FunnyBusiness: Everything About Business Except The Bottom Line

Ladies and Jellyspoons

During my tenure in the newsroom of WWBT-TV in the 1970s, I was quick to point out to my bosses every time they made a misstep on the equality road.

If they passed me up for an assignment because they said it was too dangerous, too dirty, too whatever, I balked.

I balked a lot. Certainly in the early days of my five years in the newsroom, I believed I had an obligation to fight for equality. I took my role very seriously.

Maybe because women in the newsroom were such a novelty, they tended to listen.  I absolutely thought progress was being made.

After all, I wasn't suggesting anything that radical--basically equal opportunity and fairness. It never seemed like a radical concept to me.And, it still doesn't.

Yet, according to a report issued Fairness &Accuracy In Reporting, women opinions on the Sunday talk shows are virtually silent.

"Surprisingly, NBC's Chris Matthews Show came out almost exactly even on gender, with 51 men and 49 women. Unfortunately, the show is unique in its gender balance: This Week and Fox News Sunday hewed more closely to the print media's unspoken "quota of one" for female pundits, featuring 22 percent and 25 percent women respectively. Meet the Press—which occasionally included more than one woman per panel and once (2/20/05) even filled its panel with four—had 39 percent women.

All of the program hosts, who direct the discussions, are white men: NBC's Chris Matthews and Tim Russert, ABC's George Stephanopoulos and Fox's Chris Wallace.

But which women get to speak? Certainly not women of color. While the Chris Matthews Show did well on gender parity, every one of its 49 female panelists was white."

What is more disturbing then those paltry, pathetic, inexcusable statistics, is the fact that there is no outrage.It's not as if no one's noticed the dearth of women on these shows.

It's in your face every time you watch them. For those of us who stare at the TV monitor at the health club on Sunday mornings while getting in our allotted time on the elliptical machine, it is a visual reality that is repeated week after week after week. Forget the No Spin Zone. You're about to enter the Testosterone Zone.

The absolute idiocy of the situation reminds me of my favorite childhood poem--author unknown.

Ladies and Jellyspoons.

I come before you to stand behind you to tell you something I know nothing about.

Next Thursday, which is good Friday there is going to be a mother's meeting for father's only.

Admission is free, pay at the door,

Pull up a seat and sit on the floor.

We will be discussing the four corners of

the round table.

Am I Blue?

Jamie Reidy has been fired for writing a book. "Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman" is no ordinary book. It was a business memoir of sorts that depicts Reidy's experiences selling the little blue pill.

Theme wise it's very similar to a current  French best-seller   "Hello Laziness".  Both books share how to avoid work and still succeed.

"In Hello Laziness" Corine Maier provides advice on how people can get promoted by doing as little work as possible.

Reidy's book shares how little he worked, how he exaggerated the number of doctors he visited and how much money he made selling Viagra.

Maier didn't get fired. She claimed her book was supposed to be humorous. Her employer was not amused. She was threatened with disciplinary action but that was eventually dropped and according to an article in The Bookseller,Maier's book has sold over 215,000 copies in France -- that's second only to the "Da Vinci Code".

Given that France and the U.S. have very different work cultures, Reidy did not get off as easy as Maier. He was fired. Not by Pfizer, the company that sells Viagra, but by his new employer--Eli Lilly. who were about as amused with his confessions as the French were with Maier's advice for French workers.

In firing Reidy Eli Lilly stated that he isn't the kind of role model they want for their employees.

Now that he is out of a job, Reidy can only hope that American readers will be as enthusiastic about his book as the French are with Maier's. That would definitely be a cure for the blues.

Bloggers Get The Pink Slip

In the days before the war in Iraq, American journalists liked to emphasize how little freedom they had to report the real news. There were frequent references to their "handlers" who monitored what they could and could not say.

These days a couple of bloggers may be wondering what happened to American freedom of speech. The New York Daily News  ran  a story about two people who were fired after their employers discovered their blogs.

