consumer spending will continue to grow this year, "but other sectors will lead the way," Mankiw said. For example, better growth in Europe and some other U.S. trading partners next year should generate more demand for American exports, he said. While the White House economist would not discuss the value of the dollar, many other economists expect its decline, particularly against the 12-nation euro, to make U.S. goods more competitive on world markets.
Another wholly atypical development during and after the 2001 recession was that labor productivity not only failed to decline but its growth accelerated. That meant that firms' labor costs per unit of output -- by far the largest cost incurred by most firms -- have dropped, a key reason inflation has declined to its lowest level since the mid-1960s. Over the 12 months ended in September, unit labor costs for non-farm businesses fell 2.2 percent. And this year, according to the Macroeconomic Advisers forecast, they are expected to rise only 0.8 percent.
With plenty of slack in the U.S. labor market and large amounts of unused production capacity in most industries, firms' declining labor costs have generated an enormous improvement in corporate profits. The Commerce Department reported late last month that by one measure corporate profits were being chalked up in the July-September period at an annual rate of $1.1 billion, up 25 percent from the same period in 2002. Another more modest but still solid gain in profits of around 10 percent is expected by many forecasters for this year.
Yet another atypical development during the halting recovery from the 2001 recession has been the unusually low level of interest rates across the board. Many short-term and long-term rates are at their lowest levels in more than four decades.
The Federal Reserve pursued an aggressive policy of rate reductions when the economy began turning sour at the beginning of 2001 and continued though last year. Its target for the key overnight rate on loans banks make to each other has been pegged at 1 percent since last June, and a growing number of analysts think it could well stay at that level throughout 2004. Other analysts predict the Fed will begin to boost the rate sometime in the second half of this year.
"Our outlook for strong growth and continued low inflation does not provide a compelling backdrop for Fed tightening in 2004," said economist Robert V. DiClemente of Citigroup in New York. His firm has put what he called a "token" rate increase into the forecast for late this year "as a nod to upside risks in the forecast, plausible hints that inflation may be stabilizing" and that by then the risk of more inflation in 2005 could be rising.
"Importantly, the combination of strong productivity trends, visible slack in labor and product markets, and the high level of Fed credibility reinforces a cautious approach to changing [monetary] policy's direction that is very different from cycles of the past two decades," DiClemente said.
Many analysts and investors had a great deal of trouble last fall recognizing just how differently Fed officials believe the current recovery is from past recoveries. This is the first time since the early '60s when, at the beginning of a solid recovery, inflation has been so low that policymakers don't want it to go any lower. Actually, for much of last year, Fed officials feared that inflation was so low and the economy so weak that some sort of shock, such as a major terrorist attack on the United States, might trigger a renewed slump and cause the overall level of prices to start falling. That condition, known as deflation, might cause further serious damage to the economy, the officials worried.
As the economy has strengthened, that concern about deflation has receded, though some Fed policymakers wish there were a bigger cushion than the current core inflation rate of around 1 percent. The core rate excludes volatile food and energy prices.
The key point is that Fed officials are not at all worried that several quarters of strong economic growth will cause a new burst of inflation. As Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan put it recently, the Fed can be "patient."© 2004 The Washington Post Company

TALKING POINTS ON THE "JOBLESS RECOVERY:" Helen Hopkins' notes for her appearance on Mike Foudy's nationally syndicated Business Radio Talk Show (Talk America Radio Network). October 8, 2003:

Helen Hopkins is President of Hire Standard Staffing, a Woman Owned Small Business specializing in contract and permanent placement in the DC metropolitan area since 1989. Our primary emphasis is on higher level Business Intelligence, Knowledge Management and Collaboration professionals, administrative assistants, executive assistants, legislative support, researchers, property managers (residential and commercial), and accounting and finance personnel.

Starting her working career as a professional musician, Ms. Hopkins made a decision to enter the business world in the mid 1980's and chose staffing as the industry to invest in. After spending several very lucrative and successful years learning the business and working her way to upper management for a large staffing firm, she formed her own company in 1989.

She realized that Washington didn’t need “another” general staffing company — so she channeled her energy and expertise in the staffing industry into providing a higher level of service and quality. Ms. Hopkins founded the forerunner of the current business, AdminAssistance, Inc. in 1989, providing permanent placement services to a wide variety of businesses looking for administrative support. In the mid 1990's, the company grew as it answered market demand for temporary services. But not just any temporary services — but accomplished, professional personnel who, because they came from the company’s pool of permanent placement candidates, were perceived to be of a Hire Standard, that is, good enough to Hire full-time.

Ms. Hopkins started her business during the recession of 1989-90. She’s succeeded because she’s been flexible respond to the economic and business shifts. The job market over the past two years is as bad as she’s ever seen it. The questions are “WHY?” and “WHAT CAN BE DONE?”

1) The JOBLESS RECOVERY: Increasingly, businesses are influenced by external forces which direct and limit their hiring like technology, global economics and security concerns/costs. At least, that is what they would tell you if you asked why they are not hiring more people or creating new jobs. However, the truth is not as “pretty”! There are real issues that companies tell us they face and feel powerless to change. While mortgage rates go down and the stock markets go up, the signs point towards an economic “recovery”. So, why aren’t more companies hiring? Why are many of them continuing to lay off or downsize? While the recovery is not entirely jobless, the number of open jobs is limited and the time the employers take to decide on a hire has increased dramatically over the past 2 years. The reality is that employers face skyrocketing costs and exposure with every employee they bring on board.

Over the past several years, there has been a sea change in the hiring /staffing process based on what we call “ the TRINITY”:
--increased benefits and insurance costs (includes health insurance, workers’ compensation, and unemployment )
average health insurance increases in 2003 were 15%
many companies have received WC policy increases of up 100%, or have lost their coverage altogether

--fear of employee-related litigation (discrimination, wrongful termination, legal responsibility to applicants)
--tremendous burden on the employer to document every employee review, counseling, warning, etc.
--companies have a legal responsibility to RESPOND to every resume they receive...this adds to their hiring costs and burden.

1) Inability to obtain performance-based references prior to hiring.
Past performance is a predictor of future results; how can companies effectively predict a potential employee’s performance if past employers will only confirm the person’s employment dates, title, and maybe salary?

2) Tasks still have to be accomplished. But the actual expense of an employee (benefits, etc.) can add an additional 20% on top of their salary. In addition, there is an abundance of available “talent” in the market — many of whom are willing to work on a temporary or contract basis, so employers are using temps or contract personnel instead of bringing on full time employees.

3) The staffing industry spokespeople have successfully promoted the flexible workforce and “temp-to-hire” concepts. Employers think the” try it before you buy it” model works well for them… but they forget they can only choose from the pool of currently unemployed (or underemployed) people. Those individuals who have a good work history and a legitimate interest in changing positions are at a disadvantage in a marketplace that mandates ultimate flexibility. Many of the positions they seek are actually being fulfilled by a contractor, who costs the employer less than an employee. (And, ironically, many contractors are unable to obtain individual insurance!)

4) Technology is a double-edged sword: while it has enabled employees to become more effective, it has also eliminated numerous administrative support jobs. In the 1980’s, a typical AA would support 2 people; now the average is about 20 people. So, the current situation is there are many experienced administrative or executive support assistants competing for a decreasing number of jobs. Earlier, they were told to become more technology-friendly and skilled; now they have the skills and can’t use them! What we are seeing in our resume database is any number of employees who still have lots of productive years left… but can’t find jobs. We also see thousands of recent grads unable to find permanent positions, so many of them are temping or waiting tables, carrying tens of thousands of dollars in debt. What these motivated, productive members of society are looking for is FULL-TIME EMPLOYMENT with SALARIES AND BENEFITS.

So, what is the answer? It is our opinion that the solution will ultimately have to come from the employers.

---Exert targeted pressure on their state and federal representatives for insurance reform and pricing relief.
---Lobby for fully-deductible employee health care costs.
---Demand tort reform and litigation award “caps”. Congress is currently debating who should be considered a “job applicant”, and what responsibilities the employer has to that individual.
---Practice fiscal responsibility when budgeting for future hires. Look at worst-case financial scenarios before committing to hiring.
---Work for policy changes in your own company that will allow you to give performance-based references on current and past employees. The change has to start somewhere!

