CareerBuilder.com offers up another list with “wacky” in the title.  For web purposes, wacky is a euphemism for link bait, but I’ll bite.  The list is comprised of the most unusual excuses provided by employees for being late.

1.  
   1. While rowing across the river to work, I got lost in the fog.
   2. Someone stole all my daffodils.
   3. I had to go audition for American Idol.
   4. My ex-husband stole my car so I couldn’t drive to work.
   5. My route to work was shut down by a Presidential motorcade.
   6. I wasn’t thinking and accidentally went to my old job.
   7. I was indicted for securities fraud this morning.
   8. The line was too long at Starbucks.
   9. I was trying to get my gun back from the police.
   10. I didn’t have money for gas because all of the pawn shops were closed.

As a manager, I would find #8 completely acceptable.

Comments(0)

A bullet point from a Business Development Sales Position ad:

Demonstrated ability to persevere and remain positively motivated when faced with negative response or rebuff from the customer

What they are describing is the ability to handle rejection.  I think there is no more important differentiation between average salespeople and sales superstars.  That quoted line could, or maybe should, be in every sales ad.

Comments(0)

The modern workplace is shifting towards a more ad hoc approach vs. a scheduled interaction according this The Economist’s excellent article Labour movement.  This article defines nomadism in the current work world:

Today’s work nomadism descends from, but otherwise bears little resemblance to, the older model of “telecommuting”, says Mr Ware. That earlier concept became popular in the 1990s thanks to cheap but stationary telecommunications technologies—the landline phone, the fax and dial-up internet. Because it still tied workers to a place—the home office—telecommuting implicitly had people “cocooning at home five days a week”, he says. But people do not want that: instead, they want to mingle with others and to collaborate, though not necessarily under fluorescent lights in a cubicle farm an hour’s drive from their homes. The crucial difference between telecommuting and nomadism, he says, is that nomadism combines the autonomy of telecommuting with the mobility that allows a gregarious and flexible work style.

That is an excellent explanation, isn’t it?  This trend is already in place and growing.  Mobility has become the emancipating factor in the equation.  Large companies are jumping into the nomadic ways too:

At Sun Microsystems, a company that makes hardware and software for corporate datacentres, more than half of the workforce is now officially nomadic, as part of a programme called “open work” in which employees have no dedicated desk but work from any that is available (called “hotdesking”), or do not come into the office at all.

And one good outcome of this?

Mr Schwartz, like Messrs Boyd and Coburn, has also noticed that he is having fewer “flesh meetings”.

…With more than 100,000 customers, he finds that he communicates far more efficiently through his blog, which is translated into ten languages and “on a good day reaches 50,000 people.”

…But in general he finds that “face-to-face is overrated; I care more about the frequency and fidelity of the communication.”

The article is long, but well worth the read.

Comments(1)