"Blogger rights are fast becoming an issue in the workplace as 8 million Americans have created their own blogs, more than 25% of all Internet users visit blogs and 12% have posted comments on blogs.

It's wise for workers to be cautious, said Annalee Newitz, a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a sort of civil-liberties group for techno-geeks. "

While blogging can seem like a private diary between the blogger and a few close friends and family, it's important to remember that it is a form of publishing that anyone can stumble upon.

"You wouldn't say nasty things about your boss to his face, and it's probably not appropriate to do it on your blog either," Newitz said.

One of the bloggers worked for Google and evidently speculated about the company's finances. Google was obviously not amused. Evidently Yahoo isn't quite as blogging averse

The other blogger was a Delta flight attendent who evidently posed in her uniform in a way the company did not find appropriate for employee.

Does that mean employees need to stop blogging about their jobs? Not necessarily.

As Analee Newitz told the New York Daily News, if you are going to blog about the company you work for it's probably a good idea to keep everything anonymous.

Sounds like FunnyBusiness to me.

I'm Too Sexy For Myself

For seventeen years she worked as a librarian at Harvard and for seventeen years she was passed over for promotions.  Now she's suing saying that she was discriminated because she was too sexy. Harvard is saying she was promoted because of fierce competition.

"A black librarian suing Harvard for discrimination said her supervisor advised her to look for jobs elsewhere because other companies are always looking for good minority candidates.

``You really should apply outside of Harvard because the first thing employers look for is a qualified black person,'' Desiree Goodwin claims her boss told her in December 2001.
Goodwin, 40, is suing Harvard for race and gender discrimination after being passed over 16 times in five years for higher-paying jobs. Goodwin, who earns $40,000, has been a librarian for 17 years, first at Boston College and later at Harvard beginning in 1994.

  She testified yesterday she was in shock when her boss told her she was viewed as ``just a pretty girl'' who wore low-cut tops, tight pants and would never get a promotion.

Goodwin, the oldest of 10 children who rose from poverty to earn two master's degrees, said her supervisor, Barbara Mitchell, gave her good reviews but advised her to look for jobs elsewhere. "

This will be an interesting case to follow. Over 30 years ago, a television anchor in Kansas sued a television station for firing her because they said she wasn't attractive enough.  If my memory serves...and it doesn't always, I belive she won the case and then lost it on appeal.

In my own experience in television I had a news director  tell me that I was not attractive enough to anchor the weekend news at WWBT-TV. in Richmond, Virginia.

At the time I was completely devastated. When he said he didn't like my hair style or hair color, I immediately offered to change both. I wanted to be a News Bunnie that badly.

On the surface, it may seem like we've come full circle. In reality, it's the same old, same old..just sung a different tune.

To Sir,With Love

It’s been four months since Tyler turned his back on Corporate America. After spending 20 years climbing the corporate ladder, Tyler, an efficiency expert, has decided on a second career — he’s planning on becoming a high school math teacher.

Besides being a huge culture shock, it’s also going to be a huge pay cut. If he’s lucky, Tyler’s new paycheck will be about $40,000 a year.

In his early 40s, Tyler can afford this cut in pay for two reasons: Corporate America was very, very good to him, and his wife has a career that will allow Tyler to pursue his dream of teaching without cutting into their lifestyle.

However, while you may be able to take Tyler out of the corporation, you can’t take the corporation out of Tyler. "So,” I asked. “When do you start applying for teaching positions?”

“Right now, I’m networking— talking to superintendents and principals to get my name and face out there.”

“I didn’t know teachers networked with superintendents.” I said.

”Others may not. But I’m approaching this exactly like I would to get a job in a corporation. I’ve talked to friends and associates and asked if anyone knows a principal or superintendent and then I call, using my friends name as a reference.”

“What are they telling you?”