On the job seekers side, there ARE some things they can do to increase their chances of obtaining employment:
---Build an accomplishment-oriented resume; clearly spell out the BENEFITS to the employer of hiring you ( innovation, cost savings you have created, productivity, etc.)
---Keep in touch with past supervisors; find out their current whereabouts so potential employers can reach them. Ask them to consider giving an “off the record” or “personal” reference if the past employer’s policy prohibits giving performance-based references.
---Obtain written letters of reference whenever possible.
---List a LOCAL phone number and an up-to-date email address at which prospective employers can reach you.
---Do your homework about a company before applying for work there. The more you know about them, the better prepared you will be for an interview, some of which are “impromptu” and done by phone now.
---Follow up each interview with a thank you note...proofread it before sending!
---Accept an employment offer only if you can make a minimum of a 2-year commitment to the employer.

Who exactly is a grown-up?
Notions of when true adulthood begins are shifting

CLINTON TOWNSHIP, Michigan (AP) --Sunshine filters through the window into her bedroom -- a cozy upstairs hideaway with light yellow walls and a blue floral comforter covering a twin bed. It is quiet, even peaceful -- maybe too much so for the young woman who resides here.
"It's a pretty, little room. But you kind of lose your identity in it. It's not really mine," Amy Powell says, surveying the few belongings that are hers -- a laptop, a few framed photos and a weathered notebook filled with the names and addresses of the many employers she's contacted for a job.
To say that this is not what she'd imagined is a bit of an understatement: She is 22 years old, a recent college graduate, living in her parents' suburban home -- and, as she puts it, still waiting to become a "real adult."
"To be honest, it's kind of depressing," says Powell, who's working as a waitress at a steakhouse while she searches for a job in journalism.
A weak economy has left many college grads and young professionals in a similar predicament, slowing their march to independence from the folks at home. But experts who track human development will tell you: The financial downturn is only the most recent factor pushing the start of adulthood later and later.
Gone is the notion that adulthood officially started at 18, when one typically graduated from high school -- or even 21, the modern-day age limit for drinking alcohol.
Now many experts simply consider those markers along the way. And it appears that Americans agree. A University of Chicago survey, released earlier this year, found that most think adulthood begins at age 26.
"It's not like one day you wake up and you're an adult. It's much more gradual," says developmental psychologist Jeffrey Arnett. A professor at the University of Maryland, he is writing a book on what he calls "emerging adulthood" -- the period between age 18 to 25.
"The new life course has become much more spread out and flexible," Arnett says, noting the fact that many of today's young people are staying in school longer, marrying later and delaying having children.
Trappings and independence
The University of Chicago survey found that most people defined getting married and having children as markers for true adulthood. But even that doesn't ring true for many twentysomethings.
"I just graduated from law school, I've been in a relationship with my significant other for over seven years, and I'm buying a house -- and none of that makes me feel like a grown-up," says Daniel Gluck, a 27-year-old who lives in Honolulu. "But I'm starting to lose my hair and that's beginning to make me feel grown up pretty quickly."
Others are shunning the idea of home ownership, even with the rock-bottom interest rates that have made it possible for buy property right out of college.
"I don't believe that my sense of being is dependent on what I own," says Ashley Mohney, a 24-year-old Chicagoan and avowed renter who works as a library clerk at a law firm. "I don't need a status symbol such as a house or property to feel complete or accomplished."
"That comes from my writing, playing guitar and good friends," says Mohney, an avid poetry and short-story writer outside of work.
Some young people say their hesitation about marriage, family and home ownership comes from watching how others -- from parents to peers -- have responded to the usual trappings of adulthood.
"I've had a glimpse into their lives and realize what a change those things represent," 23-year-old Lisa Mixon says of friends who got married and started families right after college. "Many of them always feel rushed, are too busy to go out with friends -- and, well, aren't happy."
Not completely adult
Now working as marketing director at Harcum College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, Mixon moved in with her parents after college while working a retail job. She has agreed to stay on for the next two years to help care for an ill parent and chip in on household duties.
Her focus, she says, is "to enjoy my time now, not as a complete adult -- just yet."
For Powell, reaching true adulthood would be as simple as getting a job that allowed her to move out of her parents' home in Clinton Township, a large suburban area a few miles northeast of Detroit.
"I'd be in my own little apartment, in a city with a job that puts my degree to use, paying my own bills, with nobody claiming me as a dependent," she says. Marriage and children will come later.
It is a very different life than her mother had.
When her mom was 22, she was married and pregnant -- and off to a Louisiana Army base with her husband, now a retired Army engineer officer.
"We had so much more responsibility at that age," says Sue Powell, now 45. Like a lot of women of her generation and those preceding hers, Sue Powell left college to get married. So as her children grew, she promised herself, "I will never let my kids do the same thing."
"We wanted them to have so many more experiences," she says as she stirs a pot of potato soup she's made for her daughter to eat before work.
But the younger Powell feels like her life is on hold. The money she earns covers her car payment and cell phone bill, though it's been a stretch since her parents recently asked her to start paying $100 toward her car insurance.
"Maybe it will be a little motivator," her mother says, a comment that draws a somewhat stunned and embarrassed look from her daughter.
The economic pinch
Even those who have found jobs in their chosen field are feeling the pinch.
"I think this economy has stunted the meter of defining adulthood because so many people do not have a choice in whether to be financially independent or not," says Kristin Lunardini, a 24-year-old who works for a public relations firm. She will soon be moving from Chicago back with her parents in Aurora, Illinois, to help pay off some bills and save money.
Whatever the factors that are causing it, much of society seems to be embracing the notion of delayed adulthood. And a whole line of increasingly common sayings are indicating a ripple effect _ "30 is the new 20" and "40 is the new 30" and so on.
Elaine Wethington, a sociologist in the department of human development at Cornell University, believes the sayings have a ring of truth.
However, there is an exception, she notes: The age that women start to become infertile has not increased.
"So women really need to think how they're going to fit children in. You can't just let it emerge," she says. "You have to plan for it."
On the other end of the spectrum, she's also noticed that the parents of her students are more reluctant than generations past to let go of their children.
"I'm 53 and I remember when I went to college, my parents considered me an adult. And I was pretty much on my own and allowed to make my own decisions," she says. "Today, I think parents at some level want the child to still be dependent a little bit longer, if they're going to keep paying the bills."
Powell has definitely felt that from her own parents, especially since she's moved back home. And her mom doesn't deny it.
"I love having them here," she says of her two children, the younger of whom is still in college. "But I can tell Amy's changed very, very much. Living here -- it's been difficult."
She's noticed that her daughter is sleeping a little later, probably because she's getting discouraged. She's also more standoffish, her mother says.
The younger Powell acknowledges that she gets annoyed by some of her parents' questions and suggestions.
"They say, 'Oh maybe you could work at the library and put together their newsletter' -- stuff that's kind of" -- she pauses for a moment and lowers her voice -- "silly."
One recent weekend, her parents insisted that she not drive to visit her boyfriend, who's still a student at Western Michigan University, where she went to school. They told her she should stay home to work on more job applications.
She ended up staying home. "But I wasn't very happy about it," she says, as she drives to the restaurant where she works.
Later that evening, she displays a handful of change left by a customer as a tip.
"This is why I still live at home," she says with a dejected look.
She counts it: "97 cents."