“Everyone is telling me that I’m qualified, that I’ll get a job, and that schools really need male math teachers.”

"That’s great. Do you have any offers?”

At that, Tyler stopped and laughed, “I’m in a holding pattern.”

Turns out, before Tyler can be certified to teach he needs to complete some coursework. The state where he lives offers a fast track course that he’s applied to. If he’s accepted, then he could teach in September. If he’s not, he’ll need to go back to school for about a year. All the people he’s talked to are confident he will be accepted into the fast track program.

Tyler explained, “They’ve told me I can’t apply for a job until I’ve been accepted into the (fast track) program.”

This of course, makes no sense to Tyler.

"You’d think they would think out of the box. Here they’ve told me I’m exactly what they’re looking for so why don’t they make me an offer contingent on my being accepted into the (fast track) program?”

I was smiling. That’s the Tyler I’ve always known. His tolerance for the status quo is nil.Of course, Tyler couldn’t see my face because we were having this conversation on the phone.

Defending himself, Tyler said, “I’m going into this with my eyes open. I’ll be amused at the bureaucracy. I know I’ll get frustrated but I figure I’ll only have to deal with that 10% of the time, and the rest I’ll be in the classroom.”

As if to give himself a pep talk Tyler continued, “I think I’ll go into this career as the wiser old sage. I’m not trying to knock heads anymore. I’m not going to be as intense as I was when I was younger. I’m not doing this for career advancement.

“In twenty years if I’m a success I’ll still be doing the same thing I’ll be in the classroom. I'm not doing this for career advancement."

NOTE: Tyler's name has been changed to make sure he can continue applying for jobs and chatting with me at the same time.

If you have a corporate tale you'd like to share, I'd like to talk.

If your name was Hittler

Years ago my friend Larry, who owns a printing company in St. Louis, got a job application for a sales position by an applicant named Hittler, pronounced Hitler.

Larry liked the guy.During the  job interview process he asked Hittler about his name.

Hittler told Larry that his family had been in the US since the 1800’s. While some cousins had changed their names,Hittler said he wanted the same name as his grandfather and father.

Larry replied,  “Good answer!”

Larry eventually hired him but not before chatting with his Rabbi about his discomfort in hiring a guy named Hittler.

Larry didn’t want to discriminate simply because prior to Osama Bin Laden this guy had the most heinous and vilified name in the world. On the other hand, Larry was concerned how clients would react to a salesman named Hittler.

Hittler's desire to have the same name as his father and grandfather even though he has to spend his entire life answering questions whether or not he's related to the other Hitler is absolutely baffling to me.

I do not have any deep emotional ties to my patronymic name. I come from a family of serial name –changers. In my family we’re not even sure what the European spelling of our original name was. Maybe it was Zentaura Maybe it was Sentaura. Once my grandfather did the Ellis Island thing, the name was either changed to Sentaur or Century, and then later to Centor.

I’ve had names on the brain for the past week. It started with seeing the Galyan’s Trading Company signed switched to Dick’s Sporting Goods.

Despite the fact that the spokespeople for Dick’s Sporting Goods and Dick’s Drive-In Restaurants both told me that they simply ignore the fact that their name is now a “bad” word, it was hard for me to understand why they would insist on keeping the name.

Then I interviewed Amy Arias, owner of a company called Mosquito. Amy and I were chatting for an article I’m working on for Women’s Business Minnesota. About 45 minutes into the interview I asked the question,

“Okay, why Mosquito?”

Amy’s response, “It’s fun, sophisticated, and memorable.” Then Amy said something that made me think about all the businesses throughout the country that call themselves Dick’s, “Not everyone likes our name, but everyone remembers it,” she said laughing.

It was an aha! moment. For the past week I’ve been thinking about all the reasons a business would not want to call themselves Dick’s. What I failed to think about was all the reasons a business would want to call themselves Dick’s.