D.C.'s Working Women at Top in Job Survey
By Kirstin Downey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 20, 2002; Page A08
Working women in the District are outperforming women in the workforce anywhere else in the United States, according to a new state-by-state survey of women's economic, health and political environment.
D.C. women earn the most money, face the lowest gap between what they earn and what men earn, are the most likely to hold managerial and professional positions and are more likely to own a business than women anywhere else in the United States, according to the report, a statistical analysis compiled by the District-based Institute for Women's Policy Research.
At the same time, women in the District also have severe problems associated with poverty, including the nation's highest rates of diabetes and mortality from cancer. They are also infected with HIV and chlamydia at higher rates than women anywhere else in the United States.
"It's like a tale of two cities," said Heidi Hartmann, the institute's president and chief executive. "In the District, there's high poverty and the lack of health insurance, but there's also high pay for other women and the highest level of managerial and professional women."
In fact, the report -- a biennial assessment of American women's status and living conditions -- reflects a tale of two countries: In some states, women have high wages, wide access to health insurance, high rates of political participation and easy access to reproduction services, should they choose to use them -- but in others, they are mired in low wages, poor access to health insurance, low levels of political participation and increasingly, more limits on their access to reproduction services.
"We were pretty shocked," said Amy Caiazza, the project's study director. "We thought there would be some differences, but the huge inequalities we found are astounding."
Employed women in the District earn a median salary of $35,800, or 89.2 percent of what men earn. (American women, on average, earn $26,900, or 72.7 percent of what men earn.) About 48 percent of D.C. women have professional or managerial posts, and about 30.9 percent of all the businesses in the District are owned by women. Nationwide, 32.2 percent of women hold professional or management jobs, and women own 26 percent of all businesses.
Maryland is nearly as congenial for employed women: There, women's earnings rank second in the nation, at $31,680 a year, and it also has the second-highest level of women -- 41 percent -- in professional and managerial positions. And it ranks third, at 28.9 percent, on the proportion of businesses owned by women. It also has high rates of political participation by women.
Virginia, where women earn a median income of $28,000, ranked sixth in its percentage of women in managerial and professional positions, at 35.7 percent, and sixth in the proportion of women-owned businesses, at 27.5 percent.
In contrast, Montana's women earn a median salary of $21,500, the lowest in the country. In Mississippi, North Dakota and South Dakota, women earn only slightly more.
In Louisiana, 20 percent of women live in poverty; in New Hampshire, only 7 percent do. About 94 percent of women in Rhode Island have health insurance, but only about 71 percent of women in New Mexico have health insurance, down from about 78 percent in 1996, when the group conducted a similar survey.
Overall, women in the workforce nationwide prospered in the past decade, the study found, because their wages grew during the buoyant economy of the late 1990s. In addition, the wage gap between men and women shrank, partially because women's wages grew but also because some men's wages did not grow as robustly.
Even so, women's wages lag men's by a large margin. According to the study, women in 41 states earn a median income of less than $30,000 a year. Men earned less than $30,000 in only one state, Arkansas.
The study noted that the proportion of female state legislators grew slightly from 1996 to 2002, from 20.8 percent to 22.6 percent. The number of female governors jumped from one in 1996 to five in the fall of 2002.
"There's a strong link between women's representation in political office and better policies for women," Caiazza said. "Women office holders pay more attention to women's issues -- reproduction rights, health status, equal opportunity and child care -- regardless of political party."
David Namura, manager of state affairs for the Alexandria-based Society for Human Resource Management, agreed that political differences in the states have resulted in economic differences. He said a few of what he called "bellwether states," which he identified as California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Oregon, New York and Washington -- also cited for high political participation by women in the study -- have begun initiating many kinds of legislation that more women find attractive, such as higher minimum wages and paid family leave.
Nancy Duff Campbell, co-president of the National Women's Law Center, said the institute's research was consistent with what it had found when it conducted similar surveys of state health, education and child-care tax-credit policies. She added that the states with low wages, more women in poverty and many workers lacking insurance "are repeaters," with the poorest states simply "switching places back and forth" at the back of the pack.
No single state, however, emerged as a nirvana in the report, because some states offer advantages in some ways and disadvantages in others.
"Massachusetts is a great place to go to college," Caiazza said, "California is a great place to own a business, Washington is a great place to run for office, Washington, D.C., is a great place to make a living, and Hawaii is a great place to have a baby."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company

City's Culture Brings Talent, Then Companies
By Neil Irwin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 7, 2002; Page E01

When Prashanth Boccasam started a small software company last fall, he could have stayed in Houston, where he lived at the time. Instead, he packed up and brought Approva Corp. to Tysons Corner.
One reason: The young, talented employees he was trying to hire all wanted to live in a place with a vibrant cultural life.
"We just attracted a whole bunch of interns from Harvard and Yale for internships because they wanted to come to Washington," Boccasam said. "Culturally, there's a tremendous amount Washington offers. It's not like Houston where it's a bunch of strip malls and McDonald's."
Such sentiments are exactly what the area's economic development officials want to hear as they market the region's cultural and quality-of-life offerings to lure employers. Here and nationwide, experts are concluding that many of the most important factors in bringing jobs to a city are far removed from bottom-line considerations such as taxes and office availability. For models they cite economic success stories such as Austin and Seattle, metro regions that have attracted companies and thousands of high-wage educated workers in the past decade largely on the strength of what people do outside work: live and play.
Today, the Greater Washington Initiative, a coalition of business and government executives who market the region to outside employers, will release a study that underscores the growing consensus that culture is a potent attraction. The organization's 2002 Regional Report has plenty of data on employment and the like in the Washington area. But the group's real emphasis is on research showing that area arts organizations are enjoying $2.5 billion in new investment.
"Interesting forms of art and culture and entertainment and recreation are increasingly important parts of the mix that companies are looking for," explained Tom Morr, managing partner of the Greater Washington Initiative.
Officials nationwide are coming to the same conclusion, said Rick Weddle, president of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council and incoming chairman of the International Economic Development Council.
"There's a shift to emphasizing talent as your best attribute," he said, adding that it takes a robust city life to attract talent that in turn attracts companies. "We thought it was due to the labor shortage in the late 1990s. In reality it was due to the value of talent, which hasn't gone away."
His organization has done some recruiting on university campuses, trying to persuade the best and the brightest to move to Phoenix -- the sort of effort that was unheard of a few years ago.
Richard Florida, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, argues for just that sort of approach in his book "The Rise of the Creative Class," recently excerpted in a magazine under the headline "Why cities without gays and rock bands are losing the economic development race."
In the book, he analyzed cities for factors that make them attractive to smart young people. His studies show a correlation with the presence of artistic options, highly educated people and a large gay population, and he ranked the Washington area eighth, behind such places as San Francisco, Austin and Seattle.
Prodding economic development used to be simple: Send representatives out to a cajole a few big companies, point out the cheap labor, low taxes and convenient airport of your burg, and watch the investment dollars flow in. In the new language of economic development, the keys to attracting the most desirable sort of growth are things like funky coffeehouses, a rambunctious local music scene, large immigrant populations and bustling urban parks.
Bruce Katz, director of the center on urban and metropolitan policy at the Brookings Institution, points out that the nation's outer suburbs, complete with the strip malls and tract housing that young, creative people tend to shun, have grown more quickly than many more quirky urban environs. But that doesn't discount the potential of a diverse, lively city attracting a highly educated, upwardly mobile workforce.
"What cities have to do is play to their strengths and develop the assets that make them distinct," Katz said. "Those things are their amenities and their lifestyle, like nightlife and cultural institutions."
As president of Cognetics Inc., David Birch advises companies on where to locate. Firms once tended to pick a location for a new office or factory based on where doing business is cheapest. No more.
"The cities growing fastest right now have the highest taxes, most expensive workers, most expensive land," Birch said. "To say you just want the cheapest worker is an old way of thinking. What you really want is a talented labor force, not the least expensive labor force."
"Part of the reason that the District is seeing inward migration of residents for the first time in years is because it has a very vibrant downtown," said Morr, of the Greater Washington Initiative. "Whether it's the nightlife of a place like Adams Morgan or Georgetown or the Ballston Corridor, we have to make sure companies know about that side of the region."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

You know those homilies designed to turn a frown upside down when you're feeling depressed, anxious or just plain blue? There's a new company making posters for those who are more cynical called Despair, Inc. It's a parody of the Successories posters, mugs, reminders and calendars you see on every manager's wall or desk nowadays. So, while you're waiting for the job market to turn around so you can 1) hire or 2) find a new, better job, check these out.

Fantasy Personnel Records: Back when we had full employment, these people might have had decent jobs. Today's tighter economy demands higher standards. The following are performance reports HR managers wish they could write - but can't. On the other hand, we can still laugh.

1. "Since my last report, this employee has hit rock bottom and has started to dig."

2. "I would not allow this employee to breed."

3. "This employee has delusions of adequacy."

4. "This employee is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot."

5. "This employee sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them."

6. "This employee has a "full six pack" but lacks the plastic thing to hold it all together."