You may not like the name Dick’s, but you won’t forget it. As for our sales rep, Mr. Hittler, his name was a definite ice-breaker. That's a good thing when you’re in sales.

Rather than hurting my friend’s business, Mr. Hittler probably helped. After all, if you got a voice-mail from a sales rep named Hittler, wouldn’t you return the call?

You can call me Dick

A couple of days after it was announced that Galyans Trading Company had been sold to the east coast based Dick’s Sporting Goods my sixteen year old daughter Berit and I were in the store and asked the sales assistant whether they would be able to keep their name.

Her shoulders slumped, her eyes rolled, and she said, “No, we’re going to be Dick’s.” Then she added, “I’m not looking forward to telling people I work at Dick’s.”

Turning to my daughter I asked, “How would you feel about working at Dick’s?”

My daughter, a tennis player said, “Work there! Are you jokin’ me? I wouldn’t even tell people I bought my balls at Dick’s.”

People on the east coast have assured me that Dick’s is a very well known and respected Sporting Goods Store (it is the largest sporting goods chain in the country) and that people there don’t snicker every time they hear the name.

Here in Minneapolis, we are still in the snickering phase. Fast forward several months. I’m driving down the highway and I see that the signage for Galyans has been replaced with a humongous sign for “Dick’s” If memory serves me correctly Sporting Goods is also on the sign but in much much smaller type.

That’s when I realized the name bothered me.

Sometime between Mrs. Oaks teaching me to read with Dick, Jane and Sally and 2005, the name Dick has become vulgarized. It’s not just another name for Johnson, Peter,John Thomas, my mighty sword, Willy, top gun, heavy artillery, and the One Gun Salute.

It’s a four letter word. To pretend that it’s not, is like walking in a parade with The Emperor’s New Clothes.

The changing status of the name Dick is not lost on the folks at Dick’s Sporting Goods who say despite the connotation of the name; they're sticking with it.

“Clearly we are concerned,” said Jeffrey R. Hennion Senior Vice President at Dick’s. But he added, Edward W. Stack, Chairman & CEO of Dick's Sporting Goods who is also the son of the original Dick, feels the name is on the door and that the name has a strong brand recognition for superior quality.

Across the country in Seattle, the folks at Dick’s Drive-In have also had to deal with the other meaning of Dick. General Manager Ken Frazier says it is a Seattle Institution and they have no intention of changing their name. He says, “Our position is to ignore it.”

Frazier did say, however, that to celebrate their 40^th anniversary in 1994 they decided it would be best to change their tag-line.

Pre-1994: We’re Dicks. Where taste is the difference

Post-1994: We’re Dicks Where taste has been the difference since 1954

Now, if my company was named Dick’s I would be less likely to ignore and more likely to change. That's me. I come from a heritage of name changers.

In the past several years my gas company, my electric company, my bank, and then my gas company again, have all changed their names. The fact is in today’s business environment businesses change names faster than some people go through Kleenex.

Unless your name is Dick, and then it tends to stick.

None of your Business

Perhaps it was my conversation with Yvonne DiVita at Lip-Sticking who told me she tries to blog every day. Or perhaps it’s because one of my retainer clients is having cash flow problems so I suddenly and regrettably find myself with an extra 15-20 hours a week on my hands – the better to blog with.

So starting today, I will be blogging with more regularity. I won’t commit to every day, but I’m going to try.

Like many people this weekend, I got sucked into the Terri Schiavo case. But unlike the executive and legislative branches of our government, the phrase that kept up popping up in my mind was not that her husband is killing her, the phrase that kept popping up in my mind is -- “ It’s none of your business.”

As I kept repeating that phrase to myself, over and over again this weekend, I realized I had no idea where the phrase originated.  Turns out like the Schiavo case, there doesn’t seem to be consensus.

According to the website Back-Roads Touring Company, an outfit that promises to take you out of the tourist façade, the term Mind Your Own business has to do with hygiene.

"Mind your Own business' Our ancestor's personal hygiene left much room for improvement. As a result, many women and men had developed acne scars by adulthood. The women would spread bee's wax over their facial skin to smooth out their complexions. When they were speaking to each other, if a woman began to stare at another woman's face she was told 'mind your own bee's wax'."

Dictionary.com indicates that none of your business gets its origins from Mind your own Bee’s wax.

"Not one's concern, as in How much I earn is none of your business. This expression employs business in the sense of "one's affairs," a usage dating from about 1600. (Also see mind one's own business.) A slangy, jocular variant from about 1930 is none of one's beeswax. The related verb phrase have no business is used to indicate that one should not meddle or interfere, as in He has no business discussing the will with outsiders."

This from wordorigins.org

Beeswax

This term, commonly used in the phrase none of your beeswax, is an Americanism dating to the 1930s. It is simply an intentional malapropism for business. It has nothing to do with actual wax.

While I wish that lots of people would be minding their own beeswax today, my search for meaning did uncover a a surprising and delightful find.

The  website for Back-Roads Touring Company has a disclaimer on the bottom of their homepage that I found so inspiring that I would like to adopt it.

With the amount of information we've tried to supply, there'll inevitably be typographical errors that we've failed to spot. Sorry for this. Should you find any, please let us know and we'll be delighted to send you a small gift for your trouble. 

Actually, I probably won’t send a gift, but I will post a personal acknowledgement.  I am a writer who definitely needs an editor. ( oh, and when I went to spellcheck this post, typepad sent an error saying the couldn't complete my request so there's probably a good chance that I will be thanking quite a few of you in the upcoming days!)

Queen Bees Part II aka words count

For some time English has been evolving toward having nondiscriminatory grammar, structure, and form.

However, that doesn't mean we don't mentally assign gender to certain words and idioms.

Take "whiny"-- it's as pink as a ballet slipper. According to Merriam Webster, whiny is " a prolonged high-pitched cry usually expressive of distress or pain"

Whiny is exactly how radio talk show host Don Imus characterized Maureen Dowd’s recent column on the lack of women writing for the op-ed page of major newspapers.

During a chat with NBC Correspondent Andrea Mitchell, Imus tried to get her to comment. She tried to take the high road and explained to Mr.Imus why this is such a big issue right now. As Dowd explained in her column:

"The kerfuffle over female columnists started when Susan Estrich launched a crazed and nasty smear campaign against Michael Kinsley, the L.A. Times editorial page editor, trying to force him to run her humdrum syndicated column.

Given the appalling way she's handled herself, Susan - an acquaintance for many years - is the last person Michael, a friend of mine, should hire. But he should recruit some more talented women to write for him. So should The Times, The Washington Post - which also has only one female columnist - and anyone else who has an obvious gender gap on their op-ed pages."

The issue isn’t whether Imus liked Dowd’s column. The issue is the choice of words. What made it whiny?  Was it the fact that Dowd pointed out that very few women are represented on the op-ed page?

Or that she provided an explanation that had more to do with female personality traits than female talent?

Or, was it whiny because a woman was pointing out that there is a disparity between men and women who hold power positions in the media?

Mitchell didn't challenge Imus on his use of the word whiny. She's not alone. Listen to the language used to describe women in power.All too often it is gender-biased, painting a picture of a less than desirable leader.

It has become standard fare to dodge the real issues of gender discrimination by attacking women with verbal euphemisms that communicate women are not as capable leaders as men.

Heaven help the woman who believes in feminism. She’s a FemiNazi. And, a woman who does exert power is called a bitch, naggy, diva, goddess, glamazon, alpha woman, bossy, blonde, scattered, ditzy, screechy, or high-pitched. (This is not the entire list, it's actually much longer).

Who wants the head of the department to be run by a naggy, high-pitched diva that operates like an alpha woman in heat?