7. "This employee has been working with glue too much."

8. "When this employee's IQ reaches 50, she should sell."

9. "The gates are down, the lights are flashing, but the train is not coming."

10. "If this employee were any more stupid, he'd have to be watered twice a week."

11. "It's impossible to believe the sperm that created this employee beat out 1,000,000 others."

12. "The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.

The Jerk at Work: Enough to Make You Sick
By Martha Frase-Blunt
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, March 5, 2002; Page HE01

Maggie Persing, an assistant manager at an art gallery in Dulles Town Center, could only watch in disbelief as a new co-worker's behavior got stranger and stranger.
"He just stopped working. If stock would come in, he would let it sit until the next person came in. Stacks of trash began to appear in the back room during his shift." Then the guy starting walking around with a paintbrush in his teeth, pretending to "paint" the artwork by mouth. "He became odd, distracting and bizarre."
While working as a secretary in Ohio, Cyn Norris had to deal with an administrator "who was such a control freak that she would take the phone out of your hands and take over a conversation. And she would insist that you used the Wite-Out using her own very precise method."
And Cindy Anderson, who worked as a training support manager at an Arlington telecom company while pregnant, will never forget the guy "who came to my bedside in the hospital within hours of my giving birth to ask for technical help with his laptop. He'd lied to the front desk, saying he was a relative."
If you're lucky, you've never had to deal with such colleagues. But almost everyone interacts with jerks at work: the parasite, the slanderer, the gossip, the time bomb. Unchecked, these occupational hazards can ooze their demoralizing miasma all over the workplace, diminishing your productivity, disrupting office harmony and, possibly, damaging your mental health.
Think it's your fault, not the jerk's, that you hate your job? Think it's your duty to suffer in silence and hope the pain fades away (or gets promoted into someone else's department)? Well, think again. And while you're at it, consider this:
An article published last year in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology reported that 71 percent of a group of federal workers said they had been the victims of one or more incidents of "workplace incivility" in the past five years. Incivility – as distinguished from sexual harassment, physical threats and other extreme actions – was defined as "low-intensity deviant behavior . . . in violation of workplace norms for mutual respect," with the offenders described as "rude and discourteous, displaying a lack of regard for others."
The researchers found that victims of this unpleasant behavior were more likely than non-victims to show symptoms of depression and anxiety and that those symptoms grew worse as exposure to boorishness increased. Not surprisingly, the more a person experienced incivility, the less she (women were more likely than men to say they had been victimized) felt committed to or satisfied with her job.
Writing in the Academy of Management Review in 1999, two other researchers observed, "Historians may view the dawn of the 21st century as a time of thoughtless acts and rudeness: we tailgate, even in the slow lane; we dial wrong numbers and then slam the receiver on the innocent respondent; we break appointments with nonchalance."
Seemingly minor acts of incivility, these academics said, can create a "tit for tat" spiral of misbehavior that turns victims into retaliators, instigators into victims, innocent bystanders into collateral damage and once-pleasant offices into terrible places to work.
Needless to say, this madness must stop. But how?
Cutting the CordIn dealing with the jerk at work, experts offer various strategies to help you keep your stress level down and your spirits up. The bad news is that these measures may require you to be more confrontational, selfish and curt than you prefer.
"It's not a simple task to get rid of the needy colleague who comes into your office at 3 o'clock every day to rattle on about his personal problems," says Sandra A. Crowe, a workplace training expert based in Rockville. "But what it costs you is valuable work time, energy and a slice of your self-esteem."
In such cases, she suggests immediately telling the colleague that you aren't able to talk, and then going about your business. If he persists, say that you prefer not to have this conversation at work.
"It's a very fine line between being honest and being brutal," Crowe says. "Ask yourself, 'How can I be honest in a kind way? How can I speak my truth and leave the relationship intact?' The unknown quantity is how receptive the other will be. If he gets angry, that may be the price you have to pay."
No, it's not easy to tell someone who's crying on your shoulder to sob elsewhere. But you owe it to yourself to politely push him away. "If you don't allow yourself to be pulled into the other person's situation, you are able to create the space you need to focus on other people and issues in order to do your job well," Crowe says. "But if you reward the behavior by enabling it, you aren't doing the perpetrator any service. You have to cut the cord of codependency."
And if maintaining your self-respect, motivation and job satisfaction isn't enough reason to resist the antics of the office jerk, consider the gratitude you may earn from your other colleagues. After all, if someone is driving you crazy, chances are good that others feel the same way. (We should make clear that we're not speaking here about emotionally damaged or mentally ill people, whom we mention later on in this article. We're talking now about presumably stable individuals who are nosy, noisy or otherwise annoying enough to make the rest of us cringe.)
Crowe says acquiescence is a more common reaction to insufferable co-workers than is flight to a new job. "People usually decide that this is the way things are . . . . They hunker down." Her advice? Don't despair but don't update your re»sume», either; "the answer to the difficult co-worker is usually some form of action."
Crowe gives the example of a work team she was retained to help. One man would always start the weekly meeting with a joke that never failed to make others uncomfortable. "But what would they do? Every time, the other members would squirm, but they would also laugh nervously. The message to the joker was, 'They like my jokes, I'll keep telling them.' "
Crowe made two suggestions to the offended parties: Agree not to respond to the jokes at all, or have one person talk with the fellow in private. "They actually did both. One team member spoke to him in an adult way, saying, 'Look, I know you mean well and I understand your intention, but your joking makes some people a little uncomfortable. I thought you'd like to know.' " Predictably, the joker accused the team of being oversensitive. "But when the next meeting rolled around, the inevitable joke was met with utter silence. Within a week, the jokes and comments vanished."
A Balm for Daily IrritantsWilliam Gorden and Dan West offer "Dear Abby"-style advice on their Web site "Ask the Workplace Doctors". "Many of the questions we get deal with instability between co-workers and irritations within the workplace environment," says Gorden, who often recommends gentle but direct confrontation.
Take "The Runaway," who found herself dodging a leech-like colleague who continually interrupted, tagged along and ambushed her in the coffee room: "I do not want her friendship; I will be cordial and courteous to her, but that is the extent of it – I just want her to get the hint and leave me alone," lamented "The Runaway."
When hinting isn't enough, Gorden replied, "frustrations can escalate into explosions, even though you know it isn't professional to blow up or break down at work. I favor assertively, repetitively stating to this individual, 'Please don't talk to me. I don't hate you, but I want to end our talk at work and elsewhere.' This same statement, or one of your own, if politely but coolly repeated, should drive anyone away."
Whatever you say, don't deviate, Gorden advised. "Repeat, repeat, repeat, each time she comes to your work station or elsewhere strives to start up a conversation." And, he continued, consider adding some turn-off signals: averted eyes, putting up barriers such as a stack of books, dodging areas where you are likely to be harassed, one-word greetings and quick moves away and squelching normal conversational cues such as head nods and smiles.
A more diplomatic form of confrontation was Gorden's prescription for the victim of an co-worker who had been known to threaten colleagues with a ruler when she became angry.
He recommended approaching the offender – "during a time when she is not angry" – with a question like "Can you help me understand your position better so we can avoid situations that result in both of us becoming angry?" and an offer to work together to reduce tensions.
Of course, the ruler may come out again, and in that case the victim may insist that the offender cease her uncontrolled outbursts, no matter who is at fault.
"Whatever you decide to do," Gorden says, "be sure you are honest and assertive about your position, whether you are issuing an apology or standing up for your rights."
Gossip, slander, verbal abuse, tattling and slacking can be handled similarly by appealing to a sense of team spirit among co-workers, he explains. If somebody is constantly bugging you by what he does – or doesn't do – on the job, don't make excuses for his behavior, and don't make excuses for not trying to correct the problem.
Save YourselfThere is, of course, a line between someone who is weird and someone who has real mental or physical ills. Ironically, the latter set of problems can be easier to resolve.
While working in New York a few years ago, Wendy Seideman occupied a cubicle adjacent to a woman who acted oddly. "She always thought there was someone behind her. All day she would repeat very loudly, 'Who's there? I know you're there! Stop looking over my shoulder!' "
Concerned – not to mention unable to focus on her job – Seideman sought help from her supervisor and then the firm's human resources office. "The woman had been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and even though it was not very well controlled, she had every right to keep her job. HR's solution was to move her to a very secluded corner so she wasn't disturbing anyone anymore."
But you can't rely on your company's personnel personnel to protect you from people who are just plain annoying. And even when the annoyance approaches an explosive level, you shouldn't expect your supervisor to rescue you. Why not? Answers Crowe: "For the same reason people don't want to cast themselves as the whistleblower: No one wants to be the bad guy." Still, rather than suffer in silence or seek the nearest exit, the experts say, you can often reduce – and maybe eliminate – the problem on your own.
Gorden recalls the dilemma of a colleague who sat next to a co-worker who constantly cleared phlegm from his throat. "The sound was making her feel physically ill. She took the direct approach and asked him if he might consider seeing a doctor about the problem, which he did. Unfortunately, there was no remedy. Eventually she donned headphones and drowned out the noise with soft music."
Another awkward situation is the co-worker with lamentable hygiene. Fortunately, our enterprising society has a solution even for this mess. Firms like CoWorkerHints.com will anonymously inform a co-worker about his or her body odor, bad breath, flatulence or other hygienic shortcoming without (hopefully) ruining workplace relationships. For a small fee – CoWorkerHints charges $9.95 – these outfits will send the colleague a diplomatic and helpful note about treatments for the problem.
Martha Frase-Blunt last wrote for the Health section about napping at work.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company

Subject: personal protection -- or what to do before and after you lose your wallet.
Place the contents of your wallet on a photocopy machine. Then copy both sides of each license, credit card, etc. You'll will now know exactly what you had in your wallet and all of the account numbers and phone numbers to call and cancel. Be sure you keep the photocopy in a safe place.
A corporate attorney sent this out to the employees in his company. I pass it along, for your information.
We've all heard horror stories about fraud. Unfortunately I (the author of this piece who happens to be an attorney) have firsthand knowledge, because my wallet was stolen last month.
Within a week the thieve(s) ordered an expensive monthly cell phone package, applied for a VISA credit card, had a credit line approved to buy a Gateway computer, received a PIN number from DMV to change my driving record information online, and more.
But here's some critical information to limit the damage in case this happens to you or someone you know.
1. As everyone always advises, cancel your credit cards immediately, but the key is having the toll free numbers and your card numbers handy so you know whom to call. Keep those where you can find them easily.
2. File a police report immediately in the jurisdiction where it was stolen. This proves to credit providers you were diligent, and is a first step toward an investigation (if there ever is one).
3. But here's what is perhaps most important: (I never ever thought to do this) - Call the three national credit reporting organizations immediately to place a fraud alert on your name and SS#.
I had never heard of doing that until advised by a bank that called to tell me an application for credit was made over the Internet in my name. The alert means any company that checks your credit knows your information was stolen and they have to contact you by phone to authorize new credit. By the time I was advised to do this, almost 2 weeks after the theft, all the damage had been done.
There are records of all the credit checks initiated by the thieves' purchases, none of which I knew about before placing the alert. Since then, no additional damage has been done, and the thieves threw my wallet away this weekend (someone turned it in). It seems to have stopped them in their tracks.
The numbers are:
1. Equifax: 1-800-525-6285
2. Experience (formerly TRW): 1-888-397-3742
3. Trans Union: 1-800-680-7289
Social Security Administration (fraud line):
1-800-269-0271

Inside every older person is a younger person - wondering what the hell happened.
-Cora Harvey Armstrong-
...............................................................
Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse.
-Lily Tomlin-
.................................................................
You know the hardest thing about having cerebral palsy and being a woman?
It's plucking your eyebrows. That's how I originally got pierced ears.
-Geri Jewell-
......................................................................
A male gynecologist is like an auto mechanic who never owned a car.
-Carrie Snow-
.....................................................................
Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and you cry with your girlfriends.
-Laurie Kuslansky-
......................................................................
My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.
-Erma Bombeck-
......................................................................
Old age ain't no place for sissies.
-Bette Davis-
......................................................................
A man's got to do what a man's got to do. A woman must do what he can't.
-Rhonda Hansome-
......................................................................
The phrase "working mother" is redundant.
-Jane Sellman-
......................................................................
Every time I close the door on reality it comes in through the windows.
-Jennifer Unlimited-
......................................................................
Thirty-five is when you finally get your head together and your body starts falling apart.
-Caryn Leschen-
......................................................................
I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.
-Jennifer Unlimited-
......................................................................
If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.
-Catherine Aird-
......................................................................
When I was young, I was put in a school for retarded kids for two years before they realized I actually had a hearing loss. And they called ME slow!
-Kathy Buckley-
......................................................................
I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb . .
. and I'm also not blonde.
-Dolly Parton-
......................................................................
You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.
- Erica Jong-
......................................................................
If high heels were so wonderful, men would still be wearing them.
-Sue Grafton-
.....................................................................
I'm not going to vacuum 'til Sears makes one you can ride on.
-Roseanne Barr-
......................................................................
When women are depressed they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country.
-Elayne Boosler-
.....................................................................
Behind every successful man is a surprised woman.
-Maryon Pearson-
.....................................................................
In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man--if you want anything done, ask a woman.
-Margaret Thatcher-
......................................................................
I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.
-Gloria Steinem-
.....................................................................
If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a noose around your neck?
-Linda Ellerbee-
.......................................................................
I am a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man I keep his house.
-Zsa Zsa Gabor-
...................................................................
Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission.
-Eleanor Roosevelt-

The UGLY TRUTH, according to Slate Magazine

Hey, Gorgeous, Here's a Raise!
As for you fatties, we're cutting your salaries.
By Steven E. Landsburg
Steven E. Landsburg is the author, most recently, of Fair Play: What Your Child Can Teach You About Economics, Values, and the Meaning of Life. You can e-mail him at armchair@troi.cc.rochester.edu. Posted Monday, July 9, 2001, at 10:00 a.m. PT

"I know what wages beauty gives," said the poet William Butler Yeats about a century ago. Modern econometricians know more precisely. In their published research, Professors Daniel Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle estimate that if you're perceived as beautiful, you probably earn about 5 percent more than your ordinary-looking counterparts.
As beauty is rewarded, so ugliness is penalized. Ugly women earn about 5 percent less than other women, and ugly men earn about 10 percent less than other men. That's right; the market punishes men more than women for being unattractive. Moreover, men's looks haunt them at every stage of their careers: Better-looking men get more job offers, higher starting salaries, and better raises. For women, good looks will get you better raises but usually not better job offers or starting salaries. (A note on Hamermesh and Biddle's methodology: Beauty was assessed by panels of people who judged photographs of the study's subjects.)
But while men suffer more for being ugly, women—and specifically white women—suffer more for being fat. In a paper from last year, Professor John Cawley found that an extra 65 pounds typically cost a white woman 7 percent of her wages. To put this another way, if you're a seriously overweight white woman, losing 65 pounds is likely to be as lucrative as an extra year of college or three extra years of work experience. For men and for black women, weight has no effect on wages. (The people in Cawley's study self-reported their weights.)
Since beauty and slenderness are associated with good pay, we can ask which way the causality runs. Do some people look better because they earn more, or do they earn more because they look better?
Surely to some extent money buys beauty. The more you earn, the more you can spend on cosmetics, health care, and plastic surgery. And higher earnings can lead to higher self-esteem, which in turn leads to better eating habits. But Hamermesh, Biddle, and Cawley believe these effects are small, for several reasons. First, there's a limit to how much you can accomplish with cosmetics. Second, the correlation between wages and beauty is strongest among the young, who are the least likely to have benefited from health care and plastic surgery. And finally, Cawley has devised some subtle statistical tests that tend to rule out the "high wages cause self-esteem which causes better eating" theory.
If high wages don't cause beauty, then presumably beauty causes high wages. But why? One guess is that certain high-paying occupations (like "fashion model" or "romantic lead") are closed to all but the most beautiful. But that can't explain why beautiful auto mechanics earn more than plain-looking auto mechanics, beautiful teachers earn more than plain-looking teachers, and so on through a long list of occupations.
Well, then, why do employers pay more for beautiful workers? Is it just because beautiful workers are more fun to look at, or does their beauty make them more productive—say by breeding self-confidence or by attracting customers? (My boon companion Marian Heller points out that self-confidence can pay off in another way—by fostering the courage to seek better jobs and demand better raises.)
Here's some evidence that employers like beauty not for its own sake, but because it's productive: Beautiful people are more likely to be found in occupations where you'd expect beauty to matter—retail sales, waitressing, etc. If the beauty premium were generated strictly by employers' desire to look at pretty people, it would presumably draw beautiful people equally into all occupations.
Now back to the gender gap. Why do ugly men suffer more than ugly women in the labor market? Partly it's because many of the ugliest women opt out of the labor market altogether, so they aren't counted in the statistics. In fact, the ugliest married women (the ones who are rated in the lowest 6 percent lookswise) are 8 percent less likely to look for a job than married women in general. That's a pretty big effect, but Hamermesh and Biddle conclude that it doesn't come close to explaining the gender gap, which remains a bit of a mystery.
They do point out, though, that low wages are not the only penalty for bad looks, and some of the other penalties hit women a lot harder than they hit men. Ugly women tend to attract the lowest quality husbands (as measured by educational achievement or earnings potential). The effect is not symmetric, though: Beautiful women do no better on the marriage market than average women. For men, looks don't seem to affect marriage prospects at all.