There was a time in the late 60s and 70s when women were quick to correct men when they behaved or spoke like a male chauvinist.

Women didn’t wait to have a man walk around the car to open a door, we did it ourselves.

Heaven help the guy who referred to the women in the office as “the girls” or tried to call us honey.

We spoke up. Changes were made.

It's no longer the best man for the job, it's the best candidate.

It's no longer a one-man show, its a solo show.

We were diligent in our desire to be treated as equals. Some would say we were obnoxious. But, it worked—sort of.  We changed some of the language. We got the jobs. Okay, we didn't’t get the pay. Thirty years later, women still earn 75 cents to every dollar earned by a man. And we should be raising a ruckus about that. We don't.

It’s been all quiet on the work front for too long. Women have lost their voice. If more women were hassling newspapers about the lack of female voices on the op-ed pages, there would be more women. No one seems to care, and when they do mention it, they’re whiny.

Women have no one but ourselves to blame. Instead of fighting the fight, we now simply walk away. Women’s solution to the inequality in male run companies is to leave corporate America.

According to the Center for Women’s Business Research, between 1997 and 2004, the estimated growth rate in the number of women-owned firms was nearly twice that of all firms (17% vs. 9%).

Language matters. We may have taken the man out of the mail carrier and police officer, but we haven't taken the sexism out of our every day language.

So the next time you hear a female executive being called a bitch, diva or glamazon, challenge it. Demand that she is described in the more gender neutral language we assign male executives we don’t like.

Call her a jerk.

.

Where are all the Queen Bees?

The year was 1972. The location: a classroom in the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Dr. Edward Lambert was lecturing us on public affairs. I was sitting in the back of the room chain smoking Virginia Slims with Ann Woolner, who now writes for BloombergNews.

What seemed like a non sequitur at the time,Dr. Lambert launched into a rant about women in broadcasting. According to Dr. Lambert women in broadcasting was not a good idea. People, he said, simply will not accept women as authority figures. Our voices were too high. His advice: learn shorthand.

Statistics would say Dr. Lambert was wrong. Women have lots of jobs in broadcasting, newspapers and corporate america. We may not earn as much as men, but we can work in just about any field we want.

Complain about the pay disparity and we're told, "These things take time."

Statistics would say We've Come A Long Way Baby, but statistics don't always tell the real story.

Women may have succeeded in becoming worker bees. but when it comes to the Queen Bee spot, women are still woefully underused.

Which brings me to Maureen Dowd's Column in the New York Times where she talks about the fact that very few women succeed as editorial columnists.

"While a man writing a column taking on the powerful may be seen as authoritative, a woman doing the same thing may be seen as castrating. If a man writes a scathing piece about men in power, it's seen as his job; a woman can be cast as an emasculating man-hater. I'm often asked how I can be so "mean" - a question that Tom Friedman, who writes plenty of tough columns, doesn't get.

Even the metaphors used to describe my column play into the castration theme: my scalpel, my cutting barbs, razor-sharp hatchet, Clinton-skewering and Bush-whacking. "Does she," The L.A. Times's Patt Morrison wondered, "write on a computer or a Ronco Slicer and Dicer?"

In 1998, Bill Clinton made a castration joke about me at a press dinner, as I sank down in my seat. I called Alan Dundes, a renowned folklorist, to ask about it. "Women are supposed to take it, not dish it out," he replied. "If a woman embarrasses a man, he feels inadequate, effeminate. He wants her to go back to the kitchen."

It's not okay that Dowd is the only female op-ed writer for The New York Times.

It's not okay that MSNBC's primetime schedule is all boys, all the time.

It's not okay that when women do succeed there is either the rumor that she is batting for the other team

or

That she slept her way to the top.

Dr. Lambert may be rolling over in his grave over the amount of women who are in broadcasting today. However, he can rest in peace because our voice is very soft. Women in the media are still viewed as children of the 50s. We can be seen, just not heard.