.

Hard as it may be to believe, some applicants don't know know these basics.

1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid clichés like the plague. (They're old hat)
6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Be more or less specific.
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
10. No sentence fragments.
11. Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used.
12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
14. One should NEVER generalize.
15. Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
16. Don't use no double negatives.
17. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be ignored.
21. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
22. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
23. Kill all exclamation points!!!
24. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
25. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas.
26. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed.
27. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said,  "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
28. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
29. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
30. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
31. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
32. Who needs rhetorical questions?
33. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
And finally...
34. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out

From our needlepoint sampler collection

1. Needing someone is like needing a parachute. If he isn't there the first time, chances are you won't be needing him again.
2. I don't have an attitude problem--you have a perception problem.
3. Last night I lay in bed looking up at the stars in the sky and I thought to myself, where the heck is the ceiling?
4. On the keyboard of life, always keep one finger on the escape key.
5. I don't suffer from stress. I am a carrier.
6.You are slower than a herd of turtles stampeding through peanut butter.
7. Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, because you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
8. Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
9. Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.
10. A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the butt.
11.Don't be irreplaceable--if you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
12. After any salary raise, you will have less money at the end of the month than you did before.
13.The more crap you put up with, the more crap you are going to get.
14.You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a clipboard.
15.Eat one live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.
16. When you don't know what to do, walk fast and look worried.
17. Following the rules will not get the job done.
18. When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"

When it comes to the workplace, be sure to watch your step.

By Kathy Simmons

You're bright and ambitious, armed with a powder keg of potential. With all this talent, you'll surely maneuver your way up the career ladder quickly--right? Well, maybe. Dangerous on-the-job behaviors can totally overshadow positive attributes. To sidestep career disaster, resolve to avoid all of the following landmines.

Rumor Mill Rendezvous
Every office has rumormongers. You know them--the ones lurking around the water cooler, speaking in hushed tones and glancing around furtively. These information junkies love to swap stories and trade one juicy tidbit for another. It's a wonder they get any work done, considering the time they spend stoking the rumor mill. Sure, it's fun to play in the dirt with these folks, but notice how many of them actually get ahead at work. You're better off associating with people who focus on results and ignore mindless speculation.

Boss Badmouthing
Regardless of how inept your boss may be, he or she deserves your loyalty. Notice: I did not say "undying respect" or "blind devotion." Real professionals understand their boss's imperfections and have enough sense not to broadcast them to others. Pointing out your leader's shortcomings only highlights one indisputable fact--your lack of character and good judgment. And that's a landmine that will surely explode someday, resulting in painful consequences.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Corporate America is full of people who quietly do their jobs every day.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Power Plays With Peers
Astute managers can see how well employees get along with their co-workers. It's almost like a litmus test of their emotional maturity. The ability to work effectively within a group is a skill you must demonstrate to move ahead. It's difficult to become a star alone. You need a solid support system, one you cannot develop by simply playing politics. Insisting upon sandbox wars with your colleagues will end up sullying your reputation. Sharpening your ability to live in harmony with teammates is a smarter move.

Resisting Risks
Corporate America is full of people who quietly do their jobs every day and wonder why they aren't further along. Constantly running from risks may put you in a comfort zone, but you will keep stagnant for years. Shakers and movers do not constantly play it safe. They have the courage to present new ideas, even at the risk of being shot down. They tackle the "hopeless" projects and rebound quickly after setbacks.

Punting on Promises
Employees who are eager to please often stumble into the landmine of overcommitment. They volunteer for every project imaginable--and then the trouble starts. Important balls are dropped, confidence wanes, and your reputation slips. It's wise to limit your projects to those on which you are sure to do a bang-up job. Being referred to as "unreliable" can carry permanent battle scars.

Too Little "Horn-Tooting"
Humility is admirable, but some employees take it to a detrimental extreme. They piously avoid any self-promotion, fearing they will appear arrogant. While too much horn tooting is certainly annoying, relying on others to take note of every success is naÔve. People are busy! You should tactfully point out accomplishments, giving full credit to those who assisted you in achieving them.

Passive-Aggressive Practices
"How's your workload?" one boss asked. "Oh, great," the employee cheerfully replied, "no problem." Then this same employee does an about-face an hour later when talking to co-workers. "The workload around here so unfair!" she laments. This is passive-aggressive behavior and it won't win you any brownie points with the boss. Being honest and consistent in your communication builds trust. Being duplicitous is surefire way to torpedo your credibility.

Misperceptions and Mistakes
It takes a healthy sense of confidence and self-worth to admit when you are wrong. Many employees go to unbelievable extremes to avoid uttering the words "It was my fault." Admitting your shortcomings demonstrates an ability to benefit from experience. It also establishes the fact that you are not so small-minded as to make excuses or blame others.

Practicing Profanity
Lori was a polished young woman who commanded respect--until she opened her mouth. Her speech was riddled with rough language. Rather than emphasizing her thoughts, this language seriously detracted from her message. It revealed not only an angry edge, but also a surprising lack of imagination. After all, how creative is it to rely on a few potentially offensive words when there are so many others available?

Mismanagement of Moods
Carrie was an outstanding employee in every respect--except for one. She was unable to manage her moods. She would often arrive to work in a foul mood, bringing plenty of tension with her. She snapped at others as if her mission was to make everyone as miserable as she was that day. Little wonder her boss never considered moving her to a position of more authority. After all, how could she manage others if she was incapable of managing her own emotions?

To assure that your career suffers no fatal damage, be sure to stay far away from these explosive areas. Carefully avoiding them will help put your future success on safer ground.


Kathy Simmons is the claims and administration director at Canada Life Assurance Company in Atlanta.

New Words for 2001 | Fortune Rates DC ||| First Impressions ||| job applicant behavior ||| 8th Grade Test (1895) ||| Chairman Bill ||| Helen Hopkins ||| Return to top

New words for 2001:

BLAMESTORMING: Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.
SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.
CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles.
PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.
MOUSE POTATO: The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.
SITCOMs: (Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage) What yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids.
STARTER MARRIAGE: A short-lived first marriage that ends in divorce with no kids, no property and no regrets.
STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.
SWIPED OUT: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.
XEROX SUBSIDY: Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one's workplace.
ASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard.
IRRITAINMENT: Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying but you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The O.J. trials were a prime example. Bill Clinton's shameful video Grand Jury testimony is another.
PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: The fine art of whacking the heck out of an electronic device to get it to work again.
VULCAN NERVE PINCH: The taxing hand position required to reach all the appropriate keys for certain commands. For instance, the arm reboot for a Mac II computer involves simultaneously pressing the Control Key, the Command Key, the Return Key, and the Power On key.
YUPPIE FOOD STAMPS: The ubiquitous $20 bills spewed out of ATMs everywhere. Often used when trying to split the bill after a meal, "We each owe $8, but all anybody's got are yuppie food stamps."
SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.
ADMINISPHERE: The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the first two levels of management. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve
404: Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message "404 Not Found," meaning that the requested document could not be located."
GENERICA: Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, sbdivisions.
OHNOSECOND: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake.
WOOFYS: Well Off Older Folks

Remember: A mediocre salesperson sells. A good one explains. A superior one demonstrates. And a great one inspires buyers to see the benefits as their own.

Last year Americans bought 20 million 1/4 inch drills. Not one of them wanted a drill. What every one wanted was a 1/4 inch HOLE.

BUT THEY HAD TO BUY THE DRILL TO GET THE HOLE. Think about that the next time you need an employee. Which is more important (especially vis a vis temps)? Getting the paperwork or getting the person to get the job done?

Economic Outlook for DC New Words for 2001 | Fortune Rates DC ||| First Impressions ||| job applicant behavior ||| 8th Grade Test (1895) ||| Chairman Bill ||| Helen Hopkins ||| Return to top

New Words for 2001 | | First Impressions ||| job applicant behavior ||| 8th Grade Test (1895) ||| Chairman Bill ||| Helen Hopkins |||Return to top

Remember that old saw about "you only get one chance to make a first impression?" Guess what? That first impression happens in the first 2 seconds according to Psycho-Linguistics trainer in this article from the Washington Post. Think about that when you're going to a job interview. Remember, the client is predisposed to like you, since they already know you're qualified to do the job (at least, they do if you're meeting them through Hire Standard Staffing.) So the job is yours to lose as you walk through the door.
The Clock's Ticking. Make Us Like You Already.
By Frank Ahrens, Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, October 31, 2000; Page C01

If a guy writes a book called "How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less," you're pretty much predisposed to dislike him. Regardless, the guy deserves the benefit of the doubt.
For exactly 90 seconds.

Corporate speaker Nicholas Boothman--a former fashion and commercial photographer who realized his biz was really about personal communication--has been lecturing sales staffs and business managers for the past decade or so, teaching them how to hone their conversational skills.

The self-improvement trope goes back at least to Dale Carnegie, but Boothman employs a modern-sounding process called "Neuro-Linguistic Programming," of which he apparently is a "licensed master practitioner."
Hmmm. Sounds pseudo-sciency.

The book, published in September, is a classic checkout-counter buy for the chronically insecure. According to Amazon.com, it is No. 3 in greater Los Angeles. Figures.
Boothman, a native of northern England, is flacking the slender volume (Workman, $14.95) on a 25-city swing, down from his home outside Toronto (they're so nice there). He was recently in Washington.

Okay, Nice Nick, let's see your fastball: Make us like you.
Boothman, a rather tall guy, appeared in The Washington Post's lobby wearing a dark blazer and dark pants--okay, no problem there. The problem was the shoes: red Converse Chuck Taylors.

Boothman looked to be about 50, a good 35 years past when he ought to be wearing Chucks to an interview. They're okay for playing tag with grade-schoolers. Moreover, they were low-tops--everyone knows high-tops are superior.

Then came the handshake. It was strong but not crushing. More important, he didn't do that hateful thing of squeezing too soon and squooshing the fingers together. It was a nice recovery from the Chucks.

Finally, there was the interview. With a digital stopwatch. We told Boothman: "You've got 90 seconds to make us like you. Start."

This is, verbatim, the 90-second taped transcript of Boothman's opening salvo, his best shot at making us like him:

"Now this is where I go and blow a big hole in your bubble. Because there's some amazing stuff come out of Harvard right now, which says we make up our minds whether we like someone in the first two seconds without them even opening their mouth. So you've actually--and I have the list--there are 30 things that we process at once about somebody else. It's the old fight-or-flight thing. So as soon as you saw me downstairs when we got in the elevator, it's over. Absolutely. Get a load of this: It's an unbelievable test they did at Harvard. They found out that students [here he emits a parenthetical statement so rapidly as to render it unintelligible], that students, watching a two-second video clip of the teacher with the sound off, come to the same conclusion about that teacher as students who've spent an entire semester with him. So that in other words, you process: You look at me, you look at the way I'm dressed, what I'm wearing, you look at the whole thing and you think: I trust this guy, I don't trust this guy. Is he a threat or is he an opportunity? Is he open or is he closed? All this stuff. So I weighed you up at the same time. I weighed you up and I used to be a photographer and everyone in photography used to dress in black and I thought, 'This guy's great! He's like a photographer!' "

The tape recorder is turned off. Maybe we misread the book's title. Instead of "making people LIKE you," as in, making them fond of you, maybe it's "making people like YOU." As in, by sheer volume and velocity of spoken word, this guy was trying to convert everyone into fast-talking Brit pitchmen from Canada.

It was only then that we realized the key word in the book's title: "Make."

That was it! He was going to make us like him, by force of orative bludgeon: "Yes, yes, we like you! Just please stop talking!"

That technique is conspicuously not mentioned in Boothman's book, which instead urges readers to make themselves likable by adopting a "useful attitude," i.e., curious, warm, accessible. Also, it urges readers to "synchronize" with the other person--to tailor your body language to his. As we spoke with--rather, listened to--the logorrheal Boothman, we appeared to be looking into a mirror: We sat with an ankle crossed over a knee, leaning back, with an arm resting on a table. So did he.

When we noticed this and shifted, so did he. It was unsettling. At one point, we stood up on a chair to see if he would, too. Nope. But when we turned our back to him to conduct the interview, he stood and did likewise.

We liked him a little better then.

Was this an unfair test? Hey, Washington's a tough town, like it or not. (Editorial note: especially when you're competing for a great job.)

More important: Did we like Nick Boothman?

Well, it's hard to say. He was right about our forming an instant judgment before meeting him, so we didn't like that. We know that he's 54 and has five kids and made his first and only wife like him, apparently, for more than 30 years. That we liked.

But how can you know after 90 seconds, or even 90 minutes, if you really like someone? How can you reach a stratum of substance? Some people are like splashy apartments: They "show well." It's only after you move in and make that first 3 a.m. trip to the kitchen and feel the nauseating crunch under your bare foot that you realize the awful truth. We're afraid Boothman's book might encourage a whole generation of excellent conversationalists who turn out to be infested with the cockroaches of superficiality, if you follow our metaphor.

What we can say for sure is that, after 90 seconds, we didn't want to punch Boothman in the nose. And if that's not the start of a beautiful friendship, then we don't know what is.

© 2000 The Washington Post Company

Economic Outlook for DC New Words for 2001 | Fortune Rates DC ||| First Impressions ||| job applicant behavior ||| 8th Grade Test (1895) ||| Chairman Bill ||| Helen Hopkins ||| Return to top

WE DON'T KNOW WHAT CRITERIA YOU USE TO QUALIFY CANDIDATES... BUT NONE OF THESE ARE "HIRE STANDARD."
A survey of personnel executives at 200 of the Fortune 1,000 companies provided the following unbelievable but true examples of job applicant behavior.

"The reason the candidate was taking so long to respond to a question
became apparent when he began to snore."

"When I asked the candidate to give a good example of the organizational skills she was boasting about, she said she was proud of her ability to pack her suitcase 'real neat' for her vacations."

"Why did (the applicant) go to college?" His reply: "To party and socialize."

"When I gave him my business card at the beginning of the interview, he immediately crumpled it and tossed it in the wastebasket."

"I received a rÈsumÈ and letter that said that the recent high-school graduate wanted to earn $25 an hour-'and not a nickel less.'"

"(The applicant) had arranged for a pizza to be delivered to my office during a lunch-hour interview. I asked him not to eat it until later."

"(The applicant) said she had just graduated cum laude, but she had no idea what cum laude meant. However, she was proud of her grade point average. It was 2.1."

"(The applicant) insisted on telling me that he wasn't afraid of hard work. But insisted on adding he was afraid of horses and didn't like jazz, modern art, or seafood."

"She actually showed up for an interview during the summer wearing a bathing suit. She said she didn't think I'd mind."

"He sat down opposite me, made himself comfortable, and proceeded to put his foot up on my desk."

"The interview had gone well, until he told me that he and his friends wore my company's clothing whenever they could. I had to tell him that we manufactured office products, not sportswear."

"(The applicant) applied for a customer service position, although, as he confided, he really wasn't a people person."

"Without asking if I minded, he casually lit a cigar and then tossed the match onto my carpet-and couldn't understand why I was upset."

"On the phone, I had asked the candidate to bring his rÈsumÈ and a couple of references. He arrived with the rÈsumÈ-and two people."

In case you were wondering why it's difficult to find the perfect candidate...

New Words for 2001 | Fortune Rates DC ||| First Impressions ||| job applicant behavior ||| 8th Grade Test (1895) ||| Chairman Bill ||| Helen Hopkins ||| Return to top

New Words for 2001 | Fortune Rates DC ||| First Impressions ||| job applicant behavior ||| 8th Grade Test (1895) ||| Chairman Bill ||| Helen Hopkins ||| Return to top

At Hire Standard Staffing, we test candidates extensively for skills and specific knowledge of software. In fact, our testing results are far and away the most reliable in the DC market. (It's part of what determines a "hire" standard. When you pass our testing, you know you're in elite company.) That said, this test below is far, far, far harder. Try it yourself. And be humbled. We doubt many of us (or even any of us) could pass this test:

8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, KS - 1895

This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 from Salina, KS. USA. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smoky Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, KS and reprinted by the Salina Journal.

Grammar (Time, one hour)

1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.
2. Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.
4. What are the Principal Parts of a verb? Give Principal Parts of do, lie, lay and run.
5. Define Case, Illustrate each Case.
6. What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation.
7 - 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you
understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

Arithmetic (Time, 1.25 hours)

1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50 cts. per bu., deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?
4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20 per m?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.

U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)

1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates:
1607
1620
1800
1849
1865

Orthography (Time, one hour)

1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication?
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u'.
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e'. Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: Bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, super.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: Card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences, Cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

Geography (Time, one hour)

1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of North America.
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fermandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give inclination of the earth.
- -------------------------------------------------
Imagine a college student who went to public school trying to pass this test, even if the few outdated questions were modernized.
- --------------------------------
Gives the saying of an early 20th century person that "she/he only had an 8th grade education" a whole new meaning!

Economic Outlook for DC New Words for 2001 | Fortune Rates DC ||| First Impressions ||| job applicant behavior ||| 8th Grade Test (1895) ||| Chairman Bill ||| Helen Hopkins ||| Return to top

Notes from Chairman Gates:

In Business @ The Speed of Thought, Bill Gates lays out 11 rules that students do not learn in high school or college, but should. He argues that our feel-good, politically- correct teachings have created a generation of kids with no concept of reality who are set up for failure in the real world. And while not all hiring organizations share Microsoft's views, enough of them do to make this worth reading.

RULE 1 - Life is not fair; get used to it.

RULE 2 - The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

RULE 3 - You will NOT make 40 thousand dollars a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone, until you earn both.

RULE 4 - If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.

RULE 5 - Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping, they called it opportunity.

RULE 6 - If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

RULE 7 - Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as the are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents' generation, try "delousing" the clothes in your own room.

RULE 8 - Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades; they will let you try as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

RULE 9 - Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.

RULE 10 - Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to their jobs.

RULE 11 - Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Economic Outlook for DC New Words for 2001 | Fortune Rates DC ||| First Impressions ||| job applicant behavior ||| 8th Grade Test (1895) ||| Chairman Bill ||| Helen Hopkins ||| Return to top______________________________________________________________________________

New Millennium Resolutions for a Full Employment Economy.

Helen Hopkins, President, Hire Standard Staffing 

The new millennium is here, and once again you'll resolve to cut cholesterol, work out (more) regularly and be an all around better person. May I suggest one more resolution that will ultimately make your business healthier, wealthier and wiser? Forget Temp-to-Perm, Temp-to-Hire, Temp Conversions or similar "satisfactory" solutions to your staffing challenges. 

"What a great way to hire," we all said when we had candidates the way the Little Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe had kids. "The employer has no legal exposure, pays no benefits, can terminate instantly if the match isn't right... doesn't even have to worry about being charged for unemployment benefits. Where's the downside?" 

First, some facts. A few years ago companies were downsizing and the pool of available candidates for highly skilled administrative and technical jobs was expanding. Companies redefined themselves. Best and brightest. Leaner and meaner. Getting more work out of fewer people. We all know the productivity mantras. Employers called the tune.  

It ain't necessarily so today. Nationwide, employment is 97%. In Virginia and Maryland, it's 98%. And with Mr. Greenspan and the Federal Reserve riding herd on inflation, this healthy economy is expected to continue.   

In addition, employees today are extremely savvy about what constitutes a "good" job. They know their 401Ks. They know how long they have to work to be eligible for this and that - all of which they expect as part of their compensation package. Add to that the fact that the DC area has the largest number of single working mothers in the nation - for whom stability (and benefits) are paramount.Those dependent on public transportation know to the penny how much it will cost them. They have to factor the costs of extended child care and family health care. They watch their own bottom line, perhaps more critically than the employer does.   

The picture becomes even clearer when you realize that over the last five years, the typical Washington company still offers less than $35K for an experienced administrative assistant. (What other costs do you have today that are the same as 1992? Rent? Power? Equipment? Automobiles?) Today, those same companies that are driven by catch-phrases like "commitment to customer service," "employee empowerment" and "total quality management " are sending a very different message to a prospective employee who is asked to accept ALL of the risk ( associated with Temp-to-Perm) in order to get a job. 

It is clear that the very best candidates are currently employed. Ask yourself this question: In this environment why would a qualified, sane person ever leave a job they know, with benefits and relationships and infrastructure they can tolerate, in order to take the risk of temping with the hope that everybody will like each other enough for the employer to offer them a permanent job at the end of three months or so of reduced benefits and increased anxiety? Would you do it? Of course not. Not when you know there are many permanent jobs available offering mutual commitment. 

It should be no surprise that one of the more prominent temp agencies in DC stopped accepting ANY Temp-to-Perm orders last year. Their reasoning: if a client needs a temp, they're happy to help out - that's their business. But companies wanted to permanently hire their best and brightest temps instead of utilizing permanent placement services. And in a market where it's difficult and expensive to find excellent candidates, they found that to be just bad business. 

So, how DO you find the most productive, skilled, committed workers?   Show commitment yourself. It's exactly the same as any other successful relationship. Commitment is a two-way street.  Find a good staffing company and let them recruit specifically for your needs. What do you have to lose? Every company today has a probation period that lets you terminate within the first 90 days with no notice. Most staffing companies work on contingency. The good ones guarantee the placement. No placement, no exposure for you. No risk. It's the same as Temp to Hire... but the additional sense of commitment from your company is often enough to convince the perfect candidate to make a switch. Remember, you are what you hire. 

Ultimately, the key to the hiring process is confidence in staffing professionals and their ability to understand your corporate culture and make the best match of tangibles and intangibles. They have a better chance of making the match you really want if you let them go out and recruit the best people... not just the best people available.  Last year you tried to do it with Temp-to-Perm. This year, resolve to do it smarter. And- as your spouse says of your cholesterol, your fitness routine and your recreational beverage resolutions - don't do it for me. Do it for yourself. 

This is a specially formulated diet designed to help women cope with the stress that builds up during the day.

BREAKFAST
1 grapefruit
1 slice whole-wheat toast
1 cup skim milk

LUNCH
small portion lean, steamed chicken with a cup of spinach
1 cup herbal tea
1 Hershey kiss

AFTERNOON TEA
the rest of the kisses in the bag
1 tub of Hagen Daas ice cream with chocolate-chip topping

DINNER
4 bottles of wine (red or white)
2 loaves garlic bread
1 family size
supreme pizza
3 snickers bars

LATE NIGHT SNACK
whole frozen Sarah Lee cheesecake (eaten directly from the freezer)

REMEMBER: STRESSED SPELLED BACKWARDS IS "DESSERTS"

Send this to all the women you know or ever knew, and you will immediately lose 10 pounds.

Economic Outlook for DC||| New Words for 2001 ||| Fortune Rates DC ||| First Impressions ||| job applicant behavior ||| 8th Grade Test (1895) ||| Chairman Bill ||| Helen Hopkins ||| Return to top

||| Jobs ||| Contact Us ||| Hot Links || | Timesheets ||| Not Milk... Cream ||| Insight Newsletter Index ||| Referrals ||| Military Dependents